CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 10. SOLIDUNGUL A. 



595 





A\\ all 



THE CRUSADERS : KING RICHARD AND THE SARACENS. 



gions of Asia renowned for horses from time immemorial. Choice animals were doubtless gath- 

 ered here alike from the wide steppes of Scythia and from Media, Armenia, <te. ; and were 

 brought to the sea-coast and distributed by the ships of Tyre and Sidon to various countries around 

 the Mediterranean Sea. Greece and Egypt, we know, received a portion, and perhaps all their 

 horses, from this source. While the horses of the northern migrations into Europe — fed on rich 

 pastures and subject to a rigorous but stimulating climate — became robust, ponderous, and pow- 

 erful, those of the more southern migration became light, graceful, and spirited. The armies of 

 the Saracens, by conquest and pillage, became filled with these breeds, and in due time — that is, 

 from the seventh to the tenth century — under the influence of the Caliphs, the renowned Arab 

 race was founded. The difference between the horses produced from these two sources — that is, 

 between those of Northern Europe and those of Western Asia — is well displayed by the differ- 

 ence between the horses of the Crusaders and those of their enemies, when they met in Syria. 

 The horse of a northern knight would have crushed a solid column of Moslem cavalry. In fact, 

 Richard Coeur de Lion, with seventeen knights, rode in front of sixty thousand Turkish horsemen at 

 Jaffa from the right to the left wing, and brandishing his lance, defied them to combat, without 

 finding an adversary who dared to encounter him. 



While thus the original British horse was of this northern breed, it appears that it has for two 

 thousand years been subject to infiltrations of the Asiatic stock. It is by no - means improbable 

 that horses were sometimes brought to England bv the Phoenicians in' that trade which we know 

 to have existed for several centuries prior to the Christian era, and to which we have already 

 alluded. The Romans also, during the five hundred years in which they held sway in Britain, 

 doubtless introduced eastern breeds. It is also probable that the British Crusaders brought some 

 Arab horses home with them. Spanish horses with Arabian blood have been frequently imported 



