508 HISTORY OF 



Thus these deserts, which present the stranger with nothing but 

 subjects of danger and sterility, afford the inhabitant protection, 

 food, and liberty. The Arabian lives independent and tranquil 

 in the midst of his solitudes ; and, instead of considering the vast 

 solitudes spread round him as a restraint upon his happiness, he 

 is, by experience, taught to regard them as the ramparts of his 

 freedom. 



The camel is easily instructed in the methods of taking up 

 and supporting his burden ; 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 burden is every day thus in- 

 creased, by insensible degrees, till the animal is capable of sup- 

 porting a weight adequate to its force ; the same care is taken 

 in making them patient of hunger and thirst: while other ani- 

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

 number,) it has a fifth stomach, which serves as a reservoir, to 

 hold a greater quantity of water than the animal has an imme- 

 diate occasion for. It is of a sufficient capacity to tontain a 

 large quantity of water, where the fluid remains without corrupt- 

 ing, or without being adulterated by the other aliments j when 

 the camel finds itself pressed with thirst, it has here an easy re- 

 source for quenching it ; it throws up a quantity of this water, 

 by a simple contraction of the muscles, into the other stomachs, 

 and this serves to macerate its dry and simple food ; in this 

 manner, 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. 



In Turkey, Persia, Arabia, Barbary, and Egypt, their whole 

 commerce is carried on by means of camels ; and no carriage is 

 more speedy, and none less expensive, in these countries. Mer- 

 chants and travellers unite themselves into a body, furnished 

 with camels, to secure themselves from the insults of the robbers 

 that infest the countries in which they live. This assemblage 



