148 THE ARAB THE HORSE OF THE FUTURE 



tinual work ! He fairly enough says that, all things 

 considered, he should prefer in the Indian or 

 Egyptian climate an Arab to any other horse, 

 habituated as he is from infancy to scanty food and 

 water, and to enduring heat and rough usage, and 

 above all with sounder legs and feet — a good- 

 tempered, willing and docile slave, and a rare agent 

 to traverse a distance in an open country. Another 

 passage from ' Thormanby ' shows how ill adapted 

 the ordinary horsey man, used to the ' leggy, weedy 

 creature who would fall over a straw,' is to judge of 

 the merits of the Arab. Says ' Thormanby ' of five 

 Arabs of the ordinary stamp — by ' ordinary,' I take it, 

 he means Bombay Arabs of the old style, not 

 pure-breds of the desert — ' To an eye accustomed to 

 European horse-flesh they would have looked, per- 

 haps, at the first glance like a lot of screws ; but 

 when you came to examine them closely, you found 

 undeniable points about them, and a look of game- 

 ness that showed it was, at any rate, no plebeian 

 animal that you had before you.' A former Duke of 

 Newcastle, one of the best judges of horse-flesh then 

 in England, shows how few people can judge an 

 Arab accurately. He thought very little of the 

 Godolphin Arabian ! 



' Thormanby ' points out that the wild-horses of 

 America, both North and South, have descended 

 from Andalusians imported by the first settled 

 Spanish settlers, and that they are fine animals, 

 very hardy, and when caught soon docile. He 



