BEALE’S CROSSING line-height: 115%;">A fellow in the Quartermaster Corps named Major George Crossman came up with the notion of using camels for military transportation during the Seminole War in Florida during the 1830s. Camels could travel a long way without water; they could carry much more weight than a mule, and would eat anything a goat would eat and several things that no self-respecting goat would ever consider eating. The idea did not take root in the War Department until 20years later during the administration of President Franklin Pierce. The always forward thinking Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, finally got behind the camel experiment when he observed on a map that much of Western America was a “great desert”. Much of that country was arid, but it was mostly a high grassy plain, not a desert.
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