A few miserable Arabs wander from one well to another, their flocks subsisting upon a scanty vegetation in a few insulated spots.

In other places, where the supply of water and pasturage is more abundant, small parties of Moors have taken up their residence, where they live in independent poverty, secure from the government of Barbary.

The greater part of the desert, however, is seldom visited, except where the caravans pursue their laborious and dangerous route.

In other parts, the disconsolate wanderer, wherever he turns, sees nothing around him but a vast indeterminable 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.
Surrounded by this dreary solitude, the traveller sees the dead bodies of birds, that the violence of the wind has brought from happier regions; and as he ruminates on the fearful length of his remaining passage, listens with horror to the voice of the driving blast, the only sound that interrupts the awful repose of the desert.
The antelope and the ostrich are the only wild animals of these regions of desolation, but on the skirts of the desert are found lions, panthers, elephants, and wild boars.

Of domestic animals the camel alone can endure the fatigue of crossing it: by the conformation of his stomach, he can carry a supply of water for ten or twelve days; his broad and yielding foot is well adapted for treading the sand; his flesh is preferred by the Moors to any other, and the milk is pleasant and nourishing.