2-94 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



flocks, had no other care but that of preserving 

 them. They do not banish them to places de- 

 tached from their own habitations ; they permit 

 them to live in the midst of themselves ; they do not 

 depise nor abandon them, and they conduct them 

 wherever their own erratic mode of life prompts. 

 Without folds to enclose their charge, they have 

 no occasion for shackles to confine them. The 

 dromedary, pasturing at liberty through the day, 

 at night comes to squat himself before his master's 

 tent ; and this same tent shelters the Bedouin and 

 his family, as well as his mare, a few goats, and 

 some sheep. Nothing separates them ; they pass 

 in this manner the nights together, without confu- 

 sion, without accident, and in the most perfect tran- 

 quillity. It is not surprising that animals, which 

 form with man a society so intimate, should be the 

 tamest in the world ; and as they are Bedouins, or 

 people resembling Bedouins, who have supplied, 

 and are daily supplying other nations, established 

 in the same country, with them, it is no longer sur- 

 prising that you observe there, in general, gentle 

 and peaceable habits in all the domestic animals. 



An animal that might augment the number of 

 those which the Egyptians have accustomed to do- 

 mesticity, is the mangouste, or ichneumon *. Much 



* Mangouste. BufFon, Hist. Nat. des Quadrupedes, Vivera 

 ichneumon. — Lin, 



a has 



