THE ARABIAN HORSE. 59 



Yorkshire who secured him through a brother in trade in that 

 region. He was the sire of Flying Childers and many others, 

 and his blood carried from generation to generation. Aleppo is 

 in Northern Syria and far distant from Arabia. At one time it 

 was embraced in Armenia Minor, the original home of the horse, 

 and adjoined Cappadocia and Cilicia, all famous for the excel- 

 lence of their horse stock more than two thousand years before 

 there was a single horse in Arabia. Upon the restoration of the 

 ancient Theban line of Pharaohs in Egypt, at the beginning of 

 the eighteenth dynasty, no time was lost by Thutmosis I. in lead- 

 ing a great army into Northern Syria for no other purpose that is 

 apparent except to replenish and rjeinvigorate the horse stock of 

 Egypt, from the region of Aleppo and further east, for this is 

 the region from which they had secured their original stock. 

 His successors pursued the same course, year after year, and the 

 number of horses and chariots captured in battle, as well as the 

 number of mares sent as tribute by the frightened people, were 

 duly recorded in the annals of their achievements. If the 

 Darley Arabian, so called, bore any relationship whatever to the 

 Arabian horse, it can only be established by tracing him back to 

 some one of the animals in Cappadocia that the Emperor Con- 

 stantius sent to Arabia in the year A.D. 356. A writer of the 

 seventeenth century, Dr. Alexander Bursell, in speaking of Aleppo, 

 says: "Formerly this part of the country was famous for fine 

 horses; and though many good ones are still bred here, it may 

 be said they are much degenerated." This is the observation of 

 an intelligent man,' written and published in 1756, about forty- 

 years after Mr. Parley's horse was brought from there. 



The other illustration is that of Godolphin Arabian. As a pro- 

 genitor of race horses this was the greatest horse of his century, or 

 indeed of any other century in the history of the English race 

 horse. He died in 1753, and absolutely nothing is known of his 

 origin or his early history. The story is generally accepted, and 

 I suppose is true, that he was bought out of a cart in Paris, as an 

 act of humanity, by a Mr. Coke, taken to London, presented ta 

 Mr. Williams, the keeper of a coffee-house, and passed from him 

 to Lord Godolphin, who kept him till he died. The story that 

 he was presented to Louis XV. by the Bey of Tunis in 1731 has 

 never been verified in any manner, and breaks down on the vital 

 point of date. Some intelligent Englishmen Insist that he must 

 have been an Arabian, while others insist that he must have been a- 



