As Marshall Trimble writes in Roadside History of Arizona, “The experiment was beset with problems. Mule skinners, known for being able to swear in paragraphs, found their oaths falling on deaf ears. The independent camels simply refused to learn English and looked upon their American handlers with contempt. The Americans, for their part, couldn’t speak Arabic….The stalemate was broken when the army imported camel drivers from the Middle East, and the survey proceeded on schedule.”

The most famous of the camel drivers was a Syrian named Hadji Ali, whose name was corrupted by the Americans to “Hi Jolly.”
If you’re every near the town of Quartzsite on I-10 between Phoenix and the California border (population in summer, about 300; population in winter, 100,000–most of them in RVs with not a walMart parking lot in sight) you can visit his gravesite, a pyramid monument with a camel on the top. (A song was written about him in the 1960’s–almost 60 years after his death–that was recorded by the New Christy Minstrels.)

Kirk (with my own stubborn animal–canine variety–in tow)