£32 ARABIAN CAMEL. 



had wild Camels to examine and compare with 

 the domestic ; bat these animals can hardly be said 

 to exist any where in a tridy natural state, or if 

 they do, no one has accurately observed and de- 

 scribed them 



The march of the Camel through the burning 

 deserts of Arabia, and its signal services to the 

 Arab, &c. &c. have been described with peculiar 

 animation and elegance by this agreeable author, 

 whose wayward and mistaken theories and nume- 

 rous errors should not be allowed to prejudice us 

 against the real merit of his ritings. 



^ ' Figure to yourself a country v/ithout verdure 

 and without water, a burning sun, an air always, 

 parched, sandy plains, mountains still more adust, 

 which the eye runs over without perceiving a sin- 

 gle animated . being ; a dead earth, perpetually 

 tossed with the winds, and presenting nothing 

 but bones, scattered flints, rocks perpendicular or 

 overturned ; a desert totally void, where the tra- 

 veller never breatlies under a shade, where no- 

 thing accompanies him, nothing recals the idea 

 of animated nature ; absolute solitude, more 

 dreadful than that of the deepest forests ; for to 

 man, trees are, at least, visible objects ; more soli- 

 tary and naked, more lost in an unlimited void, 

 he every where beholds space surrounding him as 

 a tomb : the Hght of the day, more dismal than 



* The Bactrlan, or two-bunched Camel, is, however, said to be 

 found wild in the desert parts of Asia, between India and China, 

 and to be larger than the domesticated animal. 



