184 CAMEL AND DROMEDARY. 



hundred miles, they regulate their stages. They only 

 walk, and go every day ten or twelve miles ; they are dis- 

 burthened every evening, and are suffered to feed at 

 liberty. If they are in a part of the country where there 

 is pasture, they eat enough in one hour to serve them 

 twenty-four, and to ruminate on, during the whole night ; 

 but they seldom meet with pastures, and this delicate food 

 is not necessary for them. They even seem to prefer 

 wormwood, thistles, nettles, furze, and other thorny vege- 

 tables, to the milder herbs ; and so long as they can find 

 plants to browse on, they very easily live without any 

 drink. When a caravan arrives at a wadey, or watering 

 place, in the desert, it usually halts for some days. Nothing 

 can exceed the delight with which both men and beasts 

 reach one of these points. 



The facility with which they abstain so long from drink- 

 ing, is not pure habit, but rather an effect of their forma- 

 tion. Independent of the four stomachs, which are 

 commonly found in ruminating animals, the camel is pos- 

 sessed of a fifth bag, which serves him as a reservoir to 

 retain the water. This fifth stomach is peculiar to the 

 camel. It is of so vast a capacity, as to contain a great 

 quantity of liquor, where it remains without corruption, or 

 without the other aliments being able to mix with it. 

 When the animal is pressed with thirst, or has occasion to 

 dilute the dry food, and to macerate it for rumination, he 

 causes a part of this water to reascend into the stomach, 

 and even to the throat, by a simple contraction of the 

 muscles. 



Captain Riley and his Arab-masters and companions 

 came unexpectedly upon one of these wells of water, after 

 traversing for some weeks the great desert of Sahara, 

 which is smooth as the surface of the ocean when un- 

 ruffled by winds or tempests. This well, situated on the 

 rugged flanks of a steep acclivity, was perhaps, one of the 

 most singular in nature. It lay on the north side of a deep 



