316 NATURAL HISTORY OF AFRICA. 



name imports, is now for the most part bestowed on the spe- 

 cies itself. 



" To the wild Arab of the desert, the camel is all that his 

 necessities require. He feeds on the flesh, drinks the milk, 

 makes clothes and tents of the hair ; belts, sandals, saddles, 

 and buckets of the hide ; he conveys himself and family on 

 his back, makes his pillow of his side, and his shelter of him 

 against the whirlwind of sand. Couched in a circle around 

 him, his camels form a fence, and in battle an intrenchment 

 behind which his family and property are obstinately, and 

 often successfully defended. All these advantages are a 

 necessary result of the constitutional faculties and struc- 

 ture of the camel when residing in the locality assigned 

 him by nature : under another atmosphere, his qualifica- 

 tions become less important, and his conformation less ap- 

 plicable. In Tartary and Southern Russia, where the Bac 

 trian species (longer of body and shorter of limb than the 

 Arabian) is harnessed to wheel-carriages, and even to the 

 plough, the elevation of his shoulders evidently produces a 

 waste of strength ; and, in a country where herbage and 

 water are proportionally abundant, his sobriety is not re- 

 quired. If the camel is transferred to rocky and moun- 

 tainous regions, his feet soon wear, and he ascends and de- 

 scends with great awkwardness. If he be brought into 

 temperate regions, the frequent mud, and above all, the 

 thawed snows, soften his feet, and he is unable to work ; 

 as is at least partially experienced in Central and Northern 

 Asia, notwithstanding that the Bactrian camel, again pro- 

 vided by nature for his particular locality, has soles of 

 greater hardness than the Arabian, and the dissolution of 

 the snow is excessively rapid when once begun." — Griffith's 

 Animal Kingdom, vol. iv. p. 40. 



The ancient authors do not seem to take notice of the ca- 

 mel as an inhabit?nt of Northern Africa. It is, however, 

 mentioned in Genesis (chap. xii. ver. 16) as among the 

 gifts bestowed by Pharaoh on Abram, and must therefore 

 have been well known on the banks of the Nile at a period 

 anterior to the oldest of the Greek or Roman writers. It has 

 indeed been remarked as a singular circumstance, that the 

 Romans, who carried on such frequent wars in Africa, should 

 not have thought of mentioning these animals, till Proco- 

 pius noticed canicl-riding Moors in arms against Solomon, 



