THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 185 



ashamed, sir, nobody knows you : bad rider ! I tell 

 them, you, like all English, ride well, but that time 

 they see you, very drunk ! ' We were much amused 

 at this conception of our national character. The 

 Persian thought it would have been a reproach for a 

 man of a warlike nation not to ride well, but none for 

 an European to get drunk." 



The horses of the Toorkmans, or Turkmans, are 

 much esteemed in Persia, and in the adjacent countries. 

 Turkestan, the native region of these nomads, lies 

 north-east of the Caspian, but their tribes are widely 

 dispersed over Persia, Asia Minor, and Syria. Their 

 horses are large, swift, and possess extraordinary 

 powers of endurance, though their figures are some- 

 what ungainly. When a Turkman starts on an ex- 

 pedition, he takes with him some hard balls of barley- 

 meal, which are to serve both him and his horse for 

 subsistence until his return. But sometimes in cross- 

 ing the Desert, when he finds himself unusually faint 

 and weary, he opens the jugular vein of his horse, 

 and drinks a little of the animal's blood, by which he 

 is himself refreshed, and thinks that the horse, too, is 

 relieved. Some of these men and horses have been 

 known to travel nine hundred miles, in eleven succes- 

 sive days. 



The Othmanlis or Ottomans, the founders of the 

 p 2 



