474 THE HOUSE. 



and the monuments of civilization, we find that it was distin- 

 guished for its horses as for all its productions. Armenia 

 supplied with horses and mules the merchant princes of Sidon 

 and Tyre ; and, in a subsequent age, the horses of the same 

 countries are described by Vegetius and other writers as 

 being a race tall and beautiful. Homer, nearly a thousand 

 years before the Christian era, speaks of the horses of the 

 same countries as yoked to the chariots of his heroes ; and, 

 at a subsequent period, the horses of Cappadocia, Phrygia, 

 and the neighbouring states, furnished steeds to contend in 

 the Olympic games of Greece. Now the fertile regions of 

 Asia Minor are laid desolate. The glory of its twenty na- 

 tions has passed away like a dream. Ages of tyranny and 

 misrule have marred the image of the lovely land, and left 

 us but the recollection of its former happiness. Its arts have 

 disappeared with the palaces of its kings and the tombs of 

 its heroes. If its noble horses still survive, though deprived 

 of their ancient glory, this is because the tyranny of man has 

 not been able wholly to destroy the bounties of nature in her 

 animal productions. All the horses of the countries referred 

 to, although varying in strength and size with the fertility 

 of the districts they inhabit, exhibit a common class of cha- 

 racters. 



To the southward, we enter the deserts of Syria and Me- 

 sopotamia, and the arid wilderness of Arabia. Of all the 

 countries of the East, Arabia has become the most celebrated 

 for its horses. This wild and barren country, however, does 

 not seem to have acquired the Horse until the less remote 

 periods of its history. The Camel, the Ox, the Sheep, the 

 Goat, afforded the inhabitants of old, as at the present day, 

 their chief means of subsistence. The Horse appears to 

 have been added as their habits became more predatory. 

 Their contact with Persia, and the countries of the Horse on 

 the north, put it in their power to obtain horses ; and they 

 acquired them, just as we see tribes of savages in modern 

 times possess themselves of fire-arms, which they use for 



