Читать книгу The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development - John Hankins Wallace - Страница 9

Table of Contents

The Arabian, the horse of romance—The horse naturally foreign to Arabia— Superiority of the camel for all Arabian needs—Scarcity of horses in Arabia in Mohammed’s time—Various preposterous traditions of Arab horsemanship—The Prophet’s mythical mares—Mohammed not in any sense a horseman—Early English Arabians—the Markham Arabian—The alleged Royal Mares—The Darley Arabian—The Godolphin Arabian—The Prince of Wales’ Arabian race horses—Mr. Blunt’s pilgrimage to the Euphrates—His purchases of so-called Arabians—Deyr as a great horse market where everything is thoroughbred—Failure of Mr. Blunt’s experiments—Various Arabian horses brought to America—Horses sent to our Presidents—Disastrous experiments of A. Keene Richards—Tendency of Arab romancing from Ben Hur.

Admiration always leads to exaggeration. This is true in most of the relations of life, but in our admiration of the horse it becomes greatly intensified, so greatly indeed that in magnifying his excellent qualities we find ourselves telling downright falsehoods about him before we know it. This “amiable weakness,” as we might call it, is true of our everyday life and our everyday horses; but when we come to the horse that is the universal ideal of perfection, everybody seems to lay aside all the restraints of truth in extolling the superiority of his qualities. The “Arabian horse” is the ideal horse of all the world. He is the “gold standard” in all horsedom, with the one important distinction that the one is real and the other is mythical. Not one so-called horseman in a million ever saw a genuine Arabian horse, nor any of the descendants of one; and in all the discussions of the past three hundred and fifty years it has never been shown in a single instance that a horse from Arabia, with an authenticated pedigree and tracing as such, has ever been of any value, either as a race horse or as a progenitor of race horses. The superior qualities of “the Arabian horse,” like the superior qualities of “The Arabian Nights,” are purely works of the imagination. There is just as much truth in the stories of Sindbad the Sailor and Aladdin’s Lamp as there is in most of the literature relating to the Arabian horse.

I am fully satisfied that these views of the Arabian horse will not meet with a ready acceptance by the vast majority of the horsemen of this or any other country, but my reasons for presenting them will become apparent as the discussion progresses. They smash too many idols and dispel too many chimeras of the brain to be readily accepted. It takes the average man a long time to get clear of the prejudices in which he was born, and the first question that will be asked by the doubter is, “Why could not Arabia have supported a race of indigenous wild horses, as well as any other country?” Because the horse, wild or tame, has never learned to dig a well forty feet deep, nor to draw water after it is dug. Neither has he learned to lay up a store in time of plenty against a time of famine. The horse could not live in Arabia without the care of man. And, second, “Why were all the civilized and semi-civilized nations west of Asia supplied with horses a thousand years before Arabia, when so near the original habitat of the horse?” It is the first law of our nature to supply ourselves with what we need. The camel always has been a necessity to the Arab, not only to carry him and his burdens, but to furnish nourishment and sustenance to him and his family. The camel is adapted to the country and the country to the camel, and no other created animal can fill that place. He is, literally, “the ship of the desert.” The horse in Arabia is a luxury that can be indulged in only by the rich; hence his ownership is practically restricted to the chiefs of tribes. He is never used except for display and war. Palgrave, in speaking specially of the Nejd tribe, says: “A horse is by no means an article of everyday possession, or of ordinary or working use. No genuine Arab would ever dream of mounting his horse for a mere peaceful journey, whether for a short or a long distance.”

When we consider the immeasurable superiority of the camel to the horse in meeting the wants and necessities of the Arab, we will not be surprised at the immense herds of the former and the small numbers of the latter that are bred and reared in that country. A camel can go four days without water, and under stress, it is said, a good one can cover the distance of two hundred miles in twenty-four hours. The camel and the country are suited to each other, while the horse is an exotic, and has no part in any industrial interest except raiding and robbery. My attention was first called to this unexpected smallness in the numbers of Arabian horses in the seventh century, two hundred and sixty years after the introduction of the original stock from Cappadocia. The flight of Mohammed from his enemies in Mecca to Medina took place A.D. 622. There, setting up as a Prophet, and as holding communications with Heaven, he soon gathered around him a number who believed in his divine inspiration. Understanding the habits and instincts of his followers, he soon found he must give them something to do. He called them about him, mounted a camel, and at their head he was successful in plundering two or three caravans, which greatly enraged his old enemies at Mecca. Whether the anger of his enemies was kindled anew because some of the plunder belonged in Mecca, or whether he merely deprived the Meccans of the opportunity of doing the plundering themselves, the historian fails to make clear. Whichever may have been the underlying reason, it led to war. In the first campaign of the Meccans and in the first battle fought, they far outnumbered the followers of the Prophet. There were some camels in Mohammed’s train, but no horses. He did not lead the battle himself, but remained in his tent and promised his followers that all who fell in battle would be forthwith admitted into Paradise. They believed the promise, as millions and millions have believed it since; it inspired them with a recklessness of life, and they were completely victorious. The result of this victory was the capture of one hundred and fifteen camels and fourteen horses, besides the entire camp of the enemy. In the battle of the next year (A.D. 625) between the same parties, the forces were much increased on both sides. Sir William Muir, the historian, informs us that Mohammed had but two horses in his army, one of which he mounted himself and took command of his forces. This battle was not decisive. In subsequent raids he captured many enemies and traded his female captives for horses with the surrounding tribes, so far as he was able to obtain them. The next year he had an army of three thousand men and thirty-six horses, while the enemy had an army of three thousand men, of whom two hundred were cavalry, but there was no fighting. The fame of Mohammed as a successful and relentless pillager and destroyer had now spread far and wide, and as a means of escape the chiefs of the larger portion of the tribes of Arabia hastened to tender their allegiance and obey his commands. From this forward, therefore, we must consider Mohammed as the representative of the whole of Arabia, in both its religious and military power. The next year his old enemies, the citizens of Mecca, surrendered the sacred city to him without a blow, and thus Islamism became a mighty power in the world.

It is evident from many sources other than the history of Mohammed that horses have always been a very sparse production in Arabia. Burckhardt, the famous traveler in the East, journeyed very extensively in Arabia about 1814, and he gives the result of his observations on this point of numbers as follows: “In all the journey from Mecca to Medina, between the mountains and the sea, a distance of at least two hundred and sixty miles, I do not believe that two hundred horses could be found, and the same proportion of numbers may be remarked all along the Red Sea.” This is in strict conformity with the observations of other writers, the reasons for which have already been given.

Time out of mind, everybody has heard of the insuperable difficulty of prevailing upon an Arab to part with his genuine, high-caste mare for either love or money. He will expatiate, as the story goes, upon “the beauty and graces of his mare as the light of his household and the joy and playmate of his children, and above all as she is royally bred he cannot, as a good Moslem, disobey the injunctions of the Prophet not to sell such mares, but to keep them forever that their descendants may enrich the children of the faithful to all generations.” If you ask him more particularly about her lines of descent, he will give you fifty or a hundred generations and land you safely on the name of the particular one of the five mares of the Prophet from which she is descended. To illustrate the sham of all this Major Upton’s experience, in purchasing horses in Arabia for the East India service, may be cited. It is evident the major understands his dealers and they understand him. He says: “In the desert we never heard of Mohammed’s mares, nor was his name ever mentioned in any way as connected with the Arabian horse.” He says there is no restriction nor difficulty in buying as many mares as you want, in any part of Arabia. This disposes of the tricky pretenses of the Arab horse dealer when he is negotiating a sale to a man without Arabian experience.

Some modern writers make mention of a tradition that still prevails among some tribes as to the origin of the Arabian horse, and it is to the effect that their best horses came originally from Yemen. This tradition is met with in Arabia Deserta, a long way from Arabia Felix, of which Yemen is a portion. While this tradition is of no possible value as evidence, it is suggestive of what might be unearthed in that strange country. The people were not nomadic, but agricultural and commercial, and the cities were rich. The people were well advanced in the arts and comforts of civilized life, and in their cities they had many beautiful temples and palaces. Such a people would of necessity produce learned men who would leave records of their national history behind them, and especially that of such an event as the conversion of the whole people to Christianity. Possibly the researches of scholarly men may yet bring to light more of the facts connected with the embassy from the Emperor Constantius and the introduction of the Cappadocian horses into Yemen, as related in the preceding chapters.

There are many other traditions, so called, that are burnished up and brought out whenever the crafty dealer finds he has a Richards from America, or a Blunt from England, with his mind already made up that all the best horses of the world have come from Arabia. To such a customer, with his mind already at high tension in search for the longest pedigree and the purest blood, the dealer casts his hook in something like the form following:

“When King Solomon had completed the temple he turned his attention to supplying his army with horses and chariots. He searched every nation that had horses for sale and would have none but the very best that the world could produce. He spent much of his time in admiring his beautiful horses, and one day he was so thoroughly absorbed that the hour of prayer passed without his observing it. He felt that this neglect to pray at the proper time was a great sin, and that his horses had led him into it. He did not hesitate longer, but he at once ordered all his horses to be turned loose to the public. Some of my ancestors succeeded in securing six of these mares, and from these six mares all the good horses of Arabia are descended.”

Other dealers are a little more modest in their claims for the antiquity of the pedigrees of their horses, and generously knock off about sixteen hundred years, being content to trace to the mares of the Prophet instead of the mares of Solomon. This still leaves them with a pedigree only about twelve hundred years long, which beats our modern romancers in making stud books. In order to test and select the mares that were worthy of becoming the dams of the best horses, as the story goes, the Prophet shut up a herd of mares, in plain sight of water, and kept them there till they were almost famished with thirst; and then at a signal they were all released at once, and when rushing headlong to the water the trumpet sounds, and notwithstanding their sufferings they turn and align themselves up in military order. In this test of obedience and discipline, it is said, only five of the mares obeyed the signal (some say only three) and thus the mares that obeyed, notwithstanding their sufferings, became justly entitled to the distinctive and honored name of “The Prophet’s Mares.” Another story is told of the particular markings which, in the Prophet’s estimation, indicated the best horses. By one authority he always selected a black horse with a white “forehead,” and some white mark or marks on his upper lip. Another authority says he always chose a bay horse with a bald face and four white legs, and so we might go on till we had embraced every color and every combination of marks, and we would then find that each “authority” had a horse to sell corresponding with the Prophet’s preferences. Now the fact is that Mohammed was neither a horseman nor a horse breeder, and the whole tenor of history goes to show that he neither knew nor cared very much about horses. In his first pilgrimage to Mecca, after the battles referred to above, the privilege for which was secured by negotiation, a hundred horsemen, it is said, were started and kept one day’s journey in advance of the main body of pilgrims. The great numbers following Mohammed on this pilgrimage admonished his old enemies of Mecca of the futility of attempting to resist his power longer, and they fled from the city during the continuance of the ceremonies. A year or two later he summoned all the tribes of Northern and Eastern Arabia to follow him again to Mecca, and they had too lively a sense of their own safety to disobey. Due time was given for preparation, the rendezvous was at Medina, and a vast host from all Northern and Western Arabia congregated there for a purpose that might be to fight, or it might be to pray. Mohammed mounted his camel and the word was passed, “On to Mecca.” As against such a multitude the Meccans saw that resistance was hopeless, and the city was surrendered without either side striking a blow. Arrayed in great splendor and mounted on his camel, the Prophet made the requisite number of circuits round the holy place and then entered and ordered all the idols that had been set up there to be destroyed, and his followers then shouted, “Allah is Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet!” Thus he became master of all Arabia—and woe to the Christian or the Jew who stood in his way. Two years afterward he died, and there is nothing in his life or history to indicate that he ever owned a horse or that he ever mounted one, except on a single occasion. In the ten short years of his public life he had something more important on hand than to determine how to breed horses.

In studying the Arabian horse in the light of what he has done and what he has failed to do, we are indebted to English writers for little snatches of experiences extending back for a period of about two hundred and fifty years. The earliest English writer who has had anything to say about the Arabian horse was the Duke of Newcastle, who seems to have known a great deal about the various types and breeds of horses of his day. During the period of the Commonwealth it appears he devoted his time, in the Netherlands, to training horses in the manege of that day. From his experience in this employment he became an expert in the form, structure, and docility of the different kinds of horses that he handled. When Charles II. was brought back and placed upon the throne, the duke also came to his own, and being a personal friend of the king he became his counselor and adviser in all matters relating to the improvement of the horses of the realm. In 1667 the duke published his famous book upon the horse, in which he speaks right out on any and every question that he touches. There can be no doubt that he knew more about horses and horse history than any man of his day. In speaking of the Arabian horse he says: “I never saw but one of these horses, which Mr. John Markham, a merchant, brought over, and said he was a right Arabian. He was a bay, but a little horse, and no rarity for shape, for I have seen many English horses far finer. Mr. Markham sold him to King James for five hundred pounds, and being trained up for a course (race), when he came to run every horse beat him.”

It is generally held that this Markham Arabian was the first of that breed ever brought to England, and this seems to be established by the fact that historians antedating his arrival make no mention of any Arabian horse before this one, and those following always speak of this horse as the first. In speaking of the powers of endurance of the Arabian horse, the duke says: “They talk they will ride fourscore miles in a day and never draw the bridle. When I was young I could have bought a nag for ten pounds that would have done as much very easily.” The duke’s masterful knowledge of the subject, as well as his special official relations to the king, gave him control of whatever was done or attempted in the direction of improving the racing stock of England. Tradition informs us that “King Charles II. sent abroad the master of the horse to procure a number of foreign horses and mares for breeding, and the mares brought over by him (as also many of their produce) have since been called Royal Mares.” It is very doubtful whether any such importation was ever made. The question has been discussed, from time to time and even recently, but nobody has ever yet discovered who was “Master of the Horse,” to what country he was sent or what the character of the mares he brought home, or where he got them. The fair presumption is that these “Royal Mares” were myths and that they were created merely for the purpose of putting a finish on certain very uncertain pedigrees, just as a trotting-horse man would finish a pedigree that he knew nothing about by saying, “out of a thoroughbred mare.” As a matter of course it has always been assumed that these “Royal Mares” were of distinctively pure Arabian blood. But, if we admit that such an importation was really made, we must consider that it was made under the direction and control of the Duke of Newcastle, the king’s mentor in all horse affairs, and this is sufficient proof that there was no Arabian blood about the “Royal Mares.” As the size of the English race horse and especially his weight of bone commenced to increase soon after this time, it strikes me as probable that this was the wise and guiding motive of the duke in making his selections of the “Royal Mares.”

When we come down a little nearer to our own times and step across the border from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, we are still in the realm of traditions, and many of them very preposterous. The deceptions practiced in nomenclature were so common as to be well-nigh universal. Everybody who owned a foreign horse must have “Arabian” attached to his name. To illustrate this evil and the misleading effects flowing from it, I will give two instances of the most famous horses in all English history. The Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian stand pre-eminent and before all others as progenitors of the English race horse. The former of these two was purchased at Aleppo, in Asia Minor, and brought to England in 1711, by Mr. Darley of Yorkshire who secured him through a brother in trade in that region. He was the sire of Flying Childers and many others, and his blood carried from generation to generation. Aleppo is in Northern Syria and far distant from Arabia. At one time it was embraced in Armenia Minor, the original home of the horse, and adjoined Cappadocia and Cilicia, all famous for the excellence of their horse stock more than two thousand years before there was a single horse in Arabia. Upon the restoration of the ancient Theban line of Pharaohs in Egypt, at the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty, no time was lost by Thutmosis I. in leading a great army into Northern Syria for no other purpose that is apparent except to replenish and reinvigorate the horse stock of Egypt, from the region of Aleppo and further east, for this is the region from which they had secured their original stock. His successors pursued the same course, year after year, and the number of horses and chariots captured in battle, as well as the number of mares sent as tribute by the frightened people, were duly recorded in the annals of their achievements. If the Darley Arabian, so called, bore any relationship whatever to the Arabian horse, it can only be established by tracing him back to some one of the animals in Cappadocia that the Emperor Constantius sent to Arabia in the year A.D. 356. A writer of the seventeenth century, Dr. Alexander Bursell, in speaking of Aleppo, says: “Formerly this part of the country was famous for fine horses; and though many good ones are still bred here, it may be said they are much degenerated.” This is the observation of an intelligent man, written and published in 1756, about forty years after Mr. Darley’s horse was brought from there.

The other illustration is that of Godolphin Arabian. As a progenitor of race horses this was the greatest horse of his century, or indeed of any other century in the history of the English race horse. He died in 1753, and absolutely nothing is known of his origin or his early history. The story is generally accepted, and I suppose is true, that he was bought out of a cart in Paris, as an act of humanity, by a Mr. Coke, taken to London, presented to Mr. Williams, the keeper of a coffee-house, and passed from him to Lord Godolphin, who kept him till he died. The story that he was presented to Louis XV. by the Bey of Tunis in 1731 has never been verified in any manner, and breaks down on the vital point of date. Some intelligent Englishmen insist that he must have been an Arabian, while others insist that he must have been a Barb, while no man knows whether he was either one or the other. With the most prominent horses of the nation and of their century thus used to mislead the public mind as to their lineage, what are we to expect from the great ruck of the obscure and less prominent? But, as a more elaborate and methodical discussion of this topic will be found in the chapter on the English and American Race Horse, we will now turn our attention to the actual experiences with the Arabians in recent times.

When we come down to the present century we get into the era of newspapers that really begun to give the news, and thus educate their readers, not very authentically, but circumstantially, in what was passing in the world in every department of knowledge and enterprise. Under these wide sources of information, a few authentic experiences will serve to illustrate the true status of the Arabian horse and his influence, or lack of influence, on English and American horses. More than twenty years ago the Prince of Wales made a royal progress through Her Majesty’s dominions in the East. The enthusiasm was unbounded and he was loaded down with many valuable presents, among them several elegant, high-caste Arabian horses. It appears that some of these horses had already won reputation and money on the turf, and were considered the very best that could be found in the East. On their arrival they were greatly admired and praised, especially by the sporting friends of the prince, who seemed to have no doubt, nor did they conceal their opinions, that they could beat any horses in all England. This was a conclusion that a great many racing men, with longer memories, could not accept, and after a good deal of diplomacy a match was finally concluded between the prince’s best horse and an old horse that was third or fourth-class, in his prime, but was unsound and liable to break down any time he was extended. The prince was popular, had many supporters, and much money was pending. The old horse was patched up as well as possible, the day came, the race was started, and the old cripple was so much faster than the Arab that his managers had the hardest work in the world to prevent him from running clear away and disgracing the prince. This account of the race I had from one of the most eminent and successful trainers that England has produced. He witnessed the race and knew all the facts concerning it. Notwithstanding the popularity of the prince and the universal feeling of loyalty toward him, it was a long time before his Arabs ceased to be a laughing-stock among horsemen.

Some sixteen or eighteen years ago, an English gentleman of wealth and intelligence—Mr. Wilfrid S. Blunt—got it into his head that the way to improve the English race horse was to secure fresh infusions of pure Arabian blood. He was industrious in propagating his fad, in an amateurish way, through the columns of the English newspapers, evincing great zeal and a great lack of knowledge of the hundreds of experiments in the same direction and in the history of his own country that had proved disastrous. But he had a will of his own and a bank account that enabled him to carry out his views to their own realization. In the autumn of 1877 he made up a pleasant family party, consisting of his wife, Lady Anne, and two of her lady friends and started for Arabia, with the full determination to find the best and to buy nothing that was not of the purest and best lineage that could be found in all that country. Fortunately, Lady Anne carefully noted down everything that transpired in their journeyings and after the return wrote a very pleasant and readable book, understood to have been edited by her husband in some of its features. The title of the book—“The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates”—did not strike me pleasantly, for I never knew that any of the numerous Bedouin tribes were to be found on the Euphrates. But my purpose is not to criticise either the book or its title, but to follow the party over its itinerary and discover just where Mr. Blunt found the blood he was looking for, and upon what evidence he accepted it as “the best blood.” With this view I will carefully give his own language, so far as it applies to the point in view.

His first purchase was at Aleppo, where he got a mare he named Hagar, as he says, “for a very moderate sum.” “She was of the Kehilan-Ajuz breed.” “When purchased she was in very poor condition, having just gone through the severe training of a campaign.” “She was bred by the Gommussa, the most able of the horse-breeding tribes, had passed from them to the Roala, and had now been captured and ridden some two hundred miles, in hot haste, for sale to Aleppo.” “We never met anything in our travels that could compete with her over a distance, and she has often run down foxes and even hares, without assistance, carrying thirteen stone on her back.” This was the first experience of the English “tenderfoot” among Syrian horsethieves. According to his own showing, he bought her from the fellow who had stolen her and had ridden her two hundred miles to escape, and he accepted what the thief told about the breeding of the mare as true. The thief knew just what Mr. Blunt wanted and he shaped the pedigree and tracing to suit the purchaser. Mr. Blunt had no knowledge of this mare’s breeding, nor where she came from; still, her blood was to become one of the great influences in renovating the English race horse. This incident is of no importance, in itself, except as it illustrates the universal conditions under which amateurs buy horses in the Orient.

Upon leaving Aleppo, the party traveled eastward till they struck the Euphrates and then down the right bank of that river. The first town of any importance was Deyr, on the river, and just across was ancient Mesopotamia. They were still in the border land between the productive north and the desert south, with the Syrian desert between them and the Arabian desert. All this region is occupied with a mixture of races, employed in varied pursuits, with but a feeble trace of tribal authority, as all are under the direct government of the Sultan of Turkey.

“Deyr is well-known,” Mr. Blunt says, “as a horse market, and is, perhaps, the only town north of the Jebel Shammar where the inhabitants have any general knowledge of the blood and breeding of the beasts they possess. The townsmen, indeed, are but a single step removed from the Bedouins, their undoubted ancestors. They usually purchase their colts as yearlings either from the Gomussa, or some of the Sabaa tribes, and having broken them thoroughly, sell them at three years old to the Aleppo merchants. They occasionally, too, have mares left with them, in partnership, by the Anazah, and from these they breed according to the strictest desert rules. It is, therefore, for a stranger, by far the best market for thoroughbreds in Asia, and you may get some of the best blood at Deyr that can be found anywhere, besides having a guarantee of its authenticity, impossible, under ordinary circumstances, to get at Damascus or Aleppo. There are, I may say, no horses at Deyr but thoroughbreds.”

He made some purchases at Deyr and then they pursued their journey down the river, and at the most convenient point he crossed over to Bagdad, on the Tigris. Here he inspected the stud of the Turkish pasha, but the prices were high and he seemed to lack confidence in the purity of their breeding. Whatever the cause, he made no purchases, and soon started on his journey up the Tigris. Upon reaching Sherghat on the Tigris, he turned westward, and crossing ancient Mesopotamia, he was again at Deyr, where he seems to have made more purchases, and then started, in a southwesterly direction, with eighteen mares and two stallions for Damascus and the coast. This closed the search of Arabia for Arabian horses of the highest caste and purest blood, without really being in Arabia, and this is all that can be said of “The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates”—without having seen a real Bedouin.

No doubt Mr. Blunt thinks he is right in his high appreciation of the town of Deyr as a horse market; that it is “the best market for thoroughbreds in Asia;” and that “there are no horses in Deyr but thoroughbreds,” or he would not have bought his horses there. Dealing in horses seems to be the principal business of the people, they are all well informed on the best and purest strains of blood, according to Mr. Blunt, and all their own horses are thoroughbred. Truly an ideal market, an ideal people, and ideal horses, just suited to the needs of enthusiastic amateurs like Mr. Blunt. This remarkable horse town is located on the border between the rich grain fields and luxuriant meadows on the north, and the comparatively barren deserts of the south. On the north the country has been famous for thousands of years for the great numbers and excellence of the horses produced, and they are still produced of excellent form and quality, and are sold at very low prices. On the south is the land of the camel, and but few horses and those few held at high prices, and the simple term “Arabian horse” always brings them purchasers. Here, then, we find that Deyr is the very paradise of horse traders—a tribe, wherever we find them on the face of the earth, distinguished for elasticity of conscience. The north furnishes the horses and the south furnishes the pedigrees, and no wonder the Deyrites had nothing but “thoroughbreds” when Mr. Blunt came along. In the line of their business and from their southern neighbors, they had picked up enough “Arabian horse talk” to satisfy all inexperienced buyers that they knew all about the value of the different strains of Arabian blood, and could supply them from their own studs, at very reasonable prices. And thus Mr. Blunt brought home to England eighteen “Arabian” mares and two stallions, without any satisfactory evidence that they ever had seen Arabia. In this enthusiastic venture, resulting in utter failure, there is one alleviating fact that Mr. Blunt can call to mind, and that is that his horses were just as good for the purpose of improving the English race horse as any others that have been brought from the Orient in the past hundred years. Whatever their blood, whether genuine or counterfeit Arabians, they have all alike been failures, and all alike good for nothing.

Early in the history of our own government it became not an unusual thing for the Sultan of Turkey, the Emperor of Morocco, or some other potentate of the Saracenic races, to present to the President two horses, and as they were presents from royalty to what they esteemed royalty, they were necessarily of the highest caste and of the greatest value of any horses in all their dominions. It is probable that Mr. Jefferson was the first president to receive these royal gifts, and under the requirements of the constitution and without any disrespect to the donor, he ordered them to be sold to the highest bidder, and turned the money into the treasury. Several of the presidents received these presents of horses, and without knowing the fact, I will presume disposed of them the same way. In the case of President Lincoln, Mr. Seward seemed to be more highly favored and the sultan sent the horses to him. Through the State Agricultural Society, Mr. Seward presented his royal presents to the State of New York. My recollection is not very distinct, but my impression is that Mr. Van Buren had disposed of his in the same way. When General Grant received his, he was not in public office and hence they became his personal property. A number of the first of these importations, together with some others that were brought from Arabia, individually and by private persons, were, in the early part of the century, carried into the South, which was then the “race-horse region,” but the breeders there very soon discovered that in breeding from them they were taking a backward instead of a forward step. Their progeny could neither run nor trot, and as they were too small for the ordinary uses of the farmer and planter, they were almost unanimously rejected, with nothing left but the ignorant “fad” that was embodied in the name “Arabian.”

The most notable example of the folly of attempting to regenerate the American race horse by the introduction of the “blood of the desert” is furnished in the sad experience of the late A. Keene Richards, of Kentucky. He inherited a large estate, and when he came into possession he proved himself an intelligent and successful breeder, and ran the colts of his own breeding, with a full share of winnings. He was not a spendthrift nor a gambler, but he was not content with mediocrity in sharing triumphs with his neighbors, for he was ambitious to beat, them all. He soon had his head full of such horses as the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian, and he argued if that blood founded the English race horse, he would go to Arabia and get it, and it could not fail to regenerate the American race horse. He did not stop to inquire whether either of his great ideals might have had a drop of Arabian blood in his veins, but he started for Arabia at once. He brought home a few stallions and felt sure he was on the eve of the greatest triumph of his life. When the half-Arab produce of his strong and elegantly bred race mares were old enough to run the jockey club allowed the half-breeds seven pounds the advantage in weight and they were beaten. The club then allowed them fourteen pounds and they were again beaten; and finally the allowance was raised to twenty-one pounds, and they were still in the rear rank. Under these humiliating defeats a careful man would have hesitated before he went further, but he at once jumped to the conclusion that his defeat was not in the fact that Arab blood could not run fast enough to win, but in the fact, as he supposed, that the rascally Arabs had sold him blood that was not Arab blood. In a short time he was off for Arabia again, taking with him as companion and adviser the distinguished animal painter, Troye, who had a long and successful experience as a delineator of race horses and knew all about the anatomy of the horse. They spent several months among the different tribes, and in order to get “inside of the ring,” as it were, they ate with the Arabs, slept with the Arabs, and worshiped with the Arabs, as Mr. Richards told me himself. They came home full of the highest expectations, bringing several mares as well as stallions with them, and fully assured that every one was of the highest caste and the best form for racing that could be found on all the plains of the desert. After the foals of this importation were old enough to start in the stakes, they were given the same advantages in weight as before, and they proved no better than the first lot. Poor Mr. Richards was crushed in spirits, not only by the vanishing of his air castles, but by the importunacy of his creditors. In his heroic, but misguided, efforts to improve the American race horse by infusions of pure Arabian blood, he involved his once handsome estate, and he died hopelessly insolvent. He had bred a number of pure Arabs of several generations, but the abundant feed and luxuriant blue grass of Kentucky did not increase their size, for when they came under the auctioneer’s hammer they were but little “tackeys,” and they brought only the price of little “tackeys.”

The number of horses brought to this country, whether as gifts to statesmen or as private ventures, and called “Arabians,” is not very large, and it is safe to say that not one in ten of them ever saw Arabia. They came from Turkey or some of the Barbary States. But in the case of Mr. Richards there can be no doubt that he made his selections in Arabia itself. Those selections having been made personally and with care and skill, we are bound to accept them as genuine Arabians. When we find, therefore, that having been tested they are no better than the horses brought from Turkey or from Africa, we must conclude that the whole scheme is mere moonshine, and that Arabian blood as a means of improvement has failed to develop the value that enthusiasts and dreamers have claimed for it since “time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.” Practical and thinking men always judge of the value of a breed of horses from what the representatives of that breed can do or what they fail to do. The emotional and unpractical are always looking for an ideal horse, and the poets and story writers are always furnishing them one. Where a horse figures in a story he is uniformly endowed with an almost supernatural intelligence and sense. To finish up the ideal horse, he always traces back to the “Courser of the Desert.” If his triumph is in a flight of speed, he distances all competitors because he is a pure Arabian. The story of “Ben Hur,” written by General Lew Wallace, furnishes a fitting illustration of this tendency of the public mind. The story of the chariot race at Antioch is a masterpiece of most exciting ingenuity, and one of the finest specimens of word painting in the English language. The irascible old sheik is quite overdrawn, but the judgment and skill of Ben Hur cannot be surpassed. As a matter of course, the team of black Arabians was bound to win. Every bright schoolboy in the country has read the story, and he has joined in the triumph of the black Arabians. The wide interest in the chariot race seemed to demand its pictorial delineation, and soon the public was gratified with a large and elegant etching, which hangs before me as I write. The only trouble about this excellent work of the imagination and the team of black Arabians is that there were no horses in Arabia till about three hundred and fifty years after the date of this supposed scene. We must let the poets sing and the novelists work out their plots, but it is well to pay some attention to the facts and experiences of history.

GODOLPHIN ARABIAN.

A true portrait taken from life by D. Murrier, painter to H. R. H. the Duke of Cumberland.

GODOLPHIN ARABIAN.

A distorted copy by Mr. Stubbs who never saw the horse, and changed to express the idea of fleetness.