In advocating his amendment, Davis alluded to the extent to which these animals were used in various countries in Asia and Africa as beasts of burden; and among other things, stated that they were used by the English in the East Indies in transporting army supplies and often, in carrying light guns upon their hacks; that camels were used by Napoleon in his Egyptian campaigns in dealing with a race to which the Comanche and Apache bore a close resemblance. Davis thought these animals might be used with effect against the Indians on our Western frontier. Drinking enough water before they start to last for one hundred miles; traveling continually without rest at a rate of ten to fifteen miles an hour, they would overtake these bands of Indians, which our cavalry could not do.

They could have been made to transport small pieces of ordnance with great facility; and in fact do here all that they were capable of doing in the East, where they were  accustomed to eat the hardiest shrubs and to drink the same kind of brackish water which existed in some portions of our Western deserts. Thomas Ewing of Ohio expressed the opinion that our climate was too cold for the camel, Robert Rantoul of Massachusetts had no doubt the camel might be useful, but thought $200 apiece sufficient to pay for the animals.

The amendment was lost -- 19 yeas and 24 nays. The appropriation of $30,000 to buy camels with was a reckless extravagance that the Senators could not sanction.

Then, the newspapers of California took up the scheme, and the more they agitated it, the mightier it became. They demonstrated that it was possible to form a lightning dromedary express to carry the fast mail and to bring eastern papers and letters to California in 15 days.

It would be possible, too, if Congress could only be induced to import camels and dromedaries to have fast camel passenger trains from Missouri River points to the Pacific Coast. The camel, loading up his internal water tank out of the Missouri River and striking straight across the country regardless of watering places, and boarding himself on sage brush on the plains across, would take his next drink of the trip out of the Colorado River; then after a quiet stroll across the desert, he would land his passengers in the California coast towns in two weeks from the time of starting. No more running the gauntlet of Panama fevers and thieving natives on the isthmus. No more dying of thirst on the deserts. No freezing to death in the snows of the Sierras; no more shipwrecks on the high seas. The double-decked camel train would do away with all these and solve the transportation problem until the Pacific railroad was built.

Jefferson Davis, about 1888, C.E. Emery.

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Although beaten in his first attempt at camel importation, Jefferson Davis kept his scheme in view. While Secretary of War under President Pierce from 1853 to 1857, he obtained reports from army officers stationed on the Southwestern frontier in regard to the loss of animals on the plains -- the cost of transportation of array supplies and the possibility of utilizing the camel in hunting Indians . These reports were laid before Congress, who authorized the sending out of a commission from San Antonio, Texas to Arizona to ascertain the military uses to which camels could be put in the Southwest. The commission made a favorable report and Congress, in 1854, appropriated $30,000 for the purchase and importation of camels.

In December, 1854, Major C. Wayne was sent to Egypt and Arabia to buy seventy-five camels. He bought the first lot in Cairo and taking these in the naval store ship Supply he sailed to Smyrna , where 30 more of another kind were bought.

These had been used on the Arabian deserts. They cost from $75-300 each, somewhat more than had been paid for the Egyptian lot. The ship Supply with its load of camels reached Indianola, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico, on February 10, 1857. Three camels had died during the voyage, leaving 72 in the herd.