horses falling, happened to fling his rider, the enraged elephant instantly seized the unhappy huntsman with his trunk, flung him up to a vast height in the air, and received him upon one of his tusks as he fell; and then, turning towards the other two brothers, as it were with an aspect of revenge and insult, held out to them the impaled wretch, writhing in the agonies of death.

The teeth of the elephant are what produces the great enmity between him and mankind; but whether they are shed like the horns of the deer, or whether the animal be killed to obtain them, is not yet perfectly known. All we have as yet certain is, that the natives of Africa, from whence almost all our ivory comes, assure us that they find the greatest part of it in their forests; nor would, say they, the teeth of an elephant recompense them for their trouble and danger in killing it; notwithstanding, the elephants which are tamed by man are never known to shed their tusks; and from the hardness of their substance they seem no way analogous to deers' horns.

The teeth of the elephant are very often found in a fossil state. Some years ago, two great grinding-teeth and part of the tusk of an elephant were discovered, at the depth of forty-two yards, in a lead-mine in Flintshire.

The tusks of the mammoth, so often found still fossil in Siberia, and which are converted to the purposes of ivory, are generally supposed to belong to the elephant; however, the animal must have been much larger in that country than it is found at present, as those tusks are often known to weigh four hundred pounds, while those that come from Africa seldom exceed two hundred and fifty. These enormous tusks are found lodged in the sandy banks of the Siberian rivers; and the natives pretend that they belong to an animal which is four times as large as the elephant.

There have lately been discovered several enormous skeletons, five or six feet beneath the surface, on the banks of the Ohio, not remote from the river Miume, in America, seven hundred miles from the sea-coast. Some of the tusks are near seven feet long, one foot nine inches in circumference at the base, and one foot near the points, the cavity at the root or base nineteen inches deep. Besides their size there are yet other differences: the tusks of the true elephant have sometimes a very slight lateral bend; these have a larger twist, or spiral curve, towards the smaller end; but the great and specific difference consists in the shape of the grindingteeth; which in these newly found are fashioned like the teeth of a carnivorous animal-not flat and ribbed transversely on their surface like those of the modern elephant, but furnished with a double row of high and conic processes, as if intended to masticate, not to grind, their food. A third difference is in the thigh-bone, which is of a greatly disproportionable thickness to that of the elephant, and has also some other anatomical variations. These fossil bones have likewise been found in Peru and the Brazils; and, when cut and polished by the workers in ivory, appear in every respect similar. It is the opinion of Dr. Hunter that they must have belonged to a larger animal than the elephant, and differing from it in being carnivorous. But as yet this formidable creature has evaded our search; and if, indeed, such an animal exists, it is happy for man that it keeps at a distance-since what ravage might not be expected from a creature endued with more than the strength of the elephant, and all the rapacity of the tiger!

CHAP. III.

OF THE RHINOCEROS.

Next to the elephant the rhinoceros is the most powerful of animals. It is usually found twelve feet long from the tip of the nose to the insertion of the tail, from six to seven feet high, and the circumference of its body is nearly equal to its length. It is therefore equal to the elephant in bulk; and if it appears much smaller to the eye, the reason is that its legs are much shorter. Words can convey but a very confused idea of this animal's shape-and yet there are few so remarkably formed; its head is furnished with a horn growing from the snout, sometimes three feet and a half long-and but for this, that part would have the appearance of a hog; the upper lip, however, is much longer in proportion, ends in a point, is very pliable, serves to collect its food, and deliver it into the mouth; the ears are large, erect, and pointed; the eyes are small and piercing; the skin is naked, rough, knotty, and lies upon the body in folds after a very peculiar fashion; there are two folds very remarkable-one above the shoulders and another above the rump; the skin, which is of a dirty brown colour, is so thick as to turn the edge of a scimitar, and to resist a musket-ball; the belly hangs low; the legs are short, strong, and thick; and the hoofs are divided into three parts, each pointing forward.

Such is the general outline of an animal that appears chiefly formidable from the horn growing from its snout, and formed rather for war than with a propensity to engage. This horn is sometimes found from three feet to three and a half feet long, growing from the solid bone, and so disposed as to be managed to the greatest advantage. It is composed of the most solid substance; and pointed so as to inflict the most fatal wounds. The elephant, the boar, and the buffalo are obliged to strike transversely with their weapons; but the rhinoceros employs all his force with every blow-so that the tiger will more willingly attack any other animal of the forest than one whose strength is so justly employed Indeed, there is no force which this terrible animal has to apprehend-defended on every side by a thick horny hide, which the claws of the lion or tiger are unable to pierce, and armed before with a weapon that even the elephant does not choose to oppose. The missionaries assure us that the elephant is often found dead in the forests, pierced with the horn of a rhinoceros; and though it looks like wisdom to doubt whatever they tell us, yet I cannot help giving credit to what they relate on this occasion, particularly when confirmed by Pliny. The combat between these two, the most formidable animals of the forest, must be very dreadful. Emanuel, king of Portugal, willing to try their strength, actually opposed them to each other-and the elephant was defeated.

But though the rhinoceros is thus formidable by nature, yet imagination has not failed to exert itself in adding to its terrors. The scent is said to be most exquisite; and it is affirmed that it consorts with the tiger. It is reported, also, that when it has overturned a man, or any other animal, it continues to lick the flesh quite from the bone with its tongue, which is said to be ex tremely rough. All this, however, is fabulous; the scent, if we may judge from the expansion of the olfactory nerves, is not greater than that of a hog, which we know to be indifferent; it keeps company with the tiger only because they both frequent watery places in the burning climates where they are bred; and as to its rough tongue, that is so far from the truth that no animal of near its size has so soft a one. "I have often felt it myself," says Ladvocat, in his description of this animal; "it is smooth, soft, and small, like that of a dog; and to the feel it appears as if one passed the hand over velvet. I have often seen it lick a young man's face who kept it, and both seemed pleased with the action."

The rhinoceros which was shown in London in 1739, and described by Doctor Parsons, had been sent from Bengal. Though it was very young, not being above two years old, yet the charge of his carriage and food from India cost near a thousand pounds It was fed with rice, sugar, and hay; it was daily supplied with seven pounds of rice mixed with three of sugar, divided into three portions; it was given great quantities of hay and grass, which it chiefly preferred; its drink was water, which it took in great quantities. It was of a gentle disposition, and permitted itself to be touched and handled by all visitors, never attempting mischief, except when abused or when hungry: in such a case there was no method of appeasing its fury but by giving it something to eat. When angry it would jump against the walls of its room with great violence; and make many efforts to escape, but seldom attempted to attack its keeper, and was always submissive to his threats. It had a peculiar cry, somewhat of a mixture between the grunting of a hog and the bellowing of a calf.

The age of these animals is not well known; it is said by some that they bring forth at three years old, and if we may reason from analogy, it is probable they seldom live till above twenty. That which was shown in London was said by its keeper to be eighteen years old, and even at that age he pretended to consider it as a young one; however, it died shortly after, and that probably in the course of nature.

The rhinoceros is a native of the deserts of Asia and Africa, and is usually found in those extensive forests that are frequented by the elephant and the lion. As it subsists entirely upon vegetable food, it is peaceful and harmless among its fellows of the brute creation; but though it never provokes to combat it equally disdains to fly. It is everyway fitted for war, but rests content in the consciousness of its security. It is particularly fond of the prickly branches of trees, and is seen to feed upon such thorny shrubs as would be dangerous to other animals either to gather or to swallow. The prickly points of these, however, may only serve to give a poignant relish to this animal's palate, and may answer the same grateful ends in seasoning its banquet that spices do in heightening ours.

In some parts of the kingdom of Asia, where the natives are more desirous of appearing warlike than showing themselves brave, these animals are tamed, and led into the field to strike terror into the enemy; but they are always an unmanageable and restive animal, and probably more dangerous to the employers than those whom they are brought to oppose.

The method of taking them is chiefly watching them, till they are found either in some moist or marshy place, where, like hogs, they are fond of sleeping and wallow ing. They then destroy the old one with fire-arms; for no weapons that are thrown by the force of man are capable of entering this animal's hide. If, when the old one is destroyed, there happens to be a cub, they seize and tame it; these animals are sometimes taken in pit-falls, covered with green branches, laid in those paths which the rhinoceros makes going from the forest to the river-side.

There are some varieties in this animal as in most others; some of them are found in Asia with a double horn, one growing above the other; this weapon, if considered within itself, is one of the strongest and most dangerous that Nature furnishes to any part of the animal creation. The horn is entirely solid, formed of the hardest bony substance, growing from the upper maxilary bone by so strong an apophyse, as seemingly to make but one part with it. Many are the medicinal virtues that are ascribed to this horn when taken in powder; but these qualities have been attributed to it without any real foundation, and make only a small part of the many fables which this extraordinary animal has given rise to.

CHAP. IV.

THE HIPPOPOTAMOS.

The hippopotamos is an animal as large and not less formidable than the rhinoceros; its legs are shorter, and its head rather more bulky than that of the animal last described. We have had but few opportunities in Europe of examining this formidable creature minutely; its dimensions, however, have been pretty well ascertained by a description given us by Zerenghi, an Italian surgeon, who procured one of them to be killed on the banks of the river Nile. By his account, it appears that this terrible animal, which chiefly resides in the waters of that river, is above seventeen feet long from the extremity of the snout to the insertion of the tail; above sixteen feet in circumference round the body, and above seven feet high: the head is near four feet long, and above nine feet in circumference. The jaws open about two feet wide, and the cutting-teeth, of which it contains four in each jaw, are above a foot long. Its feet in some measure resemble those of the elephant; and are divided into four parts. The tail is short, flat, and pointed; the hide is amazingly thick, and, though not capable of turning a musket-ball, is impenetrable to the blow of a sabre; the body is covered over with a few scattered hairs of a whitish colour. The whole figure of the animal is something between that of an ox and a hog, and its cry is something between the bellowing of the one and the grunting of the other.

This animal, however, though so terribly furnished for war, seems no way disposed to make use of its prodigious strength against an equal enemy; it chiefly rerides at the bottom of the great rivers and lakes of Africa-the Nile, the Niger, and the Zara; there it leads an indolent kind of life, and seems seldom disposed for action except when excited by the calls of hunger. Upon such occasions three or four of them are often seen at the bottom of a river near some cataract forming a kind of line, and seizing upon such fish as are forced down by the violence of the stream. In that element they pursue their prey with great swiftness and perseverance; they swim with much force, and remain at the bottom for thirty or forty minutes without rising to take breath. They traverse the bottom of the stream as if walking upon land, and make terrible devastation where they find plenty of prey. But it often happens that this animal's piscatory food is not supplied in sufficient abundance; it is then forced upon land, where it is an awkward and unwieldy stranger; it moves but slowly, and, as it seldom forsakes the margin of the river, it sinks at every step it takes; sometimes, however, it is forced by famine up into the higher grounds, where it commits dreadful havoc among the plantations of the helpless natives, who see their possessions destroyed without daring to resist their invader. Their chief method of annoying the animal is by lighting fires, beating drums, and raising a cry to frighten it back to its favourite element; and as it is exceedingly timorous on land they generally succeed in their endeavours. But if they happen to wound or otherwise irritate it too closely, it then becomes formidable to all that oppose it; it overturns whatever it meets, and brings forward all its strength, which it seemed not to have discovered before that dangerous occasion. It possesses the same inoffensive disposition in its favourite element, which it is found to have upon land; it is never found to attack the mariners in their boats as they go up or down the stream; but should they inadvertantly strike against it, or otherwise disturb its repose, there is much danger of sending them at once to the bottom. "I have seen," says a mariner, as we find it in Dampier, one of these animals open its jaws, and, seizing a boat between its teeth, at once bite and sink it to the bottom. I have seen it on another

occasion place itself under one of our boats, and, rising under it, overset it, with six men who were in it-who, however, received no other injury." Such is the great strength of this animal; and from hence, probably, the imagination has been willing to match it in combat against others more fierce and equally formidable. The crocodile and the shark have been said to engage with it, and yield an easy victory; but as the shark is only found at sea, and the hippopotamos never ventures beyond the mouth of fresh-water rivers, it is probable that these engagements never occurred. It sometimes happens, indeed, that the princes of Africa amuse themselves with combats on their fresh-water lakes between this and other formidable animals; but whether the rhinoceros or the crocodile are of this number we have not been particularly informed. If this animal be attacked on land, and finds itself incapable of vengeance from the swiftness of its enemy, it immediately returns to the river, where it plunges in head foremost, and after a short time rises to the surface, loudly bellowing, either to invite or intimidate the enemy; but though the Negroes will venture to attack the shark or the crocodile in their element, and there destroy them, they are too well acquainted with the force of the hippopotamos to engage it; this animal, therefore, continues the uncontrolled master of the river, and all others fly from its approach and become an easy prey.

As the hippopotamos lives upon fish and vegetables, so it is possible the flesh of terrestrial animals may be equally grateful. The natives of Africa assert that it has often been found to devour children and other creatures that it was able to surprise upon land; yet it moves but slowly-almost every creature endued with a common share of swiftness is able to escape it; and this animal, therefore, seldom ventures from the river-side but when pressed by the necessities of hunger, or when bringing forth its young.

The female always comes on land to bring forth, and it is supposed that she seldom produces above one at a time. Upon these occasions the animals are particularly timorous, and dread the approach of a terrestrial enemy; the instant the parent hears the slightest noise it dashes into the stream, and the young one is seen to follow it with equal alacrity.

The young ones are said to be excellent eating; but the Negroes, to whom nothing that has_life_comes amiss, find an equal delicacy in the old. Dr. Pococke has seen their flesh sold in the shambles like beef; and it is said that their breast in particular is as delicate eating as veal. As for the rest, the animals are found in great numbers, and as they produce very fast, their flesh might supply the countries where they are found, could those barbarous regions produce more expert huntsmen. It may be remarked, however, that this creature, which was once in such plenty at the mouth of the Nile, is now wholly unknown in Lower Egypt, and is nowhere to be found in that river except above the cataracts.

symmetry or their easy power of motion. The head somewhat resembles that of the deer, with two round horns near a foot long, and which, it is probable, it sheds as deer are found to do; its neck resembles that of a horse; its legs and feet those of a deer; but with this extraordinary difference, that the fore-legs are near twice as long as the hinder. As these creatures have been found eighteen feet high, and ten from the ground to the top of the shoulder, so allowing three feet for the depth of the body, seven feet remains, which is high enough to admit a man mounted upon a middle-sized horse. The hinder part, however, is much lower, so that when the animal appears standing and at rest, it has somewhat the appearance of a dog sitting; and this formation of its legs gives it an awkward and laborious motion, which, though swift, must yet be tiresome. For this reason the cameleopard is an animal very rarely found, and only finds refuge in the most internal desert regions of Africa. The dimensions of a young one, as they were accurately taken by a person who examined its skin, which was brought from the Cape of Good Hope, were found to be as follow:-The length of the head was one foot eight inches; the height of the fore-leg, from the ground to the top of the shoulder, was ten feet; from the shoulder to the top of the head was seven; the height of the hind-leg was eight feet five inches; and from the top of the shoulder to the insertion of the tail was just seven feet long.

No animal, either from its disposition or its formation, seems less fitted for a state of natural hostility; its horns are blunt, and even knobbed at the ends; its teeth are made entirely for vegetable pasture; its skin is beautifully speckled with white spots upon a brownish ground; it is timorous and harmless, and, notwithstanding its great size, rather flies from than resists the meanest enemy; it partakes very much of the nature of the camel, which it so nearly resembles; it lives entirely upon vege tables, and when grazing is obliged to spread its fore-legs very wide, in order to reach its pasture; its motion is a kind of pace, two legs on each side moving at the same time, whereas in other animals they move transversely. It often lies down with its belly to the earth, and, like the camel, has a callous substance upon its breast, which, when reposing, defends it from injury. This animal was known to the ancients, but has been very rarely seen in Europe. One of them was sent from the East to the Emperor of Germany in the year 1559; but they have often been seen tame at Grand Cairo, in Egypt; and I am told there are two there at present. When ancient Rome was in its splendour, Pompey exhibited at one time no less than ten upon the stage. It was the barbarous pleasure of the people at that time to see the most terrible and the most extraordinary animals produced in combat against each other: the lion, the lynx, the tiger, the elephant, the hippopotamos, were all let loose promiscuously, and were seen to inflict indiscriminate destruction.

CHAP. V.

THE CAMELEOPARD.

Were we to be told of an animal so tall that a man on horseback could with ease ride under its belly without stooping, we should hardly give credit to the relation; yet of this extraordinary size is the cameleopard-an animal that inhabits the deserts of Africa, and the accounts of which are so well ascertained that we cannot deny our assent to their authority. It is no easy matter to form an adequate idea of this creature's size and the oddity of its formation. It exhibits somewhat the slender shape of the deer or the camel, but destitute of their

CHAP. VI.

THE CAMEL AND THE DROMEDARY.

These names do not make two distinct kinds, but are only given to a variety of the same animal, which has, however, existed from time immemorial. The principal, and perhaps the only sensible, difference by which these two races are distinguished consists in this, that the camel has two haunches upon his back, whereas the dromedary has but one; the latter, also, is neither so large nor so strong as the camel. These two races, however, produce with each other, and the mixed breed formed between them is considered the best, the most patient, and the most indefatigable of all the kind.

Of the two varieties the dromedary is by far the most numerous-the camel being scarcely found except in Turkey and the countries of the Levant, while the other is found spread over all the deserts of Arabia, the southern parts of Africa, Persia, Tartary, and a great part of the eastern Indies. Thus the one inhabits an immense tract of country-the other, in comparison, is confined to a province; the other inhabits the sultry countries of the torrid zone-the other delights in a warm but not a burning climate; neither, however, can subsist or propogate in the variable climates towards the north; they seem formed for those countries where they can travel along the sandy desert without being impeded by rivers, and find food at expected distances; such a country is Arabia, and this of all others seems to be most adapted to the support and production of this animal.

The camel is the most temperate of all animals, and it can continue to travel several days without drinking. In those vast deserts where the earth is everywhere dry and sandy-where there are neither birds nor beasts, neither insects nor vegetables, where nothing is seen but hills of sand and heaps of bones-there the camel travels, posting forward without requiring either drink or pasture, and is often found six or seven days without any sustenance whatsoever. Its feet are formed for travelling upon sand, and utterly unfit for moist and marshy places: the inhabitants, therefore, find a most useful assistant in this animal, where no other could subsist, and by its means cross those deserts with safety which would be unpassable by any other method of conveyance.

An animal thus formed for a sandy and desert region cannot be propagated in one of a different nature. Many vain efforts have been tried to propagate the camel in Spain; they have been transported to America, but have multiplied in neither. It is true, indeed, that they may be brought into these countries, and may, perhaps, be found to produce there; but the care of keeping them is so great, and the accidents to which they are exposed from the changeableness of the climate are so many, that they cannot answer the care of keeping. In a few years, also, they are seen to degenerate; their strength and their patience forsake them; and instead of making the riches they become the burthen of their keepers.

But it is very different in Arabia, and those countries where the camel is turned to useful purposes. It is there considered as a sacred animal, without whose help the natives could neither subsist, traffic, nor travel: its milk makes a part of their nourishment; they feed upon its flesh, particularly when young; they clothe themselves with its hair, which is seen to moult regularly once a year; and if they fear an invading enemy their camels serve them in flight, and in a single day they are known to travel above a hundred miles. Thus, by means of the camel an Arabian finds safety in his deserts; all the armies upon earth might be lost in the pursuit of a flying squadron of this country mounted upon their camels, and taking refuge in solitudes where nothing interposes to stop their flight, or to force them to wait the invader. Nothing can be more dreary than the aspect of these sandy plains, that seem entirely forsaken of life and vegetation; wherever the eye turns nothing is presented but a sterile and dusty soil, sometimes torn up by the winds, and moving in great waves along, which, when viewed from an eminence, resemble less the earth than the ocean; here and there a few shrubs appear, which only teach us to wish for the grove that reminds us of the shade in these sultry climates without affording its refreshment; the return of morning-which, in other places, carries an idea of cheerfulness-here serves only to enlighten the endless and dreary waste, and to present the traveller with an unfinished prospect of his forlorn situation; yet in

this chasm of Nature, by the help of the camel, the Arabian finds safety and subsistence. There are here and there found spots of verdure, which, though remote from each other, are in a manner approximated by the labour and industry of the camel. Thus these deserts, which present the stranger with nothing but objects of danger and sterility, afford the inhabitant protection, food, and liberty. The Arabian lives independent and tranquil in the midst of his solitudes; and, instead of considering the vast solitudes spread around him as a restraint upon his happiness, he is by experience taught to regard them as the ramparts of his freedom.

The camel is easily instructed in the methods of taking up and supporting his burthen; their legs, a few days after they are produced, are bent under their belly; they are in this manner loaded and taught to rise; their burthen is every day thus increased by insensible degrees, till the animal is capable of supporting a weight adequate to its force. The same care is taken in making them patient of hunger and thirst; while other animals receive their food at stated times, the camel is restrained for days together, and these intervals of famine are increased in proportion as the animal seems capable of sustaining them. By this method of education they live five or six days without food or water, and their stomach is formed most admirably by Nature to fit them for long abstinence. Besides the four stomachs, which all animals have that chew their cud (and the camel is of the number), it has a fifth stomach, which serves as a reservoir to hold a greater quantity of water, where the fluid remains without corrupting, or without being adulterated by other aliments. When the camel finds itself pressed with thirst it has here an easy resource for quenching it; it throws up a quantity of this water, by a simple contraction of the muscles, into the other stomachs, and this serves to macerate its dry and simple food; in this manner, as it drinks but seldom, it takes in a large quantity at a time, and travellers, when straightened for water, have been often known to kill their camels for that which they expected to find within them.

In Turkey, Persia, Arabia, Barbary, and Egypt, their whole commerce is carried on by means of camels, and no carriage is more speedy, and none less expensive in these countries. Merchants and travellers unite themselves into a body, furnished with camels, to secure themselves from the insults of the robbers that infest the countries in which they live. This assemblage is called a "caravan," in which the numbers are sometimes known to be above ten thousand, and the number of camels is often greater than those of the men. Each of these animals is loaded according to its strength, and he is so sensible of it himself, that when his burthen is too great he remains still upon his belly (the posture in which he is laden), refusing to rise till his burthen be lessened or taken away. In general the larger camels are capable of carrying a thousand weight, and sometimes twelve hundred-the dromedary from six to seven. In these trading journeys they travel but slowly, their stages are generally regulated, and they seldom go above thirty, or at most about five and thirty, miles a day. Every evening, when they arrive at a stage, which is usually some spot of verdure, where water and shrubs are in plenty, they are permitted to feed at liberty; they are then seen to eat as much in an hour as will supply them for twenty-four; they seem to prefer the coarsest weeds to the softest pasture; the thistle, the nettle, the caffra, and other prickly vegetables are their favourite food; but their drivers take care to supply them with a kind of paste composition, which serves as a more permanent nourishment. As these animals have often gone the same track, they are said to know their way precisely, and pursue their passage when their guides are utterly astray; when they come within a few miles of their baiting-place in the

evening, they sagaciously scent it at a distance, and, increasing their speed, are often seen to trot with vivacity to their stage.

The patience of this animal is most extraordinary; and it is probable that its sufferings are great, for when it is loaded it sends forth most lamentable cries, but never offers to resist the tyrant that oppresses it. At the slightest sign it bends its knee and lies upon its belly, suffering itself to be loaded in this position; by this practice the burden is more easily laid upon it than if lifted up while standing. At another sign it rises with its load, and the driver getting upon its back between the two panniers—which, like hampers, are placed upon each side-he encourages the camel to proceed by talking and singing. In this manner the creature proceeds contentedly forward, with a slow uneasy walk of about four miles an hour, and, when it comes to its stage, lies down as before to be unloaded.

Mr. Buffon seems to consider the camel to be the most domesticated of all other animals, and to have more marks of the tyranny of man imprinted on its form. He is of opinion that this animal is not now to be found in a state of nature; that the humps on its back, the callosities on its breast and legs, and even the great reservoir for water, are all marks of long servitude and domestic constraint. The deformities he supposes to be perpetuated by generation, and what at first was accident at last becomes nature. However this be, the humps on the back grow large in proportion as the animal is well fed, and if examined they will be found composed of a substance not unlike the udder of a cow.

The inhabitants generally leave but one male to wait on ten females, the rest they castrate; and though they thus become weaker, they are more manageable and patient. The female receives the male in the same position as when these animals are loaded; she goes with young for about a year, and, like all other great animals, produces but one at a time. The camel's milk is abundant and nourishing, and, mixed with water, makes a principal part of the beverage of the Arabians. These animals begin to engender at three years of age, and they ordinarily live from forty to fifty years. The genital part of the male resembles that of the bull, but is placed pointing backwards, so that its urine seems to be ejected in the manner of the female. This, as well as the dung and almost every other part of this animal, is converted to some useful purpose by the keepers. Of the urine sal-ammoniac is made; of the dung, litter for the horses, and fire for the purpose of dressing their victuals. Thus, this animal alone seems to comprise within itself a variety of qualities, any one of which serves to render other quadrupeds absolutely necessary for the welfare of man; like the elephant, it is manageable and tame; like the horse, it gives the rider security; it carries greater burthens than the ox or the mule, and its milk is furnished in as great abundance as that of the cow; the flesh of the young ones is supposed to be as delicate as veal; their hair is more beautiful and more in request than wool; while even of its very excrements no part is useless.

CHAP VII.

THE LAMA.

As almost all the quadrupeds of America are smaller than those resembling the ancient continent, so the lama, which may be considered as the camel of the new world, is everyway less than that of the old. This animal, like that described in a former chapter, stands high upon its legs, has a long neck, a small head, and resembles the camel, not only in its natural mildness, but its aptitude for servitude, its moderation, and its patience.

The Americans early found out its useful qualities, and availed themselves of its labours. Like the camel, it serves to carry goods over places inaccessible to other beasts of burthen; like the camel, also, it is obedient to its driver, and often dies under but never resists his cruelty.

Of these animals some are white, others black, but they are mostly brown; its face resembles that of the camel, and its height is about equal to that of an ass. They are not found in the ancient continent, but entirely belong to the new; nor are they found spread over all America, but are found chiefly upon those mountains that stretch from New Spain to the Straits of Magellan. They inhabit the highest regions of the globe, and seem to require purer air than animals of a lower situation are found to enjoy. Peru seems to be the place where they are found in droves. In Mexico they are introduced rather as curiosities than beasts of burthen; but in Potosi, and other provinces of Peru, they make the chief riches of the Indians and Spaniards who rear them: their flesh is excellent food; their hair, or rather wool, may be spun into beautiful clothing; and they are capable, in the most rugged and dangerous ways, of carrying burthens not exceeding a hundredweight with the greatest safety. It is true, indeed, that they go but slowly, and seldom above fifteen miles a day; their tread is heavy but sure: they descend precipices, and find footing among the most craggy rocks, where even men can scarce accompany them; they are, however, but feeble animals, and after four or five days' labour they are obliged to repose for a day or two. They are chiefly used in carrying the riches of the mines of Potosi; and we are told that there are above three hundred thousand of these animals in actual employ.

This animal, as was said before, is above three feet high, and the neck is three feet long; the head is small and well proportioned, the eyes large, the nose long, the lips thick, the upper divided, and the lower a little depending; like all those animals that feed upon grass, it wants the upper cutting teeth; the ears are four inches long, and move with great agility; the tail is but five inches long-it is small, straight, and a little turned up at the end; it is cloven-footed like the ox, but it has a kind of spear-like appendage behind, which assists it in moving over precipices and rugged ways; the wool on the back is short, but long on the sides and the belly; it resembles the camel in the formation of the genital parts in the male, so that it makes urine backwards; it couples also in the same manner, and though it finds much difficulty in the action, it is said to be much inclined to venery. A whole day is often passed before the necessary business can be completed, which is spent in growling, quarrelling, and spitting at each other; they seldom produce above one at a time, and their age never extends above ten or twelve years at farthest.

Though the lama is no way comparable to the camel, either for size, strength, or perseverance, yet the Americans find a substitute in it with which they seem perfectly contented. It appears formed for that indolent race of masters which it is obliged to serve; it requires no care, nor no expense in the attending or providing for its sustenance; it is supplied with a warm covering, and therefore does not require to be housed; satisfied with vegetables and grass, it wants neither corn nor hay to subsist; it is not less moderate in what it drinks, and exceeds even the camel in temperance. Indeed, of all other creatures it seems to require water least, as it is supplied by Nature with saliva in such large quantities that it spits it out on every occasion: this saliva seems to be the only offensive weapon that the harmless creature has to testify its resentment. When overloaded or fatigued, and driven on by all the torturing acts of its keeper, it falls on its belly, and pours out against him a quantity of this fluid-which, though probably no way hurtful, the Indians are much afraid of. They