English Arabs. 27 



lander, was smuggled up country. This grand Arab 

 was gifted with extraordinary speed, and moved very 

 much in the style Colonel McBean's Dhaman used to 

 do : fore-legs shot out to the front without any apparent 

 bending of the knee, while the hind-legs were brought 

 well under the body, and were worked backwards and 

 forwards with the quickness and precision of the piston 

 of a locomotive. I may observe that the fatal trick of 

 bending the knees spoils a horse's style of moving just 

 as much as it does that of a ballet dancer. 



An English traveller — Major Upton, I believe — said 

 that he saw Highlander, when he was a colt, along with 

 one of the Bedouin tribes in the desert. 



This tale about English horses being sent out to India 

 to run as Arabs, was told for many years with strange 

 persistence, and, naturally, with variations. The Bom- 

 bay gossip-mongers seemed agreed, however, that two 

 of the animals in question were thoroughbreds, called 

 Chateau Lafitte and The Pony, while the third was 

 unnamed. Some asserted that the mighty Raby was 

 one or other of the first two, and advanced the argu- 

 ments of his vast superiority to the typical Arab racer ; 

 of the fact that his antecedents in the desert could not 

 be traced ; and of his suffering, just like many English 



