72 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



belong, owes doubtless to the use of the camel throughout the Ly~ 

 bian Desert and its Oases, not only the advantages of intercommu- 

 nication, but also the preservation of its national existence to the 

 present day. On the other hand, the negro races never, of their 

 own accord, made any use of the camel ; it was only in company 

 with the conquering expeditions and proselyting missions of the 

 Bedouins, carrying their prophet's doctrines over the whole of 

 Northern Africa, that the useful animal of the Nedjid, of the Naba- 

 theans, and of all the countries inhabited by Aramean races, spread 

 to the westward, and was introduced among the black population. 

 The Goths took camels as early as the fourth century to the Lower 

 Istros (the Danube), and the Ghaznevides conveyed them in much 

 larger numbers as far as India and the banks of the Ganges." We 

 must distinguish two epochs in the diffusion of the camel through- 

 out the northern part of the African continent; one under the Ptole- 

 mies, operating through Cyrene on the whole of the north-west of 

 Africa ; and the Mohammedan epoch of the conquering Arabs. 



It has long been a question, whether those domestic animals which 

 have been the earliest companions of mankind- oxen, sheep, dogs, 

 and camels are still to be met with in a state of original wildness. 

 The Hiongnu, in Eastern Asia, belong to the nations who earliest 

 tamed and trained wild camels as domestic animals. The compiler 

 of the great Chinese work, Si-yu-wen-kien-lo, (Historia Regionum 

 occidentalium, quse Si-yu vocantur, visu et auditu cognitarum,) affirms 

 that, in the middle of the 18th century, wild camels, as well as wild 

 horses and wild asses, still wandered in East Turkestan. Hadji 

 Chalfa, in his Turkish Geography, written in the 17th century, 

 speaks of the frequent chase of the wild camel in the high plains 

 of Kashgar, Turfan, and Khotan. Schott translates, from a Chinese 

 author, Ma-dschi, that wild camels are to be found in the countries 

 to the north of China and west of the Hoang-ho, in Ho-si or Tan- 

 gut. Cuvier alone (Regne Animal, t. i. p. 257) doubts the pre- 

 sent existence of wild camels in the interior of Asia. He believes 

 they have merely "become wild;" because Calmucks, and others 

 having Buddhistic religious affinities with them, set camels and other 

 animals at liberty, in order " to acquire to themselves merit for the 

 other world." According to Greek witnesses of the times of Ar- 



