he takes with him for his own meals, and
also some of the drinking water which he carries on his saddle. But if
it did happen that his master had no food or drink to spare, the camel
could still live for several days, using his hump for food, and the
water in the cells of his stomach for drink.

The camel can do yet another wonderful thing. He can tell a long way
off when he is coming to a place where there is water. In the desert,
after going over sand and sand for many days, a traveler sometimes
finds a beautiful place called an _oasis_. It is just like a lovely
little garden right in the middle of the desert, with a spring of
water, and several fig trees, date trees, and other palm trees growing
all around the pool.

When a traveler is crossing the desert and sees nothing but sand for
several days, it sometimes happens that his camel suddenly stops,
stands quite still for a minute, raises his head, and sniffs the air.
Then he turns a little to the right or to the left, and begins to run
straight that way. His master may look ahead very hard, but he will
see nothing but sand and sand, as before.

But the camel, by just sniffing the air, has found out that there is
an oasis within reach, though it is still too far away for him to see
it. Then he runs on most gladly, and comes to the oasis in an hour, so
that he and his master can rest there for some time, and drink from
the pool, and eat the figs and dates growing on the trees.

Of course, the camel can also eat the leaves of the trees; in fact,
when he is not in the desert, but just in the ordinary country, he
usually eats from the shrubs and bushes, and gets figs and dates only
as a dainty, just as you sometimes have ice cream. The camel with two
humps will gladly eat many more things than the camel with one hump.
In fact, when he is hungry, he will eat not only any kind of
vegetable, but also meat. He has even been known to chew up and eat
bones, blankets, and leather! And he is perhaps the _only animal that
will drink salt water_; for the country in which the Two-Humps camel
lives has several lakes, the water of which is bitter and salty.

So you see how useful an animal the camel is, whether he has one hump
or two humps. He is so useful that people have been saying for a long
time that camels should be brought into America, where there are
several deserts in the western states. In fact, a strange thing has
already happened. The United States Government did br