FOR PEACE AND WAR. 15 



ture were taken from Asia, whence the people came, and to 

 which alone they acknowledged affinity, to Asia it is 

 reasonable to attribute the horses of Egypt, and those 

 countries deriving their horses or " cross " from them. 

 But, even in Asia there was a difference respecting horses ; 

 for ever since human records began, the male, and occa- 

 sionally the female population have used the saddle in the 

 northern half, while in the southern it is only within the 

 commencement of profane history that the better classes 

 are mounted and riding tribes, having preferred swift 

 camels, as the Kyale Arabs do to this day. 



Want of more accurate geographical knowledge of the 

 territorial limits of primitive Arabia and ancient Egypt, 

 tend to mislead the enquirer regarding the horses in either. 

 A large portion of Western Persia, all Palestine, and Eastern 

 Syria was occasionally claimed within the boundaries of 

 Arab sway in ancient times ; and, since the Hejira, they 

 have extended, Eastward, far beyond the Euphrates, and. 

 West, to Morocco. . Likewise ancient Egypt at times claimed 

 part of Arabia, of Syria, and the whole of Palestine. Buffon, 

 who asserts that Avild horses have been, and still are found 

 in Arabia, with even the Avide margin of territory that 

 above facts allow, must be held as in error, for it is argued 

 that " all the peninsula and the provinces that can by any 

 extension be claimed within the limits of the country, 

 have been tenanted from the earliest periods by wander- 

 ing tribes grazing camels, goats, and sheep, on every space 

 that produced verdure ; and there are, nowhere, districts 

 sufficiently inaccessible, or cover properly qualified to 

 shelter horses in a wild state." The probability that there 

 were no horses in this barren and inappropriate region 

 until the period of the Scythian conquerors, or Shepherd 

 Kings, who brought them from high Asia, and left behind 

 them, with many words of their language, their horses. 



