176 THE CAMEL. 



until the construction of roads through that 

 region by Shah Abbas, about the time of the 

 first colonization of our eastern States. 1 



His progress eastward from the two centres 

 where the Bactrian and the Arabian appear to 

 have respectively originated the desert of Gobi 

 and the greater Arabian peninsula has been 

 equally gradual, and it is only within the pres- 

 ent century that he has been introduced, though 

 not with encouraging success, into the damp 

 climate and tropical luxuriance of the islands of 

 the Indian Ocean. 



That he will continue to spread, until he 

 finds a home in all thinly populated countries 

 with tropical or temperate climates, and such 

 conditions of soil as occur in his original birth- 

 places, there can be little doubt, and we may 

 therefore confidently expect his naturalization 

 in South Africa, Australia, the desert of Ata- 

 cama, Southern Chili and Buenos Ayres, and 

 our own New Mexican and Calif ornian territo- 



1 Hanway and some other travellers have ascribed the 

 former rarity of the camel in the southern basin of the Cas- 

 pian to the abundance of boxwood, upon the foliage of 

 which the animal greedily feeds, but which seldom fails to 

 prove fatal to him. Later observation has not confirmed 

 this opinion, nor is it known that any plant which he inclines 

 to eat is injurious to him. 



