INTERIOR OF AFRICA. 1^7 
may be pronounced almost destitute of inhabitants ; except where 
the scanty vegetation which appears in certain spots, affords 
pasturage for the flocks of a few miserable Arabs, who wander 
from one well to another. In other places, where the supply of 
water and pasturage is more abundant, small parties of the 
Moors have taken up their residence. Here they live, in inde- 
pendent poverty, secure from the tyrannical government of Bar- 
bary. But the greater part of the Desert, being totally desti- 
tute of water, is seldom visited by any human being ; unless 
where the trading caravans trace out their toilsome and danger- 
ous route across it. In some parts of this extensive waste, the 
ground is covered with low stunted shrubs, which serve as land- 
marks for the caravans, and furnish the camels with a scanty 
forage. In other parts, the disconsolate wanderer, wherever he 
turns, sees nothing around him but a vast interminable expanse 
of sand and sky ; a gloomy and barren void, where the eye 
finds no particular object to rest upon, and the mind is filled 
with painful apprehensions of perishing with thirst. " Surround- 
ed by this dreary solitude, the traveller sees the dead bodies of 
birds, that the violence of the wind has brought from happier 
regions ; and, as he ruminates on the fearful length of his re- 
maining passage, listens with horror to the voice of the driving 
blast ; the only sound that interrupts the awful repose of the 
Desert."* 
The few wild animals which inhabit these melancholy re- 
gions, are the antelope and the ostrich; their swiftness of foot 
* Proceedings of the African Association, Part I. 
