24 HORSEMANSHIP. 



exportation of horses is hampered by such heavy duties 

 that permission to take them out of the country is illusory. 

 Doubtless in the royal stables there are some fine specimens. 

 The Emir Abd-el-Kader of Algiers, when at the height of 

 his power, defending his native land against the armies of 

 France, inflicted the punishment of death, without mercy, 

 on any Moslem convicted of selling a horse to the 

 Christian. 



About foreign horses I shall have little to say. Many of 

 those now sold, both for riding and driving, are what we 

 term " soft foreign substitutes." One very nice stranger, for 

 young ladies' riding especially, is the real Spanish jennet. 

 Under the ?^Ioresco Khalifat the commercial enterprise of 

 the Arabs knew no bounds. In those warlike times richly 

 caparisoned horses of the purest blood were the most 

 acceptable royal gifts, and to the stables of the Kalifs of 

 Cordova, Toledo, Seville, Valencia^ jMurcia, and Badajos, 

 during the rule of the Moslem on the Siberian peninsula, 

 came the very pith and marrow of Mesopotamia, Nejd, 

 Morocco, and Tunis. The royal farms of the Alham.bra 

 were the breeding grounds of the finest and purest blood 

 horses of the Orient. Granada, the Damascus of Spain, 

 enjoys a climate akin to that of " the eye of the East," the 

 oldest city in the world. In the true Andalusian jennet's 

 veins runs a stream in which mingles some of the bluest 

 blood of Asia and Africa. He is a gentleman every inch of 

 him, small and pretty, graceful and easy in his paces, 

 carries his dapper, well-bred head handsomely in the 

 proper place, and is gifted with a good mouth. There is 

 not much of him, but what there is is good and comely, 

 quite the animal to catch the eye and win the affections of 

 a young lady or an Eton boy. 



Some of the half-bred French Arabs, from Arab sire and 



