THE CAMEL. 7 



present the traveller with an unfinished prospect of his 

 forlorn situation ; yet in this chasm of nature, by the 

 help of the camel, the Arabian finds safety and subsist- 

 ence. There are here and there found spots of verdure 

 which though remote from each other, are, in a manner 

 brought nearer by the labour and industry of the camel. 

 Every part of this animal is applied to some useful 

 purpose ; but ils chief utility consists in its being a 

 beast of burden, in countries where no other quadruped 

 could live and perform that office. By means of this 

 useful creature, the trade of Turkey, Persia, Arabia, 

 Barbary, and Egypt, is principally carried on. It is not 

 only qualified to carry heavy burdens, but to support 

 extreme abstinence; at the same time that it travels 

 with great expedition. In a word, it is the most tractable 

 and most valuable animal to be found in all the warm 

 regions of the old continent. It is easily instructed 

 in the methods of taking up and supporting his burthen; 

 their legs, a few days after they are produced, are bent 

 under their belly : they are in this manner loaded, and 

 taught to rise ; their burthen is every day then increased, 

 by insensible degrees, till the animal is capable of support- 

 ing a weight adequate to its force : the same care is taken 

 in making them patient of hunger and thirst: while 

 other animals receive their food at stated times, the camel 

 is restrained for days together, and these intervals of 

 famine are increased, in proportion as the animal seems 

 capable of sustaining them. By this method of education 

 they live five or six days without food or water ; and their 

 stomach is formed most admirably by nature to fit them for 

 long abstinence : besides the four stomachs, which all ani- 

 mals have that chew the cud, (and the camel is of the 

 number) it has a fifth stomach, which serves as a vessel, 

 to hold a greater quantity of water than the animal has 

 an immediate occasion for. It is of a sufficient capacity 

 to contain a large quantity of water, where the fluid 

 remains without corrupting, or without being adulterated by 

 the other aliments; when the camel finds itself pressed 

 with thirst, it has here an easy resource for quenching it; 

 it throws up a quantity of this water by a simple con- 

 traction of the muscles, into the other stomachs, and 

 this serves to soften its dry and simple food; in this man- 

 ner, as it drinks but seldom, it takes in a large quantity 

 at a time ; and travellers, when straitened for water, have 

 been often known to kill their camels for that which 

 they expected to find within them. 



