580 INTRODUCTION OF CAMELS. 
that of most other domesticated animals. “ He has followed,” 
says Mr. Gliddon, “ the radiations of war, commerce, and emi- 
In the journeys made by the patriarchs of the Scriptures into Egypt they 
were accompanied by camels; these animals were also employed in bearing 
the productions of Arabia to that country, but they were always the property 
of aliens, and their residence there was but temporary. So “during the stay 
of the Hebrews in the land of Goshen, no allusion is made to camels, save in 
Ihxodus, ix. 8, whether owned by themselves or by their Egyptian rulers. On 
the contrary, the especial mention of asses as the animals on which Jacob’s sons 
carried their sacks of corn over the desert of the Isthmus of Suez *—of wagons 
furnished by the Egyptians to bring up Jacob from Canaan +—of cattle, horses, 
flocks, and asses, as the only zoological property the famishing Egyptians could 
give in exchange for bread,{—combined with the notable fact that, in the ac- 
count of the Mosaic exodus, horses attached to chariots and cattle are the only 
quadrupeds enumerated ;—ail these accumulated evidences, I repeat, amply 
confirm hieroglyphical and historical negatives of the naturalization of camels 
in Egypt, at any time prior to the Persian invasion, B, C. 525.” (Gliddon’s 
Memoir, MS.) 
One of the most elaborate treatises on the geographical distribution of the 
camel in the Old World, is that of the distinguished geographer and ethnologist 
Karl Ritter, who in his great work has devoted 150 pages to the history of this 
quadruped. I shall merely quote the results of his investigations to show the wide 
extent of the present diffusion of the camel. These natural limits are established 
as follows :—‘‘ Towards eastern and south-eastern Asia, by the tropical, sultry, 
maritime, Indian, and Farther Indian climate of the Elephant-land and fluvial 
zone of the Cocoa-forests ;—towards the north on the Upper Jenesei, Baikal, 
and Irtysh, by the Heindeer-zone of the sub-polar climate of 58° to 56° North 
Latitude ;—beyond the flat steppe-lands of the nomadic tribes, by agriculture 
upon the European eulture-ground, with the fixed dwellings of its inhabitants. 
In the Maghreb, or northern half of the African continent, the Lybian camel- 
zone, towards the north (from the Erythrean Hast to the Atlantic West), is 
exhibited without limit, as far as the Berber races, as well as Moors and Bedou- 
ins, inhabit the Sahara and the Oases. But south of that it is limited by the 
zone of tropical rains, or the wet season, along the valleys of the Senegal, the 
Niger system, and the Bahr el-Abiad. Were the expanse of sand and gravel 
changes into a luxuriant, thickly-wooded, fruit-bearing soil, subject to inunda- 
tion, before which the organization of this desert-animal shrinks back, and 
where begins the belt of the central Negro States of Soudan, or the Land of the 
Blacks, with whom asses and bullocks, as universal beasts of transport, thrive, 
being better suited to the climate, or where the negro has become his own 
bearer of burdens.” § 
* Genesis, xlii, 27; xliii. 18, 24. + Id, xlv. 21, 275 and xlvi. 5. + Id, xlvii. 17. 
§ Karl Ritter, Asien. 
