170 THE ARAB THE HORSE OF THE FUTURE 



temper to be compared with other horses, and 

 they would walk all day without food. In her own 

 horse there was not a scrap of vice in his whole 

 nature. 



Mrs. G. R. Durand, wife of the British Minister 

 to the Shah of Persia, in her book writes that the 

 Bakhtiari horses are often beyond price, of pure 

 Arab race, as hardy as beautiful; quite extraordinary 

 in the way they carry their riders over rocks and 

 stones — they scarcely ever make a mistake, and their 

 legs seem to be as hard as steel. A little black mare 

 ' carried her rider as if she had wings.' Mrs. Durand 

 herself had a little gray Arab, who used to come 

 into her dining-room and stroll round the table, 

 pushing his head over their shoulders and whinnying 

 gently for bits of bread. At a Simla dinner-party 

 he came round the table just like a big dog. 



Mr. J. H. Sanders shows that tradition had 

 always affirmed that the Percheron, the most active 

 and beautiful of all heavy breeds, is indebted to the 

 Arab for his good qualities, and that recent research 

 in France proves it. What the Darley Arabian was 

 to the thoroughbred, that, says Mr. Sanders, was 

 the gray Arabian Gallipoli to the Percheron. The 

 American Percheron Stud-Book attributes the start- 

 ing-point of the breed to the overthrow of the Arabs 

 by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in the year 

 732, which left the fine Arab and Barb steeds of the 

 defeated Arabs in the hands of the victors. It 

 also shows that that infusion of Arab blood was 



