d have
imagined that I was transported where the manna rained down from the
sky for the support of the Israelites in the wilderness.

From any thing I could ever learn from the Arabs with whom I lived, they
are wholly strangers to every kind of industrious labour, and equally
unwilling to be instructed. They have only two artisans among them, and
these they regard with a kind of veneration, and doubtless with
astonishment, when they see them imitate in any manner the works of
foreigners, for they themselves are incapable of doing any thing. A
wheelwright and a blacksmith were in possession of the whole arts and
sciences of the country. The knowledge of the first was exercised in
making wooden dishes, mortars, and ploughs; but he has never yet been
able to give to that instrument of agriculture that shape which is
proper, and would make it easy for the hand of the labourer. The other
labours with strength of arm upon iron, and is equally ignorant of its
good and bad qualities. I have frequently seen him heat his iron many
times in the fire till he had exhausted all its virtue, and then he was
obliged to give it up, without making any thing of it; and if at other
times he was more fortunate, he never produced more than a clumsy
resemblance of the article which he wished to imitate. The same artisan
wrought with equal confidence in precious metals. My master one day
brought to him the chain of gold which I had given him, with orders to
make rings of it for his daughter. The ignorant fellow, after having
examined it, pretended that it was not gold. He compared it with a piece
of a mixed metal, which he had procured from one of our wrecks, and
which he insisted was pure gold. To support his assertion, he remarked
that mine was of various colours, but his was real metal, and of a
yellower hue. In short, after several remarks and dissertations equally
ridiculous as ill founded, he came to the resolution of making a hole in
a piece of charcoal, in which he enclosed it; and after having blown the
fire well, he was lucky enough to melt it, and to form rings as large as
the round of a snuff-box. His genius was generally admired, and he got a
bowl of butter-milk for his reward.

What pains did I not take to teach them a method of grinding their
barley with more ease, and of fanning it! How much have I laboured to
instruct them how to load their camels, with more equal weight on both
sides, in such a manner as not to hurt their sid