THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 101 



tastes of cultivated nations ; and the ungainl}^ camel sliares in the con- 

 tempt with which the humble ass, the mule, and even the ox, are 

 regarded by the polished and the proud. Besides this, both the pro- 

 ducts and the restraints of proper agriculture are unfavorable to his full 

 development and physical perfection. When the soil is enclosed and 

 subjugated, and the coarse herbage and shrubbery of spontaneous 

 growtli are superseded by artificial vegetation, he misses the pungent 

 and aromatic juices which flavor the sun-burnt grasses and wild arbo- 

 rescent plants that form his accustomed and appropriate diet; the con- 

 finement offence, and hedge, and stall are repugnant to his roving pro- 

 pensities and prejudical to his health, and he is as much out of place 

 in civilized life as the Bedouin or the Tartar. Hence the attempts to 

 introduce him into Spain, Italy, and other European countries have 

 either wholly ftiled, or met with very indifferent success ; and though 

 he still abounds in Bessarabia, the Crimea, and all the southeastern 

 provinces of Russia, yet the rural improvements which the German 

 colonists have introduced into those regions have tended to reduce his 

 numbers. When the wandering Tartar becomes stationar}^ encloses 

 his possessions, and converts the desert steppe into arable ground, his 

 camels retreat before the horse, the ox, and the sheep, and retire to the 

 wastes beyond the Don and the Volga. So essentially nomade indeed is 

 the camel in his habits, that the Arab himself dismisses him as soon as he 

 acquires a fixed habitation. The oases of the desert are generally 

 without this animal, and he is not possessed by the Fellahheen of the 

 Sinaitic jieninsula, by the inhabitants of Sinah or the oasis of Jupiter 

 Ammon, or by those who cultivate the valleys of Mount Seir. 



, Of the primitive races of man, known to ancient sacred and profane his- 

 tory, but one, the Bedouin Arab, has retained unchanged his original mode 

 of life. It is the camel alone, whose remarkable properties, by making hab- 

 itable by man regions inaccessible to the improvements of civilization, has 

 preserved to our own times that second act of the great drama ot social 

 life, the patriarchal condition. The Arab in all his changes of faith, 

 heathen, christian, mussulman, has remained himself immutable ; and 

 the student of bibhcal antiquity must thank the camel for the lively 

 illustrations of scripture history presented by the camp of the Ishmaelite 

 sheikh, who is proud of his kindred with the patient Job, and who boasts 

 himself the lineal descendant of Ibrahim el Khaleel, or Abraham "the 

 friend" of God. 



Naturalists divide the camel into two species, the Cnmdus dromcdarius, 

 or one-humped camel of Arabia and Africa, and the Cauielus Bdctrimms, 

 or two-humped camel of northern Asia.* It has been suspected that 

 the camel of the Sahara is distinct from that of more northern Africa, 



* These geographical limitations, if not strictly accurate are nevertheless sufficiently so 

 for general purposes. Although Host (Etlerrettninger om Marokos, 270) saw the two- 

 humped camel at Morocco, and individuals of this species are sometimes met in Syria, yet 

 it is pretty certain that he is not bred in Africa, or in the warmer regions of the Asiatic con- 

 tinent, but properly belongs to northern latitudes. The one-humped camel has a wider 

 range. He is found among the Kirghises, and in Tartary, and the highlands of central Asia ; 

 he seems to bear the cold almost as well as the Bactrian, but he has neither the speed nor the 

 powers of endurance which characterize tlie dromedary of the African and Arabian deserts. 

 Although neither species probably now exists in a wild state, yet tjiere is good reason to 

 believe that the Bactrian was found wild at no very remote period in the desert of Gobi, 

 where this variety probably originated. Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, I, 88. 



