The horse : with a treatise on draught / by William Youatt.

  • William Youatt
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The horse : with a treatise on draught / by William Youatt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and of height. Here the horses were taken for exercise; and they had many a stumble and many a fall as they galloped over this strangely un- even course ; but they gradually learned to lift their feet higher, and to bend their knees better, and to deal their steps sometimes shorter and sometimes longer, as the ground required, until they could carry their riders with ease and safety over the most irregular and dangerous places. 1 hen it was that the Partliians could fully put into practice their favourite manoeuvre, and turn upon and destroy their unsuspecting toes. I hey could also travel an almost incredible distance without food or rest. To the Scythians, the Medes, and the Parthians, in after times, and in rapid succession (if, indeed, they were not different names for hordes of one common origin), succeeded the Ostraces, the Urals, the Monguls, the Calmucks, the Nogays, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, and the Huns—all people of the vast plains of Central Asia, which has been well denominated the nursery of nations. These were all horsemen. Some of their leaders could bring from two to three hundred thousand, horsemen into the held. The speed of their marches; their attacks and their retreats;. the hardihood to which they inured themselves and the animals by which they were carried* the incursion, and often settlement, of horde after horde, each as numerous as that to which it succeeded; —these are circumstances that must not be forgotten in our rapid sketch of the horse. At the end of the eighth century, when the Saracens overran a great part of Europe, they brought with them a force of 200,000 cavalry, in a much higher state of discipline than the Goths and Huns of former ages Of the horses in the south of Asia and the east of the Indus little mention occurs, except that both chariots and cavalry were summoned from this distant region to swell the army of Xerxes. Celebrated as the horses of Persia afterwards became, they were tew, and of an inferior kind, until the reign of Cyrus. That monarch, whose life was devoted to the amelioration and happiness of his people, saw how admirably Persia was adapted for the breeding of horses, and how ne- cessary was their introduction to the maintenance of the independence ot his country. He therefore devoted himself to the encouragement and improvement of the breed of horses. He granted peculiar privileges to those who possessed a certain number of these animals; so that at length it was deemed ignominious in a Persian to be seen in public, except on horseback At first the Persians vied with each other in the beauty ot their horses, and the splendour of their clothing ; and incurred the censure of the historian Athenseus that they were more desirous of sitting at their ease than of approving themselves dexterous and bold horsemen; but under such a monarch as Cyrus they were soon inspired with a nobler ambition, and became the best cavalry of the East. The native Persian horse was so highly prized, that Alexander considered one of them the noblest gift he could bestow; and wdien the kings of Partlna would propitiate their divinities by the most costly sacrifice, a Persian horse was offered on the altar. . ... Ve^etius has preserved a description of the Persian horse, which proves him to have been a valuable animal, according to the notions of those times * but capable of much improvement, according to the standard ot a more modern period. He says that “they surpassed other horses in the nride and gracefulness of their paces, which were so soft and easy as to nlease and relieve, rather than fatigue the rider, and that the pace was-as safe as it was pleasant; and that, when they were bred on a large scale, they constituted a considerable part of their owners revenue. He adds, as a commendation, “the graceful arching of their necks, so that their chins leaned upon their breasts, while their pace was something between
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