The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 61, July 1957 - April, 1958 Page: 43
591 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Operation Camel
then followed the trail to Fort Stockton, arriving on July 28. The
report of the trip reads in part as follows:
The camels have encountered hills and mountains of the most
difficult nature; crossed streams, traversed prairies, some smooth,
others rocky and broken by rapid succession of deep arroyos or
ravines, they have sustained an abstinence of nearly five days from
water in one instance, and frequently of two or three days, with an
allowance of food much inferior to that necessary for a horse or a
mule ... traversing the while the most difficult country in north-
western Texas, making marches laterally of over 20 miles per day
and have arrived at their place of departure in the same condition
in point of flesh which characterized them in setting out. With the
horses and mules the case is different. . . . The camels carried water
for them, an allowance of three gallons per day, which though not
sufficient, is believed to have been the means of saving several val-
uable animals ... the emaciation and jaded condition of many
others shows an inferiority to the camel for this service.28
In San Antonio, en route to his station at Camp Cooper in
March, 1857, Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee witnessed one
of the camel experiments. He had seen the second shipment of
camels some time before when it passed through San Antonio en
route to Camp Verde. On that occasion he was amazed to see one
of the animals rise from the ground, "packed with two bales of
cotton."29 Three years later when Lee became the temporary com-
mander of the Texas Department, he watched other camel experi-
ments. The reconnaissance into West Texas during the spring and
summer of 1859 was the most severe test that had yet been under-
taken. Colonel Lee wanted more positive proof of the feasibility
of using the camel.
Secretary of War Floyd directed Lee to continue the tests
which he thought advisable to extend into rougher terrain. On
May 31, 186o, Lee ordered Lieutenant William Echols to make
another trip into the upper Rio Grande country. According to
the instructions, he should make a reconnaissance between Camp
trail ran down from the Panhandle of Texas, crossed the Pecos at Horsehead
Crossing, thence via Comanche Springs (now Fort Stockton) through Pena Colo-
rado and thence southward toward the tip of the Big Bend, where it forked
crossing the Rio Grande at two places. The springs must have been the camp
ground for the Indians for a thousand years."
28Senate Executive Documents, 36th Cong., 1st Sess. (Serial No. lo04), Document
No. 2, p. 488.
29Carl C. Rister, Robert E. Lee in Texas (Norman, 1946), 80.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 61, July 1957 - April, 1958, periodical, 1958; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101164/m1/63/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.