3 86 



QUADRUPEDS. 



Syria, and throughout the north of Africa. They are both remarkable for extreme 

 gentleness and docility, and for their patience in travelling under the weight of enor- 

 mous burdens. The usual load of a camel is from six to eight hundred pounds, and 

 with this weight upon their backs they will travel from forty to fifty miles a day ; but 

 the swift camels or dromedaries carrying only a single man move with wonderful rapi- 

 dity : these will traverse, for several successive days, from seventy to one hundred miles 

 in the twenty-four hours. This animal, emphatically described by the Arabian epithet 

 the Ship of the Desert, furnishes the only means of communication whereby many 



Eastern nations separated from each 

 other by burning deserts carry on their 

 commerce : his strength and capability 

 of enduring prolonged abstinence both 

 from food and water, alone render this 

 intercourse possible ; and in few in- 

 stances is the beneficence of the Creator 

 more conspicuous than in the construc- 

 tion of these invaluable helpmates of 

 the human race. To enable him to 

 move with facility over a soft sandy 

 surface, his feet are broad and cushion- 

 shaped and his limbs long ; he picks 

 the thorny bushes as he passes without 

 halting ; and provided with an extra- 

 FIG. 427. WATER-CELLS OF THE CAMEL. ordinary apparatus in his stomach, in 



which he carries water (Fig. 427), he 



resists the burning heat for ten or even twelve days without drinking ; and if during 

 this space of time his food has been still more scanty than his sober habits demand, or 



y 



FIG. 428. LLAMA. 



the few dates, beans, or cakes usually in store for him are exhausted, the fat which 

 composes almost the whole of the hump or humps upon his back serves as an extra 



