440 THE RED INDIAN AND THE BEDOUIN. 



wilderness, many years will elapse ere this noble bird 

 will have to be struck off the game list of the Desert 

 Zone and the adjoining territories. The habits of the 

 ostrich and her mode of making her nest are beautifully 

 portrayed by Thomas Pringle, the Poet of South Africa, 

 in his poem "Afar in the Desert, " a copy of which is 

 annexed to Chapter xiv in this work. 



We shall close this section with a brief notice of 

 the interesting race of nomads whose home is in the 

 great deserts. Without some such notice of man as 

 he exists amid some of the wildest and most desolate 

 regions of the Earth, we can hardly think that any 

 description of the Desert Zone could be deemed 

 complete. 



It has often been remarked that the Bedouin Arabs 

 in the eastern, and the Red Indians of America in 

 the western hemisphere have many qualities in 

 common: both of them inheriting the same noble and 

 warlike characters, which make them the finest natural 

 soldiers in the world: the same intense love of 

 freedom, the same unconquerable attachment to a 

 wild life, burn in the breasts of both. Born amidst 

 the wastes and solitudes of Nature, as the tenants of 

 the wilderness they live, and move, and have their 

 being; and as such they will live in story. The red 

 man, however, has always remained the crafty, ferocious, 

 untameable savage. But for ages the Arab has been 

 endowed with a certain rude polish, which has made 

 him, as it were, one of Nature's gentlemen proud, 

 dignified, courteous, and self-possessed. Even the 

 poorest of the desert nomads receives a stranger with 

 an air of one accustomed to the society of the great; 

 whilst in face, form, and dress, their appearance is for 



