THE ARABIAN HORSE. 61. 



Some sixteen or eighteen years ago, an English gentleman of 

 wealth and intelligence Mr. Wilfrid S. Blunt got it into his 

 head that the way to improve the English race horse was to se- 

 cure fresh infusions of pure Arabian blood. He was industrious 

 in propagating his fad, in an amateurish way, through the columns 

 of the English newspapers, evincing great zeal and a great lack of 

 knowledge of the hundreds of experiments in the same direction 

 and in the history of his own country that had proved disastrous. 

 But he had a will of his own and a bank account that enabled him 

 to carry out his views to their own realization. In the autumn of 

 1877 he made up a pleasant family party, consisting of his wife, 

 Lady Anne, and two of her lady friends and started for Arabia, with 

 the full determination to find the best and to buy nothing that 

 was not of the purest and best lineage that could be found in all 

 that country. Fortunately, Lady Anne carefully noted down 

 everything that transpired in their journeyings and after the re- 

 turn wrote a very pleasant and readable book, understood to have 

 been edited by her husband in some of its features. The title 

 of the book "The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates" did not 

 strike me pleasantly, for I never knew that any of the numerous 

 Bedouin tribes were to be found on the Euphrates. But my 

 purpose is not to criticise either the book or its title, but to fol- 

 low the party over its itinerary and discover just where Mr. Blunt 

 found the blood he was looking for, and upon what evidence he 

 accepted it as "the best blood." With this view I will carefully 

 give his own language, so far as it applies to the point in view. 



His first purchase was at Aleppo, where he got a mare he 

 named Hagar, as he says, "for a very moderate sum." "She was 

 of the Kehilan-Ajuz breed." "When purchased she was in very 

 poor condition, having just gone through the severe training of a 

 campaign." "She was bred by the Gommussa, the most able of 

 the horse-breeding tribes, had passed from them to the Roala, 

 and had now been captured and ridden some two hundred miles, 

 in hot haste, for sale to Aleppo." "We never met anything in 

 our travels that could compete with her over a distance, and she 

 has often run down foxes and even hares, without assistance, 

 carrying thirteen stone on her back." This was the first experi- 

 ence of the English "tenderfoot" among Syrian horsethieves. 

 According to his own showing, he bought her from the fellow 

 who had stolen her and had ridden her two hundred miles to 

 escape, and he accepted what the thief told about the breeding of 



