It Is Equally The Same With Respect To Procuring Water.

The native inhabiting a scrubby and an arid district has, from his knowledge of the country and from a long residence and practical experience in the desert, many resources at command to supply his wants, where the white man would faint or perish from thirst.

The very densest brushes, which to the latter are so formidable and forbidding, hold out to the former advantages and inducements to resort to them of more than ordinary temptation. Abounding in wild animals of various kinds, they offer to the natives who frequent them an unlimited supply of food: a facility for obtaining firewood, a grateful shade from the heat, an effectual screen from the cold, and it has already been shewn that they afford the means of satisfying their thirst by a process but little known, and which from a difference in habits and temperament would be but little available to the European.[Note 67 at end of para.] In judging, therefore, of the character of any country, from the mere fact of natives being seen there, or even of their being numerous, we must take all these circumstances into consideration; and, in estimating the facility with which a native can remain for a long time in a country, apparently arid and inhospitable, we must not omit to take into account his education and experience, and the general nature of his habits. The two former have accustomed him from infancy to feel at home and at ease, where a European sees only dread and danger:

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