Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/625

Rh fourteen or sixteen days, it is well known, an ordinary camel will live, though he hath no fresh supply of water. When he chews the cud, or when he eats, you constantly see him throw, from this repository, mouthfuls of water to dilute his food; and nature has contrived this vessel with such properties, that the water within it never putrifies, nor turns unwholesome. It was indeed vapid, and of a bluish cast, but had neither taste nor smell.

small remains of our miserable stock of black bread and dirty water, the only support we had hitherto lived on amidst the burning sands, and our spirits likewise, were exhausted by an uncertainty of our journey's end. We were surrounded among those terrible and unusual phænomena of nature which Providence, in mercy to the weakness of his creatures, has concealed far from their sight in deserts almost inaccessible to them. Nothing but death was before our eyes; and, in these terrible moments of pain, suffering, and despair, honour, instead of relieving me, suggested still what was to be an augmentation to my misfortune; the feeling this produced fell directly upon me alone, and every other individual of the company was unconscious of it.

drawings made at Palmyra and Baalbec for the king, were, in many parts of them, not advanced farther than the outlines, which I had carried with me, that, if leisure or confinement should happen, I might finish them during my travels in case of failure of other employment, so far at least, that, on my return through Italy, they might be in a state of receiving further improvement, which might carry them to that perfection I have since been enabled to con