150 The Arabian Horse. 



how small, suddenly flies across their path, without 

 stopping they will make a pat at it, like a kitten playing 

 with a ball. Such feats, I hold, cannot possibly be 

 performed except by a horse with good shoulders and a 

 free use of them ; bad shoulders and galloping bring 

 the legs to grief See the amount of galloping the 

 Arab's legs can stand. 



Galloping one of my own Arabs at more than three- 

 quarter speed on the race-course at Amballah, the horse 

 put his near fore foot into a fox's or rat's hole — such 

 holes were very numerous ; this let him down in depth 

 to his knee, but did not bring him down — it scarcely 

 made a difference in his stride — good shoulders or bad. 



I will give another instance, which, I think, displays 

 not only the high courage of the Arabian, but his 

 wonderful power and activity. The Arab I was riding, 

 jackal-hunting, would have been considered an old 

 horse in England. He could not have seen less than 

 twenty summers, had been a racer, had gone through two 

 campaigns as a charger, but his legs were as straight 

 and clean as a foal's. After a kill, when riding slowly 

 homewards, we came to the bank of a nullah. Some 

 thought the bottom looked suspicious. I pushed my 

 horse down, and was immediately up to the hips of my 

 horse in quicksands. I would have got off if I could, 

 but the horse never gave me a chance ; his bounds and 

 springs can only be described as astonishing ; he lifted 

 himself straight up out of the treacherous soil over and 

 over again, only to be again engulfed ; still he did not 

 give up, nor fall over, or succumb, and finally landed 



