212 RIDING 



of the horse chiefly of the race called Equus speleus, but some- 

 times those of Equus caballus have been found, under circum- 

 stances which prove that they were placed there long before the 

 times of which we have any historical knowledge, and that their 

 presence was due to a primitive race of men of whom we know 

 little. 



In the Swiss lake dwellings the bones of the horse are rarely 

 found under circumstances that suggest a date earlier than the 

 bronze age, but during and after the bronze age the true horse 

 was well known to the ancient Swiss. 



It is in the caves of the Dordogne that we find the earliest 

 representations of the horse, scratched upon the surface of the 

 rock, or carved upon pieces of horn and bone ; and these rude 

 sketches often show much skill in the prehistoric artists. 



Between the times of the cave-dwellers of the Dordogne and 

 the earliest accepted fixed date (3800 B.C.) of the appearance of 

 the horse in history thousands of years must have passed ; and 

 it does not seem to me that it is probable that during these ages, 

 when a constant though slow improvement was going on in the 

 social condition of the peoples of Middle Europe, no effort was 

 made to domesticate an animal so well known as the horse. 



When the horse makes its appearance in the valley of the 

 Euphrates the wheeled-chariot had come into use, for Sargon I., 

 king of Agade, whose records are ascribed to about 3,800 years 

 before our era, was rolled along in a bronze chariot. How 

 many centuries had passed from the time the horse was first 

 put to service before the perfect chariot was developed ? 



It is true that the ox might have been employed in the evo- 

 lution of the wheeled vehicle, but the ox is too slow for war or 

 chase, and the man who first dared to measure his strength against 

 the horse was a warrior and a hunter, and probably agriculture 

 received little or no attention for ages after man began the 

 domestication of animals. I do not lay any stress upon the 

 point ' that horses must first have been used for riding, because 

 roads would be necessary for wheeled vehicles ; ' for if the horse 

 had been first domesticated in Western Asia, the vast plains of 



