1950-09-09 — Page 3

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1950.

DESERT MOUNTIES

White racing camels from the Sudan head into the Egyptian desert carrying the Police Camel Corps on manoeuvres. This Corps is one of the world's most colourful mounted patrols and is part of the national defence force of 2,000 camels..

A CORPSMAN receives field orders from an officer His check bears the caste mark

FA

of Upper Sudan native and was probably made by his father when he was a year old.

AMED in fact and fiction, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police let neither freezing snow or high mountains stop them from getting their man. Now from distant Krypt cumus word of an equally colourful and sea soned group of riders of the law-the Police Camel Corps. The challenge there is neither snow nor mountains, bat the enervating heat of the fat Suralia desert.

Egypt's Police Camel Corps moves silently day and night over sandy regions impass- able except to the soft spreading pads of the camel's feel. Corpsmen carry no tents. They sleep on the sand which is likewise their kitchen. Each man bakes his own bread in the sand without the use of pots or pans, since they know that the desert is the cleanest of all the earth's carpets.

What appears a trackless waste to outsidera is a clearly imprinted report to those corpsmen. They plek out any wanted camel truck from among hundreds. The weight of the beast and his load leave the evidence sught by these desert-wise protectors of Egypt's lonely borders.

The sun by day and the stars by night are their only guides. No roads exist, and eyesight must be as "clear as an eagle's" when the speedy camel and his precision- trained rider pursue a Sahara' bað man,

WHEN THE WARNING is sounded that a camel thief is loose on the desert,

the Police Camel Corps breaks up into small parties like this one passing the

THIS SUDANESE & in expert in detecting wilch of the many track marks in the Sahara desert sand is that of a stolen animal the Police Camel Corps is about to close in upon.

4,000-year-old pyramids. Speed is vital and, since cars cannot cross the heavy sand, the camel provides an Old World answer to a modern police problem.

ON FOOT with his rifle ready for action, another Camel Corps

..

AFTER Á SCUFFLE, the thief surrenders to an officer while a corpiman covers him with a policeman approaches a desert hideout where the thief hides. rifle. Beemingly undisturbed by the proceedings, the camel, loaded with lobt, dtí nahrby..