460 
DESCRIPTION OF THE WILD ASS. 
the skin smooth, like a deer’s, and of a reddish colour ; the belly 
and hinder parts partaking of a silvery grey ; his neck was finer 
than that of a common ass, being longer, and bending like a 
stag’s, and his legs beautifully slender; the head and ears 
seemed large in proportion to the gracefulness of these forms, 
and by them I first recognised that the object of my chase was 
of the ass tribe. The mane was short and black, as was also a 
tuft which terminated his tail. No line whatever ran along his 
back, or crossed his shoulders, as are seen on the tame species 
with us. When my followers of the country came up, they 
regretted I had not shot the creature when he was so within my 
aim, telling me his flesh is one of the greatest delicacies in 
Persia ; but it would not have been to eat him that I should 
have been glad to have had him in my possession. The pro- 
digious swiftness and peculiar manner with which he fled across 
the plain, coincided exactly with the description that Xenophon 
gives of the same animal in Arabia, (vide Anabasis, b.i.) But, 
above all, it reminded me of the striking portrait drawn by the 
author of the book of Job. I shall venture to repeat it, since 
the words will give life and action to the sketch that is to ac¬ 
company these pages. 
“ Who hath loosed the bonds of the wild ass ? whose house 
I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings ! 
He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the 
crying of the driver. The range of the mountain is his pasture.” 
I was informed by the melnnandar, who had been in the de¬ 
sert, when making a pilgrimage to the shrine of Ali, that the 
wild ass of Irak Arabi differs in nothing from the one I had just 
seen. He had observed them often, for a short time, in the 
possession of the Arabs, who told him the creature was perfectly 
