THE AEABIAN HORSE. 55 



Yemen. This tradition is met with in Arabia Deserta, a long 

 way from Arabia Felix, of which Yemen is a portion. While 

 this tradition is of no possible value as evidence, it is suggestive 

 of what might be unearthed in that strange country. The people 

 were not nomadic, but agricultural and commercial, and the cities 

 were rich. The people were well advanced in the arts and com- 

 forts of civilized life, and in their cities they had many beautiful 

 temples and palaces. Such a people would of necessity produce 

 learned men who would leave records of their national history 

 behind them, and especially that of such an event as the conver- 

 '.sion of the whole people to Christianity. Possibly the researches 

 of scholarly men may yet bring to light more of the facts con- 

 nected with the embassy from the Emperor Constantius and 

 the introduction of the Cappadocian horses into Yemen, as re- 

 lated in the preceding chapters. 



There are many other traditions, so called, that are burnished 

 up and brought out whenever the crafty dealer finds he has a 

 Richards from America, or a Blunt from England, with his mind 

 already made up that all the best horses of the world have come 

 from Arabia. To such a customer, with his mind already .at high 

 tension in search for the longest pedigree and the purest blood, 

 the dealer casts his hook in something like the form following: 



"When King Solomon had completed the temple he turned his 

 attention to supplying his army with horses and chariots. He 

 searched every nation that had horses for sale and would have 

 none but the very best that the world could produce. He spent 

 much of his time in admiring his beautiful horses, and one day 

 he was so thoroughly absorbed that the hour of prayer passed 

 without his observing it. He felt that this neglect to pray at the 

 proper time was a great sin, and that his horses had led him into 

 it. He did not hesitate longer, but he at once ordered all his 

 horses to be turned loose to the public. -Some of my ancestors 

 succeeded in securing six of these mares, and from these six 

 mares all the good horses of Arabia are descended." 



Other dealers are a little more modest in their claims for the 

 antiquity of the pedigrees of their horses, and generously knock 

 off about sixteen hundred years, being content to trace to the 

 mares of the Prophet instead of the mares of Solomon. This 

 still leaves them with a pedigree only about twelve hundred years 

 long, which beats our modern romancers in making stud books. 

 In order to test and select the mares that were worthy of becom- 



