22 FOREIGN BREEDS OF HORSES. 



in their passage to the East, can now frequently di-aw considerable supplies 

 of horses from this colony, and some regiments have been entirely mounted 

 here. This is sufficient proof of the degree of improvement which they 

 have reached. It is, however, said, by Percival, in his ' Cape of Good 

 Ho^oe,' that the riding-masters have occasionally much trouble in breaking 

 in the Cape horses, which are naturally vicious, and especially when put 

 beyond the pace to which they had been accustomed. They rarely stand 

 above fourteen hands high ; they are hardy, and when thoroughly broken 

 in, are capable of enduring great privations and fatigue. They are rarely 

 shod while they remain in the colony, or if they are, it is only on the fore 

 feet. Their principal food is carrots, mth a small quantity of corn. No 

 hay is grown near Cape Town, nor are there any pastures on which the 

 horses can be turned. 



The wild horses have long disappeared near to the colony, and we have 

 no authentic record that any of them were ever taken and attempted to be 

 domesticated. 



The horse is rarely seen in any part of the eastern coast of Africa. It 

 is not a native of Madagascar, but is again found in Ajan and Adel, on 

 the southern frontiers of Abyssinia. 



THE ARABIAN HORSE. 



Although modern Europe owes so much to Arabia for the improvement 

 in her breed of horses, it may be doubted whether these animals were 

 found in that country as a matter of merchandise, or indeed existed there 

 at all in large numbers in very early times. The author of the book of 

 Job, in describing the wealth of that patriarch, who was a native of 

 Arabia, and the richest man of his time, makes no mention of horses, 

 although the writer shows himself very conversant with that animal. 

 Five hundred years after that, Solomon imported spices, gold, and silver, 

 from Arabia ; but we are told in Chronicles, all the horses for his own 

 cavalry and chariots, and those with which he supphed the Phosnician 

 monarchs, he procured from Egypt. 



There is a curious record of the commerce of different countries at the 

 close of the second century. Among the articles exported from Egyipt to 

 Arabia, and particularly as presents to reigning monarchs, were horses. 



In the fourth century, two hundred Cappadocian horses were sent by 

 the Roman emperor as the most acceptable present he could offer a power- 

 ful prince of Arabia. 



So late as the seventh century the Arabs had few horses, and those ot 

 little value ; for when Mahomet attacked the Koreish near Mecca, he had 

 but two horses in his Avhole army ; and at the close of his murderous 

 campaign, although he drove off twenty-foui- thousand camels and forty 

 thousand sheep, and carried away twenty-four thousand ounces of silver, 

 not one horse appears in the list of plunder. 



These circumstances sufficiently prove that, however superior may be 

 the present breed, it is comparatively lately that the horSe was naturalised 

 in Arabia. Indeed the Ai^abs do not deny this ; for until wdthin the last 

 century, when their horses began to be so deservedly valued, they were 

 content to limit theii^ pedigree to one of the five on which Mahomet and 

 his four immediate successors fled from Mecca to Medina on the night of 

 the Ilegira. 



Although in the seventh century the Arabs had no horses ot value, yet 

 those which they had derived from their neighbours began then to be pre- 

 served with so much care, and propagated so uniformly and strictly from 

 the finest of the breed, that in the thirteenth century the Arabian horse 

 began to assume a just and unrivalled celebrity. 



There are no\Y said to be three breed^s or varieties of Arabian horses : 



