1853.] 



THE HORSE AND ITS RIDER. 



great monarcliics, not imaginaiy, but taken from existing races 

 and actual localities. 



As there is no trace whatever of the existence of an indigenous 

 breed of wild horses in Arabia or the adjacent countries, we 

 must conclude that to great care taken in breeding and training 

 the imported races, and to the selection of the tinest forms, may 

 be attributed the excellence of the Arabian stud — the uatui'al 

 quality was more fully developed by the sunny climate — the 

 allowance of scant}' but highly nutritious food, and the abste- 

 miousness in drink — and the constant attention of the owner ; 

 and we may safely conclude that, as at this day, the superior ex- 

 cellence of the English horse may be attributed to the careful 

 and judicious intermixture of races; so did the Arabs derive 

 their small but superb chargers from the Egyptian, Persian and 

 Armenian breeds. This may account for the fact that, in very 

 remote times, the Arab chiefs received presents of beautiful horses 

 from neighbouring kings with joy ; not that they wanted them, 

 but that they might add to the excellence of their own breeds. 

 And this, too, accounts for the great intermixture of colour in 

 the Arab races. The Arabian horse was carefully bred, and 

 this was not, and could not have been the case among the riding- 

 nations of Higher Asia, when the immense herds ranged wild 

 over the interminable pastures, almost independent of human 

 intervention and control. Such a nation as this care more for 

 aggregate number than individual value ; the whole people were 

 mounted, and in the saddle performed nearly all their necessaiy 

 avocations. They crossed rivers by swimming their horses, or 

 attaching them to rude rafts. Of all the human famihes, this 

 alone eat the flesh of the horse: they drank the milk of their 

 mares, and discovered how to form from it an intoxicating beve- 

 rage. On lioi-seback the marriage ceremony was performed ; on 

 horseback the Council of the nation debated its aft'aii's ; treaties 

 of peace and declarations of war were dated from the stirrup of 

 .the Ghaghan. In our own times the Polish nobles met on horse- 

 back to elect their king. Among many of the Riding nations 

 the horse, man and colt, were fixed standards of value, as the cow 

 was among the Celtic tribes; and they invented the bridle, sad- 

 dle and stirrup, and probably the horse-shoe, of which latter we 

 shall speak more at a future period. Talitar tribes at various 

 periods in history, from the time of Attila to the 13th century, 

 poured their swaims of cavalry westward, penetrating noi'thward 

 to Silesia, and southward to the Kile; twice, in the middle 

 ages, they passed eastward, invaded and conquered China. There 

 is no nation at this day that can oppose an equal force of cavalry 

 to Russia. A cavalry officer of rank, in Canada, told me that he 

 saw 60,000 Russian horsemen reviewed at one time by the Em- 

 peror Nicholas ; and that among these there were very few 

 Cossacks. Yet, just before the French Revolution, the Russian 

 cavalry could not stand before the Turks, unless in squares eight 

 deep, with guns at the angles, and the fronts further protected 

 by portable chevaux de frizes, and even then they were often 

 broken by the furious charge of the Spahis. 



When all these facts are carefully compared and considered, 

 no doubt can exist but that the aboriginal region in which the 

 wild horse was first subdued to the use of man, must be sought 

 for in High Asia, about the fortieth parallel of latitude, the \'ast 

 table from whence for ages past riding Nomade tribes have con- 

 tinued to isstie, penetrating east, south and west, from periods 

 long piior to all historical recoKL 



It now remains to notice the various breeds of the horse as 

 we find them mentioned in ancient writers, and rapidly trace 

 them to our own times, it being primarily assumed that each race 

 or tribe of men derived their own stock from the wild horses in 

 their immediate vicinity — as the jiied horse, or tangum, in the 

 central .mountains of Asia; the tarpan, or bay stock, more to the 

 east and south ; the pale horse, dun or edbach, on the banks of 



the Caspian; the white or villous stock, on the Euxiue; and the 

 black, or crisped-haired, in Europe : notwithstanding the inter- 

 course among the nations in comuiere, and the invasions of Mar, 

 the distincti\e features of these races are still to be discerned, 

 though there has been an intermixture for 3,000 yeats, as 

 clearly and decidedly as at this day distinguish the diflerent 

 races, of men. The tarpan or bay stock, originally seated on the 

 banks of the Caspian, was most probably that which mounted 

 the armies of the Hyksos, the Shepherd Kings, the first hoise- 

 men invaders of Arabia and Egypt; this breed was that which 

 fell into the hands of the Egyptians on the expulsion of the 

 Hyksos, and afterwards into those of the Arabians, and may be 

 considered the parent stock of the Arab stock of this daj', im- 

 proved, as we have seen, by the most careful breeding and train- 

 ing. This horse is figured on the monuments of Egypt, as about 

 the size of the modern Arab, with a somewhat shorter back, 

 large eyes, small ears, and clean limbs, and when the sculpture 

 is painted, the colour is invai-iably red. It may be assumed that 

 all the bay, chestnut and brown hoise.=, are of this race, for we 

 know that in the time of Croesus, the Lydian cavalry were 

 mounted on brown hoi-ses, and Lydia bordered on the region in 

 which the Tarpan was indigenous. We find various breeds of 

 this race mentioned in ancient writers, such as the Scenite Ara- 

 bian, and the Syrian of Apamoea, at which place Strabo tells us 

 300 stud-hoi-ses and 30,000 l)rood-mares were maintained for 

 the service of the state; in Egypt, on the Upper Nile, at 

 Syene, and at Calambia, in Lybia, a bay stock flourished, highly 

 S])oken of by the ancients ; fiom Egypt the bay stock followed 

 the line of the coast through Numidia and Mauritania, where 

 it mounted in the Roman times the armies of Hannibal, and in 

 later days the Moorish cavalry, who introduced it into Andalusia, 

 when they came over into Spain to make war on the Goths. 

 This breed was also taken into Italy and Sicily by Phoenician and 

 Carthagenian ships. 



The next stock is the Median or Nisoean, a pale dun or cream- 

 colored horse. In the time of Darius there was an immense 

 breeding establishment at the place- — Nisoea — whence it is re- 

 corded that that monarch obtained 100,000 horses to oppose the 

 invasion of Alexander, and still left 50,000 in its pastures, which 

 Alexander saw when he marched through that eountrj-. Other 

 circumstances, however, lead to the conclusion that the white 

 Nisoean was a peculiar and choice breed, originally from Cilicia, 

 and that the majoiity of the horses in these famous pastures 

 derived their origin fiom the Dun breed, now, as then, existing in 

 the Ukraine, and marked down the back and on the shoulders 

 with the bai's \\hich distinguish the ass. Sex'eral varieties of 

 this Dun race, with the peculiar marking, are yet found in the 

 south of Russia and east of German)', and in the Danubian 

 principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia; an aeciilental specimen 

 is occasionally met with in the British Islands. The white horses 

 of Nisoea were especially dedicated to the service of the Sun 

 God, and used in the state pageants of the Persian Sultauns. 

 A breed of white horses, curiou.sly mottled with black, is still in 

 existence on the Euythean Sea, and sold at high prices to the 

 grandees of the Court of Teheran for purposes of parade. 



We now come to the Tannian or Tangum, the primceval 

 spotted stock ; that is, horses of a pure white, irregularly marked 

 with large chesnut spots; in England known as a skewbald, in 

 contradistinction to the piebald, which is black and white. This 

 species of the hoi-se is still found wild in the highlands of Thibet. 

 It was with horses of this breed that the Parthians mounted 

 their hordes of cavalry; it was known in Euiopean legends 

 from the arrival of the Scythian Centaurs; it constituted the 

 cavalry of Thessaly and Thrace ; of this stock was the famous 

 charger of Alexander, Bucephalus; and last!}', we find it ridden 

 by the Huns, who, coming from the north side of the wall of 



