THE SYRIAN HORSES. 
311 
old Saladin ! I love him, with all his faults ! Day after day 
how he toiled for me up-hill and down-hill, over beds of rock 
and beds of mud, in sunshine and in storm, wherever I wished 
to go—save in those extreme cases, already referred to, when 
the fire of genius or the excess of vindictive passions caused 
him to forget, for the moment, that he carried so true a friend 
upon his back. 
The horse upon which the English Captain rode, was the 
most classical in form of any in the party ; that is to say, 
there was a rotundity of body in him that continually re¬ 
minded me of the fat horse in front of the Homan Capitol, 
and of the bronze horses in Naples, which were probably mod¬ 
eled upon animals of the horse species that had recently been 
drowned. The Captain, doubtless, in view of this fact, as 
well as on account of his warlike spirit, called him Waterloo; 
but it was chiefly for fleetness of foot that Waterloo was dis¬ 
tinguished, in the eyes of the Captain. This conceit I always 
regarded as a weakness on the part of my friend; because, to 
tell the truth, Waterloo was the only really clumsy animal in 
the party. The Captain, however, was firmly persuaded that 
Waterloo was born for a racer; that he, Waterloo, had been 
a racer in early life, and had strained the muscle of one of his 
fore-legs, which accounted for the fact that he always came in 
at the end of every race on the journey. All that was neces¬ 
sary was, to keep the switch going ; and certainly it did seem 
essential, for the moment the Captain stopped switching, Wa¬ 
terloo stopped running. The switch was just as indispensa¬ 
ble a part of his machinery as the piston-rod to a steam-engine. 
When we set out in the morning, the right arm of the Cap¬ 
tain commenced working, just as regularly as machinery could 
work, and it only stopped when it was requisite that Waterloo 
should also stop. By night both parties were entirely ex¬ 
hausted with the labors of locomotion. But the most sin¬ 
gular part of it was, that my friend would never admit that 
Waterloo was not naturally a full-blooded racer. He would 
even go so far as to bet his hat on a trial of speed with Sala¬ 
din, which was a proposition so preposterous that I never could 
listen to it without a smile of disdain. 
