SAGACITY OF THE ARABIAN HORSE. 235 



either in love or fear. On the continent of Europe, 

 horses are seldom struck, but the voice alone is 

 generally used to excite them to greater exertions. 

 While with us they are generally under the power 

 of men without sense, temper, or feeling, ignorant, 

 brutal, capricious, and cruel, infinitely in the scale 

 of creation below the generous creatures they tor- 

 ment. How differently do the Arabs treat their 

 horses. A modern traveller remarks,* that ' we 

 4 Europeans have no idea of the extent of intelli- 

 4 gence and attachment to which the habit of living 

 4 with the family, of being caressed by the children, 

 4 fed by the women, and encouraged or repri- 

 4 manded by the voice of the master, can raise the 

 4 natural instinct of the Arabian horse. The race 



* is of itself more sagacious and more tameable than 

 4 that of our climates, and this is the same with 

 ' other animals in Arabia. Nature itself has given 

 4 them a higher degree of instinct and a closer fra- 

 4 ternity with man than in our countries. They 

 4 seem to retain some remembrance of Eden, where 

 1 they voluntarily submitted themselves to the 



* dominion of man, the king of nature. I have 

 4 often in Syria, seen birds caught in the morning 

 ' by the children, and perfectly tame by evening, 

 1 having need neither of cage nor string to retain 

 4 them with the family that had adopted them, but 

 ' fluttering freely among the oranges and mulberry 



* M. la Marline's Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. 



