348 MARES NEVER SOLD 



test — race, and the speed, gentleness, and courage which 

 ought to come of race. The Arabians which the ordinary 

 traveller picks out as the finest are those which fill the 

 eye ; the best mare in the desert may be far from a beau- 

 ty ; she is " a rum 'un to look at, but a devil to go." 



The Bedouin cannot be induced to sell a mare. It is in 

 her that he takes chief pride ; through her he keeps the 

 pedigree. If forced by debt or distress to part with her, 

 he has the right to stipulate that she shall be bred to such 

 and such a horse, and that he shall have the first mare- 

 foal. He will never ride a horse when he can ride a mare. 

 Most of the Bedouins who are put on escort duty ride 

 horses, but this is because all the travellers do the same, 

 and it is not convenient to mix the sexes ; but let him get 

 beyond the reach of the current of tourists and it is his 

 mare he bestrides ; it is to her that he trusts his life. 

 Geldings exist, but they are rare. I remember to have 

 seen but two or three in Syria. 



It will, I fear, be a disappointment to the reader for me 

 to say that the common Arabian of Syria is so nearly like 

 the bronco that the Bedouin might be set down as a cow- 

 boy — bar clothes and seat and intelligence. So far as the 

 horse goes you might mix a hundred of each in a big cor- 

 ral, leave them alone a month, and it would be hard for 

 any but an expert to pick out either kind. By common 

 Arabian I mean the saddle-horse that is used in every-day 

 life, the equine vin du j)ciys. Take a hundred of the av- 

 erage of these horses, and seventy of them will be bron- 

 cos ; the rest will show some marks of what we Occident- 

 als call better blood. There are two or three points of 

 difference: the Arabian croup is higher, the barrel back 

 of the girths less swollen, the withers less prominent, the 

 ewe neck by a shade less pronounced. But the work-a- 

 day Arabian of Syria plainly shows his couslnshlp with 



