The camels of the Kababish must indeed be stronger and have greater powers of resistance because the Jellaba of Dongola frequently place a load of 8 hundredweight on their animals…
-Gustav Nachtigal, Sahărâ und Sûdân: Ergebnisse sechsjähriger reisen in Afrika, 1881
I thought I’d killed my white camel when KhairAllah mounted me on another the day I returned from visiting a Jellaba merchant in Dongola, saying he’d died in my absence, adding with a laugh that the bits of petrified wood I’d collected along the Wadi al-Milk had broken the literal camel’s back. But now I’m not so sure. Those few bits I’d packed up, much to KhairAllah’s mockery at the time, came no way near to adding an extra five pounds to my saddle bag, much less a hundredweight.