any other place than Turkestan, and some other parts of the Levant; while the dromedary, more common than any other beast of burthen in Arabia, is found in all the northern parts of Africa, from the Mediterranean to the river Niger, and is also met with in Egypt, in Persia, in Southern Tartary, and in all the northern parts of India. The dromedary, therefore, occupies an immense tract of land, while the camel is confined to narrow limits. The first inhabits hot and parched regions; the second, a more moist soil and temperate climate; and the whole species, as well the one as the other, appears to be confined to a zone of three or four hundred leagues in breadth, which spreads from Mauritania to China, for they subsist neither above nor below this zone, and although a native of warm climates, this animal is averse to those where the heat is excessive; his species ends where that of the elephant begins, and it cannot exist either under the burning heat of the torrid zone, or in the milder climates of the temperate. It appears to be originally a native of Arabia, for that is not only the country where they are the greatest in number, but where they seem to be in the best condition. Arabia is the most dry country in the world, and one in which water is the most scarce. The camel is the least thirsty of all animals, and can pass several days without any drink. The land is almost in every part dry and sandy. The feet of the camel are formed to travel in sand; and he cannot support himself on moist and slippery ground. Herbage and pasture are wanting in this country, as is also the ox, whose place is supplied by the camel.

We cannot be deceived as to the native country of these animals, when we consider their nature and structure which must be conformable thereto; especially when those are not modified by the influence of other climates. It has been tried, but without effect, to multiply camels in Spain; they have also in vain been transported to America, but they have neither succeeded in the one climate, nor in the other, and they are seldom to be met with in the East Indies beyond Surat and Ormus: not that we mean to say absolutely that they cannot subsist and increase in the East Indies, Spain, America, and even in colder countries, as in France, Germany, &c. By keeping them during the winter in warm stables, feeding and treating them with care, not letting them labour, or suffering them to walk out but when the weather is fine, they might be kept alive and we might even hope to see them multiply; but such productions are small and imbecile, and the parents themselves are weak and languid. They lose, therefore, all their value in these climates, and, instead of being useful, they are very expensive to bring up, while in their native country they may be said to compose all the wealth of their masters.

The Arabs regard the camel as a present from Heaven, a sacred animal, without whose aid they could neither subsist, trade, nor travel. The milk of these beasts is their common nourishment: they likewise eat their flesh, especially that of the young ones, which they reckon very good. The hair of these animals, which is fine and soft, and is renewed every year, serves them to make stuffs for their clothing and their furniture. Blest with their camels, they not only want for nothing, but they even fear nothing. In a single day they can traverse a tract of fifty leagues into the desert, and thus escape from their enemies. All the armies in the world would perish in pursuit of a troop of Arabs; and hence they are no further submissive than they please. Let any one figure to himself a country without verdure and without water; a burning sun, a sky always clear, plains covered with sand, and mountains still more parched, over which the eye extends and the sight is lost, without being stopped by a single living object; a dead earth constantly whirled about by the winds, presenting nothing but bones, flints scattered here and there, rocks perpendicular, or overthrown; a desert entirely naked, where the traveller never drew his breath under a friendly shade, where nothing accompanies him, and where nothing reminds him of an animated nature; an absolute solitude, a thousand times more frightful than that of the deepest forests; for trees appear as beings to the man, who thus desolate, thus naked, and thus lost, in an unbounded void, looks over all the extended space as his tomb: the light of the day, more dismal than the shade of the night, serves but to renew the idea of his own wretchedness and impotencies, and to present before his eyes the horror of his situation, by extending round him the immense abyss which separates him from the habitable parts of the earth; an immensity which he, in vain, attempts to overrun; for hunger, thirst, and burning heat, haunt every weary moment that remains between despair and death.

Nevertheless, the Arab has found means, by the aid of the camel, to surmount these difficulties, and even to appropriate to himself these frightful gaps of Nature: they serve him for an asylum, they secure his repose, and maintain his independence.—But why does not man know how to make use of any thing without abuse? This same free, independent, tranquil, and even rich Arab, instead of respecting these deserts as the ramparts of his liberty, sullies them with his guilt; he traverses them to rob the neighbouring nations of their slaves and gold; he makes use of them to exercise his robberies, which, unfortunately he enjoys more than his liberty; for his enterprizes are almost always successful. Notwithstanding the caution of his neighbours, and the superiority of their forces, he escapes their pursuit, and carries away with impunity all that he has plundered them of.

An Arab, who destines himself to this business of land piracy, early hardens himself to the fatigue of travelling; he accustoms himself to the want of sleep, to suffer hunger, thirst, and heat. For the same purpose he instructs his camels, he brings them up, and exercises them in the same method. A few days after their birth, he bends their legs under their bellies, forces them to remain on the earth, and in this situation loads them with a heavy weight, and which he only relieves them from to put on greater. Instead of suffering them to feed at pleasure, and to drink when they are thirsty, he regulates their repasts, and by degrees increases them to greater distances between each meal, diminishing also, at the same time, the quantity of their food. When they are tolerably strong, he exercises them in the course; he excites their emulation by the example of horses, and by degrees renders them as swift, and more robust. At length, when he is assured of the strength and swiftness of his camels, and that they can endure hunger and thirst, he then loads them with whatever is necessary for his and their subsistence, departs with them, arrives unexpected at the borders of the desert, stops the first passenger he sees, pillages the straggling habitations, loads his camels with his booty, and if he is pursued, if he is obliged to expedite his retreat, it is then that he displays all his own, and his animal’s talents. Mounted on one of his swiftest camels, he conducts the troop, makes them travel day and night, almost without stopping either to eat or drink; and in this manner, he easily passes over the space of three hundred leagues in eight days; and during all that time of fatigue and travel, he never unloads his camels, and only allows them an hour of repose, and a ball of paste each day. They often run in this manner for nine or ten days without meeting with any water, and when, by chance, there is a pool at some distance, they smell the water at more than half a league before they come to it. Thirst makes them