ARAB AND BARB HORSES 19 



will be a wild man ; his hand will be against every man, and 

 every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the 

 presence of all his brethren." 



Indeed, this son of Abraham was the very per- 

 sonification of the Arabian people throughout 

 their whole history, and he needed horses as the 

 Arabian people have needed them ever since to 

 assist in the forays and expeditions which give to 

 life its spice and its prize. Then again, there is a 

 tradition that Nejd got its horses from Solomon; 

 another that they came from Yemen. This seems 

 to me the same tradition, for Yemen's ancient 

 name was Sheba ; and what more natural than for 

 Solomon to have rewarded with gifts of horses the 

 Queen of Sheba's people for giving him one of his 

 most satisfactory wives. Then there is a story that 

 has been builded up in our own days by a man 

 who was a Methodist minister before he became 

 a manufacturer of trotting-horse pedigrees in this 

 country. This interesting man in his old age, if he 

 did not resume the occupation of his youth, did 

 study the Bible in the endeavor to show that the 

 Arabian horses never had been much in quality 

 and many in numbers, and that their antiquity 



or ~HE 

 UNIVERSITY 



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