220 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



especially fit ttieirL for companionsliip with man. Between the 

 driver sitting in a wagon and the beast which hauls it along the 

 road there can be no such companionship and sympathy as be- 

 tween the rider and his horse. Each feels the every motion of the 

 other ; each knows the other's thought ; the two seem as but one 

 creature, with a single brain and a single purpose. The centaur 

 is a creature of the poet's imagination, but it comes very near a 

 reality. 



What an important role the riding-horse has played in the 

 history of mankind can only be appreciated by a study of horses 

 along with the nations. Take, for example, the history of Moham- 

 medanism. Mohammed and his followers swept wherever the 

 Arabian horse and his armed rider could tread, and no further. 

 Other peoples had pushed their conquests by sea as well as by 

 land; but by the horse and on the horse the Mohammedan con- 

 quests were made ; the horse was the real standard-bearer of the 

 crescent, and where the Oriental war-horse was stopped the spread 

 of Mohammedanism was stayed. 



The Moors went through Spain on their Barb horses, and when 

 they were driven back, after several centuries of occupation, it 

 was the men, not the horses, that went back. Their blood re- 

 mained, and made the Spanish horse the most noted of Europe, 

 and what part they played in the wars of the times is the theme 

 of many a Spanish ballad. When the Spanish horse was at its 

 best, then Spain was at her height among nations ; and as her 

 horses declined, her glory waned. 



The Spanish adventurers brought their horses to America, and 

 what part they played in the conquest of Peru and Mexico forms 

 one of the most picturesque features of those cruel days. Those 

 Spanish horses were the progenitors of the wild and half wild 

 breeds which later spread from Patagonia and the plains of the 

 Plata on the South to the West Indies on the east, and the valleys 

 of California on the north. The native Californian horses to this 

 day show traces of their Barb origin through all the changes oi form 

 and vicissitudes of fortune, and of their riding qualities I have a 

 vivid recollection of some thousands of miles upon them. 



From Mexico the Indians of the plains derived their horses. 

 In earlier days dogs were the only beasts of burden with which 

 the feeble tribes followed the buffalo in its migrations. The old 

 Catholic Fathers have told us what the Indians then were. 



