But it was a vain effort on my part.

They kept in the track of water-holes, and wandered on from one to the other at considerable speed.
At length I abandoned hope altogether, though not without a feeling of sore disappointment, as I watched the curious, ungainly creatures disappearing over the ridge of a sand-hill.

Of course I took good care not to tell any of the natives the real reason of my desire to possess a camel,--though I did try to explain to them some of the uses to which people in other parts of the world put these wonderful animals.
I never lost an opportunity of leaving records wherever I could.

As I have said before, I was constantly blazing trees and even making drawings upon them; and I would have left records in cairns had I been able to make any writing material.

Talking about this, I was for a long time possessed with the desire to make myself a kind of paper, and I frequently experimented with the fibres of a certain kind of tree.