3 6 THE HORSE IN HISTORY 



Indeed during the thirteenth century a.d. 

 ceremonies equally revolting are known to have 

 been performed regularly among the Tartars, 

 while at the funeral of Frederic Casimir, Com- 

 mander of Lorraine, in 1781, a horse was killed, 

 and then buried with its master, and at even so 

 recent a date as the funeral of Li Hung Chang a 

 horse and chariot made of paper were, according 

 to the newspaper reports, burned at the grave- 

 side — probably a last survival of some weird rite 

 of a sacrificial nature observed formerly in China 

 and Japan. 



Another race known to have immolated live 

 horses, especially white horses, was the Veneti. 

 This people lived at the head of the Adriatic, 

 and their name survives to this day in " Venice." 



The sacrifice of white horses was common 

 too amongst the Scandinavian and the Teutonic 

 races, and formed part of their religion. The 

 Sicilian Greeks, again, are said to have set a 

 high value upon white horses, and to have sacri- 

 ficed them under the impression that by doing 

 so they afforded additional gratification to their 

 gods. 



It would appear, indeed, that in all ages white 

 animals were looked upon as sacred in a sense, 

 for in parts of India the white elephant is deemed 

 sacred to this day, and in parts of Persia the 

 white ass. Then, in the fifth century B.C., the 

 nomad Scythians, whose territories lay chiefly 



