CHAPTER Y. 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF EQUITATION. 



The antique Persians taught three useful things, 

 To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth. 



BYRON, Don Juan. 



ALTHOUGH the art of equitation does not fall strictly within 

 the scope of the present work, yet, as it has been necessary 

 in the course of our historical survey and in discriminating 

 between the Asiatic and Libyan horses to mention the various 

 methods of capturing, controlling and utilising the steed em- 

 ployed by the horse-owning peoples of the ancient world, it will 

 riot be out of place if we sketch briefly the chief steps in the 

 evolution of equitation. 



It is not improbable that amongst the Turko-Tartaric tribes 

 the horse was first domesticated not for locomotion, but, like the 

 ox amongst other races, for the sake of its milk and flesh, and just 

 as at a later stage the cow-keeping peoples began to use the ox 

 to draw the plough and cart, so the Turko-Tartaric race began 

 gradually to use their horses as a means of transport and 

 locomotion. The deeply-rooted love of mares' milk which still 

 characterises Kalmucks and other Tartars seems to indicate 

 that it has formed a substantial part of the nutrition of their 

 race through long ages. 



The horse was ready to hand on all the vast plains of Upper 

 Asia, where neither wild sheep, goats, nor cattle were to be had. 

 On the other hand neither the Aryans of the Rig-veda nor the 

 Libyans seem ever to have drunk mares' milk, probably because 

 they had possessed cows, sheep and goats, and had been accus- 



