We cannot be deceived as to the native country of these animals, when we consider their nature and structure which must be conformable thereto; especially when those are not modified by the influence of other climates. It has been tried, but without effect, to multiply camels in Spain; they have also in vain been transported to America, but they have neither succeeded in the one climate, nor in the other, and they are seldom to be met with in the East Indies beyond Surat and Ormus: not that we mean to say absolutely that they cannot subsist and increase in the East Indies, Spain, America, and even in colder countries, as in France, Germany, &c. By keeping them during the winter in warm stables, feeding and treating them with care, not letting them labour, or suffering them to walk out but when the weather is fine, they might be kept alive and we might even hope to see them multiply; but such productions are small and imbecile, and the parents themselves are weak and languid. They lose, therefore, all their value in these climates, and, instead of being useful, they are very expensive to bring up, while in their native country they may be said to compose all the wealth of their masters. The Arabs regard the camel as a present from Heaven, a sacred animal, without whose aid they could neither subsist, trade, nor travel. The milk of these beasts is their common nourishment: they likewise eat their flesh, especially that of the young ones, which they reckon very good. The hair of these animals, which is fine and soft, and is renewed every year, serves them to make stuffs for their clothing and their furniture. Blest with their camels, they not only want for nothing, but they even fear nothing. In a single day they can traverse a tract of fifty leagues into the desert, and thus escape from their enemies. All the armies in the world would perish in pursuit of a troop of Arabs; and hence they are no further submissive than they please. Let any one figure to himself a country without verdure and without water; a burning sun, a sky always clear, plains covered with sand, and mountains still more parched, over which the eye extends and the sight is lost, without being stopped by a single living object; a dead earth constantly whirled about by the winds, presenting nothing but bones, flints scattered here and there, rocks perpendicular, or overthrown; a desert entirely naked, where the traveller never drew his breath under a friendly shade, where nothing accompanies him, and where nothing reminds him of an animated nature; an absolute solitude, a thousand times more frightful than that of the deepest forests; for trees appear as beings to the man, who thus desolate, thus naked, and thus lost, in an unbounded void, looks over all the extended space as his tomb: the light of the day, more dismal than the shade of the night, serves but to renew the idea of his own wretchedness and impotencies, and to