754
HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY
MAGAZINE.
“ ' I ask, in the name of God,
has your horse ever worked on land?’
“ ' He has worked on the land for
four days.’
“ ‘Very well, mine never
has, and, by the beard of the Prophet, I am sure to catch
you!'
“ Toward the close of the day the
horse that never labored was victor, and as the rider of the degraded
horse sank under the blows of his enemy, he said,
“ ' There has been no blessing
upon our country since we have changed our coursers into beasts of
burden and of tillage. Has not God made the ox for the plow, the camel to
transport merchandise, and the horse alone for the race: there is
nothing gained by changing the ways of God.’ “
Illustrative of this spirit of
the maternal tenderness toward the Arab horse, is the story of the
young chief who had a precious mare and many enemies. Once he went a
journey of three days’ distance from his home to obtain a large sum of
gold, when his foes determined to make him prisoner or kill him. Knowing
the swiftness of the young chiefs mare, they divided themselves in
groups of ten persons, and took their stations at three hours’ distance
from each other. The first group was to pursue until they came up to
the second, and so on, until the young chiefs barb should be exhausted.
All was done as designed, but the mare never gave way. The three days’
journey was accomplished in one; and more than forty-eight hours
before he was expected, the blind old father, who sat smoking at the
entrance of his tent, recognized the familiar tramp of his son's
mare.
“There is my son coming back!”
exclaimed the old patriarch, and ere the words fell from his mouth the
young chief dismounted, gave the reins to his wife, and laid the precious
treasure at his father's feet. But the old man thought more of the mare
than of the gold or of his son. “ Why did you over-fatigue the creature?”
he exclaimed, in reproachful tones; “ bring her to me, that I may judge of
her condition.” The son then explained how obstinate had been the chase of
his enemies, and how he had by the mare's endurance escaped. That night
the young chief, wrapped in his cloak, rested unnoticed in a corner
of his tent; but women, young men, slaves, and effendis, crowded in
anxious solicitude around the mare, rubbing her maimed limbs with
softening liniments, giving her strengthening beverages; nor was quiet
restored to the tribe until it was formally announced that the object of
so much solicitude had taken her allotted food, and had full
possession of her limbs.
Layard, who had a better
opportunity than has ever been enjoyed by any other European of seeing the
true Arab steed in his glory, writes of him with all the rich coloring of
Job himself: “The Arabs,” he says, “would ride up to my tent and give
me the usual salutation, ' Peace be with you, O Bey!' then driving their
lances into the ground, they would spring from
their mares and fasten their
halters to the still quivering weapons. Seating themselves on the grass,
they related deeds of war and plunder, or speculated on the sites of the
tents of Sofuk until the moon rose; then they vaulted into their saddles
and took the way of the desert.” In another place he
writes: “ Sofuk was the owner of a mare of matchless beauty, called, as if
the property of the tribe, Shammeriyah. Her dam was the celebrated Kubleh,
whose renown extended from the sources of the Khabour to the end of
the Arabian promontory, the day of whose death is an epoch from which
the Arabs of Mesopotamia date events concerning their tribe.
Mohammed-Emin, sheik of the Jabours, assured me that he had seen
Sofuk ride down the wild ass of the Singar on her back. Sofuk
esteemed her and her daughter above ail the riches of his tribe; for
her he would have forfeited all his wealth, and even Amsha (his
princess wife) herself.”
A number of inquiries respecting
the Arabian horse were propounded by General Dumas to Abd-el-Kader. The
chief answered in a characteristic letter. He says that an Arabian
horse can, for months successively, and without any rest, travel sixty
miles a day. That if hard pressed he can go in one day a hundred miles;
yet a horse that has completed that journey ought to be spared the
following day, and should be ridden a much shorter distance. Upon their
power of abstinence he mentions one occasion where he pushed his command
into a gallop for five or six hours without taking breath. That
during an excursion of five-and-twenty days, the horses had only what
would have amounted to eight ordinary meals, no straw, and but little
spring-time grass. The horses went without drinking sometimes one, two,
and even three days ! The horses of the desert do even more than that;
they remain three months without eating a single grain of barley. Certain
years have occurred when even a twelvemonth has passed, the horses
depending upon grass and an occasional feed of dates; and yet, under
these disadvantageous circumstances, they were both capable of
traveling and going to battle.
Contrary to our custom the Arabs
mount their horses at an early age. They have proverbs “that the
lessons of infancy are engraved on stone; the lessons of mature age
disappear like bird's nests.” The first year the Arabs teach the horse to
be led by a bridle. The second year they ride him for a mile, then two,
then farther; and when eighteen months old, they are not afraid of
fatiguing them. The third year they tie them up, cease to ride them, and
make them fat; if they do not then suit, they sell them. If a horse is not
ridden before the third year, then it is certain he is good for nothing
but running, which a good horse has no occasion to learn, because it is
his original faculty.
A noble lady visiting Egypt
writing to her friends in England, says: “I fear you
may