.54 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



consider Mohammed as the representative of the whole of Arabia, 

 in both its religious and military power. The next year his old 

 enemies, the citizens of Mecca, surrendered the sacred city to 

 him without a blow, and thus Islamism became a mighty power 

 in the world. 



It is evident from many sources other than the history of 

 Mohammed that horses have always been a very sparse produc- 

 tion in Arabia. Burckhardt, the famous traveler in the East, 

 journeyed very extensively in Arabia about 1814, and he gives 

 the result of his observations on this point of numbers as follows: 

 "In all the journey from Mecca to Medina, between the moun- 

 tains and the sea, a distance of at least two hundred and sixty 

 miles, I do not believe that two hundred horses could be found, 

 .and the same proportion of numbers may be remarked all along 

 the Red Sea." This is in strict conformity with the observations 

 of other writers, the reasons for which have already been given. 



Time out of mind, everybody has heard of the insuperable 

 difficulty of prevailing upon an Arab to part with his genuine, 

 high-caste mare for either love or money. He will expatiate, as 

 the story goes, upon "the beauty and graces of his mare as the 

 light of his household and the joy and playmate of his children, 

 and above all as she is royally bred he cannot, as a good Moslem, 

 disobey the injunctions of the Prophet not to sell such mares, but 

 to keep them forever that their descendants may enrich the 

 children of the faithful to all generations." If you ask him 

 more particularly about her lines of descent, he will give you fifty 

 or a hundred generations and land you safely on the name of the 

 particular one of the five mares of the Prophet from which she is 

 descended. To illustrate the sham of all this Major Upton's ex- 

 perience, in purchasing horses in Arabia for the East India 

 service, may be cited. It is evident the major understands his 

 dealers and they understand him. He says: "In the desert we 

 never heard of Mohammed's mares, nor was his name ever men- 

 tioned in any way as connected with the Arabian horse." He 

 says there is no restriction nor difficulty in buying as many mares 

 as you want, in any part of Arabia. This disposes of the tricky 

 pretenses of the Arab horse dealer when he is negotiating a sale 

 to a man without Arabian experience. 



Some modern writers make mention of a tradition that still 

 prevails among some tribes as to the origin of the Arabian horse, 

 ;and it is to the effect that their best horses came originally from 



