The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 61, July 1957 - April, 1958 Page: 50

50 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
a "mule army" until a generation ago. The old stubborn army
mule had plenty of friends; the camel had few. A mule would
respond to a lot of "cussing," which was not effective with a
camel. They always appeared never to "give a cuss" in the pres-
ence of a swearing driver. Rudyard Kipling once said you might
as well lavish your affections on a baggage van as on a camel.
And the same is true of expending one's wrath.
The camel never replaced the horse or mule in the West. The
steam engine replaced them, as the motor car and the Diesel
engine are currently making a museum piece of the steam
engine. The camel had his fair trial as a beast of burden. He
succeeded in every test, but in the end he failed to impress the
Westerner. He passed on, and his bones bleached on the desert
wastes of Arizona and in the Bandera Hills. "Operation camel"
passed into history because the camel was a foreigner. He did
not "belong."