224 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



I ride them every day 



Over the field of adventures ; 

 Carried away in their impetuous career, 



I combat the most valiant. 

 My steed is as black as a night without moon or stars. 



He was foaled in vast solitudes ; 



He is an air-drinker, son of an air-drinker. 

 His dam also was of noble race, and our horsemen have 

 named him the javelin. 



The lightning flash itself cannot overtake him ; 



Allah save him from the evil eye." 



The mule needs no remark. He is the same useful, hard- 

 working, unpopular animal in Turkey as in America. He 

 has the same moral obliquity of character, and the same 

 uncertainty in his business end, as elsewhere. His great 

 usefulness in the transportation of goods makes him worthy 

 of better treatment than he receives. 



The donkey, the poor donkey, is everywhere in the way. 

 He is the common bearer of a certain class of burdens in all 

 the cities. You meet him in every street. He crowds you 

 to the wall with protruding load. Everybody curses and 

 kicks him, while he is doing his best. He carries all the 

 sand, lime, bricks, boards and lighter timbers for building. 

 He carries aAvay all the refuse of every kind. He is the 

 most useful, abused and patient of animals. Men, women 

 and children ride him. He always leads the caravan of 

 camels, mules or horses. Everybody uses him ; nobody 

 loves him ; everybody abuses him. The Eastern world could 

 not live without him. 



The prince of burden-bearers is the camel. He is in 

 truth the " ship of the desert." He bears enormous loads, 

 of from six to eight hundred pounds, twenty -five to thirty 

 miles a day. But for him all inland commerce would cease. 

 From the far-off, isolated hamlets of the East he gathers up 

 and brings down to the sea-port towns, or to the few 

 through which a railway passes, the products of the country, 

 and returns laden with the merchandise of Europe. Awk- 

 ward beyond description, with his short body and long neck 

 and legs, moving noiselessly over the ground with his soft- 

 padded feet, you wonder, and yet shrink from him. Dia- 

 bolical in expression, he is ugliness personified. 



