48 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



Arabian horse in the whole army. They were all called Arabians, 

 however, and that pretense has existed ever since. 



The Phoenicians were the most remarkable people of all the 

 early ages and indeed of any age. They belonged to the Aramaic 

 or Semitic race; they settled in Canaan long before the days of 

 Abraham and attained their greatest prosperity in the days of 

 Solomon, when his fleets and those of his friend Hiram, King of 

 Tyre, controlled and monopolized the commerce of the world. 

 More than five hundred years before this alliance, however, they 

 had established commercial relations with all the countries bor- 

 dering on the Mediterranean, and their ships were trading in the 

 ports of every country from Egypt to the Pillars of Hercules and 

 far beyond. There seems to be no doubt that they carried tin 

 from Britain and amber from the Baltic, and, of course, they 

 had to bring something to exchange for what they carried away. 

 What did they bring? As amber did not enter into the necessary 

 arts it is not probable the trade was very large, but tin was re- 

 quired by many nations in their everyday life, especially the 

 Egyptians, who had no foreign commerce and were thus depend- 

 ent upon the Phoenician merchants. We may conclude, there- 

 fore, that the trade in tin was large, and as there was no Phoeni- 

 cian colony in extreme southwestern Britain, the foreign traders 

 would bring just what the Britons most needed. If they were 

 already in possession of horses they would not need that kind of 

 exchange, but if they were not in possession of horses, that would 

 be just the kind of exchange they would want, and probably this 

 was the source from which they obtained their supply. The 

 question, however, of how or when our British ancestors obtained 

 their first supply of horses has never been positively answered. 

 That they had them in great abundance at the beginning of the 

 Christian era is fully established by the experience of the Romans 

 when they captured Britain. From their great numbers and the 

 skill displayed in their management in battle, it cannot be 

 doubted that they were there for many generations before the 

 Roman armies came in contact with them. Many theories have 

 been advanced as to how the horse may have reached Britain, but 

 no one of them rests on so reasonable a basis of probability as 

 that of the Phoenician traders. If from this source, which I am 

 strongly disposed to believe was the true source, it must have 

 been during the maritime supremacy of the Phoenicians and their 

 colonies, and this would place the date several centuries before 



