GENERAL VIEW OF THE FIELD. 5 



a camel; and when he went the second time in triumph, mounted 

 on a camel, he made the requisite number of circuits round the 

 holy place, then dismounted and broke the idols that had been 

 set up there. Then came the triumphant shout of his followers; 

 * 'There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet." 

 Since then, this cry has rung over a thousand battlefields, and 

 as I write it is still heard in the homes of the slaughtered Arme- 

 nians. From a great, warlike, and conquering people, the fol- 

 lowers of Mohammed have degenerated into an aggregation of 

 robbers and murderers of defenseless Christians. Since the days 

 of Mohammed, horses no doubt have increased in numbers, but 

 all modern travelers express their surprise at the small numbers 

 they see. The horse is an expensive luxury in Arabia, and none 

 but the rich can afford to keep him. He fills no economic place 

 in the domestic life of the Arab, for he is never used for any pur- 

 pose except display and robbery. Nobody is able to own a horse 

 but the sheiks and a few wealthy men. Nobody would think of 

 mounting a horse for a journey, be it long or short. The camel 

 fills the place of the horse, the cow and a flock of sheep, all in 

 one, and surely the Arabs are right in saying, "Job's beast is a 

 monument of God's mercy." It is very evident that nearly all 

 the horses said to have been brought from Arabia never saw 

 Arabia. As an illustration of the uncertainty of what a man is 

 getting when he thinks he is buying an Arabian, in the Orient, I 

 will give, in some detail the experiences of Mr. Wilfrid S. 

 Blunt, a wealthy Englishman who had an ambition to regenerate 

 the English race horse by bringing in fresh infusions of Arabian 

 blood. He went to Arabia to buy the best, but he didn't go into 

 Arabia to find it. He skirted along through the border land 

 where agriculture and civilization prevailed, while away off to the 

 south the wild tribes roamed over the desert, and to the north, 

 not far away, was the land of abundance that had been famous 

 for more than three thousand years for the great numbers and 

 excellence of the horses bred there. Here on the banks of the 

 Euphrates Mr. Blunt found the town of Deyr, and he soon dis- 

 covered it was a famous horse market. The inhabitants were the 

 only people he met with who seemed to understand and appre- 

 ciate the value of pedigrees, and there were no horses in the town 

 but "thoroughbreds." Here Mr. Blunt made nearly all his pur- 

 chases which amounted to eighteen mares and two stallions "at 

 reasonable prices." As will be seen in the extracts from his book, 



