556 NATURAL HISTORY. 



seldom, barley being their only food. They do not 

 neglect to cut the mane of the colts as soon as they 

 are a year or eighteen months old, in order to make it 

 grow thick and long. They mount them at t\vo years 

 old, or two years and a half at most. Till this age 

 they put neither saddle nor bridle on them ; but after 

 it, all the Arabian horses stand saddled at the door of 

 the tent, every day, from morning to night. 



The breed of these horses is dispersed in Barbary, 

 among the Moors, and even among the Negroes of the 

 rivr Gambia and Senegal. The principal people of 

 the country have some which are of uncommon beauty. 

 Instead of barley or oats, they give them maize reduced 

 to flour, which they mix witli milk, when they are in- 

 i lined to fatten them ; and in this hot climate they 

 seldom let them drink. 



The Tartars live with their horses nearly in the 

 Game manner as the Arabians do. When they are a- 

 Ixnit seven or eight months old, the young children 

 mount them, and make them walk and gallop a little 

 way by turns. They thus break them by degrees, 

 and oblige them to submit to long fastings ; but they 

 never mount them for racing or hunting till they are 

 six or seven years old, and then make them support 

 incredible fatigue, such as travelling two or three days 

 together without stopping, passing four or five with- 

 out any other food than a handful of grass every eight 

 hours. They also inure them to go twenty-four with- 

 out drinking. These horses, which appear, and w.hich 

 are actually so robust in their own country, become 

 enfeebled, and are soon good for nothing when trans- 

 ported to China or the Indies ; but they succeed bet- 

 ter in Persia and Turkey. In lesser Tartary they 

 Jave also a breed of smali horses, which are in such 



