S(36 MORAL AND POLITICAL STATE. 
which gives it a value even in the eyes of Euro- 
peans. 
Commerce forms a more prominent feature. 
We do not, however, allude to foreign com- 
merce, for which, with the exception of Egypt, 
no part of Africa was ever distinguished. The 
want of contiguity to the other continents, of in- 
land seas and large archipelagos, formed insur- 
mountable obstacles to its establishment. But 
from the earliest ages, and much more since the 
entry of the Arabians, inland trade has been con- 
ducted on an immense scale. Through their 
exertions, the remotest coasts, and the inmost 
depths of the interior, have become pervious to 
it. Infinite facility has been afforded by the in- 
troduction of the camel, emphatically called the 
ship of the desert an animal, whose patience 
of hunger and fatigue, whose capacity of convey- 
ing water, and whose foot smoothly gliding over 
the level sand, seems almost to point him out as 
an instrument formed by nature for effecting 
a communication across these immense wastes. 
The trade is carried on by merchants, trained 
from their infancy to the hardships and difficul- 
ties of these formidable journeys. To enliven 
the dreary route, as well as to afford mutual aid 
in danger, they almost always form themselves 
into large bodies called caravans, varying in num- 
ber from two or three hundred to two thousand. 
