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therefore be obtained, nor could the horse, or sheep, or even the hardy mountain-goat be sustained for any length of time; but the rein-deer supplies the place of these. The milk is excellent, the flesh furnishes food, the skin clothing, the tendons bow-strings, and when split, the finest thread; the horns yield glue, and the bones are manufactured into various useful articles.

Observe how wonderfully this creature is adapted to the country which he inhabits. His foot is broad, and the under-part is entirely covered with hair, as the claw of the ptarmigan, with feathery bristles, which is almost the only bird that can endure the rigour of the same climate. A peculiar mechanism also enables the rein-deer to spread wide his hoofs, when about to touch the ground, and thus is he enabled to cover a larger surface of the snow, and to be preserved from sinking into it, while journeying in his rapid course. Then he has large spreading horns, and these answer two important purposes; one for his own benefit, as I have just observed, the other for that of his master: with these broad horns, he can shovel away the snow from off the lichens in hard weather, when unable to obtain the young and juicy cones of the drooping larches. By means of his antlers, the swift creature is often yoked to a sledge, the reins are wound around them; and on he goes in his rapid career, as if scarcely feeling that he has any weight to draw.

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The camel must now be spoken of. But this, some reader may, perhaps, be ready to exclaim, is a trite subject. Every one has heard how wonderfully the stomach is constructed, and how swiftly, and how well, the creature traverses the burning deserts, to which he is assigned." True, and were I going to speak merely on these subjects, the camel must certainly be omitted. But cast

your eye on those vast tracts of burning sands, which distinguish the interior of Africa. Let us take for instance the great desert of Zahara, The Desert, as it is emphatically termed, stretching from the shores of the Atlantic, to the confines of Egypt, over an extent of more than two thousand miles this is in most places a sandy heath of various levels, in some parts hard and calcined; in others a deep sand; in others covered with an odoriferous plant, which the Arabians call the the; and which, though far superior in fragrance, resembles the wild thyme of our own

commons.

In some few portions of the wilderness, thousands of sheep, and goats, and cows, are seen to pasture, while in others, nothing is presented to the eye, but desolate hills of shifting sand.

This last portion is literally a desert without water, and so it is called by the Arabs, to whom it conveys the fearful idea of intense and suffocating heat, of the total absence of all vegetable life, and of those floating surges of suffocating sand, which often overwhelm the traveller with a dreadful death. In short, this portion of Zahara is a desolate wilderness, a wild expanse, where the scorching heat of the sun-beams, confined and reflected by the hills of sand, hourly diminishes the hope of water; and where whole caravans have perished from thirst.

Over this lonely desert, no land-marks are discoverable, and every trace of men or camels, is speedily obliterated by the shifting of the sand: camel-drivers, therefore, are obliged to observe the bearings of the sun, by day, and to trace their nightly progress by the stars. Like the ocean,

it connects the countries, which it seems to separate; and unites the regions, which must otherwise be eternally apart.

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