ORIGINAL HABITAT OF THE HOUSE. 27' 



f ul armies of the mightiest nations. Now, to maintain that wild 

 horses could not only live, but flourish and increase, in a country 

 where there was not enough edible herbage on a thousand acres 

 to keep a grasshopper alive, and not a running stream of water 

 within five hundred miles, requires a measure of mental sterility 

 that can be found nowhere but among a few of the writers on 

 the Arabian horse. Of all the curiosities in which the literature of 

 the Arabian horse abounds and in the multitudinous efforts to give 

 him the primacy among horses, there seems to be nothing quite 

 so absurd as this story about his being indigenous to the desert. 

 Animals in a wild state are never found except in countries and 

 districts where the conditions surrounding provide them with 

 food and water. How long would a band of strong, healthy 

 horses live if turned loose to seek their own subsistence in the 

 desert of Arabia? Of all the countries on the face of the globe 

 there is no one where the horse is so completely dependent upon 

 the care and support of his master as Arabia. 



Fortunately, we are not left for data to unwritten traditions 

 two thousand years old, nor to the fervid imaginations of a race 

 of cutthroats and thieves of the very lowest order of civilization, 

 but we can turn, with full confidence, to authentic contempora- 

 neous history, from which we can settle this question, at once 

 and for all time. Strabo, the great Greek geographer and philos- 

 opher, flourished in the reign of Augustus, at the very beginning 

 of the Christian era. He describes Arabia just as we know it 

 to-day, for all countries have changed in their boundaries and 

 government except Arabia. He describes the people as chiefly 

 nomadic, and as breeders of camels. The most remarkable thing 

 in this description is the fact, found in his great work, Vol. III., p. 

 190, that they had no horses at that time. The exact language 

 used in this statement will be found in the next chapter of this 

 work. The question now arises, If there were no horses in Arabia 

 at the beginning of the Christian era, when and how did they 

 become possessed of them? Fortunately, again, written history 

 supplies the answer to this question. In my next chapter will be 

 found, quoted at some length, the circumstances bearing on this 

 question. In brief, the facts are as follows: Philostorgius, a dis- 

 tinguished Greek theologian, wrote an ecclesiastical history in the 

 fifth century which .is no longer extant. Photius, at one time 

 Patriarch of Constantinople, in the ninth century wrote an 

 epitome of the work by Philostorgius and to this epitome we are 



