THE EXCELLENCE OF THE ARAB HORSE 107 



English in South Africa, and, so far as I can 

 recollect, he had no artillery, but only Arab horse- 

 men. 



General Daumas reminds us in his introduction 

 that the horsemen of Numidia — i.e., Arabs or Barbs 

 — were famous in the time of the Romans ; that 

 Arab horsemen of the present day are in no way 

 inferior to their predecessors ; and that the horsemen 

 of Algeria still retain the typical characteristics 

 of both the Barb and the Arab stock. General 

 Daumas spent sixteen years in Africa, during which 

 period he had been entrusted with missions, and had 

 exercised functions which brought him into constant 

 intercourse with the Arabs. 



From 1837 to 1839 he was the French Consul at 

 Mascara, accredited to the Emir Abd-el-Kader, after 

 which he was the head of the Arab Office in the 

 Province of Oran, and was finally Central Director 

 of the Arab Office of Algiers. These different 

 posts brought him into close contact with the native 

 chiefs and the first families of the country, and he 

 acquired their language. He says he was deter- 

 mined to find out what was the real value of Arab 

 horses, and what was the nature of the service they 

 were capable of — not by hearsay, but through the 

 evidence of his own eyes ; not from books, but from 

 men ; and that what he placed before his reader was 

 the result both of his own personal observations and 

 of conversations with Arabs of every grade of life, 

 from the tented chief down to the simple horseman, 



