not unfrequently used, the camel fleet pursues its voyage until it reaches its anchoring ground for the night in some brake well known to the devidjis, making commerce easy between nations, to whom the desert would otherwise be an unconquerable bar; or smoothes the dreary way from Damascus to Mecca for the Mahometan pilgrim. The camel of the caravans which trade between Cairo and the interior to spots still a blank on the map of the European geographer, becomes a slave-ship. When one of these slave-caravans reaches the open country, the miserable slave has to undergo the horrors of a sort of middle-passage in the desert, though his treatment, terrible as it is, is mild when compared with the agonies of the hold. He is made fast to a long pole, one end of which is tied to a camel's saddle, and the other, which is forked, is passed on each side of his neck and tied behind with strong cord, so as to render it impossible for him to get his head out: his right hand is fastened to the pole at a short distance from his head. Thus, with his legs and left arm at liberty, the slave is, as it were, taken in tow by the camel, behind which he marches all day long, and is cast off at night only to be put in irons. The hadj, or pilgrim-caravan, pursues its route principally by night, and by torch-light. Moving about four o'clock in the afternoon, it travels without stopping till an hour or two after the sun is above the horizon. The extent and luxury of these pilgrimages, in ancient times especially, almost exceed belief. Haroun, of Arabian Nights' celebrity, performed the pilgrimage no less than nine times, and with a grandeur becoming the commander of the faithful. The caravan of the mother of the last of the Abassides numbered one hundred and twenty thousand camels. Nine hundred camels were employed merely in bearing the wardrobe of one of the caliphs, and others carried snow with them to cool their sherbet. Nor was Bagdad alone celebrated for such pomp and luxury in fulfilling the directions of the Koran. The Sultan of Egypt, on one occasion, was accompanied by five hundred camels, whose luscious burdens consisted of sweetmeats and confectionery only; while two hundred and eighty were entirely laden with pomegranates and other fruits. The itinerant larder of this potentate contained one thousand geese and three thousand fowls. Even so late as sixty years since, the pilgrim-caravan from Cairo was six hours in passing one who saw the procession. The departure of such an array, with its thousands of camels glittering in every variety of trappings, some with two brass field-pieces each-others, with bells and streamers—others, again, with kettle-drummers—others, covered with purple velvet, with men walking by their sides playing on flutes and flageolets—some glittering with neck ornaments and silver-studded bridles, variegated with coloured beads, and with nodding plumes of ostrich-feathers on their foreheads to say nothing of the noble, gigantic, sacred camel, decked with cloth of gold and silk, his bridle studded with jewels and gold, led by two sheiks in green, with the ark or chapel containing the Koran written in letters of gold,-forms a dazzling contrast to the spectacle it not unfrequently presents before its mission is fulfilled. Numbers of these gailycaparisoned creatures drop and die miserably, and when the pilgrimage leaves Mecca the air is too often tainted with the effluvia reeking from the bodies of the camels that have sunk under the exhausting fatigue of the march. After he had passed the Akaba, near the head of the Red Sea, the whitened bones of the dead camels were the land-marks which guided the pilgrim through the sand-wastes, as he was led on by the alternate hope and disappointment of the mirage, or 'serab,' as the Arabs term it. Burckhardt describes this phenomenon as seen by him when they were surrounded during a whole day's march by phantom lakes. The colour was of the purest azure,—so clear, that the shadows of the mountains which bordered the horizon were reflected with extreme precision; and the delusion of its being a sheet of water was thus rendered perfect. He had often seen the mirage in Syria and Egypt: there he always found it of a whitish colour, like morning mist, seldom lying steadily on the plain, almost continually vibrating; but in the case above described the appearance was very different, and bore the most complete resemblance to water. This exact similitude the traveller attributes to the great dryness of the air and earth in the desert where he beheld it. There, too, the appearance of water approached much nearer than in Syria and Egypt, being often not more than two hundred paces from the beholders, whereas he had never seen it before at a distance of less than half-a-mile. Will it be believed that some zoologists (among them we could mention a great name,*—the name of one who did glorious service in his day, but who was too prone to attempt to put Nature in the wrong) have endeavoured to account for the construction of the camel by a theory based upon the lengthened servitude of the animal? Now, if you grant, as you will not if you are wise, that the callosities of the camel were the result of an infinitesimal series of genuflexions, the slave-tokens of a long submission to the tyrant man, what will you make of the internal organization-of the cisterns which enable the animal to live where any creature not so provided must perish from thirst without artificial aid? Here are vast sandy deserts to be traversed before man can communicate with man. Where is the medium of communication ? Nature presents an animal of surpassing endurance, capable, upon emergency, of sustaining a thirst of ten or twelve days' duration. The head is levelled directly * Buffon. forward, and lighted by eyes that can look onward, and in some degree backward, but which are protected from the downward stroke of the sun by an overhanging orbit which prevents the camel from looking upward. The nostrils are so formed that the animal has only to make the muscles do their duty to shut them against the sand-storm of the simoom. From the sole of the elastic foot to the crown of the well-balanced head the camel externally is formed for the destiny which it has to fulfil; and its internal structure is pregnant with proofs of its adaptation to its own wants as well as the wants of man on that particular portion of the earth where it is most vigorous: if it be taken thence and transplanted to other localities, it does its duty after a fashion, but the breed dwindles. The geologist well knows that the disposition of the strata, after all the convulsions and disruptions they have undergone, is precisely that which presents the most accommodating surface to man. If they had remained as they were at first deposited, where would he have found that mineral wealth which is the great source of civilization? It is quite true that this very mineral wealth is enabling him to supersede the animal of which we have been treating, perhaps at too great length. The steam-power-Darwin was a great and true prophet*—may leave the camel far behind, even in the desert: but no sound physiologist can contemplate the creature without seeing in it an overwhelming manifestation of the wisdom of the Creator. June, 1850. * Soon shall thy arm, unconquer'd steam, afar This is fulfilled. Who shall say that the rest of the prophecy may not come to pass?— Or, on wide waving wings expanded bear 126 TH CHAPTER VII. `HE hen which was induced, good easy Dame Partlet, to bestow her maternal affection upon an egg of the wedge-tailed eagle laid in the Garden of the Zoological Society, was,-it will be in the remembrance of those who amuse themselves by looking into these simple annals-left sitting.' The first egg was laid on the 27th of February in this year, and was, it will be recollected, placed under a common hen, but was removed after the expiration of twenty-one days in an addled state. The second egg-that on which the hen was left sitting at our last notice-was laid in the first week of March, and was removed, after a patient incubation of twenty-two days, addled also. On the 29th of March a third egg was produced, but it was destroyed by the parents. April 4.-Another egg was this day laid, but no attempt was made to get it hatched. The imprisoned parents made a poor apology for a nest of birchbroom and straw-the materials within their reach; but instead of manifesting any intention to do the parental office, the birds wanted to destroy every one of the eggs, and the keeper found it necessary to look very sharp to prevent them from carrying their ovicidal propensities into effect. This reversal of the great law of Nature is not confined to birds. The sow and the rabbit, if disturbed at the critical moment, will not unfrequently devour their offspring, as those know to their cost whose impatience |