86 LIGHT HORSES : BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



it is reported, placed his veto on the export ; but my impres- 

 sion is that, as in time gone by, I, with a well-lined purse and 

 carte blanche as to price, could pick up a few specimens of the 

 highest caste horses, and probably a mare or two, such as 

 would silence all carpers, and convince the most sceptical that 

 there are still to be found amongst the desert-born superlative 

 illustrations of that stock which boa-^ c an ancestry of great 

 deeds and mighty traditions. Horses that outrival all the 

 rest, * the pearl of the casket,' are no more to be bought for a 

 mess of pottage in Arabia than here ; and this is especially 

 true both in Nejd and Mesopotamia, where so much store is 

 set by blue blood. As for the Sultan's dog-in-the-manger 

 iradee, that writ won't run, especially when it is sought to be 

 imposed on these nomad rievers, who care nought for the 

 Sultan or the Khedive. The dollar (backed by influence) is 

 as omnipotent in the horsehair tents of the Bedaween as ever 

 it can be in Lombard Street. 'Gold wins where angels might 

 despair.' 



" The Arabian has somewhat suffered in public estimation 

 by ill-advised attempts to measure his speed against that of 

 our modern racehorses. I once entertained the fallacy, but 

 a trial at Newmarket between a plater belonging to the late 

 Mr. Caledon Alexander, and the famous Mysore and Bombay 

 ' crack ' Copenhagen, convinced me of my mistake. On the 

 racecourse the Arab is at a manifest disadvantage, being 

 built on lines which are quite different from those of our 

 greyhound-like thoroughbred. He is bred in the desert, exists 

 for one purpose, and that is to carry his freebooting owner 

 on his long and rapidly-executed razzias ; whereas the tho- 

 roughbred, since the days of King James I., has been the 

 product of careful selection for racing purposes solely ; and, 

 in these latter days, every consideration has been sacrificed 

 to the development of speed alone ; all the science and sound 

 principles of breeding, which our ancestors were the first to 

 establish, being very generally disregarded. Had we started 

 ab initio from pure Arabian blood on both sides, sire and dam 



