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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    to calculate the time; and that the Bedouin is naturally given to exagge- ration. and most of all, when relating the prowess of the animal that he 7 - , , . i .1 i i. Vvi-a rlnmo/l fVlQT. Ql. T.hP. lntrO- loves as dearly as his children : yet it cannot be denied that, at the intro- duction of the Arabian into the European stables, there was no horse comparable to him. The mare in her native deserts will travel fifty miles without stopping ; she has been urged to the almost incredible distance of one hundred and twenty miles, and, occasionally, neither she nor her rider lias tasted food for three whole days. Our horses would fare badly on the scanty nourishment afforded the Arabian. The mare usually has but two meals in twenty-foui hours. During the day she is tied to the door of the tent, ready for the Ledouin to spring, at a moment’s warning, into the saddle; or she is turned out before the tent ready saddled, the bridle merely being taken off, and she is so trained that she immediately gallops up at her master s call. At nig it j she receives a little water ; and with her scanty provender of five or six pounds of barley or beans, and sometimes a little straw, she lies down content, if she is accustomed to lie down at all, in the midst of her mastei & * ^ Burckhardt relates a story of the speed and endurance of one of them, and shows with what feelings an Arab regards his quadruped friend: — “A troop of Druses on horseback attacked, in the summer of 1815, a party of Bedouins, and pursued them to their encampment; the Bedouins were then assisted by a superior force, and becoming the assailants m their turn, killed all the Druses excepting one who fled. He was pursued by some of the best mounted Bedouins, but his mare, although fatigued, cou d | not be overtaken. Before his pursuers gave up the chase, they called to him, and begged to be permitted to kiss his excellent mare, promising him safe conduct for her sake. He might have taken them at their word, for the pledge of an Arab, in such circumstances, might have been relied on: he however refused. They immediately left the pursuit, and blessing the noble beast, cried out to the fugitive, ‘ Go and wash the feet of your mare and drink off the water.’ This expression is, often used by the Bedouins - to show the regard they have for their mares. . . , A periodical writer in the “ Sportsman,” on what authority is not stated, but he is right in most of the particulars if not in all of them, says, that : “ taking the comparative excellence of the different races, Nejedybztween the desert of Syria and Yemen, and now in the possession of the Wahabis,, is generally reckoned to produce the grandest, noblest horses. Hejaz: (extending along the Red Sea, from Mount Sinai to Yemen, and including^ in it Medina and Mecca) the handsomest; Yemen (on the coast of the Redd Sea and the Indian Ocean, and the most fertile part of Arabia) the most- durable ; Syria the richest in colour ; Mesopotamia the most quiet; Rgy p 1 the swiftest; Barbary the most prolific; and Persia and Koordistan thee The introduction of the Arabian into England, and the concern which he has had in the improvement of the English horse, will be treated ot n the next chapter. THE PERSIAN HORSE. Next in the route which has been pursued along the south ot Asia, to wards the east, and yielding only to the Arabian in beauty and value stands the Persian horse. He is of larger growth than the Arabian,— purposely bred so,—and on that account some foreign—still east country but not pure Arabian blood, being introduced. A larger animal, one mor adapted for modern war, is the result, but witli some diminution ot spec- and endurance. The Persian is a nobler-looking annual at the first glanced
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