Now it is evident that no creature could exist there, unless peculiarly adapted to its localities, and yet that desert must be passed. Numerous tribes also live upon its surface, those wandering tribes, concerning whom it was declared in the earliest records of the world, "that their hand should be against every man, and every man's hand against theirs."

We find, accordingly, that a strange-looking quadruped, with a hunch upon his back, and with feet admirably constructed to pass over a hard and flinty soil, and with such an exquisite sense of smelling, as to discover water at a considerable distance, is placed in those barren deserts. The Creator has wonderfully endowed the camel with parts and qualities, adapted to the office which he is designed to fill. The driest thistle, the most thorny plant, is all the food this useful quadruped requires, and even these he eats while passing on, as if anxious not to lose a single moment. Destined to cross immense and streamless deserts, to journey over countries, not even moistened by the dew of heaven, he is endued with the extraordinary ability to lay in a store of water, sufficient for the consumption of many days. To contain this needful supply, he carries within him a kind of cistern, from which, when once filled, he draws at pleasure the required quantity, and pours it into his stomach, with the same effect, as if taken fresh from a spring, and with this he journeys patiently and vigorously, all day long, and often with a heavy load upon his back, through regions visited with burning winds, and over plains that glow with parched, and never-cooled sands. Hence it happens, not unfrequently, that travellers have been obliged to kill one or more of their camels, to preserve themselves from perishing by thirst.

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The feet too, how curious they are, how well adapted to journey on a scorched and rugged way. The under part is covered with a tough, and pliable skin; which, by yielding in all directions, enables the animal to travel with security and ease, upon a soil, that would otherwise parch and destroy the hoof.

Camels are venerated by their Arab masters, as gifts of heaven, as sacred animals, without whose aid they could neither subsist, nor journey, nor carry on their commerce. Possessing them, they not only readily obtain all which they require, but they have nothing to fear. A single day suffices to bear them at least fifty leagues into their deserts, and thus, they are very soon beyond the reach of their most powerful enemies. The best appointed armies would perish in attempting to pursue them, for their country is equally without herbage and water. Theirs is a burning sun, and a cloudless sky, plains of sand also, and arid mountains, where not a single living object either meets, or relieves the wearied eye.

Such then are the camels of Zahara: without their services, the wandering Arabs could not continue in their wild solitudes; for the deserts neither yield them land for corn, or pasturage, nor trees with which to supply timber for a dwelling, nor running streams for the hiding-place of fish. The camel seems to unite within himself all those various gifts, which are beneficently showered forth in the temperate regions of the globe. His milk supplies the place of that which is yielded by our cattle, and is far more nutritious; his hair is wrought into various articles of dress; his skin supplies a covering for the tent, and consequently sheep are unnecessary to the Arab.

We may further remark that the burning climate of Africa, is peculiarly adapted to the constitution of the camel.

Place him in temperate Europe, and he would pine away. The frequent showers that cause our fields to bring forth abundantly would be death to him, and just in the situation where his services are no longer wanting, he would droop and die.

This valuable creature is more completely subjugated than any of the domestic species. Dogs and horses, swine and sheep, oxen and asses, are found wild in different portions of the globe, whereas the Arabian camel, or dromedary, the camelus dromedarius, with one hunch is totally enslaved, for none have ever been discovered in their primitive condition of liberty and independence. They are common throughout the vast extent of Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Barbary, and Arabia, but more especially in Arabia, of which they are the symbol, when found on the coins of any other nation; while the Bactrian camel, (camelus bactrianus,) generally prevails in Russia and Siberia, and is seen in the milder parts of Asia, in those especially, between India and China; a moister soil, and moderate climate being more congenial to their habits, than the dry and parched regions of Arabia, or Africa.

This extraordinary phenomenon in Natural History, the complete domestication of the dromedary, establishes the fact, that after the catastrophe which occasioned the destruction of innumerable living creatures, of which we discover fossil exuviæ, Noah and his family first settled in the East.

Light is thrown upon this remarkable coincidence only in the Mosaic record. That record tells us, that the whole race of camels perished with all other animals in the flood of waters, excepting that one solitary pair, the male and his female, which the Most High reserved to keep them alive upon the earth. Thus, the camel race, being dimi

nished to two individuals, became reduced under the power of man, and they alone of all the unclean beasts, or such as parted the hoof, were especially valuable to him. When, therefore, the patriarch and his family quitted the ark, and established themselves in Asia, this important race was carefully preserved; individuals could not be spared to run wild, their services were continually required in the sultry regions of the globe, and they alone no more returned to their early state of liberty and independence. Hence, they have ever been considered as pertaining to the hottest portions of the East, and have descended in a direct line from the patriarch, who introduced them, as peculiarly associated with one branch of his family. And the same care, which, doubtless, prevented their escape to freedom in the earliest ages of society, is still exercised for their preservation.

The domestication of this valuable species is, therefore, a living and perpetual evidence, both of the great calamity in which all, excepting a reserved few of the animal creation, perished, and of that also which established the human race on the Asiatic continent.

Bishop Watson remarked that he never saw a Jew, without beholding a living testimony to the truth of the Old Testament. Granville Penn observes, with equal force, that he also never looked at an Arabian camel, without beholding in it a living testimony to the truth of that stupendous catastrophe, which loaded the soils of northern Europe with animal spoils from off the perished earth, and fixed the ancestors of the present race of mankind in the Western regions of Asia.

In turning from Sahara to the East, we discover a huge animal that is all important beneath the sultry regions of the line in those parts especially, where great bulk and