The Antiquity of this Race. 133 



more or less as it is good and valuable. This appears 

 to me to be a striking instance of the pure and unmixed 

 character of the Arabian horse ; and, if pure and un- 

 mixed, of the antiquity of his race. Surely it is more 

 reasonable to believe that the horse went southwards 

 from Ararat to a congenial climate, than that he should 

 go north-easterly to Central Asia, and was there first 

 domesticated, as supposed by Colonel Hamilton Smith 

 — to an uncongenial climate ; on the other hand, if the 

 horse first multiplied, and his offspring became dis- 

 persed and was domesticated in Bactria, the higher val- 

 leys of the Oxus, in Cashmere, or in Central Asia, and 

 perhaps simultaneously in several regions, why exclude 

 Arabia } Again, if the horse were not taken'into Egypt 

 by Mizraim, or domesticated there simultaneously with 

 other countries, it is more easy to believe he should 

 have been taken from Arabia into Egypt than that herds 

 or troops of wild horses should find their way across so 

 vast an extent of country as from Central Asia to 

 Egypt, many parts of which would be inhabited, for we 

 have no indication or record of any exodus from Cen- 

 tral Asia to Egypt between the dispersion at Babel and 

 1702 B.C. to account for the horse having been taken 

 thence by Man. Moreover, during so long a period 

 (there were 589 years between the Deluge and when the 

 horse is first mentioned in Egypt, according to the 

 chronology in our authorised version of the Scriptures, 

 which gives the lowest calculation), the horse coming 

 from the wilds of Central Asia would have, in all pro- 

 bability, undergone considerable changes, but in Job's 

 time the horse in Arabia was in his grandest form. 



