22 FOREIGN BREEDS OF HORSES. 



with that animal. Five hundred years after that, Solomon imported spices, 

 gold, and silver, from Arabia *; but all the horses for his own cavalry and 

 chariots, and those with which he supplied the Phoenician monarchs, he pro- 

 cured from Egypt +. 



There is a curious record of the commerce of different countries at the close 

 of the second century. Among the articles exported from Egypt to Arabia, and 

 particularly as presents to reigning monarchs, were horses. 



In the fourth century, two hundred Cappadocian horses were sent by the 

 Roman emperor as the most acceptable present he could offer a powerful prince 

 of Arabia. 



So late as the seventh century the Arabs had few horses, and those of little 

 value ; for when Mahomet attacked the Koreish near Mecca, he had but two 

 horses in his whole army : and at the close of his murderous campaign, although 

 he drove off twenty-four thousand camels and forty thousand sheep, and carried 

 away twenty-four thousand ounces of silver, not one horse appears in the list of 

 plunder. 



These circumstances sufficiently prove that, however superior may be the 

 present breed, it is comparatively lately that the horse was naturalised in 

 Arabia. Indeed the Arabs do not deny this ; for until within the last century, 

 when their horses began to be so deservedly valued, they were content to limit 

 their pedigree to one of the five on which Mahomet and his four immediate 

 successors fled from Mecca to Medina on the night of the Hegira. 



Although in the seventh century the Arabs had no horses of value, yet those 

 which they had derived from their neighbours began then to be preserved with 

 so much care, and propagated so uniformly and strictly from the finest of the 

 breed, that in the thirteenth century the Arabian horse began to assume a just 

 and unrivalled celebrity. 



There are now said to be three breeds or varieties of Arabian horses : the 

 Attechi, or inferior breed, on which the natives set little value, and which are 

 found wild on some parts of the deserts ; the Kadischi, literally horses of an 

 unknown race, answering to our half-bred horses — a mixed breed j and the 

 Kochlani, horses whose genealogy, according to the modern exaggerated accounts, 

 has been cultivated during two thousand years. Many written and attested 

 pedigrees extend, with true Eastern exaggeration, to the stud of Solomon. The 

 Kochlani are principally reared by the Bedouin Arabs in the remote deserts. A 

 stallion may be procured without much difficulty, although at a great price. 

 The Arabs imagine that the female is more concerned than the male in the 

 excellence and value of the produce, and the genealogies of their horses are 

 always traced through the dam. 



The Arab horse would not be acknowledged by every judge to possess a 

 perfect form. The head, however (like that which is delineated in the title- 

 page), is inimitable. The broadness and squareness of the forehead ; the small- 

 ness of the ears ; the prominence and brilliancy of the eye ; the shortness and 

 fineness of the muzzle ; the width of the nostril; the thinness of the lower 

 jaw, and the beautifully developed course of the veins, — will always characterise 

 the head of the Arabian horse. The cut in the title-page is the portrait of the 

 head of a black Arabian presented to William IV. by the Imaum of Muscat. 

 It is a close and honest likeness. The muzzle, the nostrils, and the eye, are 

 inimitable. In the sale of the Hampton Court stud, in 1837, this animal realised 

 580 guineas ; it was bought for the King of Wurtemberg, and is highly prized 

 in Germany. 



The body of the Arab may, perhaps, be considered as too light, and his chest 



* 2 Chron. ix. 14. f 2 Chron. i. 17. 



