90 INTRODUCTION. 



raised concerning horses in either, during antiquity, 

 we are liable to be misled for want of more accurate 

 geographical knowledge ; but this difficulty appears 

 not to apply in refuting the argument of Count de 

 Buffon, where he asserts the primitive horse to be 

 still found wild in Arabia; for all the peninsula, 

 and the provinces that can by any extension be 

 claimed as within the limits, having been tenanted 

 from the earliest periods by wandering tribes, graz- 

 ing camels, goats, and sheep on every space that 

 produced verdure, there are nowhere districts suffi- 

 ciently inaccessible, or cover properly qualified to 

 shelter horses in a wild state, although wild cat- 

 tle are mentioned, which in reality are not animals 

 of the bovine family, but oryges belonging to the 

 Antilopidce. * It is more probable, as before ob- 

 served, that there were no horses in this open and 

 barren region, until Scythic conquerors of the giant 

 race, Imilicon, Cuthites, or Hyksos, brought them 

 down from High Asia ; and that these hordes and 

 their animals were incorporated like the Idumeans, 

 or left their horses, and many words of their lan- 

 guage, when they perished or were expelled, t. If 



* The leucoryx, and other antelopes, are usually classed with 

 oxen in Oriental relations. 



t Events of- this kind had occurred, and are again foretold 

 by the prophet Ezekiel, vi. 26, " A king of kings from the 

 north, with horses and with chariots, and with horsemen," &c. 

 A king of kings, literally Chahyan. T,he Tahtars have a pro- 

 verb, that for seven years after a horde has passed, no corn will 

 grow. In the eleventh century, when the terrible Comans 

 overthrew Persian, Turk, and Christian, and took possession ot 



