venerable Moslem was
sitting on a stone, silently and solemnly engaged in smoking his pipe.
He observed the dog _following_ us, and was astonished at it, as
something new and extraordinary; and rising, and making out of the way,
he cried out, 'May his father be accursed! Is that a dog or a fox?'"
Again, in Damascus, should a worn-out horse, donkey, or camel die in the
streets, in a few hours the dogs have devoured it; and the powerful rays
of the sun dry up all corrupt matter. Mr Graham tells us that the dogs
of Damascus are brown, blackish, or of an ash colour, and that he saw no
white or spotted specimens. He never saw a case of hydrophobia, nor did
he hear a _bark_. The dogs "howl, and make noise enough," he continues,
"but the fine, well-defined _bow-wow_ is entirely wanting." With a quiet
humour, he hints at the bark being a mark of the civilised, domesticated
dog, and as denoting, apparently, "the refinement of canine education."
We have been struck with the attempts of Penny's Esquimaux dogs,
deposited by the gallant Arctic mariner in the Zoological Gardens, to
_get up_ a bark somewhat like the "well-bred" dogs in the cages near
them. Mr Graham tells us of the Damascus dogs having established a kind
of police among themselves, and, like the rooks, driving all intruders
far from their district.

Dogs were not always disregarded in the East. Herodotus informs us,[54]
during the Persian occupation the number of Indian dogs kept in the
province of Babylon for the use of the governor was so great, that four
cities were exempted from taxes for maintaining them. In the mountain
parts of India, travellers describe the great dogs of Thibet and
Cashmere as being much prized.

"The domestic dog of Ladak," says Major Cunningham,[55] "is the
well-known shepherd's dog, or Thibetan mastiff. They have shaggy coats,
generally quite black, or black and tan; but I have seen some of a light
brown colour. They are usually ill-tempered to strangers; but I have
never found one that would face a stick, although they can fight well
when attacked. The only peculiarity that I have noticed about them is,
that the tail is nearly always curled upward on to the back, where the
hair is displaced by the constant rubbing of the tail." And that the
same massive variety was also prized in ancient times we know, by a
singularly fine, small bas-relief in baked clay, found in 1849 in the
Birs-i-Nimrud, Babylon, by Sir Henry Rawlinson, which is preser