CHAPTER V. 



THE HORSE IN HISTORY. 



I. THE DAPPLED HORSE OF EUROPE. 



The Baltic People. The Baltic, which 

 once drained through Lapland to the Arctic, 

 became, as the icefields melted, a land-locked 

 lake until a local sinkage of the rocks opened 

 its Danish channels into the Atlantic. At the 

 same period the North Sea was eating its way 

 up the old vale of North River. 



The melting of the icefields had left these 

 Baltic and North-River Provinces of Cloudland 

 an ill-drained country of bare rock wastes, of 

 boulder tracts and clay, cluttered with lakes 

 and swamps. It was long before its damp and 

 frosty soils yielded a scanty crop, eight 

 bushels of wheat, for instance, in Plantaganet 

 England as compared with thirty-six bushels, 

 the present average. The only wealth was that 

 of fisheries in cold and deadly shallows. 



Here, in a rapidly improving climate, was a 

 school of manhood which educated poor 

 savages who lived on shell-fish, driving them 



