268 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 
following tradition exists. Her owner was once fly- 
ing from the enemy, and, being hard pressed, he cast 
off his cloak in order to relieve the mare of that un- 
necessary weight. But when, having distanced his 
pursuers, he halted, what was his surprise to find 
that his cloak had lodged on the mare’s outstretched 
tail and still hung there! From this incident, the 
heroine of the story has figured ever since in the un- 
written pedigrees of the desert as “the Arab of the 
Cloak.” 
Occasionally, though not’ often, one sees an Ameri- 
can-bred horse, especially if it be a colt, galloping in 
the pasture with its tail carried so high that the hair 
divides and falls forward like a streamer. This is a 
very common sight in the desert. “I have seen a 
mare, an Abayan Sherakh,” writes Major Upton, 
“galloping loose, with both head and tail high to an 
extent such as I could hardly have believed had I 
not seen it. Her tail was not only high, but seemed 
to be right over her back, and, besides streaming out 
behind like a flag, covered her loins and quarters. It 
was a splendid sight to one who can appreciate a 
horse.” A single horseman mounted on a mare that 
carried her tail in this superb manner, and galloping 
in the distance, away from the spectator, has often 
been mistaken in the desert for three horsemen riding 
abreast. 
What does an Arabian horse look like, —a mare of 
the desert, of noble birth, belonging, we will say, to 
the tribe Gomussa, of the clan Anazeh, and valued 
for her high descent from Nejd to the Euphrates, 
from Damascus to Bagdad? Let us imagine her 
coming forward at a walk. She advances with a 
