SHEEP GOATS DOGS. 411 



load. The Arabs have none with a double hump ; nor did 

 Burckhardt meet with any of them in Syria ; and the only 

 one seen by Niebuhr was in a town in Anatoha, to which it 

 had been brought from the Crimea. "It differs," says Hcn- 

 niker, " in its make, its uses, and its master, only as a hunter 

 differs from a pack-horse." Chenier says this animal can 

 travel si.xty leagues in a day, or 145 J miles ; and some of 

 the African Bedouins have offered to ride 400 miles through 

 the Great Sahara in four days. His motion is so violent and 

 rapid that the rider must be girded to the saddle, and have a 

 handkerchief before his mouth to break the current of the 

 wind. 



Sheep and goats form a considerable part of the pastoral 

 wealth of the Arabs, but there seems to be nothing very 

 peculiar in the breed. Russell and Barthema relate that the 

 sheep have a thick and broad tail, which they drag behind 

 them, supported on a small carriage. In Hejaz, Ali Bey 

 remarked that the tail, though large, was less so than in the 

 southern countries ; while Burckhardt informs us, that in the 

 northern deserts this appendage is of the ordinary size. 

 The ears, however, are rather bigger than those of the com- 

 mon Enghsh kind. In the neighbourhood of Mecca and 

 Medina he noticed a diminutive species with a white and 

 brown spotted -ekin. They are purchased as rarities by 

 foreigners. At Cairo, where they are kept in the houses 

 of the grandees, they are painted red with henna, and 

 have a collar with little bells hung round their neck to 

 amuse the children. The Aenezes shear their flocks yearly 

 about the end of spring ; they generally sell the wool before 

 it is cut from the sheep's back, at so much per hundred 

 The greater part of them are black, having the head and 

 neck, or sometimes only the face, white. The goats also 

 are mostly black, with long ears. The male lambs and kids 

 are sold or slauglitered, except two or three which are kept 

 for breeding. The ewes and goats are milked morning and 

 evening during the three spring months. From the milk of 

 one hundred (which is always mixed together) the Bedouins 

 expect, in common years, about eight pounds of butter per 

 day ; of this a single family will consume about two quintals 

 (about two hundred and twenty pounds) a year ; the remain- 

 der is carried to the market. 



Of dogs tliere are several varieties in the domesticated 



