CHAPTER VI. 



The Centaur The Mongols and Calmucks A Russian 

 Taboon. 



THE origin of the fabulous Centaur is referred by 

 some of the learned to the Steppes, whence the first 

 horses, and probably thek riders also, passed into 

 Thessaly. The equestrian skill acquired by the 

 Thessalians at an early period, when the horse was 

 unknown in the rest of Greece, might have induced 

 the imaginative beholders to declare in hyperbo- 

 lical language that the horse and rider were one 

 body : 



" These gallants 



Had witchcraft in 't ; they grew into their seat, 

 And to such wondrous doing brought their horse 

 As they had been incorpsed, and deminatured 

 With the brave beast." 



And thus, what was ^t first but a figurative expres- 

 sion, may have come afterwards to be regarded as 

 standing for a literal truth. Or, as is still more 



