18 England's horses, 



the latest writer ou the subject, who travelled through the Nejed 

 in 1862, considers " the greater part of these pedigrees, and 

 still more the antiquity of their origin, as comparatively recent 

 inventions, got up for the market of Bedoains— i. e., Arabs of 

 the Desert — and townsmen." He adds that one of the grooms 

 attached to the stud of Feysul, Sultan of Eiad, then chief of the 

 Wahabees, who ruled over the whole of the interior of Arabia 

 from Djowf to Hasa, on the Persian Gulf, and consequently pos- 

 sessed the whole of the Nejed, remarked to him " that Solomon 

 was more likely to have taken horses from us than we from him " 

 — a criticism worthy of a Yorkshireman : but Abd el-Kader deals 

 with this tradition as positively historical, and in some measure 

 founds his theory upon it. 

 Palgrave says, moreover : — 



" I found at Hayel and in Djebel Shomer good examples of what is com- 

 monly called the Arab horse ; these are for the most part the produce of a 

 mare from the neighbourhood and a Nejdean horse, sometimes the reverse, 

 but never, it would seem, thorough Nejdee on both sides. "With all their ex- 

 cellencies, these horses are less symmetrically elegant ; their height, too, is 

 much more varied ; some of them attain 16 hands, and some are down to 14. 

 From these, purchases are made every now and then by European princes, 

 peers, and commoners, often at astounding prices." 



Here I may mention that Burckhardt, who wrote in 1829, 

 says that there are mares in the stud of Saoud, then ruler of 

 the Nejed, for which he had given as much as £650. Palgrave 

 continues : — 



" The genuine Nejdean breed i. e., thoroughbred Arab (sire and dam) is 

 never sold ; and when asked how one could be acquired, they answered him, 

 by war, by legacy, or by free gift. In this last manner there is a possibility of 

 an isolated specimen leaving the Nejed, but even that is seldom; and when 

 policy requires a present to Egypt, Persia, or Constantinople, mares are never 

 sent, and the poorest stallions (though deserving elsewhere to pass for real 

 beauties^ are picked out for the purpose." (p. 309.) 



How then are we to suppose that the horses of Zab (formerly 

 Numidia), of which Abd-el-Kader speaks, are to be reckoned 

 Arabs of pure family — i. e., thoroughbred, both by the side of 

 sire and dam —when it has from time immemorial been the rule 

 of the Nejed (the only district where they exist) never to let a 

 mare go out of the country. 



Palgrave goes on to state that " the total of the Nejdean cen- 

 sus of horses would not sum up 5,000 ; " and says, moreover, 



