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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    name of the “ Wind-sucker or the Desert-horse.” Jackson says of him that the Desert-horse is to the common Barbary horse what the Desert- camel is to the usual camel of burden; but that he can only be induced to eat barley or wheat — oats are never given to horses in Africa; but that, supplied with a little camel’s milk, he will travel almost incredible dis- tances across the Desert. He is principally employed in hunting; the antelope and the ostrich. J There is some little exaggeration, however, about this, for when he is biought towards the coast, and can no longer get his camel’s milk, he will eat the barley and the straw which are given to him, and will thrive and get at upon them. If he chances to die, it is from being suffered to gorge too much of his new food; or if he loses a portion of his speed and wind, it is because he has been taken out of his exercise, and permitted to accu- mulate flesh and fat too fast. More in the centre of Africa, in the kingdom of Bournou, is a breed, which Mi. iully, in his almost romantic history of Tripoli, reckons superior even to those of Arabia or Barbary; it possesses, according to him, the best qualities of both those breeds, being as serviceable as that of Arabia, and as beautiful as that of Barbary. On the south of the Great Sahara Desert we find again the Arabian or the Barbary horse in the possession of some of the chiefs of the Foulahs and the Jalofs; but the general character of the animal is in those torrid regions much deteriorated. These horses are small, weak, unsafe, and untractable. The Foulahs, however, can bring into the field no fewer than 16,000 cavalry. Some writers have asserted, that in the kingdom of Benin a much larger number could be collected. In the country lying between that of the Foulahs and the kingdom of Benin there are few horses immediately on the coast, but they a^e more numerous in the inland districts. Bosman, however, says of them that they are very ill-shaped ; that they carry their heads and necks more pro- jecting and depressed than even the ass; that they are slow and obstinate, and only to be forced on by dint of blows; and that they are so low, that a tad man sitting on their backs could touch the ground with his feet. He adds that at Fida, on the Slave-coast, whence he journeyed inland to Ehnina, ^ bought five or six of them, each of which cost him somewhat less than 4/., but they did him no manner of service, and he was compelled to leave them behind. Neither horses, nor any other produce of value, can be looked for in these unhappy countries, so long as they are desolated by the abominable slave-trade, under the sanction of the more civilised but truly unchristian nations of Europe. THE CAPE OP GOOD HOPE HORSE. Nothing is certainly known of the western coast of Africa, descending- towards the south; but arriving at the Cape of Good Hope, we find that the horse, if a native of that country, is only occasionally seen in its wild state. The horses that were introduced by the first colonists, the Dutch were mostly procured from Batavia, Java, and South America. At the very commencement of the colony, many horses were imported from Persia These were mingled together, and crossed in every possible way excent l ea l ° sc,e^.tlfic ’“Pavement seems to have entered the head of the Dutch boor They were a small hardy race, capable of endur- dressedf and otn illid SUe’ “ Way 8a<Uy neSlectcd » ™ver When the Cape was ceded to the English, both the colonists and the government set earnestly to work to improve these undersized animals and with very considerable success. The British light regiments of dragoons C 3 ° *
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