LY 



THE saddles in Egypt have no special type, though all 

 partake of the general Oriental features. You see every- 

 thing from a donkey's to an English saddle on the horses. 

 One common type has the sitting-place round like the out- 

 side of a huge water-pipe. From the front projects an up- 

 right two-inch square perpendicular piece to serve as pom- 

 mel; the high and slanting cantle is scooped out much 

 after the fashion of a giant oyster-shell. The flaps are 

 long and square, and the stirrups hang inside them. In 

 the country well up the Nile the saddle-tree is simple, 

 the bearings made much like those of the old-type Ind- 

 ian, but with a pommel and cantle less prominent than 

 even a McClellan. The two bearing-pieces are whittled out 

 crudely, and shrunk in place by covering the whole with 

 rawhide, leaving the saddle open down the back, like a 

 very illy-made, unfinished Whitman tree. Under it goes 

 a folded blanket; over it no end of rugs, all in pictu- 

 resque disarray. The stirrup-leathers are hung well for- 

 ward, and the girth is kept so loose that it is often 

 fastened only by a packthread. I have not seen a single 

 well-girthed horse in Egypt ridden by a native. To us, 

 who believe in keeping a saddle in place and then sticking 

 to it, this seems odd; but the natives do not appear to 

 heed the matter, and their saddles do not slip, even in 

 violent turns and twists. The bit is, of course, a gag, 

 and the trappings are as gaudy as they are apt to be 

 dirty and rotten. 



