My journey from the Grand Canyon back to Olten took me in almost exactly the direction Coronado might have taken if he hadn’t fallen for the lies of the Hopi and the Turk. I spent my last night in Flagstaff, Arizona. When I drove out of the town the next morning, I found myself back on the celebrated Route 66.
It was a profoundly depressing experience.
I saw scores of motorcyclists pursuing their dreams of another existence on that highway, riding along it for hour after hour at a steady 80 m.p.h. On the occasions when they did alight from the saddle, they strode around stiff-legged amid the sun-bleached Coca-Cola cans and tyre-flattened rabbits on the hard shoulder, relieved themselves against Joshua trees, and stared blankly out across the Mojave Desert. And because no trace of their dream could be seen there, they folded up their stands again and rode on in pursuit of it, eyes glued to the point at which the road disappeared over the horizon.
One could tell from their apprehensively hunched shoulders that they were no Easy Riders in real life, but architects, accountants or plumbers from London, Düsseldorf or Barcelona.
They had shelled out a lot of money and spun their alimony-entitled ex-wives a yarn in order to fly here just once in their lives and rent these Harleys on deposit from an outfitter who had also sold them brand-new fringed leather jackets, steel-tipped boots and black helmets adorned with ‘Street Devils’, or something of the kind, in white runic script.
And now they were riding in gaggles, hour after hour, along this highway where the gas stations sell their wares at twice or three times the usual price because it’s only here that tourists are dumb enough to embark on a ride across the desert with half-empty tanks. Their backsides ached and their hands were benumbed by the vibrations of the technologically obsolete Harley engines, and the tour operator’s escorting truck followed on behind with their trolley bags, so they could put on their McGregor shirts and ironed jeans for supper at the Holiday Inn. And they had their toothbrushes and blood-pressure pills with them, and each of them had a Rolex on his wrist and an iPhone in the breast pocket of his fringed jacket. Many of them had turned off their mobile phones, but they’d taken them along for safety’s sake, and were careful to ensure that they were kept fully charged. Every 20 seconds they peered through their mirrored Ray Bans at the speedometer and estimated from their mileage and average speed how long it would be before they reached their next scheduled stop and could fold down their stands once more.
I don’t know if these Easy Riders are aware of it, but Route 66 is an old camel track. After the Mexican-American War of 1846–8 the youthful United States acquired 529,000 square miles of arid, dusty desert in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Utah and California – terrain as alien to most Americans as Ukraine or Mongolia.
This terra incognita had to be crossed by pioneers on their way to the promised land of California, where nuggets of gold were reputed to spill from every furrow and orange trees bore fruit three times a year. The only problem was that it was impassable, as far as one could tell, because there were no roads, no navigable rivers, and no waterholes – not even any discernible tracks. Horses died of thirst, mules collapsed from exhaustion, draught oxen dropped dead, and humans got hopelessly lost and also expired after slaughtering the last of their beasts. Then there were the Indians who mysteriously managed to move around with ease in this hostile environment and stubbornly resisted the pale-faced intruders. It wasn’t to be expected that they would be willing to act as guides for Washington.
So the Americans recalled who had guided their European forebears across the deserts of the Old World: the nomads of Arabia on their camels. The US Army decided to acquire some Arabian camels to show them the way to the West.
On 2 March 1855 the United States Congress approved a credit of $30,000 to enable camels to be introduced into the heart of the North American continent, where there were neither navigable rivers nor passable roads. The purpose of the operation was to keep the nomadic Indian tribes who were constantly ‘rebelling against civilization’ in check, and to open up trade routes and facilitate communication.
Since the camels were to be under military command, a naval transport vessel was acquired and equipped with spacious stables on the upper deck. On the morning of 3 June 1855 the USS Supply sailed from New York for North Africa, and on 4 August she dropped anchor in the picturesque little harbour of Tunis. The two officers in command, Major Henry C. Wayne and Lieutenant David Dixon Porter, undertook their first trip ashore. In all their American innocence, they informed the cattle dealers of the harbour district that they were Americans, had many thousands of dollars to spend, and were firmly determined to purchase a camel – possibly more than one. They then bought the first camel they were offered by the first dealer they came to for the first price he quoted.
Wayne and Porter were hardly back on board the USS Supply when they discovered that the animal was suffering from camelpox, a disease so infectious, unpleasant and difficult to treat that the Arabs proverbially wished it upon their enemies. The two Americans could not but regard it as an insult when, on the following day, the governor of Tunis sent them two more camels in little better condition. To spare themselves further humiliation, Wayne and Porter sailed on, intending to do business more shrewdly in Turkey, Persia or Egypt.
But healthy camels were hard to find anywhere in the Mediterranean area because most of them were being used as pack animals in the Crimean War on the Russo-Turkish border. Major Wayne and Lieutenant Porter sailed to Malta, Greece and Turkey, where, although they purchased no camels, they were able to learn something about the camel trade. They learnt that two-humped Asiatic camels were best suited to carrying loads, whereas single-humped Arab dromedaries were used mainly for riding. They learnt to tell healthy camels from sick and discovered that many camel dealers injected the limp humps of sick beasts with water to make them appear healthier. They also learnt that a healthy camel cow could be bought for between 40 and 50 dollars, and a good bull for 75 to 100, and that the Tunisian dealer responsible for their first purchase had brazenly swindled them. They sold two of their three sick camels to a Constantinople butcher for 44 dollars.
They eventually found an abundant supply of healthy, inexpensive animals in the camel markets of Egypt, because the viceroy, Mohammed Ali Pasha, had prohibited the exportation of camels by decree. After lengthy negotiations they finally managed to acquire 33 camels and five Ottoman camel drivers in Alexandria and Smyrna and get them aboard their ship.
The USS Supply set sail for Texas on 15 February 1856. The two-month return trip across the wintry Atlantic was stormy, and the camels had to be lashed to the deck in a kneeling position. It is apparent from the captain’s log that the animals were not actually seasick, but that severe storms robbed them of their appetite for hay. When the ship entered Indianola harbour, Texas, on 29 April 1856, there were 34 animals on board – one more than there had been when she sailed.
In June 1857 the caravan set off from Albuquerque to find a westward route across the desert along the 35th parallel. It comprised 44 men, 12 covered wagons, 25 camels, and numerous horses, mules and dogs.
For the first few days the camels tried the soldiers’ patience by lagging far behind the horses and mules, but they demonstrated their superiority as soon as water ran short. Unerringly, they led the caravan many miles to the next waterhole – of whose existence neither soldiers nor horses had known – and then watched dispassionately as men and beasts greedily jostled for a drink.
After that the camels and their Ottoman drivers assumed the caravan’s undisputed leadership, unfailingly guiding it along the shortest, quickest and safest route to California past canyons, craters, volcanoes and the remains of Indian civilizations that had failed to survive a visit from the Conquistadors. It was a ‘constant source of wonder’ to the leader of the expedition, Edward Fitzgerald Beale, and his companions, that they could scarcely cover a mile of their journey without coming across ruins or fragments of pottery that bore witness to the erstwhile presence in large numbers of ‘a race whose very name has passed away’, as Beale noted in his journal.
Late in August they came to the big pueblo of the Zuni Indians, whose 12,000 inhabitants still lived as they had done in the days of the Spanish explorer Francisco Coronado. Finally, on 17 October, after a four-month trek covering 1,200 miles, the camel caravan reached the Colorado River and halted at a place now called Beale’s Crossing, 15 miles north of the small Californian town of Needles. There they were closely watched by the Mohave Indians, who had already had some contact with passing gold prospectors and expressed their surprise at the camels’ appearance in fractured English. ‘God damn my soul eyes!’ one of them exclaimed, according to expedition leader Beale. ‘How de do! How de do!’
From that summer onwards, settlers undertaking the great trek to California in their covered wagons followed the tracks of those 25 camels through the Mojave Desert. The dangerous routes through Death Valley and across the snow-covered passes of the Sierra Nevada were no longer used.
The 25 camels remained in California. The army sold them in November 1863 to zoos, travelling circuses and mining companies. The animals left behind in Texas were released and the Ottoman camel drivers returned to Egypt – all save one, who remained in America, got married, and became a scout for the US Army. Jordanian by birth, his name was Hadji Ali, but because his comrades couldn’t remember such an outlandish appellation they christened him ‘Hi Jolly’. When the army no longer required his services, Hi Jolly bought a mule and rode off into Arizona’s Sonoran Desert to dig for copper, gold and silver in the Plomosa and Harquahala Mountains. He died in Quartzsite, Arizona, on 16 December 1903, at the age of 75.
Some time after Hi Jolly’s death an old prospector swore to a strange story that definitely has the unmistakable ring of truth, even though it may not have happened exactly the way he told it. According to him, he had spotted an old red camel in the desert near Quartzsite and had mentioned this incredible encounter in a saloon. A dark-skinned, elderly man had thereupon asked him where he had seen the camel and, on being told, had left the saloon without another word. The dark-skinned old man – according to legend, none other than Hi Jolly – had been found dead in the desert a few days later, with his arms around the neck of the red camel, which had also expired.
Hi Jolly’s tomb is situated a few hundred feet from US Highway 60 and takes the form of a pyramid with a camel perched on its apex. His remains are buried inside it, together with the ashes of a camel that died in Los Angeles Zoo in 1934.
When the Santa Fe Railroad from Los Angeles to Kansas was built from 1869 onwards, the track precisely followed in the camels’ footsteps and retraced the covered wagons’ route through the Mojave Desert. And half a century later, when automobiles were invented and US Highway 66 became the first through road from east to west, its engineers took their bearings from the railroad, in other words, from the covered wagons’ route and, ultimately, from the trail blazed by Ottoman scouts on their camels.
The last descendant of Hadji Ali’s camels is reported to have been sighted in British Columbia in the mid 1930s, but many sources claim it was a Chinese camel. That, however, is another story.