(no subject)
Nov. 6th, 2009 05:54 pmI found this excerpt in the "The Silk Road: A History" , Arthur Conan Doyle on camels:
"[The camel] is the strangest and most deceptive animal in the world. Its appearance is so staid and respectable that you cannot give it credit for the black villainty that lurks within. It appraoches you with mildly interested and superior expression, like a patrician lady in a Sunday school. You feel that a pair of glasses at the end of a fan is the one thing lacking. Then it puts its lips gently forward, with a far-away look in its eyes, and you have just time to say, "The pretty dear is going to kiss me," when two rows of frightful green teeth clash in front of you, and you give such a backward jump as you could never have hoped at your age to accomplish. When once the veil is dropped, anything more demoniacal than the face of a camel cannot be conceived. No kindness and no length of ownership seem to make them friendly. And yet you must make allowances for a creature which can carry 600 lb. for 20 miles a day, and ask for no water and little food at the end of it."