Ludamar has for its northern boundary the great desert of Sahara.  From the best inquiries I could make, this vast ocean of sand, which occupies so large a space in northern Africa, may be pronounced almost destitute of inhabitants, except where the scanty vegetation which appears in certain spots affords pasturage for the flocks of a few miserable Arabs, who wander from one well to another.  In other places, where the supply of water and pasturage is more abundant, small parties of the Moors have taken up their residence.  Here they live, in independent poverty, secure from the tyrannical government of Barbary.  But the greater part of the desert, being totally destitute of water, is seldom visited by any human being, unless where the trading caravans trace out their toilsome and dangerous route across it.  In some parts of this extensive waste the ground is covered with low stunted shrubs, which serve as landmarks for the caravans, and furnish the camels with a scanty forage.  In other parts the disconsolate wanderer, wherever he turns, sees nothing around him but a vast interminable expanse of sand and sky—­a gloomy and barren void, where the eye finds no particular object to rest upon, and the mind is filled with painful apprehensions of perishing with thirst.

The few wild animals which inhabit these melancholy regions are the antelope and the ostrich; their swiftness of foot enabling them to reach the distant watering-places.  On the skirts of the desert, where water is more plentiful, are found lions, panthers, elephants, and wild bears.

Of domestic animals, the only one that can endure the fatigue of crossing the desert is the camel.  By the particular conformation of the stomach he is enabled to carry a supply of water sufficient for ten or twelve days; his broad and yielding foot is well adapted for a sandy country; and, by a singular motion of his upper lip, he picks the smallest leaves from the thorny shrubs of the desert as he passes along.  The camel is therefore the only beast of burden employed by the trading caravans which traverse the desert in different directions, from Barbary to Nigritia.  As this useful and docile creature has been sufficiently described by systematical writers it is unnecessary for me to enlarge upon his properties.  I shall only add that his flesh, though to my own taste dry and unsavoury, is preferred by the Moors to any other; and that the milk of the female is in universal esteem, and is indeed sweet, pleasant, and nutritive.

I have observed that the Moors, in their complexion, resemble the mulattoes of the West Indies; but they have something unpleasant in their aspect which the mulattoes have not.  I fancied that I discovered in the features of most of them a disposition towards cruelty and low cunning; and I could never contemplate their physiognomy without feeling sensible uneasiness.  From the staring wildness of their eyes a stranger would immediately set them down as a nation of lunatics.  The treachery and malevolence of their character are manifest in their plundering excursions against the negro villages.  Oftentimes without the smallest provocation, and sometimes under the fairest professions of friendship, they will suddenly seize upon the negroes’ cattle, and even on the inhabitants themselves.  The negroes very seldom retaliate.