“But in his own district a native is very differently situated; he knows exactly what it produces, the proper time at which the several articles are in season, and the readiest means of procuring them.  According to these circumstances he regulates his visits to the different portions of his hunting ground; and I can only state that I have always found the greatest abundance in their huts.”

It is evident therefore that a European or even a stranger native would perish in a district capable of supplying the necessaries of life, simply because he had not the experience necessary to direct him where to search for food, or judgment to inform him what article might be in season at the particular time of his visit.  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:  he has thus the advantage over the European in the desert, that a swimmer has in the water over the man who cannot swim; conscious of his own powers and resources, he feels not the least apprehension, whilst the very terrors of the other but augment his danger.  On the other hand, the general habits, mode of life, and almost temperament of the savage, give him an equally great advantage.  Indolent by disposition and indulgence, he makes very short stages in his ordinary travels, rarely moving more than from eight to twelve miles in the day, and this he does so leisurely and quietly, that he neither becomes excited nor heated, and consequently does not experience that excessive thirst, which is produced by the active exertions or violent exercise of the European, and which in the latter is at the same time so greatly augmented, by his want of confidence and anxiety.