134 THE ARAB THE HORSE OF THE FUTURE 



only describing what he saw. He does not appear 

 to have had any idea of lauding the Arab. It 

 does not appear that he knew how nearly Arab 

 the little Syrian is, nor does it appear that he 

 had any idea of disparaging the English horse. He 

 was describing a picturesque scene, and the reference 

 to the English horse seems to have been quite an 

 aside. ' Their own big, hungry chargers had to be 

 left behind at Cairo !' 



Dinah Sharp, in the iVezu York Times, November 

 14, 1 89 1, shows that the Arab has not deteriorated. 

 She relates that Omar (who afterwards belonged to 

 the late Empress of Austria, the finest horsewoman 

 in Europe), travelled three days and nights over the 

 hot and barren plains of the Arabian desert, with 

 but 2 quarts of barley for food, and an occasional 

 tuft of Sahara clover. 



Miss Ella Sykes, in her recent work ' Through 

 Persia on a Side-saddle,' writes that the horses they 

 usually had were wiry little Arabs, about 14 hands 

 high, plucky, enduring, and very easy to manage by 

 their riders. 



The Vienna correspondent of the Mail, recently 

 wrote that the Hungarian horse had special 

 qualities of endurance, which he attributed to his 

 dash of the Arab blood, and that it was a great 

 matter to have a certain strain of Arab blood in the 

 troop-horse ; for the Arab horse and the horse with 

 the Arab blood will feed on indifferent forage which 

 the English horse will not look at, and would retain 



