An animal thus formed for a sandy and desert region, cannot be propagated in one of a different nature. Many vain efforts have been tried to propagate the camel in Spain; they have been transported into America, but have mulitiplied in neither. It is true, indeed that they may be brought into these countries, and may, perhaps, be found to produce there; but the care of keeping them is so great, and the accidents to which they are exposed, from the changeableness of the climate, are so many, that they cannot answer the care of keeping. In a few years also, they are seen to degenerate their strength and their patience forsake them; and instead of making the riches, they become the burden of their keepers.

But it is very different in Arabia, and those countries where the camel is turned to useful purposes. It is there considered as a sacred animal, without whose help the natives could neither subsist, traffic, nor travel; its milk makes a part of their nourishment; they feed upon its flesh, particularly when young; they clothe themselves with its hair, which it is seen to molt regularly once a year; and if they fear an invading enemy, their camels serve them in flight, and in a single day they are known to travel above a hundred miles. Thus, by means of the camel, an Arabian finds safety in his deserts: all the armies upon earth might be lost in the pursuit of a flying squadron of this country, mounted upon their camels, and taking refuge in solitudes where nothing interposes to stop their flight, or to force them to wait the invader.* Nothing can be more

The foot of this animal, (so often referred to, and not without reason, as an evidence of design,) is divided into two toes, each having a horny tip; the division is not, however, complete; for an elastic pad or cushion, constituting the main part upon which the pressure falls, spreads broadly beneath, connecting them together, but leaving the points free. On pressing the ground, the elastic cushion expands, and the toes diverge, so that a larger surface is brought in contact with the sandy earth, a circumstance which, in connexion with the elastic nature of the sole, if we may so call it, enables the creature to tread over the yielding desert, or the hard and arid plain, with almost equal comfort.

The foot of the camel, certainly formed by nature to tread a loose sandy soil, "does not, however, appear to me," says the writer just quoted, "to suffer from stony or hard roads. In Asia Minor there are mountains in every direction; the paths across them are hard, rough, and loose, as rocks and broken stones can make them; yet I have often seen camels treading them without any appearance of suffering; and though I have met them in my travels, hundreds in a day, I do not remember having ever seen a wounded hoof." The soil most inimical to the foot of the camel is such as is soft and muddy; here the anima!, slipping at every step, keeps on its legs with difficulty. It is said that so great is its dislike to venture upon such a track, that its drivers have been obliged to spread

their tent coverings over the obnoxious ground, in order to conceal its appearance, and induce the animal to proced.-RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY'S NATURAL HISTORY.

* ARABIAN HORSE AND CAMEL.-It is an erroneous opinion which believes Arabia to be very rich in horses. Many tribes are wholly unprovided with them, and Burckhardt supposes that there do not exist 50,000 of those animals between the extreme boundaries of the Euphrates and Syria, a much smaller number than the same extent of ground would furnish in any other part of Asia or Europe. The Syrian districts, especially Hauran produce the best; but of pure Arabian blood of the choicest breeds, few have ever been exported. If a Bedouin wishes to express his admiration of the speed of another's mare, he blesses the animal copiously, and addressing her master, says, "Go and wash your mare's feet and drink up the water." The best Arabian camel, after three whole days' abstinence from water, shows manifest signs of great distress; in case of absolute necessity, it might possibly go five days without drinking; but this trial can never be required, since there is no route across the Arabian desert in which wells are farther distant from cach other than three days and a half. Burckhardt never heard an instance of a camel being slaughtered for the sake of the water in its stomach. The extremity of thirst, indeed, induces the traveller, unable to support the exertion of walking, to cling as a last resouce to this serviceable animal, nor does its stomach, unless on the first day's watering, afford by any means a copious supply. The swiftness of the camel has been greatly exaggerated: 115 miles in eleven hours, during which occured

dreary than the aspect of these sandy plains, that seem entirely forsaken of life and vegetation: wherever the eye turns, nothing is presented but a steril and dusty soil, sometimes torn up by the winds, and moving in great waves along, which, when viewed from an eminence, resemble less the earth than the ocean; here and there a few shrubs appear, that only teach us to wish for the grove, that remind us of the shade in these sultry climates, without affording its refreshment; the return of morning, which, in other places, carries an idea of chcerfulness, here serves only to enlighten the endless and dreary waste, and to present the traveller with an unfinished prospect of his forlorn situation; yet in this chasm of nature, by the help of the camel, the Arabian finds safety and subsistence. There are here and there found spots of verdure, which, though remote from each other, are, in a manner, approximated by the labour and industry of the camel. Thus these deserts, which present the stranger with nothing but objects of danger and sterility, afford the inhabitant protection, food, and liberty. The Arabian lives independent and tranquil in the midst of his solitudes; and instead of considering the vast solitudes spread round him as a restraint upon his happiness, he is by experience taught to regard them as the ramparts of his freedom.

The camel is easily instructed in the methods of taking up and supporting his burthen; their legs, a few days after they are produced, are bent under their belly; they are in this manner loaded, and taught to rise; their burthen is every day thus increased, by insensible degrees, till the animal is capable of supporting a weight adequate to its force: the same care is taken in making them patient of hunger and thirst: while other animals receive their food at stated times, the camel is restrained for days together, and these intervals of famine are increased in proportion as the animal seems capable of sustaining them. By this method of education, they live five or six days without food or water; and their stomach is formed most admirably by nature to fit them for long abstinence: besides the four stomachs which all animals have that chew the cud, (and the camel is of the number,) it has a fifth stomach which serves as a reservoir, to hold a greater quantity of water than the animal has an immediate occasion for. It is of a sufficient capacity to contain a large quantity of water, where the fluid remains without corrupting, or without being adulterated by the other aliments: when the camel finds itself pressed with thirst, it has here an easy resource for quenching it; it throws up a quantity of this water

two passages over the Nile in a ferry-boat, each requiring twenty minutes, is the most extraordinary performance which Burckhardt ever heard authenticated; and this, probably, has been surpassed by an English trotting mare. He thinks that, if left to its own free will, this animal would have travelled 200 miles in twenty-four hours; twelve miles an hour is the utmost trotting pace of a camel; it may gallop nine miles in half an hour, but it cannot support that pace, which is unnatural to it, for a longer time. Nothing can be easier than its common amble of five and a half miles an hour, and if properly fed every evening, or in case of emergency once in two days, it will continue this pace uninterruptedly for five or even six days. While the hump continues full, the animal will endure considerable fatigue on a very short allowance, feeding, as the Arabs say, on the fat of its own hump. After a long journey the hump almost entirely subsides, and it is not until after three or four months' repose, and a considerable time after the rest of the carcass has acquired flesh, that it resumes its natural

size, of one-fourth of the whole body. The full growth of the camel is attained at twelve years; he lives forty, but at about or under thirty his activity declines. In Egypt, camels are kept closely shorn, and are guided by a string attached to the nose-ring. Those of Arabia are seldom perforated in the nose; and readily obey the short stick of the rider. The camel-saddle of the Arabian women is gaudily fitted out, and a lady of Nadja considers it a degradation to mount any other than a black camel, while an Æzenian beauty prefers one which is grey or white. Cautery to the chest of the hump is usually applied when their broken-winded caravan-camel is exhausted by fatigue. Towards the close of a long journey, scarcely an evening passes without this operation, yet the load is replaced on the following morning on the part recently burned, and no degree of pain induces the patient animal to refuse or throw it off. If it once sinks, however, overpowered either by hunger or toil, it cannot be compelled to rise again.-ARCANA OF SCIENCE, 1833.

by a simple contraction of the muscles, into the other stomachs, and this serves to macerate its dry and simple food; in this manner, as it drinks but seldom, it takes in a large quantity at a time, and travellers, when straightened for water, have been often known to kill their camels for that which they expected to find within them.

In Turkey, Persia, Arabia, Barbary, and Egypt, their whole commerce is carried on by means of camels, and no carriage is more speedy, and none less expensive in these countries. Merchants and travellers unite themselves into a body, furnished with camels, to secure themselves from the insults of the robbers that infest the countries in which they live. This assemblage is called a caravan, in which the numbers are sometimes known to amount to above ten thousand, and the number of camels is often greater than those of the men : each of these animals is loaded according to his strength, and he is so sensible of it himself, that when his burthen is too great, he remains still upon his belly, the posture in which he is loaded, refusing to rise, till his burthen be lessened or taken away. In general, the large camels are capable of carrying a thousand weight, and sometimes twelve hundred; the dromedary from six to seven. In these trading journeys they travel but slowly; their stages are generally regulated, and they seldom go above thirty, or at most about five and thirty miles a day. Every evening, when they arrive at a stage, which is usually some spot of verdure, where water and shrubs are in plenty, they are permitted to feed at liberty; they are then seen to eat as much in an hour as will supply them for twenty-four they seem to prefer the coarsest weeds to the softest pasture; the thistle, the nettle, the cassia, and other prickly vegetables, are their favourite food; but their drivers take care to supply them with a kind of paste composition, which serves as a more permanent nourishment. As these animals have often gone the same track, they are said to know their way precisely, and to pursue their passage when their guides are utterly astray when they come within a few miles of their baiting place in the evening, they sagaciously scent it a distance, and increasing their speed, are often seen to trot with vivacity to their stage.

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The patience of this animal is most extraordinary; and it is probable that its sufferings are great, for when it is loaded, it sends forth most lamentable cries, but never offers to resist the tyrant that oppresses it. At the slightest sign, it bends its knees, and lies upon its belly, suffering itself to be loaded in this position; by this practice the burthen is more easily laid upon it, than if lifted up while standing; at another sign it rises with its load, and the driver getting upon its back between the two panniers, which, like hampers, are placed upon each side, he encourages the camel to proceed with his voice and with a song. In this manner the creature proceeds contentedly forward, with a slow uneasy walk of about four miles an hour, and when it comes to its stage, lies down to be unloaded as before.

Buffon seems to consider the camel to be the most domesticated of all other creatures, and to have more marks of the tyranny of man imprinted on its form. He is of opinion that this animal is not now to be found in a state of nature, that the humps on its back, the callosities upon its breast and its legs, and even the great reservoir for water, are all marks of long servitude and domestic constraint. The deformities he supposes to be perpetuated by generation, and what at first was accident at last becomes nature. However this be, the humps upon the back grow large in proportion as the animal is well fed, and if examined, they will be found composed of a substance not unlike the udder of

a cow.

The inhabitants generally leave but one male to wait on ten females; the rest they castrate, and though they thus become weaker, they are more manageable and patient. The female receives the male in the same position as when these animals are loaded; she goes with young for about a year, and like all other great animals, produces but one at a time. The camel's milk is abundant and nourishing, and mixed with water makes a principal part of the beverage of the Arabians. These animals begin to engender at three years of age, and they

ordinarily live from forty to fifty years. The genita' art of the male resembles that of the bull, but is placed pointing backwards, so that its urine seems to be ejected in the manner of the female. This, as well as the dung, and almost every part of this animal, is con

dance as that of the cow; the flesh of the young ones is supposed to be as delicate as veal; their hair is more beautiful, and more in request than wool; while even of its very excrements, no part is useless.

CHAP. XXVII.

THE LLAMA.

As almost all the quadrupeds of America are smaller than the resembling ones

burthen; like that it is obedient to its driver, and often dies under, but never resists his cruelty.

Of these animals, some are white, others black, but they are mostly brown, its face resembles that of

the camel, and its height is about equal to that of an ass. They are not found in the ancient continent, but entirely belong to the new; nor are they found spread over all America, butare found chiefly upon those mountains that stretch from New Spain to the Straits of Magellan. They inhabit the highest regions of the globe, and seem to require purer air than animals of a lower situation are found to enjoy. Peru seems to be the place where they are found in

greatest plenty. In Mexico they are introduced rather as curiosities than beasts of burthen; but in Potosi and other provinces of Peru, they make the chief riches of the Indians and Spaniards who rear them: their flesh is excellent food; their hair, or rather wool may be spun into beautiful clothing; and they are capable, in the most rugged and dangerous ways, of carrying burthens not exceeding a hundred weight, with the greatest safety. It is true indeed that they go but slowly, and seldom above fifteen miles a day; their tread is heavy, but sure; they descend precipices, and find footing among the most craggy rocks where even men can scarce accompany them; they are, however, but feeble animals, and after four or five days' labour, they are obliged to repose for a day or two. They are chiefly used in carrying the riches of the mines of Potosi, and we are told that there are above three hundred thousand of these animals in actual employ.

This animal, as was said before, is above three feet high, and the neck is three feet long; the head is small and well proportioned, the eyes large, the nose long, the lips thick, the upper divided, and the lower a little depending; like all those animals that feed upon grass, it wants the upper cutting teeth; the ears are four inches long, and move with great agility; the tail is but five inches long, it is small, straight, and a little turned up at the end; it is clovenfooted, like the ox, but it has a kind of spear-like appendage behind, which assists it in moving over precipices and rugged ways; the wool on the back is short, but long on the sides and the belly; it resembles the camel in the formation of the genital parts in the male, so that it makes urine backwards; it couples also in the same manner, and though it finds much difficulty in the action, it is said to be much inclined to venery. A whole day is often passed before the necessary business can be completed, which is spent in growling, quarrelling, and spitting at each other; they seldom produce above one at a time, and their age never extends above ten or twelve years at farthest.

Though the llama is no way comparable to the camel, either for size, strength, or perseverance, yet the Americans find a substitute in it, with which they seem perfectly contented. It appears formed for that indolent race of masters which

petual snow, from Chili to New Granada, without reaching the isthmus of Panama. The species is not to be found in Mexico; and this remarkable circumstance is to be ascribed to the fact that the isthmus of the Cordilleras has a less elevation than is suited to their natures and wants. In the same

way some of the Alpine animals of Europe, which never descend into the plains, are found upon mountains at long intervals, although the line of their summits is interrupted. This locality is determined by elevation. The same fact is constantly observed with regard to plants.