ORDER PACHYDERM AT A. 451 



Men who have no fixed habitation, who live in tents, are 

 shepherds, and who, when they have consumed all the 

 pastures of one district, remove to another in search of 

 new, — of the horses of these people we know nothing, 

 except from the relations of such travellers as have visited 

 them. Their accounts, it must be confessed, are all more or 

 less imperfect ; still we have sufficient data to conclude that 

 of all the horses in the world, those of the Tartars approach 

 most nearly to the savage state. They seem to be small and 

 but indifferently made, but sober and indefatigable. Ac- 

 cording to some writers, they are the fittest of all horses to 

 support the longest and most violent journeys without eating 

 or drinking. Brought up among all the other animals of 

 the horde, exposed from their infancy to the inclemency of 

 the weather, accustomed to little food, and to follow their 

 mothers in the most rapid and extensive excursions, they 

 acquire the most astonishing power of sustaining fatigue. 

 Besides, it must be remarked, that these people, who esteem 

 their horses for no qualities but what are truly serviceable, 

 and who live in a great measure on their flesh, preserve 

 only the most vigorous. The others, not being able to en- 

 dure the trials to which they are exposed, are soon killed 

 and eaten, to prevent them from consuming the provision 

 of more valuable animals. The most vigorous horses, 

 those which undergo the given ordeal, being alone pre- 

 served for service and reproduction, their offspring must 

 necessarily partake of their hardy qualities, and the race 

 thus continue one of the best perhaps on earth for the en- 

 durance of privation and fatigue. Their education is not 

 much attended to: left alone, as it were, until the moment 

 in which it is absolutely necessary to take and break them 

 in, they are indocile and restive. But the Tartar horseman 

 cares little for this ; all he asks of them is to run fast and 

 long ; he gives himself no trouble about anything else. 

 The Persian Horses are next to the Arabian, from which 



