HISTORY. 457 



sources of the Indus, as the Hindoos assert, or, for any 

 thing we know, in the mountains of the Moon, which the 

 Negroes may, with equal reason, believe : and then, having 

 indulged our imagination with finding out the spot where 

 the first pair of Horses was called forth, we may exercise 

 our ingenuity in devising means for enabling them to trans- 

 port themselves, without the aid of wings, to so many dis- 

 tant regions. But, in truth, the origin of the Horse does 

 not admit of determination by any facts known to us ; and 

 we have merely to consider whether it be more consonant 

 with reasonable probabilities that all the Horses of the world 

 have been produced in one spot, and spread from a common 

 centre, or have been placed ab origme, that is, from the com- 

 mencement of the present zoological distribution of animals, 

 in the regions proper to them. 



From whatever regions we may suppose the Horse to have 

 been derived, we know that, from early times, he has been 

 subjected to human control. We read of him in the earliest 

 annals of the East, as typical of power and splendour, as 

 harnessed to the chariot of the Sun, as a sign in the firma- 

 ment, and as the object of adoration .and sacrifice to mortals 

 below. The first great conquerors of the regions beyond the 

 Sinde, whom we call Hindoos, proceeded, there is reason to 

 believe, from near the western termination of the great Hi- 

 malaya Mountains, where the most ancient and refined of 

 written languages, the Sanscrit, still lingers in the speech of 

 the people. We may suppose them to have been a nation of 

 horsemen and charioteers ; and they themselves, in their le- 

 gends, derive the great river which has given name to their 

 country from the mouth of a Horse. Proceeding westward, 

 we have the first accounts of great empires, the Assyrian, 

 the Babylonian, and the Persian, where, as records, sacred 

 and profane, inform us, the Horse, with Chariots of War, 

 existed from the first ages. Proceeding still westward, and 

 nearly in the same parallel of latitude, we reach a kingdom 

 of Africa, where the Horse was subdued from the earliest 



