FIRST USED IN EGYPT. 23 



Canaan, the country lying between the Isthmns of Suez and the 

 ridges of Lebanon, the horse had ah-eady been naturalized in 

 that region ; inasmuch as the Canaanites " went out to fight 

 against Israel, with horses and chariots very ^lan3^" 



From these considerations, and from the fact that, so late as 

 600 years after this date, Arabia had still no horses, — as it seems 

 certain, since, while Solomon imported from Arabia, silver and 

 gold and spices, it was from Egypt, only, that he procured horses 

 for his own cavahy and that of the allied kings of Phoenicia, — I 

 conclude that it was no others than those very Shepherd kings 

 of Egypt, described as a dynasty of invading conquerors of a 

 stranger race, termed the Hycsos, whose origin is imknown, who 

 introduced the horse into Lower Egypt ; and that, after this pe- 

 riod, that country became the principal breeding district and 

 emporium of that noble animal. 



It may be that these Hycsos were intruders from the eastern 

 portion of Abyssinia, bordering on Upper Egypt, where there 

 Btill exists, in the kingdoms of Dongola and Sennaar, a very 

 superior breed of Barbs ; and that it was thence that they in- 

 troduced the horse into Egypt, which assuredly does not possess 

 such extensive tracts of native pasture, or meadow lands, as 

 alone are adapted to the existence of this animal in a state of 

 nature and of freedom. 



In Greece, the beautiful fable, that the horse sprang from 

 the earth under the impulse of the trident of Neptune, the 

 most puissant, if not the most potent, of the gods, as the em- 

 blem of strength and warfare, seems intended to adumbi-ate a 

 belief of the Hellenes that the auimal came from beyond the sea. 



We have, however, clearer evidence of the method of his 

 introduction, in the universal tradition that the Thessalians, 

 who were, from first to last, the best and most expert horsemen 

 in Greece, as well as the Athenians, from whose sacred soil the 

 horse is said to have sprung at the summoning of the sea-god, 

 and the settlers of the Argolis, were all colonists from Egypt. 



Here, then, in Europe, on the great fertile plains of Thessaly 

 and Thrace, the boundless reedy meadows on the banks of the 

 Danube, and thence away to the illimitable horse-pastures of 

 the Ukraine, and the banks of the Dnieper and the Don, the 

 horse was unquestionably first introduced, and propagated both 



