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Albert Gorton Greene

The Lost Camel.

DERVISH was journeying alone in the desert, when two merchants suddenly met him. "You have lost a camel?" said he, to the merchants. "Indeed we have," they replied. "Was he not blind in his right eye, and lame in his left leg?" said the Dervish. "He was," replied the merchants. "Had he not lost a front tooth?" said the Dervish. "He had," rejoined the merchants. "And was he not laden with honey on one side, and wheat on the other?" "Most certainly he was," they replied; "and as you have seen him so lately, and marked him so particularly, you can, in all probability, conduct us to him." "My friends," said the Dervish, "I have never seen your camel, nor ever heard of him but from you." "A pretty story truly," said the merchants; "but where are the jewels which formed part of his cargo ?" "I have neither seen your camel nor your jewels," repeated the Dervish.

On this, they seized his person, and forthwith hurried him before the Cadi, where, on the strictest search, nothing could be found upon him, nor could any evidence be adduced to convict him, either of falsehood or theft. They were then about to proceed against him as a sorcerer, when the Dervish, with great calmness, thus addressed the court : " I have been much amused with your surprise, and own that there was some ground for your suspicions; but I have lived long, and alone, and I can find ample scope for observation, even in a desert. I knew that I had crossed the track of a camel that had strayed. from its owner, because I saw no mark of any human footstep on the same route. I knew that the animal was blind in one eye, because it had cropped the herbage only on one side of its path. And I perceived that it was lame in one leg, from the faint impression which that particular foot had produced upon the sand. I concluded that the animal had lost one tooth, because, wherever it had grazed, a small tuft of herbage had been left uninjured in the midst of its bite. As to that which formed the burthen of the beast, the busy ants informed me that it was corn on one side, and the clustering flies that it was honey on the other."