246 
FACILITIES FOR 
spect to procuring water. The native inhabiting a 
scrubby and an arid district has, from his knowledge 
of the country and from a long residence and practi- 
cal experience in the desert, many resources at com- 
mand to supply his wants, where the white man 
would faint or perish from thirst. 
The very densest brushes, which to the latter are 
so formidable and forbidding, hold out to the former 
advantages and inducements to resort to them of 
more than ordinary temptation. Abounding in wild 
animals of various kinds, they offer to the natives 
who frequent them an unlimited supply of food : a 
facility for obtaining firewood, a grateful shade 
from the heat, an effectual screen from the cold, 
and it has already been shewn that they afford the 
means of satisfying their thirst by a process but 
little known, and which from a difference in habits 
and temperament would be but little available to 
the European.* In judging, therefore, of the cha- 
racter of any country, from the mere fact of natives 
being seen there, or even of their being numerous, we 
must take all these circumstances into consideration ; 
and, in estimating the facility with which a native 
can remain for a long time in a country, apparently 
arid and inhospitable, we must not omit to take 
into account his education and experience, and the 
general nature of his habits. The two former have 
accustomed him from infancy to feel at home and 
at ease, where a European sees only dread and 
* Vide vol. i. p. 349. 
