214 KINDS OF ARABS 



flesh. We are wont to associate an Arab with the idea of 

 love for and gentle treatment of his steed ; on the con- 

 trary, it is less than one in a hundred Arabs who treats his 

 horse with intelligence or with kindness, and therefore it 

 is less than one in a hundred which becomes anything but 

 a commonplace beast of burden. 



There are two kinds of Arab tribes : first, those dwelling 

 in the cities, subsisting by the lower trades and living from 

 hand to mouth in crowded filth, and those dwelling in 

 the lesser communities, such as small towns and villages, 

 earning a precarious livelihood by a crude sort of agricult- 

 ure or by raising dates or olives, and living in mud- walled 

 huts roofed with thatch, sod, or tile ; second, the tent- 

 dwellers, who rove from place to place and are purely a 

 pastoral people, subsisting on the yield of their flocks and 

 herds and the breeding and sale of the camel, horse, and ass. 

 Among the first, when they have any, as is rare enough, 

 the horse has become a sumpter animal, a means of trans- 

 portation or an item in husbandry, and has, as a matter 

 of course,' fallen from his high estate. Among the latter 

 he has kept some of his better qualities ; among some of 

 the wealthy he has retained all his attributes. It goes 

 without saying that in the cities it is the rich who own 

 the finest stock; on the desert this is not always true. 

 Unless ground into the very dust by poverty, many a man 

 who owns no other earthly possessions may have as fine a 

 mare as the noblest sheik ; and he will starve his own flesh 

 and blood to keep her sleek and hearty. In fact, it is she 

 whose foal will annually fill the empty exchequer. 



An Arab, meaning a tent-dweller, for in an equine sense 

 the town-dweller is no Arab, loves first and above all his 

 mare. No need to recite the oft-sung affection he will 

 lavish upon her, the care he will take of his glossy favor- 

 ite, for whose preservation he. will gladly pinch his own 



