i8 The Book of the Horse. 



the oldest. Many of the horses brought were two and three years old, and might have been bought 

 at much lower prices. Of the different breeds, the Kahailan seemed to be the most numerous, the 

 Soklawye the most esteemed. 



"The Anazeh inflict a temporary disfigurement upon their young horses by cropping the hair 

 of the tail quite short, after the cadgerly fashion creeping in amongst English hunters, but leave the 

 tails of the full-grown animals to attain their natural length. They denied being in the habit of 

 making, as they are commonly believed to do, fire-marks on their horses for purposes of distinc- 

 tion ; and denied also all knowledge of grounds for a report which I have seen brought forward 

 very lately, viz., that English horses had been used to improve the breed. The foals, they said, 

 though dropped most frequently in spring, were yet produced all the year round, in consequence 

 of which the age of their horses dated from the actual day of birth, and not from any particular 

 season of the year. 



" With the exception of one Anazeh vicious at his pickets^ I remember no instance of an Arab 

 horse showing vice towards mankind. 



" We had an Italian horse-dealer with us, a great black-bearded man, one Angelo Peterlini. 

 He was a good and useful man in his way ; well acquainted with the dodges and mysteries of 

 Bedouin horse-dealing ; cunning in guessing the price that an Arab would take for his horse, and 

 careful to offer him only the half, that he might work up the other half in process of bargaining ; 

 sharp-sighted in detecting the two or three ' unlucky' hairs which in Bedouin estimation might 

 lower the value of a horse, and as pertinacious in making them tell upon the price as if he believed 

 in them; in fact, altogether well acquainted with the Bedouins, and monstrously polite to them 

 before their faces, but with, at heart, a horror of them unspeakable (by anybody of less gifts of 

 eloquence than himself), and with the intensest aversion to anything of the nature of what he 

 called a 'bariiffa with them. Dogs, thieves, hogs, canaille, people of the devil — I wish I could 

 convey the magnificent and sonorous emphasis with which he rolled out these and other epithets 

 upon them behind their backs, or the ingenuity with which he framed speeches setting forth their 

 precise relationship with the Fiend, and the exact nature of a most curious connection with the 

 hogs which he attributed to them. 



" I must add a postscript. Do not let any man, because I have rated the average price of an 

 Anazeh horse at £i\, suppose that £'^\ is to buy him a striking specimen of the race; or, because 

 I have described the Anazeh horses as fine, imagine that the very fine ones are anything but the 

 exception to the rule. With the Arab horse, as with everything else in the world, the average is 

 grievously removed from the ideal, and all that you w.int above it you must pay for. Finally, let 

 any one who may be tempted to seek for an Arab horse in his native deserts remember that 

 though we, buying horses by the hundred, could attract numbers of sellers to our camp, it does 

 not follow that he, in search of a .solitary animal, could do anything of the kind, or, indeed, 

 that he could draw together a sufficient number to offer him a reasonable choice ; and above all, 

 if he wish to avoid tribulation, let him receive as great truths all Angelo Pcterlini's remarks 

 upon the Bedouins, and shape his course so as — if he will take viy advice — to keep perfectly 

 clear of them." 



Having given an extract which conveys so unfavourable an idea of the moral qualities of 

 the Bedouin, of whom we have been accustomed to read such picturesque and romantic accounts, 

 it is right to add that the British cavalry officer's admiration for the Anazeh as a horseman is 

 unbounded ; and I give his description here, although the subject docs not properly come within 

 the contents of this chapter. 



■'His horseman.sliip, when he chooses to display it, is very striking and curious. He puts 



