averse Dabsoun-Noor.

This great salt mine seems to pervade with its influence the whole Ortous
district, throughout whose extent the water is brackish, the soil arid,
and the surface encrusted with saline matter. This absence of rich
pasturage and fresh water is very adverse to the growth of cattle; but
the camel, whose robust and hardy temperament adapts itself to the most
sterile regions, affords compensation to the Tartars of the Ortous. This
animal, a perfect treasure to the dwellers in the desert, can remain a
fortnight, or even a month, without eating or drinking. However wretched
the land may be on which it is put to feed, it can always find wherewith
to satisfy its hunger, especially if the soil be impregnated with salt or
nitre. Things that no other animal will touch, to it are welcome; briars
and thorns, dry wood itself, supply it with efficient food.

Though it costs so little to keep, the camel is of an utility
inconceivable to those who are not acquainted with the countries in which
Providence has placed it. Its ordinary load is from 700 to 800 lbs., and
it can carry this load ten leagues a day. Those, indeed, which are
employed to carry dispatches, are expected to travel eighty leagues per
diem, but then they only carry the dispatch bearer. In several countries
of Tartary the carriages of the kings and princes are drawn by camels,
and sometimes they are harnessed to palanquins; but this can only be done
in the level country. The fleshy nature of their feet does not permit
them to climb mountains, when they have a carriage or litter of any sort
to draw after them.

The training of the young camel is a business requiring great care and
attention. For the first week of its life it can neither stand nor suck
without some helping hand. Its long neck is then of such excessive
flexibility and fragility, that it runs the risk of dislocating it,
unless some one is at hand to sustain the head while it sucks the teats
of its dam.

The camel, born to servitude, seems impressed from its birth, with a
sense of the yoke it is destined to bear through life. You never see the
young camel playing and frolicking about, as you see kids, colts, and
other young animals. It is always grave, melancholy, and slow in its
movements, which it never hastens, unless under compulsion. In the
night, and often in the day also, it sends forth a mournful cry, like
that of an infant in pain. It seems to feel that joy or rec