EARLY DISTRIBUTION OF HORSES. 4? 



\ 



many of the arts of peace and in all the arts of war. The Phoeni- 

 cian blood was liberally commingled with that of the natives. 

 The blood carried the brains, and hence the beautiful structiires 

 that came from their hands and heads. No purely bred nomad 

 ever could have conceived or constructed the Alhambra. The 

 Phoenicians were refined and educated idolaters, as refinement and 

 education were understood in their day, while the native people 

 were literally barbarians. 



The then recent and rapid spread of Mohammedanism among 

 all the people of Northern Africa is, on its surface, one of the 

 most remarkable facts in history. As a religion it served to 

 unite, under the banner of the Crescent, all who accepted it, and 

 guaranteed to all who fell in its defense immediate admission to 

 paradise. All who did not accept it were enemies and only fit to 

 perish by the sword of the Saracen. The founder of this religion 

 died A.D. 632, and seventy -nine years afterward his followers, in 

 Northern Africa alone, won their great victory over the .Gothic 

 dynasty of Spain. When once on Spanish soil they appeared to 

 take root there and held possession of a large part of Spain for 

 nearly nine hundred years. 



Now that I have traversed the field of Spain and Northern 

 Africa, from the first dawnings of history down to the beginning 

 of the seventeenth century, in order to gather in all that history 

 reveals touching the introduction and propagation of the horse 

 in those regions, we are ready to summarize the facts that we 

 have gleaned. At the periods of six hundred (when Carthage be- 

 came independent of the mother country), four hundred, and 

 two hundred years before the Christian era, there is undoubted 

 evidence, over and over again, that Spain and Northern Africa 

 were abundantly supplied with horses. Then, how is it possible 

 that the hordes of Barbarians from Asia could have supplied these 

 countries with horses, when they did not arrive there until 

 several centuries after the supply is established to have existed ? 

 Take, if you please, the shortest of the periods suggested above, 

 when Hannibal's cavalry almost annihilated a great Roman army, 

 two hundred and sixteen years before the Christian era. This 

 was five hundred and seventy-two years before Arabia had any 

 horses; and how can "the blind leaders of the blind" supply 

 Hannibal's cavalry with Arabian blood? When the people of 

 Northern Africa, west of Egypt, fought their way into Spain it is 

 not known that there was a single Arabian soldier nor a single 



