iHE SYRIAN HORSES. 
315 
an intentional display of horsemanship, he seized Yusef in his 
arms and extricated the embarrassed leg from the stirrups. 
I am sorry to say that Yusef, owing, perhaps, to a flow of 
blood to the head, took his stick immediately upon regaining 
the saddle, and struck Syed Sulemin several times with great 
fury; which Syed Sulemin resented by running away from 
the scene of the disaster, and never stopping till he reached 
the next village. Furthermore, that soon after our arrival at 
that village, where we spent the night, Yusef, who had never 
spoken a word since the disaster, now broke forth and charged 
Mustapha with having stolen his oats on the previous night. 
This Mustapha denied most indignantly. Yusef said that to 
deny so palpable a fact was to call him a liar ; whereupon 
he fell to work with his stick and beat Mustapha; nor is it 
probable that he would have desisted until he had fairly 
flayed the poor fellow from head to foot, had I not interfered 
and sternly protested against such a severe mode of punish¬ 
ment. Next morning Syed Sulemin and his master kissed 
and made up ; and Mustapha relieved his feelings on the 
road by riding on top of the baggage on his mule, some dis¬ 
tance in the rear of Yusef, and convulsing himself and all the 
other muleteers with silent laughter; as also by showing 
every body, except our dragoman, how a cljeered may be 
picked up in certain cases. 
To complete this sketch, I may as well add that, besides 
the four horses above described, we had three baggage mules, 
all respectable animals in their way. They belonged to the 
Arabs who drove them, and were much like their masters— 
rugged and unpromising in appearance, but capable of endur¬ 
ing any amount of fatigue r when driven to it by the force of 
circumstances. The only fault they had, was an unprofitable 
habit of lying down with our baggage in the middle of every 
marsh and river that lay across our road. It was a habit 
equally unprofitable to both parties, because it damaged our 
provisions, saturated our bedding, ruined our books and maps, 
put us out of temper, and did the mules no good whatever, 
inasmuch as they only increased the weight by the amount 
of water soaked up in that way, besides the beatings they re- 
