FOREIGN HORSES 19 



in 1864. Many of the produce were parted with at Aleppo, 

 so a cross of EngHsh thoroughbred blood is easily 

 accounted for. 



In the account published by Mr. William Palgrave 

 of his visit to Nejd, disguised as an Oriental, he 

 remarks : — 



"Nejd horses are especially esteemed for great speed 

 and endurance of fatigue ; indeed in this latter quaHty 

 none come up to them. To pass twenty-four hours on 

 the road without drink and without flagging is certainly 

 something, but to keep up the same abstinence and labour 

 conjoined, under the burning Arabian sky for forty-eight 

 hours at a stretch, is, I believe, pecuHar to the animals 

 of the breed ! " 



It is this spirit and endurance that give Arabians 

 their chief value, which is appreciated far more by 

 almost every foreign nation than by our own, for we 

 perhaps set undue store by actual size. We forget the 

 old saw, that it is "symmetry and action that carry 

 weight " ; to which must be added courage and resolution 

 to bear fatigue and go through with the allotted task. 

 We are afraid of losing bulk by reintroducing Arabian 

 blood, though this seldom extends beyond the first cross ; 

 and on one occasion the winner of the first prize in the 

 four-year-old class for weight-carrying hunters, at the 

 Dubhn Horse Show, was the son of a little Arabian sire, 

 said to be barely 14 hands. 



In testimony of the worth of Arabian horses for 

 campaigning purposes, reference may be made to a memo- 

 randum drawn up by the late Colonel Barrow, of the 

 19th Hussars, who was so well known as one of the chief 

 organisers of mounted infantry. The memorandum re- 

 ferred to the Arabians, on whom the 19 th Hussars were 

 mounted during the campaign on the Nile for the relief 

 of Khartoum. They were stallions of 14 hands, 

 between eight and nine years old, and were bought in 

 Syria and Lower Egypt at about £18 per head. Colonel 

 Barrow calls attention to the fact, as being very remark- 

 able, that out of 350 horses during nine months in a hard 



