ENCOMIUMS ON THE ARAB TAKEN AT RANDOM 151 



get only a few handfuls of barley, no bedding or 

 grooming, and generally the saddle is not removed. 

 They are sure-footed and exceedingly sagacious, and 

 exhibit a wonderful degree of activity and fleetness. 

 Then he cites Baron von Taubenheim, first equerry 

 to the King of Wurtemberg, who, writing to a 

 friend, reminded him what an Anglomaniac he (the 

 Baron) was, but said that nevertheless from hence- 

 forth he should set the Arab horse above every other, 

 from experience of his extraordinary performances. 

 The Baron describes the horrible roads of Lebanon 

 — rocks over which the horse has often to mount or 

 descend two or three at a step, loose rolling stones, 

 a track running jaggedly and unevenly along the 

 verge of a precipice. Yet along such roads as these 

 the Arab goes on without flagging from six in the 

 morning till eight at night, and he averred that he 

 never discovered the least flagging, even in the last 

 quarter of an hour, and for many days he literally 

 never took hold of the reins. 



The Rev. Dr. Porter, in his ' Five Years in 

 Damascus,' refers to these dreadful roads of Lebanon, 

 which, he says, ' are startling when your steed 

 assumes a vertical attitude or passes along a preci- 

 pice brink, where a false step would hurl him 

 hundreds of feet below.' 



After many other instances of endurance, clever- 

 ness, bottom, and docility. Baron Taubenheim says 

 that he knows that vanity would make him in his 

 own country again seek out a six-foot-high English 



