CHAPTER XXXIII.

HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED (_Continued_).

Breeding the trotter intelligently an industry of modern

development—Plethora of turf papers, and their timidity of

the truth—The accepted theories, old and new—Failure of

the “thoroughbred blood in the trotter” idea—“Thoroughbred

foundations,” and the Register—“Like begets like,” the great

central truth—Long-continued efforts to breed trotters from

runners—New York the original source of supply of trotting

blood to all the States—Kentucky’s beginning in breeding

trotters—R. A. Alexander, and the founding of Woodburn—The

“infallibility” of Woodburn pedigrees—Refusal to enter

fictitious crosses in the Register and the results—The

genesis and history of the standard—Its objects, effects, and

influence—Establishing the breed of trotters—The Kentucky

or “Pinafore” standard—Its purposes analyzed—The “Breeders’

Trotting Stud Book” and how it was compiled—Failure and

collapse of the Kentucky project—Another unsuccessful attempt

to capture the Register—How honest administration of the

Register made enemies—The National Breeders’ Association

and the Chicago Convention—Detailed history of the sale and

transfer of the Register, the events that led up to it, and the

results—Personal satisfaction and benefits from the transfer,

and the years of rest and congenial study in preparing this

book—The end 508-546

APPENDIX.

HISTORY OF THE WALLACE PUBLICATIONS.

_By a Friend of the Author._

Mr. Wallace’s early life and education—Removal to Iowa,

1845—Secretary Iowa State Board of Agriculture—Begins work,

1856, on “Wallace’s American Stud Book,” published 1867—Method

of gathering pedigrees—Trotting Supplement—Abandons Stud

Book, 1870, and devotes exclusive attention to trotting

literature—“American Trotting Register,” Vol. I., published in

1871—Vol. II. follows in 1874—The valuable essay on breeding

the forerunner of present ideas—Standard adopted 1879—Its

history—Battles for control of the “Register”—_Wallace’s

Monthly_ founded 1875—Its character, purposes, history,

writers, and artists—“Wallace’s Year Book” founded 1885—Great

popularity and value—Transfer of the Wallace publications, and

their degeneration 547-559

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR _Frontispiece._

MAP OF ARMENIA, CAPPADOCIA, SYRIA, ETC. _To face page_ 24

MAP OF PHŒNICIAN COLONIES AND THE MEDITERRANEAN ” ” 36

GODOLPHIN ARABIAN, TRUE PORTRAIT }

} In one view ” ” 67

GODOLPHIN ARABIAN, DISTORTED }

STAR POINTER, THE CHAMPION PACER (1:59¼) ” ” 155

JOHN R. GENTRY, PACER (2:00½) ” ” 173

ALIX, THE PRESENT CHAMPION TROTTER (2:03¼) ” ” 255

HAMBLETONIAN (RYSDYK’S) ” ” 267

GEORGE WILKES, SON OF HAMBLETONIAN ” ” 284

ELECTIONEER, SON OF HAMBLETONIAN ” ” 289

ABDALLAH (ALEXANDER’S), SON OF HAMBLETONIAN ” ” 294

NANCY HANKS, BY HAPPY MEDIUM (2:04) ” ” 306

ETHAN ALLEN, BY VERMONT BLACK HAWK ” ” 381

NOTE.—Nine of the above engravings have been reproduced, by permission,

from the Portfolio issued by _The Horse Review_.

THE HORSE OF AMERICA.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

General View of the Field Traversed.

In undertaking to fulfill a promise made years ago, to write a history

of the American Trotting Horse and his ancestors, I am met with the

inquiry: What were his ancestors and whence did they come? To say that

the American Trotter, the phenomenal horse of this century, is descended

from a certain horse imported from England in 1788, does not fully meet

the requirements of the truth, for there are other and very distinctive

elements embodied in his inheritance that are not indebted to that

particular imported horse. In searching for these undefined elements,

I have found myself in the fields of antiquity, reaching out step by

step, further and further, until the utmost boundaries of all history,

sacred and profane, were clearly in view. There I found a field that

was especially attractive because it was a new field, and the relations

of the peoples of the earliest ages to their horses had never been

investigated nor discussed. Having no engagements nor necessities to

hurry me, the careful exploration of this hitherto unknown territory has

afforded me very great enjoyment.

As the result of these investigations, the breadth and scope of this

volume will be greatly widened, touching upon the originals of most of

the lighter types of horses, and many of the idols of the imagination

will be demolished. The objective point is the history of the Trotting

Horse, but before reaching that point we must consider the beginnings

of, practically, nearly all the varieties of horses in the world. The

assistance that I may be able to gain from modern writers will be very

limited, and restricted Haicus, the great grandson of Japheth, became

the ruler of his people. Descending from him, in the direct male line,

there were five or six long reigns before the dynasty was overthrown by

the Assyrians. They were largely an agricultural people, and the ancient

historians have told us they were famous for the great numbers and fine

quality of the horses they produced. The market for their horses, the

prophet Ezekiel tells us, was in the great commercial city of Tyre,

whence they were carried “in the ships of Tarshish” by the Phœnician

merchants to all portions of the known world. Having here reached back to

the Noachic period and country, with all that this implies, I will leave

the problem, with the more extended consideration that will be given it

in the chapter on the general distribution of horses in all parts of the

commercial world.

Horsemen of average intelligence and writers on the horse, oftentimes

much below average intelligence in horse matters, all seem to unite on

the Arabian horse as their fetish, when in fact they know nothing about

him. The songs of the poets and the stories of the novelists have taken

the place, in the minds of the people of all nations, of solid history

and sober experience. When a story writer wishes to depict an athletic

and daring hero, he never fails to mount him upon an “Arab steed,” when

some blood-curdling adventures are to be disclosed. When Admiral Rous,

the great racing authority in England, announced some years ago, that

the English race horse was purely descended from the horses of Arabia

Deserta, without one drop of plebeian blood, all England believed him,

and this rash and groundless dictum has served all writers as conclusive

evidence ever since. Now, it is not probable that more than two or at

most three per cent. of the blood of the English race horse as he stands

to-day is Arabian blood. The greatness and value of the Arabian horse is

purely mythical. He has been tested hundreds of times, both on the course

and in the stud, and in every single instance he has proved a failure.

This is what all history and experience teach. There are but few horses

bred in Arabia and there are, comparatively, but few there now. From

the time of their first introduction into Yemen—Arabia Felix—up to the

time of Mohammed, about two hundred and seventy years, they were still

very scarce. Mohammed was not a horseman nor a horse breeder, nor is it

known that he ever mounted a horse but once, and then he had but two in

his army. When he made his first pilgrimage to Mecca he rode a camel;

and when he went the second time in triumph, mounted on a camel, he made

the requisite number of circuits round the holy place, then dismounted

and broke the idols that had been set up there. Then came the triumphant

shout of his followers; “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his

prophet.” Since then, this cry has rung over a thousand battlefields, and

as I write it is still heard in the homes of the slaughtered Armenians.

From a great, warlike, and conquering people, the followers of Mohammed

have degenerated into an aggregation of robbers and murderers of

defenseless Christians. Since the days of Mohammed, horses no doubt have

increased in numbers, but all modern travelers express their surprise at

the small numbers they see. The horse is an expensive luxury in Arabia,

and none but the rich can afford to keep him. He fills no economic place

in the domestic life of the Arab, for he is never used for any purpose

except display and robbery. Nobody is able to own a horse but the sheiks

and a few wealthy men. Nobody would think of mounting a horse for a

journey, be it long or short. The camel fills the place of the horse, the

cow and a flock of sheep, all in one, and surely the Arabs are right in

saying, “Job’s beast is a monument of God’s mercy.” It is very evident

that nearly all the horses said to have been brought from Arabia never

saw Arabia. As an illustration of the uncertainty of what a man is

getting when he thinks he is buying an Arabian, in the Orient, I will

give, in some detail the experiences of Mr. Wilfrid S. Blunt, a wealthy

Englishman who had an ambition to regenerate the English race horse by

bringing in fresh infusions of Arabian blood. He went to Arabia to buy

the best, but he didn’t go _into_ Arabia to find it. He skirted along

through the border land where agriculture and civilization prevailed,

while away off to the south the wild tribes roamed over the desert, and

to the north, not far away, was the land of abundance that had been

famous for more than three thousand years for the great numbers and

excellence of the horses bred there. Here on the banks of the Euphrates

Mr. Blunt found the town of Deyr, and he soon discovered it was a famous

horse market. The inhabitants were the only people he met with who seemed

to understand and appreciate the value of pedigrees, and there were no

horses in the town but “thoroughbreds.” Here Mr. Blunt made nearly all

his purchases which amounted to eighteen mares and two stallions “at

reasonable prices.” As will be seen in the extracts from his book, he

was strikingly solicitous that the friends at home should have no doubt

about the quality of the stock he purchased being all “thoroughbred.”

No doubt he realized the awkwardness of the location as not the right

one in which to secure “thoroughbred” Arabians and hence the vigorous

indorsement of the honesty of the “slick and experienced” dealers as

honest men and true descendants of the Bedouins of the desert. In this

“he doth protest too much” and thus suggests that while the pedigrees

came from the tribes of the desert to the South, it might be possible

that the horses came from the farmers who bred them to the North. However

this may have been, the whole enterprise turned out to be a flat failure,

and after a number of years spent in begging for popular support, the

whole collection was dispersed under the hammer of the auctioneer, not

realizing a tithing of the cost.

While it is not necessary that I should express any opinion as to whether

Mr. Blunt was deceived in the breeding of the animals which he brought

home, I will make brief allusion to an American experience which is more

fully considered elsewhere. Some forty or more years ago Mr. A. Keene

Richards, a breeder of race horses in Kentucky, became impressed with the

idea that the way to improve the race horse of America was to introduce

direct infusions of the blood of Arabia. He did not hesitate, but he

started to Arabia and brought home some horses and mares and put them to

breeding. The pure bloods could not run at all and the half-breeds were

too slow to make the semblance of a contest with Kentucky-bred colts. He

concluded that he had been cheated by the rascally Arabs in the blood

they put upon him. He then determined to go back and get the right blood,

and as a counselor he took with him the famous horse painter, Troye, who

was thoroughly up on anatomy and structure. They went into the very heart

of Arabia and spent many weeks among the different tribes of the desert.

They had greatly the advantage of Mr. Blunt or any other amateur, for

they were experienced horsemen and knew just what they were doing. When

they were ready to start home they believed they had found and secured

the very best horses that Arabia had produced. When the produce of this

second importation were old enough to run it was found that they were no

better than the first lot, and thus all the bright dreams of enthusiasm

were dissipated. Thus was demonstrated for the thousandth time that the

blood of even the best and purest Arabian horse is a detriment and

hindrance rather than a benefit to the modern race horse. Mr. Richards,

with all his practical knowledge and experience, was no more successful

than the amateur, Mr. Blunt. The blood which Mr. Richards brought

home was, no doubt, purer and more fashionable, as estimated in the

desert, than that brought home by Mr. Blunt, but when tested by modern

advancement it was no better.

A careful study of the chapter on the English Race Horse will present

to the minds of all my intelligent readers the consideration of several

points to which they will be slow in yielding assent. These points run

up squarely against the preconceived opinions and prejudices of two

centuries, and these preconceived opinions and prejudices are well-nigh

universal. The first point upon which the public intelligence has gone

wrong is in the general belief that horse-racing had its origin in the

seventeenth century, when Charles II. was restored to his throne. The

truth is we have accounts of racing by contemporaneous historians in the

twelfth century, and indeed, we might say from the time of the Romans

in Britain. To go back four centuries, however, is far enough to answer

our present purpose. After selecting, breeding, and racing four hundred

years we must conclude that the English had some pretty good race horses.

This is fully verified by the writers at the close of Queen Elizabeth’s

reign as well as at the beginning of Charles II.’s. They had native

English horses that were able to beat all the imported exotics, including

the Arabian owned by King James. We must, therefore, conclude that the

race horse was not created by Charles II., but that racing was simply

revived by him, after the restrictions of Cromwell’s time, and that the

old English blood was the basis of that revival. The importations of so

many exotics in his reign were simply so many reinforcements of the old

English racing blood.

The next point to which exception will be taken is the conclusion reached

as to the character and influence of the exotics that were introduced in

the reign of Charles II. These exotics have been designated in a general

way, by the phrase “foundation stock,” which has been introduced more

out of deference to the popular understanding than to its legitimate and

true meaning. For the real “foundation stock” we must look away back

in the centuries, long before Charles was born. The analysis of the

data furnished by Mr. Weatherby as “foundation stock” clearly shows

that the Turks predominated in numbers, but, possibly, the Barbs in

influence. The Arabian element, in both numbers and influence, seems

to be practically _nil_, and this is the “gist of my offending.” The

one great horse—Godolphin Arabian—exerted a greater and more lasting

influence upon the English race horse than any other of his century and

probably than all the others of his century, and his blood is wholly

unknown. Fortunately, a few years ago I was able to unearth his portrait

and prove it a true portrait, and in that picture we must look for his

lineage. He was a horse of great substance and strength on short legs,

with no resemblance whatever to a race horse. About fifty years after his

death Mr. Stubbs, the artist, who prided himself upon representing the

character of a horse rather than his shape, came across this picture,

from which he made an “ideal” copy of what he thought the horse should

have been, which is a veritable monstrosity. These two pictures will

appear together in their proper places, where they can be leisurely

studied, and the honest and the dishonest compared.

The American race horse is the lineal descendent of the English race

horse, and like his ancestor he is very largely dependent upon the

“native blood” for his existence as a breed. The first English race horse

was imported into Virginia about 1750, and he there met a class of saddle

mares that had been selected, bred, trained, and raced at all distances

up to four-mile heats, for nearly a hundred years. These mares were

the real maternal foundation stock upon which the American race horse

was established, as a breed. The phrase “native blood” is here used as

applying to the animals and their descendants, that were brought over

from England at and soon after the plantation of the American colonies.

Up to the time of the Revolution there were but few racing mares brought

over—as many as you could count on your fingers—but they must have been

marvelously prolific, for thirty or forty filly foals each would hardly

have accommodated all the animals with pedigrees tracing to them. Quite

a number of our greatest race horses and sires of forty or fifty years

ago traced to some one of these mares through links that were wholly

fictitious. Indeed, from the period of the Revolution, and even before

that, down to our own time, the pernicious and dishonest habit of adding

fictitious crosses beyond the second or third dam became the rule in the

old American families, and an animal with a strictly honest pedigree

was the exception. In spreading abroad these dishonest fictions as true

pedigrees, the press—perhaps not venally, but ignorantly—was made the

active agent. Whenever a rogue could get a pedigree into print, however

absurd, nothing could prevent its spread as the truth. The early sporting

and breeding press was not in the hands of men remarkable for conscience

and still less remarkable for knowledge. But the worst of all was the

“professional pedigree maker” who knew so many things that he never knew,

and stopped at nothing. In all this dirty work of manufacturing pedigrees

there is a very striking resemblance between the awkward efforts of the

early English and the early American pedigree maker. This whole topic

of the ignorance of the press and the dishonesty of the pedigree makers

will be considered fully in its proper place. Fortunately, although still

far from perfect, the methods and care in the preservation of the true

lineage of the race horse in our own day have been greatly improved. The

many efforts to improve the American race horse by introducing fresh

infusions of Saracenic blood will receive due attention, especially as

they have nearly all been made within the newspaper period, and their

uniform and complete failure will not be new to American horsemen.

When we reach the horses of the colonial period, we are in a field

that never has been explored and cannot be expected to yield a very

rich harvest. Here and there I have been able to pick up a detached

paragraph from some contemporaneous writer, and occasionally a record,

or an advertisement, from which, in most cases, I have been able to

construct a fair and truthful outline and description of the horses of

the different colonies, down to the Revolutionary war. The collection of

the material has required great patience and great labor, but it has not

been an irksome task, for many things have been brought to light of great

interest to the student of horse history. The knowledge of the colonial

horse in his character and action, that may be gathered from the chapters

devoted to his description and history, I flatter myself, will not only

be interesting as something new, but will throw a strong light on the

lineage of the two-minute trotter and pacer.

The colonists of Virginia were subjected for a number of years to great

suffering, privation, and want. They were badly selected and many of them

were improvident and never trained to habits of industry and thrift.

There were quite too many “penniless gentlemen’s sons” among them, who

had been sent out with the hope that the change might improve their

habits and their morals. They were too proud to work, and when they were

driven to it by necessity they didn’t know how. After suffering untold

hardships for a succession of years, those that survived learned to

adapt themselves to their environment and to make their own way in the

world. Their first supply of domestic animals were all consumed as food,

embracing horses, cattle, swine, and goats, and everything had thus been

consumed except one venerable female swine, as reported by a board of

examiners. Their second supply of horses, cattle, swine, and goats was

more carefully guarded, and from them in greater part came the countless

denizens of the barnyard.

There were several shipments of horses at different times, by the

proprietors in London, down till about 1620 and possibly later, but they

do not seem to have increased very rapidly, for in 1646 all the horses

in the colony were estimated at about two hundred of both sexes. This

estimate was probably too low, for ten years after this the exportation

of mares was forbidden by legislative enactment, and eleven years later

this restriction was removed, and both sexes could then be exported. From

this legislation and from writers who visited the colony we learn that

horses were very plenty, and they are described as of excellent quality,

hardy and strong, but under size. It was the custom in Virginia, and

indeed in all the other colonies at that period and for long afterward,

to brand their young horses and turn them out to hustle for their own

living. They increased with wonderful rapidity and great numbers became

as wild and as wary of the habitation and sight of man as the deer of

the forest. About the close of the seventeenth century the chasing and

capture of wild horses in Virginia became a legitimate and not always

an unprofitable sport, for an animal caught without a brand became the

unquestioned property of his captor. It is a noteworthy fact that off

the coast of Virginia the island of Chincoteague has been occupied for

probably two hundred years by large bands of wild horses. They are

still there, and not till within the last few decades have there been

any efforts made to domesticate some selections from them. They are of

all colors, but quite uniform in size, not averaging much over thirteen

hands, with clean limbs, and many of them are pacers. There is only one

way to account for them in that location, and that is, that they were

originally a band of Virginia wild horses that wandered or was chased

out onto this sandy peninsula, and while there some great storm set the

mysterious ocean currents at work and cut off their retreat by converting

a peninsula into an island, and there they have lived and multiplied ever

since.

The colonial horses of Virginia were of all colors and all very small

in size, as we would class them in our day. An examination of a great

many advertisements of “Strayed,” “Taken up,” etc., of the period of

about 1750, clearly establishes the fact that at that time the average

height was a small fraction over thirteen hands and one inch. More were

described as just thirteen hands than any other size, and they were

nearly all between thirteen and fourteen. From this same advertising

source I was able to glean conclusive evidence as to their habits of

action, and found that just two-thirds of them were natural pacers and

one-third natural trotters. Thus for more than a hundred years they

had retained the peculiarities of their English ancestors in the reign

of James I., in color, size, and gait. This in no way differs from the

description of the Chincoteague Island ponies of to-day. As early as 1686

a law was enacted that all stallions less than thirteen and a half hands

high found running at large should be forfeited; but this, like Henry

VIII.’s laws in the same direction, had failed to increase the average

size of the horses. From the indomitable passion for horse-racing which

prevailed universally among the colonists, we may safely conclude that

some animals were carefully selected and coupled with a view to the speed

of the progeny, both at the gallop and at the pace, but the great mass

were allowed to roam at large, and under such conditions no variety or

tribe of horses has ever improved in size, or indeed in any other quality.

The early horses of the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, afterward New

York, were brought from Utrecht in Holland. As we would look at them

to-day, they were small, but they were larger and better, and brought

higher prices than the English horses of the Eastern colonies or than

the Swedish on the West. It was conceded, however, that for the saddle

they were not so good as the New England horses, and hence it may be

inferred that they were not pacers. It is very evident, however, that the

two breeds were soon mixed, as the saddle was then the universal means

of travel, whether for long or short distances. During the time of the

Revolutionary war a large accumulation of data bearing on the size and

action of the horses of that period goes to show that the average size

had then increased to fourteen hands and one inch, and in gait fifteen

both paced and trotted, nine trotted only, and seven paced only. It is

not pretended that these data represent the horses of the early colonial

period, but only of the period above indicated. Strains of larger breeds

had been introduced, but the little New England pacer had made his mark

on the habits of action.

In 1665, the next year after the Dutch had surrendered the country to

the English, Governor Nicolls established a race-course on Hempstead

Plains and offered prizes for the fleetest runners, and his successors

kept up annual meetings on that course for many years. This was the first

official and regularly organized race-course that we have any trace of

in this country. These meetings seem to have been well supported from

the very first by both town and country, and as the people were then

practically all Dutch, it is a fair inference that the horses engaged in

the races were Dutch horses. This was before the English race horse had

reached the character of a breed, and a hundred years before the first of

that breed was imported into New York. From this beginning many tracks

were constructed or improvised in and about the city, upon which racing

at all forms and at all gaits has been carried on to the present day.

When honestly conducted the sport has always been favorably received by

reputable people; but at successive periods it has degenerated into a

mere carnival of gambling that placed it under a ban.

The horses of the New England colonies fill a very important place in the

horse history of the country. This is especially true of a remarkable

tribe of swift pacers, produced in Rhode Island and known throughout

the whole country as the “Narragansett Pacers.” To the description of

these a special chapter will be devoted. The first horses imported into

New England reached Boston harbor in 1629 and were sent direct from

England by the proprietary company in London. The same year a small

consignment reached Salem. The next year about sixty head were shipped

to the plantation, but many of them were lost on the voyage. In 1635 two

Dutch ships landed at Salem with twenty-seven mares and three stallions,

and were sold there at remunerative prices. Other shipments followed,

no doubt, that have not been noted. In 1640 the colonists seem to have

been supplied with all the horses they needed, for that year they shipped

a cargo of eighty head to the Barbadoes. From these importations into

Boston and Salem, all the New England colonists received their supplies.

The field specially gleaned to determine the size and gaits of the

Massachusetts horses covered the years 1756-59, from which it appears

that the average height was then fourteen hands and one inch; and as

to gait, just three-fourths were pacers and one-fourth trotters. In

comparing this average size with the Virginians of the same period we

find that the Massachusetts horses were about one hand higher, which

would indicate the influence of the early Dutch blood. Besides this we

must make some allowance for a possible different habit of estimating

size.

When the plantation was made at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1636, the

planters brought their horses and other domestic animals with them. In

1653 the General Court, at New Haven, made provision for keeping public

saddle horses for hire, and all horses had to be branded. After passing

over a period of more than a hundred and twenty years we find that in

1776 the average size of the Connecticut horse was thirteen hands and

three inches, thus ranging below the other New England colonies. At that

period it is found that the ratio of pacers and trotters was as fifteen

pacers, or trotters and pacers, to four that trotted only. The very

interesting experience of two English travelers, mounted on Connecticut

pacers, in 1769, and their enthusiasm about their superlative qualities,

will be found in its place.

The colony of Rhode Island was planted in 1636 by Roger Williams and his

followers, and eleven years later they obtained their charter. Their

supply of horses came wholly from the colony of Massachusetts, and in

a short time the new plantation became greatly distinguished for the

superiority and speed of its pacers. From the official report of the

colony for 1690, we learn that horses constituted their leading item of

exports, and that they were shipping horses to all the colonies of the

seaboard. At that early day the fame of the Narragansett pacer extended

through all the English colonies, and probably also through the French

plantations on the St. Lawrence. All trade with Canada was strictly

prohibited, but in the then condition of the borders how could such

regulation be enforced, if a Frenchman, with a bale of peltry, wanted

to exchange it for a Narragansett? Freed from the Puritan restrictions

of New England, of that day, the Rhode Islanders developed the speed

of their pacers by racing them, and thus the best and fastest of all

New England were collected there. In 1768 the average height of the

Narragansetts was fourteen hands and one inch, which shows them to have

been about three and a quarter inches higher than the Virginia horses of

the same period. They were not all pacers, for out of thirty-five there

were eight that did not pace, and some others that both trotted and

paced. A full account of these famous pacers will be found in the chapter

on the Colonial Horse History of New England, and that on The American

Pacer and his Relations to the American Trotter.

William Penn did not visit his princely gift from Charles II. until 1682,

and it was then under the government of the Duke of York. In giving a

description of things as he found them he remarks: “The horses are not

very handsome, but good,” and this is all he says of them. Knowing that

Pennsylvania, in the early part of this century, produced larger and

heavier horses, than any other portion of the country, it was a great

surprise to me to find the undoubted proof that a hundred years earlier

she had produced the smallest and the lightest horses of any of the

colonies. In the first half of the last century the average size of the

horses of Eastern Pennsylvania was thirteen hands one and a quarter

inches, and they were remarkably uniform in size. This was one-quarter

inch below the average of the Virginians. Of the twenty-eight animals

examined as to gait, twenty-four of them were natural pacers, three both

paced and trotted, and a single one trotted only. Finding these two facts

of uniformity of size and uniformity of gait together, we are prepared

for another fact that follows, viz., in Philadelphia the pacers were more

popular and fashionable than in any other city, so far as we can learn,

and they were selected with great care and bred for their speed, and that

speed was highly tested on the race-course. They were breeding for speed

without much regard to size, and hence the uniformity.

It has not been discovered that the colonists of New Jersey made any

direct importations of horses from England. Their original supplies

were obtained from New York on the one side and Pennsylvania on the

other. From these sources, therefore, we can form a correct estimate of

the size and gaits of the Jersey horses, without going into particular

investigation. The only object, then, in referring to this colony is

to prove that before 1748 all kinds of racing had become so common in

the colony as to be a nuisance. Consequently the legislative authority

passed an act in 1748 for the suppression of “Running, Pacing and

Trotting Races.” This was in strict harmony with the well-known condition

of things in Philadelphia and vicinity very early in the century. If

there had been no pacing races there would have been no legislation

suppressing them.

The horses of the colony of Maryland would necessarily partake of the

characteristics of Virginia and Pennsylvania, from which she probably

received her supply. There seems to be no evidence of direct importation.

This colony was really the first, in point of time, to legislate for the

suppression of pacing races. In 1747, one year before New Jersey, an act

was passed forbidding pacing races in certain locations at certain times,

and the avowed object was the protection of the Friends in holding their

yearly meetings. Here, then, we have historic evidence that the three

colonies of Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Virginia had frequent pacing

races, and legislative evidence that Maryland and New Jersey had quite

too many pacing races, early in the last century. It follows, then, that

the other colonies indulged their sporting fancies in pacing races also.

The colonies of North and South Carolina obtained their supply of horses

from Virginia, and they possessed the same characteristics as the parent

stock. The first permanent settlement in North Carolina was in 1653, but

before this it had become the refuge of Quakers and others fleeing from

the proscriptions that prevailed in Virginia against all who did not

conform to the English church. South Carolina received her charter in

1663, at a time when horses were beginning to run wild in Virginia. In

1747 thirty horses were advertised in which the size was given, and the

average is within a small fraction of thirteen and a half hands high, and

in this number two were given as fifteen hands, which was a very large

horse for that day. The gait is given in only twelve cases—ten of which

were pacers, one paced and trotted, and one trotted only.

The chapter on the “Early Horse History of Canada” is very brief. It

was not till the year 1665 that the first horses were brought over from

France, and as they came from ancient Picardy, right across the Channel

from England, it is reasonable to assume that they partook of the same

characteristics as the English horses, and that many of them were pacers.

Another theory of the origin of the Canadian pacer is the probability of

clandestine trading with the New Englanders. Among the many impossible

stories about the breeding of Old Tippoo, the greatest sire of Canada,

the truth seems to come to the surface at last, and there can be no

reasonable doubt that he was got by “Scape Goat.” However much or little

dependence can be placed upon many of the claims of fast pacing stallions

coming from Canada, it must be conceded that some of these claims

seem to be well founded, and that the pacing element has been greatly

strengthened by blood from the other side of the border.

The most striking fact in the history of the pacing habit of action is

its great antiquity. The average Englishman of to-day and the average

American of twenty years ago have been united in insisting with the

greatest vehemence that the pace is not a natural but an acquired gait,

resulting from some injury or malformation. One of the great leaders on

that side of the discussion called it “structural incongruity” arising

from the breeding of the “thoroughbred” horse on the “slab-sided” mares

of the West and South, and thought the idea was unanswerable, but

never cited any instances to prove it. Now, the truth is, the earliest

unquestioned evidence we have that horses paced is that furnished by

the chisel of Phidias when he sculptured the horses on the frieze of

the Parthenon at Athens, and that is two thousand three hundred and

thirty-three years old. From the period when the sons of Japheth turned

their attention to horse-breeding on the fruitful plains and valleys in

the regions of the mountains of Ararat down to this culmination of Greek

art, I have not been able to find any contemporaneous evidence of the

existence of the lateral habit of action; but as we know it existed more

than two thousand years ago, we are justified in concluding that among

the original bands of horses, in their original habitat, pacers as well

as trotters abounded. From the erection of the Parthenon in Athens, the

occupation of Britain by the Romans, and through all the centuries down

to the plantation of the colonies in this country, we have mountains of

indisputable evidence of the antiquity of the pacer. In its place this

topic will be quite fully discussed.

The relation which the pacer bears to the American Trotting Horse has

for twenty-five years been a topic of much senseless discussion. In the

historical sketch which served as an introduction to the first volume

of the “American Trotting Register,” the attention of the breeding

public was first called to this question, in a form that was somewhat

tentative, and much less didactic than my judgment suggested, but

it served as an introduction to the study of the question which it

foreshadowed. From this initial paragraph grew the discussion that has

been going on ever since, much of which has been the merest jargon. The

essential oneness of the trot and the pace has been clearly demonstrated

by thousands of experiences. The trotting inheritance that produces the

fast trotter also produces the fast pacer; and the pacing inheritance

that produces the fast pacer also produces the fast trotter. The

trotting-bred John R. Gentry, with his pacing record of a mile in two

minutes and one-half a second, is but a single instance of very many

of the same character. The fastest harness racers in the world are the

pacers, and it seems to make no difference whether the inheritance of

speed comes from the trotter or the pacer. The subject of the pacer in

his diversified historical relations to the American trotter will be

found in different portions of this work, and all tending to show the

significant fact that he is again rapidly attaining the position of honor

among the equine race which he maintained for so many centuries in the

far-distant past.

Early in this century the American Saddle Horse, the real saddle horse of

all time, past and present, began to vanish from sight. Improved roads

and wheeled vehicles superseded him, in great measure, long before the

days of railroads. For business and travel he was the sole dependence

of our forefathers for two hundred years, and in point of health it

is a great misfortune that he has gone so completely out of use. The

horse that cannot take the “saddle gaits” and carry his rider without

discomfort or fatigue is not a saddle horse. Springing up and down at

every revolution of the horse is not riding for pleasure, but to avoid

punishment and a torpid liver. In the chapter devoted to his description,

origin, and breeding, it will be clearly shown that he is indebted to

his pacing ancestry of the past centuries for his saddle gaits. As the

mere matter of great speed cuts no figure in the qualifications of a

saddle horse there is a wide field here for the production of style and

beauty in the breeder’s art. The aims of a goodly number of intelligent

breeders are now moving in this direction, and with the foundations so

well laid as they now are, we can look forward to a grand superstructure.

As the breeder of speed at the trot goes to the horse that can do it

himself, and as the breeder of speed at the gallop goes to the horse

that can beat all the others, so the breeder of the saddler will go to

the handsomest and best of all his tribe, and when we reach the horse

that is perfect in symmetry, style, quality, and disposition, he will

be a saddle horse and no questions will be asked about what particular

combinations of blood he may possess. He will be strictly eclectic, with

the one exception of the inheritance of gait, and he will be the result

of wise choosing in his size and structure, and of skillful handling in

his disposition and manners.

The Wild Horse of the plains and pampas of North and South America was

at one time an object of great interest and curiosity with all our

people. No schoolboy of sixty or seventy years ago knew any lesson

in his geography so well as the one which pictured and described the

millions of wild horses that roamed over the Western plains. In the

field of imagination and exaggerated fiction he was a fairly good second

to the Arabian—both arrant humbugs, at least so far as their merits

have been tested. In the past, the question has sometimes been asked,

tentatively, whether the horse may not have been indigenous on this

continent? The paleontologists have undertaken to answer this question

in the affirmative and have produced the bones of what they call the

horse to prove it. This “horse” is scant fifteen inches high and he has

three, four or five toes on each foot. These toes resemble “claws” more

than anything else. They tell us these little animals flourished over

two millions of years before man was placed on the earth, and that they

are now found imbedded in the solid rock, say two hundred feet below the

general surface. The outline drawing of horses on works supposed to have

been erected by a prehistoric and lost race, and also the linguistic

question as to whether any of the oldest Indian tribes had any word

representing the horse, will be fully considered, with that presented

by the paleontologists, in the chapter devoted to the Wild Horse. Too

much prominence has been given to the horses of Cortez in his conquest

of Mexico, as the progenitors of the American wild horse. He had very

few horses in his command, and it is very doubtful whether any of them

escaped the slaughter of battle and found a home in the wilderness.

The horses in the army of the unfortunate Ferdinand De Soto, that

were abandoned on the confines of Texas, after his death, became the

progenitors of all the wild horses of North America.

The remarkable pre-eminence to which Messenger attained as the founder

of a great race of trotters, in his own right and by his own power,

and more especially as he was the only English-imported running horse

that ever showed any tendency whatever in that direction, the study of

Messenger’s lineage becomes a question of very great interest and value

to all students of trotting history. His sire, Mambrino, was a great

race horse, and was distinguished above all others of his generation, or

indeed of any other generation, before or since, as the progenitor of a

tribe of coach horses of great excellence and value. In addition to this,

the evidence seems to be conclusive that he had a natural and undeveloped

trotting step that far surpassed that of all other running horses of his

day. His sire, Engineer, was notoriously short on the side of his dam,

and his grandsire, Sampson, was a half-breed of great size and bone, and

ran some winning races, in the best of company, for that day.

The history of Messenger himself is still clouded in mystery, and the

blood he inherited from his dam remains hopelessly unknown. The identity

of his importer and owner has never been established, which of itself

throws a suspicion upon the pedigree that is said to have come with him.

He ran several races at Newmarket, England, and proved himself a second

or third-rate race horse. The racing records there show that he was by

Mambrino, and that is all that is known about his inheritance. He left

a few tolerably good race horses, for their time, but he filled the

country with the best road and driving horses that the horsemen of this

country had ever known. A chapter each to Messenger’s ancestors and to

himself will be found in their proper places in this volume. The twenty

years of Messenger’s life and service in this country fell in a period

of indifference to all kinds of racing except running. The English race

horse was then the popular idol, and it is not known that any of his sons

or daughters were ever trained to trot. Neither can it now be certainly

determined that any of them were disposed to pace, but if we may judge

of the habits of action of his immediate progeny by what we know of

succeeding generations, we can hardly doubt that there were pacers among

them. As the custom then was, and as it so remained for at least half a

century later, all pacers were hidden away from public sight, as they

were supposed to furnish evidence of ignoble breeding.

The chapter on “The Sons of Messenger” will be long, but it will be of

exceeding interest. They constitute the connecting link that brings

together the peculiar trotting instincts of the sire and develops them

in their own progeny. Several of them were not only trained to run,

but did run successfully. It is not known that any of his sons was

ever trained to trot, but it is known from contemporaneous evidence

that several of them were fast natural trotters, notably Bishop’s

Hambletonian, Bush Messenger, Winthrop Messenger, Mambrino, etc., all of

which will be considered in their proper place. When we reach the second

remove from Messenger we begin to enter into the full fruition of all the

promises, and in considering such animals as Abdallah, Almack, Mambrino

Paymaster, Harris’ Hambletonian, etc., we begin to feel that we are well

within the trotting latitudes, for this remove began to found families

and tribes that attracted the attention of all intelligent breeders.

In the next remove from Messenger we strike the most famous of all

trotting progenitors in Rysdyk’s Hambletonian. At one time there was an

active and determined difference of opinion among breeders as to which

of three horses, Hambletonian, Ethan Allen, or Mambrino Chief, would in

the end prove to be the most successful sire. This controversy may not

be remembered by the younger of the present generation of horsemen, but

it was bitter and uncompromising, and it presents a lesson so important

that it may be here referred to. The adherents of Ethan Allen argued

that as he was handsomer, that his gait was the very perfection of

trotting action, and that he was incomparably faster than either of the

other two, he must of necessity prove the most successful in begetting

trotters. The adherents of Mambrino Chief used the same argument, with

the exception of beauty and style, and dwelt strongly on the fact that he

was a faster horse than Hambletonian, and would consequently get faster

offspring. Both these arguments were good, so far as they went, but they

lacked completeness and hence were not sound. Neither Ethan Allen nor

Mambrino Chief had a dam, and so far as we know the inheritance of both

was restricted to the male side of the house. Development of speed is

a valuable and real qualification in any sire, but all experience goes

to show that it is only a help to an inheritance. Hambletonian was not

much developed, but it is conceded on all hands that he could show a

2:40 gait at any time and that his action was very perfect. He was got

by a grandson of Messenger, whose dam, Amazonia, was one of the fastest

mares of her generation, whatever her blood may have been. Abdallah got

more and faster trotters than any other grandson of Messenger, and his

daughters were very famous as the producers of trotters. Hambletonian’s

dam, the Kent Mare, was by imported Bellfounder, a horse that got no

trotters practically, but this mare was the fastest four-year-old of

her time, and that because she was out of a very fast mare, One Eye,

that was a double granddaughter of Messenger. That is, One Eye was by

Hambletonian, the son of Messenger, and out of Silvertail, a daughter of

Messenger. This double Messenger mare was unknown to the trotting turf,

but she was well known throughout Orange County as a remarkably fast

trotter. Hence Hambletonian not only possessed more Messenger blood than

any horse of his generation, but that blood came to him through developed

trotters, and he had a right to surpass all competitors, especially the

two that were, at one time, the most prominent.

Several of the sons of Hambletonian, as shown by the tabular statistics

which will be introduced, became greater than their sire, not only in

getting trotters from their own loins, but in transmitting the trotting

instinct to their descendants. The growth and spread of this family

is far and away beyond any precedent that can be cited in any age or

country, and is simply marvelous. It is said that fully ninety per cent.

of the fast trotters now on the turf have more or less of the blood of

Hambletonian in their veins, and I think it is a safe conclusion to say

that no intelligent breeder in all the country is trying to produce

trotters without it. All the other tribes are dropping out of sight,

and at the present ratio of rise and fall it will be but a few years

till every trotter on the turf will be credited in some degree to the

one really great progenitor, Hambletonian. The other tribes will not be

blotted out nor will their merits be lost, but absorbed into the mightier

tribe.

Such families as the Bashaws, the Clays, the Black Hawks, the Mambrino

Chiefs, the Pilots, the American Stars, the Blue Bulls, etc., will be

fully considered through several chapters, according to their strength

and merit. As these families have not been able to hold their own in

the rush to the front, and as they seem to be falling further to the

rear in the number and quality of their performers each succeeding year,

we may as well begin to designate them as “the minor families.” Their

inheritance was feeble and unsatisfactory, and more or less sporadic, and

we never had any right to expect a brilliant and permanent success from

such beginnings.

As the investigation of disputed, spurious and fraudulent pedigrees

was a prime necessity in order to reach safe and honest grounds upon

which to build up a breed of trotters, much of my time through all my

editorial life was devoted to this kind of investigation. From the first

page of the first volume of the “Register” I was deeply impressed with

the importance of having all pedigrees absolutely correct, and this

impression grew into a vital conviction that without this a breed of

trotters never could be established. I soon found that I had accepted

from some breeders of the very highest respectability a goodly number of

pedigrees that were thoroughly rotten in their extensions. This taught

me that I must study the moral fiber of breeders critically, as well as

their pedigrees, and that from the highest to the lowest. Some men are

honest from principle and because it is right to be honest, while others

are honest because “honesty is the best policy.” Some men are dishonest

because of ignorance, others because they were born cheats, but the

most dangerous of all rogues is the man who will utter a false pedigree

and then prove it by trained witnesses who, for half a dollar, can

remember whatever is necessary and forget whatever might be against their

employer’s interest. By this kind of evidence a man can prove anything.

Not very long ago a man proved that a certain mare came out of a certain

other mare, and when that was shown to be impossible he turned round and

proved (?) that she was out of another mare, and there was just as much

truth in the one as the other, and not a single word of truth in either.

So long as there are men in the world there will be rogues among them,

but the intelligence of the public in breeding matters has so greatly

advanced that many an honest man would begin to doubt his own sanity if

he were even to think of breeding in lines that he was once ready to

fight for as the only right and successful way to breed. The brainless

advocacy of “more running blood in the trotter,” was substantially the

basis of the whole brood of dishonest pedigrees, against which it became

my duty to wage war; but to-day no intelligent man in all the land can be

found to advocate any such balderdash unless it be in the foolish support

of thoughtless opinions previously expressed.

The subject of “How the Trotting Horse is Bred,” is a most interesting

one because it is entirely new in animal economy and is distinctively

American. The initial thought that opened the door to the practical and

scientific consideration of the subject was the happy conception, in the

spring of 1872, of the little phrase, “Trotting Instinct.” Following this

with the definition of the word “instinct” as being “the sum of inherited

habits,” the term expressed in two words and the definition of it in five

words, put the whole subject in a form that was easily comprehensible and

flashed upon the mind as thoroughly practical. This little phrase, with

its definition, when once comprehended, is a very complete epitome of all

that has been taught and all that has been learned of the art of breeding

the trotter. It not only embraces, but requires, the trotting inheritance

as the only starting point, which must be strengthened and the instinct

intensified by the development of the speed of succeeding generations.

It stood some years at the parting of the ways between intelligence and

ignorance, between enlightened judgment and stupid prejudice, between

honesty and dishonesty, but now it is accepted, in practice, as the

universal law from one end of the land to the other. Thus, we have

not only added millions to the wealth of the country, but without any

outside assistance or instruction we have produced a horse that by way of

pre-eminence, throughout the world, is justly entitled to be designated,

“The Horse of America.”

CHAPTER II.

ORIGINAL HABITAT OF THE HORSE.

No indications that the horse was originally wild—The steppes

of High Asia and Arabia not tenable as his original home—Color

not sufficient evidence —Impossibility of horses existing in

Arabia in a wild state—No horses in Arabia until 356 A.D.—Large

forces of Armenian, Median, and Cappadocian cavalry employed

more than one thousand seven hundred years B.C.—A breed of

white race horses—Special adaptability of the Armenian country

to the horse—Armenia a horse-exporting country before the

Prophet Ezekiel—Devotion of the Armenian people to agricultural

and pastoral pursuits through a period of four thousand

years—All the evidences point to ancient Armenia as the center

from which the horse was distributed.

In undertaking to consider and determine what particular portion of the

earth was the original habitat of the horse, we must not forget that we

are in a field that antedates all history, both sacred and profane. When

we have gone back to the very first dawnings of historical records we

are still far short of the period in which initial light can be reached.

In profane history, with more or less safety, we can get back to a point

about seventeen hundred years before the Christian era; and in sacred

history about two hundred years less. At both of these dates the horses

referred to were not in a feral state, but were the companions and

servants of man.

There have been two separate theories advanced which demand some

attention, because of the eminence and learning of the men who have

advanced them. The first is that the original habitat of the horse was

on the steppes of High Asia, east and north of the Caspian and the Black

Sea. The only argument I have ever seen advanced in support of this

theory is based upon the great number of wild horses that are found in

that part of the world, and that so many of them are of a dun color.

From the frequency of the recurrence of the dun color another theory has

sprung up to the effect that the original color of the horse was dun,

and hence it is argued that when the dun color appears in our own day

it must be taken as evidence that the original color of the horse was

dun. This reasoning is very far from being conclusive, for there are dun

horses and dun tribes in all breeds, just as there are greys, and the

color is just as liable to be transmitted as any other color. In the

last century there were many dun horses in England, and at least one of

that color was advertised very widely as “the Dun Arabian,” probably a

foreign horse, but it is hardly possible that he was an Arabian. It was

then the custom of the country to call all foreign horses “Arabians,” no

difference from what part of the world they came. It has been stated on

what seemed to be good authority that a dun horse once won the Derby,

but whether the color may result from line breeding or from atavistic

tendencies, the argument advanced does not seem to have any weight in it

for the purpose intended.

[Illustration: ARMENIA, CAPPADOCIA, NORTHERN SYRIA ETC.

ABOUT 1200 B.C.]

Another argument in favor of the wild and unknown regions east and north

of the Caspian as the habitat of the horse has been urged with much

more power and effect. It has been accepted and reiterated by so many

learned men, one after another, that I doubted the wisdom of attempting

to overthrow it, until I found the spot in which it was fatally weak.

This view of the question seems to rest upon the fact that the successive

hosts of Barbarians that overran Europe in the early centuries of the

Christian era brought their horses, as well as their flocks and herds,

with them, and it is assumed that these horses were the first brought

into Europe. This involves a total misconception of dates; not of a few

years merely, but of many centuries. All of Europe, including Britain,

and all of Northern Africa, were abundantly supplied with horses,

probably a thousand years before the first destructive wave of Barbarians

touched Europe. Linguistic and ethnological facts clearly prove that

those people came from Asia, and possibly from a part of Asia where

there were horses running wild, but that does not prove that they came

from the original habitat of the horse. With no dates, either definite

or approximate, to support this theory, and with no specific portion

of the earth fixed upon as the general locality from which they came,

it resolves itself into a mere speculation with nothing to support it,

except the fact that different writers have been copying it from one

another, without throwing any additional light upon it, for a number of

generations.

The most remarkable and at the same time the most untenable of all the

claims that have been urged about the horse is that he was indigenous

in Arabia. We can tolerate any number of foolish claims set up to show

that the Arabian horse is superior to all others, for such assertions

can be tested and disproved, as they have been a thousand times, but

the claim that Arabia was the original habitat of the horse is so

utterly preposterous, and yet so widely advocated by writers and others

who know nothing about it, that we must consider it with some brief

deliberation. When the maimed and crippled horses of De Soto were turned

loose and abandoned on the plains of Texas, they had all around them

the means of an abundant and healthy subsistence, and they multiplied

and grew into an innumerable host that made the earth tremble when they

moved in great masses. Under the same favorable conditions of water

and pasture, the same results followed on the pampas of South America.

Upon the early settlement of Virginia, as well probably as in some of

the other colonies, and within two hundred years, many of the horses of

the colonists strayed away, became wild and remained so, propagating

and increasing for generations, and until the growing numbers of their

former masters captured or exterminated them. The varied herbage of the

forest and its grassy swales, and streams of pure water everywhere, made

Virginia a paradise for the horse in his feral state.

Buffon, the French naturalist of a hundred and fifty years ago, notices

the theory of the wild horses of Arabia, but he is careful not to

commit himself nor indorse it in any form. In Vol. I., p. 237, he says:

“According to Mannol, the Arabian horses are descended from the wild

horses in the deserts of Arabia, of which, in ancient times, large

studs were formed,” etc. In going further, to find where Mannol got his

information, it appears that somebody, with an unpronounceable name that

I have forgotten, told him so. Major Upton, a very intelligent but very

credulous modern writer on what he saw and learned in the desert, says

he never heard of this story of wild horses in Arabia, and pronounces it

a “fallacy.” When we consider that Arabia never was conquered and the

reason why, although Rome, at the very culmination of her power, followed

by Assyria and Egypt, all failed of their purpose without meeting an

enemy in battle, we must accept the fact that nature had interposed

a barrier that military power could not surmount. The barrenness and

aridity of the desert has always protected the Arabs against the most

powerful armies of the mightiest nations. Now, to maintain that wild

horses could not only live, but flourish and increase, in a country

where there was not enough edible herbage on a thousand acres to keep

a grasshopper alive, and not a running stream of water within five

hundred miles, requires a measure of mental sterility that can be found

nowhere but among a few of the writers on the Arabian horse. Of all

the curiosities in which the literature of the Arabian horse abounds

and in the multitudinous efforts to give him the primacy among horses,

there seems to be nothing quite so absurd as this story about his being

indigenous to the desert. Animals in a wild state are never found except

in countries and districts where the conditions surrounding provide them

with food and water. How long would a band of strong, healthy horses live

if turned loose to seek their own subsistence in the desert of Arabia?

Of all the countries on the face of the globe there is no one where the

horse is so completely dependent upon, the care and support of his master

as Arabia.

Fortunately, we are not left for data to unwritten traditions two

thousand years old, nor to the fervid imaginations of a race of

cutthroats and thieves of the very lowest order of civilization,

but we can turn, with full confidence, to authentic contemporaneous

history, from which we can settle this question, at once and for all

time. Strabo, the great Greek geographer and philosopher, flourished

in the reign of Augustus, at the very beginning of the Christian era.

He describes Arabia just as we know it to-day, for all countries have

changed in their boundaries and government except Arabia. He describes

the people as chiefly nomadic, and as breeders of camels. The most

remarkable thing in this description is the fact, found in his great

work, Vol. III., p. 190, that they had no horses at that time. The exact

language used in this statement will be found in the next chapter of

this work. The question now arises, If there were no horses in Arabia

at the beginning of the Christian era, when and how did they become

possessed of them? Fortunately, again, written history supplies the

answer to this question. In my next chapter will be found, quoted at

some length, the circumstances bearing on this question. In brief, the

facts are as follows: Philostorgius, a distinguished Greek theologian,

wrote an ecclesiastical history in the fifth century which is no longer

extant. Photius, at one time Patriarch of Constantinople, in the ninth

century wrote an epitome of the work by Philostorgius and to this

epitome we are indebted for the facts we here relate. Constantius, at

the time of which Philostorgius wrote, was on the throne of the Eastern

empire, and was exceedingly zealous in spreading and strengthening the

Christian religion. He learned that the prince of Arabia Felix (that

part of Arabia which we will designate by its modern name Yemen) was

strongly disposed to come out with his people and embrace Christianity.

Constantius thereupon determined to encourage both prince and people in

the movement they were contemplating, and he sent them a grand embassy

with many valuable presents, the most noted of which were two hundred

“well-bred Cappadocian horses.” The embassy was completely successful,

and Theopholis, who had been made a bishop and placed at the head of it,

remained there several years. This was in the year 356 of the Christian

era, and is the first intimation we have in all history of horses in

Arabia. These are the facts, so far as any facts are known, upon the

consideration of which I am not able to assent to the claim that either

High Asia or Arabia was the original habitat of the horse.

I have been surprised at the number of coincidences that seem to point

to ancient Armenia as the first habitation of the horse. This country

at one time was a very powerful kingdom, extending from the mountains

of Caucasus on the north to Media or Assyria on the south, and from

the Caspian Sea on the east to the Euphrates on the west, and at one

time even to the Mediterranean. It was intersected by several ranges of

mountains and not only gave rise to the Euphrates and the Tigris, but to

a number of smaller rivers. It was well watered everywhere, and produced

in great abundance all varieties of herbage, cereals, and fruits. It

was originally called Ararat by the Hebrews, probably after a range of

mountains about central to the territory embraced, and because Noah’s Ark

rested somewhere “on the mountains of Ararat.” It is also called Togarmah

in Scripture, after Torgom, son of Gomer, who was the son of Japheth,

the son of Noah. Japheth seems to have been the oldest son of Noah, and

he chose this fruitful region as the future home of his descendants.

The Rev. Michael Chamich, a native Armenian, went back into the old

Armenian records, translated the language as originally used, and wrote

a history of the country from its first settlement; and this history has

been Englished by Johannes Adval, another native Armenian, and published

in Calcutta in 1827. This work seems to be worthy of credence, and it

clearly establishes the lineal descent of the governing family back to

Japheth, the son of Noah. The order of succession as the head of the

tribe continues through several generations unbroken, from father to

son. Gomer, the son of Japheth, was succeeded by his son Togarmah, then

followed Haicus, Armenac, Aramais, Amassia, Gelam, Harma, Aram, Arah, who

was slain in battle, his son Cardus (at twelve years old), Anushaven, who

died without issue and was succeeded by Paret, who reigned fifty years

and during his reign the patriarch Joseph died in Egypt, B.C. 1635. These

princes all had long reigns. Haicus was the first of the line to assume

the title of king, and he was greatly distinguished for extending the

boundaries of his kingdom. Gelam extended his borders to the Caspian.

Aram was fifty-eight years on the throne, during which time he had a war

with the Medes, and also with the Cappadocians, in both of which he had

a large force of cavalry in the field. This was about seventeen hundred

years before the Christian era, and is the first mention of cavalry that

I have found in history, either sacred or profane. In both these wars

his cavalry was met by the cavalry of the enemy, equal to or greater

than his in numbers. How long before this troops may have been mounted

on horses it is impossible to say, but from the numbers so used at that

period of the world by the neighboring nations and tribes, as the Medes,

the Cappadocians, etc., it is fair to conclude that the horse had then

been an important factor in all military movements for many generations.

When we consider two opposing armies, each provided with divisions of

five thousand cavalry, the period being about B.C. 1700, with no dates

beyond that are known as relating to the horse, we are shut up to our own

reasoning as to the number of centuries that may have been required to

produce these great numbers. It must have been at least one century, or

it may have been three or four, and this would carry us back to the head

of the house of Japheth.

If we accept Egyptian chronology, which still lacks much of being

reliable, one of the Pharaohs, named Thutmosis I., invaded Syria, passing

up through Palestine till he reached the latitude of Aleppo, and then

turned eastward and crossed the Euphrates. His campaign was successful;

he fought many battles and returned laden with spoils, especially horses

and chariots of war. This was before the Israelites reached the promised

land, and before Joshua’s battle with the “Northern kings,” in which

they had “horsemen and chariots very many,” and which is the earliest

Scriptural instance in which horses were employed in battle.

The territory embracing the ancient countries of Eastern Asia Minor,

bounded on the north by the Black Sea and the Caucasian mountains, on

the south by the thirty-seventh degree of north latitude, and extending

to the Caspian Sea, has always been remarkable for the variety, value,

and abundance of its agricultural products. Many of the very early

historians have noted the fact that each one of the countries embraced

in this territory was distinguished for the excellence and numbers of

horses produced, and they appear in about the following order, namely,

Armenia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Media. The last-named country embraced

what is now the northern part of Persia, and as between the “Medes”

and the “Persians” there is no little confusion in the public mind, as

sometimes one was on top and sometimes the other. Then, to add to the

confusion, the Assyrians came in, occupying the same country and the same

capitals. For our present purposes it is not necessary to enter into the

consideration of these successive dynasties. The Medes were comparatively

newcomers, and as they were a great military people their prominence

in horse history resulted more from the spoils of war and the tribute

in horses that they collected from their neighbors than from their own

production. Kitto says that in the time of the Persian empire the plain

of Nissæum was celebrated for its horses and horse races. This plain was

near the city of Nissæa, around which were fine pasture lands, producing

excellent clover. The horses were “entirely white” (probably grey) and

of extraordinary height and beauty, as well as speed. They constituted

part of the luxury of the great, and a tribute in kind was paid from them

to the monarch, who, like all Eastern sovereigns, used to delight in

equestrian display. Some idea of the opulence of the country may be had

when it is known that, independently of imposts rendered in money, Media

(then the undermost dog), paid a yearly tribute of not less than three

thousand horses, four thousand mules, and nearly one hundred thousand

sheep. The races, once celebrated through the world, seem to exist no

more.

When Darius the Mede had extended his empire over the whole of Western

Asia and Egypt, he exacted heavy tribute in horses from all subjugated

provinces. This was about 520 B.C., and antedated the racing referred

to above. In all parts of his extended empire he built roads and

established lines of couriers, mounted on fleet horses, that there

might be no delay in receiving at his capital and sending out again

intelligence of what was transpiring in any part of his dominions. For

this service the best and fleetest horses were required, and the only

guide we have to determine how these horses were selected we find in

the fact that the tribute collected from the little kingdom of Cilicia,

formerly a part of Cappadocia, was, in addition to a stated sum of money,

one white horse for every day in the year. It is possible that these

white Cilician horses may have been the progenitors of the white (grey)

race horses spoken of in Media.

In describing the general fruitfulness of Cappadocia, Strabo says:

“Cappadocia was also rich in herds and flocks, but more particularly

celebrated for its breed of horses.” Strabo speaks of this as a leading

characteristic of the country and doubtless it had held pre-eminence in

this respect for generations before he wrote. Three hundred and fifty-six

years later, when Constantius was selecting his presents of horses for

the prince and people of Yemen, in Arabia, he knew just where to look, in

all his dominions, for the best of their kind, and selected two hundred

“well-bred” ones for Arabia. Sir R. Wilson, in discussing the quality

of the Russian cavalry horses about 1810, had evidently heard of this

Cappadocian origin of the Arabian horse, but, unfortunately, he got all

the parties badly mixed in his reference. He makes Constantine instead

of Constantius the donor of three hundred Cappadocian horses, instead of

two hundred, and they are given to one of the African princes, instead of

to an Arabian prince. The African traveler, Bruce, found some excellent

horses in Nubia, Africa, and from their high quality and unusually large

size he seems to have jumped to the conclusion that these were the

descendants of the three hundred from Constantine.

After glancing over all the different countries in this great zone as

defined above, and extending from the Bosphorus to the Caspian Sea, one

cannot fail to be impressed with its special adaptation to the production

and sustenance of all varieties of domestic animals, in their greatest

perfection. Here the country seems to have been made for the horse, and

the horse for the country. Here was a country suited to his nativity, and

here we find records of his existence centuries earlier than in any other

country. The wild ass flourished in this country, but I have not been

able to find any evidence or indication that the horse was not always

the companion and servant of man. Wherever he is found in a feral state

reasons that are amply satisfactory are never wanting to account for that

state. Ancient historians have specially noted each of the principal

countries embraced in this zone for the superiority and numbers of its

horses, but no one has made any allusion to wild horses, nor suggested

that there may have been a time when their ancestors were wild.

Now, as we have designated a long and wide region of Western Asia,

embracing a number of different nationalities and governments, as the

probable original habitat of the horse, can we go further and designate

the particular nationality or government in which was his original home

and from which he was distributed to adjoining nations or peoples? In

answer to this question, we cannot present any dates of record earlier

than about 1700 B.C., and this date will apply as well to Media and

Cappadocia as to Armenia. We must, therefore, consider it in the light of

other facts and circumstances, not dependent upon specific dates. In the

first place, and taking the Mosaic account of the deluge as the starting

point, “the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat.” This is the original

name of a country, intersected by a mountain range, and that range took

its name from the country in which it was found. “Mount Ararat” was

simply a very high peak in that range. The distinction should be observed

here between “the mountains of Ararat” and “Mount Ararat.” In the second

place, it is clearly established by all history that near the base of

this mountain range Japheth and his descendants had their homes. His son

Gomer was highly distinguished in his day, and his grandson, Togarmah,

son of Gomer, became a powerful chief. To such prominence did he rise in

the affairs of his age that for centuries after his day his country was

called “Togarmah.” Hence we have the three names, Ararat, Togarmah and

Armenia applied in sacred and profane history to the same country that we

are now considering.

During the continuance of the dynasty of King Haic or Haicus, the son of

Togarmah, the Armenians became a very prosperous and powerful people.

They did not seem to be an aggressive or warlike people, although

their boundaries were greatly extended, but a thrifty agricultural and

industrious people. Breeding and marketing horses seem to have been

their leading employments. In the twenty-seventh chapter of the Prophet

Ezekiel he gives a catalogue of the different peoples trading with the

great Phœnician merchants and the products of their countries, in which

they traded. This catalogue was written five hundred and fifty-eight

years before the Christian era, and is very remarkable for its extent

and completeness. It not only shows what the Phœnicians carried away

to the West, in their “Ships of Tarshish,” but also what they brought

back for distribution among their customers in Western Asia. I will

quote, from the revised version, two or three of the classes of articles

enumerated, embracing both import and export trade. Of foreign imports

he says: “Tarshish” (Spain and beyond) “was thy merchant by reason of

the multitude of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead,

they traded for thy wares.” Of articles for export he says: “They of the

house of Togarmah traded for thy wares with horses and war-horses and

mules.” “Togarmah” here means “Armenia,” and this is the only instance

in which horses are mentioned in the catalogue. I will give another

quotation, not because it is conclusive in itself, but because it is

confirmatory of Strabo’s statement that there were no horses in Arabia

in his day. He says: “Arabia and all the princes of Kedar, they were the

merchants of thy hand; in lambs, and rams, and goats, in these were they

thy merchants.” Other products from more southern portions of Arabia are

enumerated, but no horses. This is the initial step toward the general

distribution of horses, by the Phœnician merchants, which will be

developed in the next chapter.

In speaking of Media (Vol. II., p. 265), Strabo says: “The country is

peculiarly adapted, as well as Armenia, to the breeding of horses.” Of

one district not far from the Caspian he remarks: “Here, it is said,

fifty thousand mares were pastured in the time of the Persians, and

were the king’s stud. The Nessæan horses, the best and the largest in

the king’s province, were of this breed, according to some writers, but

according to others they were from Armenia.” Again he says: “Cappadocia

paid to the Persians, yearly, in addition to a tribute in silver, one

thousand five hundred horses, two thousand mules, and fifty thousand

sheep, and the Medes contributed nearly double this amount.”

Of Armenia he says, p. 271: “The country is so well adapted, being

nothing inferior in this respect to Media, for breeding horses that the

race of Nessæan horses, which the king of Persia used, is found here

also; the satrap of Armenia used to send annually to the king of Persia

twenty thousand young horses.”

The Nessæan horses, so famous for their speed, were the “thoroughbreds”

of their day, and there can hardly be a doubt they originated in Armenia,

and, just like our own “thoroughbreds,” they were essentially the result

of careful selection through a series of generations, and of breeding

only from animals possessing the desired qualifications in the highest

degree. In the earlier days of racing in Media, it appears that white

was the fashionable color, but I am disposed to think that grey, growing

white with age, was the color intended to be expressed by the writers

of that period. The “albino” color is abnormal and supposed to indicate

tenderness and lack of stamina.

There is one fact, in considering this question, to which I have probably

not given sufficient prominence and weight. So far as the records go,

the three countries of Armenia, Cappadocia, and Media are synchronous

in having mounted troops in their armies seventeen hundred years before

the Christian era. We must, therefore, consider the conditions of these

countries antecedent to the period of 1700 B.C. Of Cappadocia we know

absolutely nothing historically until it was conquered by Cyrus, king

of Persia, about 588 B.C. Of Media the earliest knowledge we have of a

historical character does not go back further than about 842 B.C. It

should be observed that I here speak of “historical” knowledge and not

of uncertain traditions of many centuries earlier. Both of these nations

with their distinctive nationalities have, long since, been wiped off the

surface of the earth.

When we reach Armenia, we reach a people with a most remarkable history,

extending back for more than four thousand years. This history, although

not wholly free from criticism or doubt, seems to be honestly written and

worthy of a liberal measure of confidence. That the children of Japheth

should have settled at the foot of the mountains of Ararat strikes every

one as a very natural event, but that their descendants should still be

there, through all the triumphs and oppressions of four thousand years,

is one of the most stupendous facts in the history of the world. From

the very first we know of them they seem to have been an agricultural

people, strongly attached to their native soil. When they ruled over the

land from the Caspian to the Mediterranean, they built no great cities,

but adhered steadfastly to the rural pursuits of their fathers, and

this, probably, was the chief cause of their weakness. Their wealth

and sources of wealth were chiefly in their horses, and these they sold

to the merchants of Sidon and Tyre, who carried them to all the nations

of Europe and Africa, commencing with Egypt, and supplying all wants as

far as Spain and Morocco, and beyond, probably, as far as Britain. The

Phœnician merchants were the first to open commercial transactions with

Europe and Africa, and they were in control of the commerce of the world

long before King Solomon entered into commercial partnership with Hiram,

king of Tyre. Armenia had horses to sell long before they had horses

in Egypt, and Phœnicia had ships and enterprise to carry them there.

There is a fitting of interests here that seems to point to Armenia as

the great original source of supply, and as the original habitat of the

horse.

CHAPTER III.

EARLY DISTRIBUTION OF HORSES.

First evidences of horses in Egypt about 1700 B.C.—Supported

by Egyptian records and history—The Patriarch Job had no

horses—Solomon’s great cavalry force organized—Arabia as

described by Strabo at the beginning of our era—No horses

then in Arabia—Constantius sends two hundred Cappadocian

horses into Arabia A.D. 356—Arabia the last country to be

supplied with horses—The ancient Phœnician merchants and their

colonies —Hannibal’s cavalry forces in the Punic Wars—Distant

ramifications of Phœnician trade and colonization—Commerce

reached as far as Britain and the Baltic—Probable source of

Britain’s earliest horses.

Having considered the different theories or opinions as to the original

habitat of the horse and the means and facilities by which distribution

to the different portions of the earth may have been effected, I have

omitted land migration, which will be self-evident to all as an important

factor in the problem. It is now in order, therefore, to consider such

dates and facts as are pertinent and may be gleaned from history, sacred

and profane.

[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN COLONIES

ABOUT 1200 B.C.]

When Abraham, with Sarah his wife, visited Egypt about 1920 B.C., the

Pharaoh for her sake bestowed upon him many gifts: “Sheep and oxen and

he asses and men servants and maid servants and she asses and camels.”

Among these great gifts there were no horses, evidently because Egypt

had no horses at that time. There is no mention nor reference to horses

in Egypt till Joseph became prime minister two hundred years later,

when there were a few horses, and they were traded or sold to Joseph by

their owners in exchange for food, not in droves, but as individuals.

These scriptural facts in the experiences of Abraham and Joseph seem

to be circumstantially sustained by the discoveries of those learned

Egyptologists who, in late years and with the spade in their hands,

have resurrected so much of history that had been buried for thousands

of years. It was during the reign of the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings,

that Abraham and Joseph were in Egypt, and in order to approximate the

time when horses were first introduced, we must glance at a few facts

in connection with what is known of the Hyksos. Some have claimed they

were from Chaldea, some from Northern Syria and Asia Minor, and some

again from Phœnicia, and it is one of the strangest things in history

that a great nation should be overthrown and held in subjection for over

five hundred years and nobody know who did it. Then again, it is equally

incomprehensible that any nation should have subdued Egypt and held it

in bondage so long and yet never have claimed the honor of having done

so. Still another mystery remains that never has been solved, and that

is, what became of the Shepherds and their followers when they were

driven out? At the period of the conquest the governing class was rent by

factions and under a weak and tyrannical king. The Delta and the Valley

of the Nile were crowded with slaves, many of them of Asiatic origin.

The elevated plains and mountain sides were covered with fierce and

intractable nomads, all of Asiatic origin, tending their flocks. Some

brave and skillful shepherd organized the shepherds and the slaves and at

their head swept down upon the government with a power that was so mighty

as to be irresistible. Manetho, the great Egyptian historian of more

than two thousand years ago, thus describes the event: “Under this king,

then, I know not wherefore, the god caused to blow upon us a baleful

wind, and in the face of all probability bands from the East, people of

ignoble race, came upon us unawares, attacked the country and subdued it

easily and without fighting.” In remarking upon this same event Professor

Maspero, who stands at the very head of the Egyptologists, says: “It

is possible that they (the shepherds) owed this rapid victory to the

presence in their armies of a factor hitherto unknown to the Africans—the

war chariot—and before the horse and his driver the Egyptians gave way in

a body.” In view of the direct declaration of Manetho that the question

of the succession was settled “without fighting,” the mere suggestion of

an unsustained “possibility” from Maspero that the result may have been

determined by the war chariots cannot be accepted. All the authorities

agree that the horse was introduced into Egypt at some period during the

rule of the Shepherd Kings, but there is absolutely no evidence that this

was at the beginning or anywhere near the beginning of that rule.

No records or delineations of the horse have been found in any of the

temples or tombs of Egypt prior to the beginning of the eighteenth

dynasty, which was probably about the year 1570 B.C. and contemporaneous

with the birth of Moses. If the Shepherd Kings left behind them any

records or delineations of the horse it would be quite natural for the

true kingly line to destroy and erase every vestige of whatever would

revive a memory to them so bitter and hateful. But the absence of all

traces of horses under the seventeenth dynasty of the Shepherds does not

prove that there was none, for we have direct proof in Joseph’s case that

they were there one hundred and fifty-six years, and in Jacob’s burial

one hundred and nineteen years before the beginning of the eighteenth

dynasty.

The question as to the time when they procured their horses having

now been approximately settled, the inquiry naturally follows as to

where they came from? In answering this question there seems to be no

hesitation or doubt. They came from Northern Syria, which embraces not

only the northeastern coast of the Mediterranean, including Phœnicia,

but the countries north and east of it trading there, which means the

great horse-breeding countries of Armenia and Cappadocia. Being largely

engaged in the Egyptian trade for many centuries, it is probable the

Phœnician merchants were the principal agents in supplying them. In

speaking of the horse in Egypt, Prof. Maspero says: “The horse when once

introduced into Egypt soon became fairly adapted to its environment. It

retained both its height and size, keeping the convex forehead—which

gave the head a slightly curved profile—the slender neck, the narrow

hind-quarters, the lean and sinewy legs and the long, flowing tail which

had characterized it in its native country. The climate, however, was

enervating, and constant care had to be taken, by the introduction of new

blood from Syria, to prevent the breed from deteriorating. The Pharaohs

kept studs of horses in the principal cities of the Nile valley, and the

great feudal lords, following their example, vied with each other in the

possession of numerous breeding stables.”

There are some facts here that are worthy of special emphasis: (1)

There were no horses in Egypt till the period of the Shepherd Kings,

i. e., about the time of Joseph. (2) All Egyptologists down to the

present day agree that the supply of Egyptian horses was procured from

Northern Syria. (3) The Egyptians and the Arabians were adjoining nations

in constant, friendly intercourse, exchanging the products of their

respective countries, and yet there is no shadow of an intimation that

the Arabians had then ever owned a horse. It is reasonable to conclude,

therefore, not only from what is written, but from what is implied, that

the Arabians at about the period of 1600 B.C. had no horses. Northern

Syria, as the source of Egyptian supply, points directly to Armenia,

adjoining on the east, as the original source. When Strabo wrote at the

beginning of the Christian era that there were no horses in Arabia at

that time, he would still have been within the bounds of the truth if he

had said there had been none there for more the sixteen hundred years

before his day. All these considerations confirm the history that has

come down to us from Philostorgius.

As early as the dynasties of the Shepherd Kings and while the Israelites

were still in Egyptian bondage, the Phœnician merchants had accumulated

great wealth and great power and were literally the masters of the seas.

The Phœnicians were a commercial and maritime people and the Egyptians

were, in fact, dependent upon them for all their foreign supplies.

These conditions leave hardly a doubt that Egypt’s first supply of

horses came through the Phœnicians. But upon the establishment of the

eighteenth dynasty under the old Thebans, the spirit of war and conquest

revived, and under Thutmosis I. and Thutmosis III., notably, numerous

and successful campaigns were made against Northern Syria and then

extending eastward across the Euphrates into the borders of Armenia and

Assyria. And from the number of horses and chariots captured in battle

and collected as tribute, the careful student cannot avoid the conclusion

that this kind of spoil was the chief incentive to the various campaigns.

“Besides the usual species,” Maspero informs us, “powerful stallions were

imported from Northern Syria, which were known by the Semitic name of

_Abiri_, the strong.” This is the first mention in history of an improved

type of horse noted for his strength.

Whatever may have been the precise period in which the Patriarch Job

lived, he was the author of the grandest panegyric on the war-horse that

ever was written. Yet it seems strange that he owned seven thousand

sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred

she asses, but did not own a horse. To draw his picture of the war-horse

he must have seen him in action, on the field, and it is not improbable

in his younger days he witnessed, or possibly participated in, some great

battle between the Babylonians and the Persians, north of the latitude

and country in which he lived. It is now generally conceded, I think,

among learned men that the “land of Uz” was in the southeastern portion

of Arabia Deserta, bordering on the Persian Gulf, where the horse is a

useless luxury. Job was a very rich man, he certainly did not lack in

admiration of the horse, and if he had thought that horses would add to

his comfort and enjoyment he could easily have obtained them from the

great herds in the north. But the camel is the great beast of service

and utility in Arabia; it was so in Job’s time, it is so to-day, and it

always will be so because it is suited to the environment.

When Joshua was subduing the tribes of Canaan, B.C. 1450, he found that

the Phœnicians had several well-fortified cities and did not attack them,

but he encountered a combination of “Northern Kings” with a vast army and

“with horses and chariots very many.” His victory was complete, and he

houghed their horses and burned their chariots with fire.

Jabin, called the King of Canaan, in the time of the Judges, had his

kingdom on the northern border of Palestine and east of Phœnicia, at

the southern extension of Mount Lebanon. Sisera, one of the greatest

commanders of the time, B.C. 1285, commanded his army and he had nine

hundred chariots of iron, but the victory of the Israelites was complete.

In the year B.C. 1056, David pursued some of the tribes of Western Arabia

that had made a raid on Southern Palestine and carried away many captives

and much spoil. He overtook them with his own followers and subdued them,

and none escaped except four hundred young men who fled on camels. He

recovered all the captives and brought back all the flocks and herds,

but there were no horses among them. About the same time, historians

inform us, the tribes of Eastern Arabia were paying their tribute to the

Assyrians in camels and asses, while the northern countries were paying

theirs in horses and money.

The Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon B.C. 992, to learn of his wisdom

and “to prove him with hard questions.” Her kingdom was in that part

of southeastern Arabia now called Yemen, bordering on the Red Sea. Her

journey was a very long one and she “came with a very great train of

camels that bare spices and very much gold and precious stones.” It will

be observed that there were no horses in this “very great train.” It will

be observed further, from the incidents above related, that whenever the

Israelites met their neighbors north of them, whether in peace or war,

they met horses with them; and whenever they met their neighbors south

of them, they were mounted only on camels.

When the dominions of Solomon had become vastly extended, embracing

numbers of tributary kingdoms, as well as nomadic tribes, and when his

ships had gathered in untold riches from all parts of the world, he

found it prudent to reorganize his army for the defense of his kingdom

and his wealth, and on a scale commensurate with the dangers that might

arise from a combination of the jealous and envious neighbors with whom

he was surrounded. Among the northern kingdoms of that day it had been

often demonstrated in battle that the effective force of an army must

be estimated by its strength in horsemen and chariots of war. Solomon,

therefore, bought horses and chariots from Egypt, and horses from all

lands that had them for sale. It is probable that the superiority of

the Egyptian chariots was the special reason for buying them in that

country, as he paid six hundred shekels of silver for the chariots and

one hundred and fifty for the horses to bring them home. The reorganized

army consisted of one thousand four hundred chariots and twelve thousand

horsemen, and they were quartered in the different large cities in his

dominions. In the interval of seven hundred and twenty-eight years that

had elapsed since Joseph was Prime Minister, and horses introduced in

Egypt, they had greatly multiplied. When Solomon died and his kingdom was

divided into two hostile camps, Hiram, King of Tyre, his lifelong friend

and associate, became virtually his successor to the trade of the world.

The great Greek geographer, Strabo, traveled and wrote in the reign of

Augustus, and died A.D. 24. For descriptions of all countries of that

period and their industries and productions, he has been quoted for

eighteen hundred years as the best if not the only authority. Writing

as he did, at the very initial point of the Christian era, he gives us

a landmark that fixes itself in the mind. He gives a brief, but quite

satisfactory, description of Arabia, in which he notes the general

topography and boundaries as they are understood to-day; and then he

enters, somewhat, into the climate, productions of the soil, character

and industries of the people, etc. Of one part of the country he speaks

of the inhabitants as breeders of camels, and of another, that is more

productive, he remarks: “The general fertility of the country is very

great; among other products there is in particular an abundant supply

of honey. Except horses, there are numerous herds of animals, asses

and swine, birds also of every kind, except geese and the gallinaceous

tribes.”

Here we have from the very highest authority the pivotal fact that there

were no horses in Arabia at the commencement of the Christian era. This

does not rest upon argument, nor is it a deduction from some condition

of things that might have existed; but it is a distinct declaration of

what Strabo saw with his own eyes and wrote down when he saw it. It must,

therefore, stand as an undisputed fact, until some reputable authority is

brought forward to contradict it. This description from Strabo applies

to that rich portion of Arabia, bordering on the Red Sea along its full

length. With the fact established, circumstantially and historically,

that there were no horses in Arabia at the beginning of the Christian

era, it now remains to consider how and when they were first introduced

in that country.

Philostorgius, a distinguished Greek theologian, born A.D. 425, as

related in the preceding chapter, wrote an ecclesiastical history, which

is no longer extant, but fortunately Photius, at one time patriarch

of the Eastern church, born A.D. 853, prepared an epitome of it. This

epitome of Philostorgius comes down to A.D. 425, and is to be found

in the Lenox Library of this city, bound up in the same volume with

Sozomen’s Ecclesiastical History. I will here quote literally from this

epitome so much as is pertinent to the question before us. Constantius

was then on the throne of the Eastern Empire, and labored for the

promotion of the Christian religion.

“Constantius sent ambassadors to those who were formerly called

Sabæans, but are now known as Homeritæ, a tribe descended from

Abraham, by Keturah. As to the territory which they inhabit,

it is called by the Greeks Magna Arabia and Arabia Felix, and

extends to the most distant part of the ocean. Its metropolis

is Saba, the city from which the Queen of Sheba went forth to

see Solomon.... Constantius, accordingly, sent ambassadors to

them to come over to the Christian religion.... Constantius,

wishing to array the embassy with peculiar splendor, put on

board their ships two hundred well-bred horses from Cappadocia,

and sent them, with many other gifts.... The embassy turned

out successfully, for the prince of the nation, by sincere

conviction, came over to the true religion.”

Other facts might be quoted from this epitome, showing that Theopholis

was made a bishop and placed at the head of this embassy and that

he remained in Arabia Felix several years, prosecuting his work

successfully. It might also be quoted to show that the people of the

cities of Yemen (Arabia Felix) were, at that day, well advanced in

civilization and refinement, and that wealth and luxury abounded on

all sides. Their lands, from the sea to the desert, were wonderfully

productive, and their people lived in the cities and on their farms,

but few leading a nomadic life. In later generations this part of the

country, which is in Arabia Felix, has been called Yemen, and I believe

it is universally conceded among the Arab tribes and by writers who have

studied the subject that the best horses come from Yemen.

Taking the administration of Joseph as indicating the time when the first

horses were introduced into Egypt, about B.C. 1720, and the actual date

when Constantius sent the first into Arabia, A.D. 356, we find that Egypt

led Arabia by two thousand and seventy-six years. And yet numbers of men

have written great pretentious books on the horse, in which they tell

us that the Egyptians got their horses from the Arabians; while others

equally pretentious and voluminous tell us the Arabians got their horses

from the Egyptians; and neither class probably ever gave the labor of an

honest hour to settle this question. The one is over two thousand years

out of the way, and still they know just as much about it as the other

knows. They are both equally ignorant and equally dishonest, for they

simply copied, as their own, what somebody had said before them.

It is conceded on all hands and by all men who have gone beneath the mere

surface, that the literature of the ages furnishes no evidence that there

were horses in Arabia before the fourth or fifth century of our era.

General Tweedie, by far the ablest writer on the Arabian horse that we

have examined, concedes the pertinency and force of the absence of all

literary evidence, until the fifth century is reached, and as a reply he

says: “The several Roman invasions of Arabia, in the reigns of Augustus,

Trajan, and Severus, must have left foreign horses behind them.” This

is, in fact, conceding the accuracy of Strabo’s representations and that

there were no horses in Arabia at the beginning of the Christian era. The

truth of the historical allusion is that the Romans never overran nor

conquered Arabia. They could skirmish around the border and capture a

few towns or cities, but the death-dealing desert was too much for them.

Trajan at last made it a Roman province by his proclamation, and not by

his sword, and for the excellent reason that “the game was not worth the

candle.” What a strange fact it is that Arabia, instead of the first,

should have been the last country in all the old world to be supplied

with horses!

It is very difficult to comprehend or even imagine the changes that may

be wrought in a thousand years by a strong, enterprising, and aggressive

people, colonized in a rich country occupied by semi-barbarians and

savages. This was the condition in Northern Africa, when the Phœnician

colonies were planted there, a thousand years before the Christian era.

The colony at Utica in Algeria was planted about eleven hundred years

before the Christian era, which was contemporaneous with the reign of

Saul as king of Israel. The colony of Carthage, that afterward contested

with Rome for universal dominion, was planted in the same country, about

two hundred years later, and was contemporaneous with Jehu. The whole

southern shore of the Mediterranean was dotted with Phœnician colonies,

from Egypt westward.

The oldest of the Phœnician colonies so far from home was probably Gades,

now called Cadiz, on the Atlantic coast of Spain and outside of the

Pillars of Hercules. This colony was planted about fifteen hundred years

B.C. and was contemporaneous with Moses and the forty years’ journeying

of the Israelites in the wilderness. The more recent scholarship seems

to have developed the fact that still north of Gades and extending from

the mouth of the Guadelete to that of the Guadiana, there was a very

large and flourishing colony planted by the Phœnicians, possessing within

itself many of the requisites and functions of statehood, and that

this was the ancient “Tarshish” of scripture. This plantation became a

secondary Tyre, and the “ships of Tarshish” not only made their voyages

back and forth through the length of the Mediterranean, but extended them

northward, up the European coast and to Britain, and southward along the

African coast for a great distance, establishing trading posts wherever

the products of a country promised profitable exchange.

The planting of colonies in that age, even for the one ostensible purpose

of trade, involved more than the mere erection of a “trading post”

at some selected harbor. A strong and well-equipped and well-trained

military force had to be employed to protect and defend them. The

Phœnicians were great traders, and at the same time they were excellent

fighters. Their numerous colonies on both shores of the Mediterranean

required a strong military force that was made up very largely of

slaves and the nomadic tribes of the country, but always commanded by

prominent and influential Phœnicians. It is impossible to tell what the

very early experiences of the colonists may have been with regard to

horses; nor do we know whether they found horses already there when they

arrived at their new plantations. My belief is, however, that they were

not only the first to carry horses to Egypt, but they were the first

to carry them to the western extremities of the Mediterranean. It will

be remembered that the early trade of the Armenians with the Phœnician

merchants was not only in horses, but in _horsemen_, and it is probable

that these “horsemen” were slaves, expert and skillful in managing the

horse. It has been said by historians that certain classes of their ships

were ornamented with a carved horse’s head, at the prow; and it has been

inferred that the ships so designated were specially constructed and

fitted up for the safe carrying of horses. It is true that in the course

of the centuries horses may have found their way from Egypt westward to

Algeria, and by crossing the Bosphorus they might have found their way

from Asia Minor to Spain, but it is also true that from small beginnings

at the plantation of the colonies there was ample time for them to

increase to almost countless herds before the period when the colonists

became a mighty military power in the earth.

Historians tell us that the military establishment of the city of

Carthage alone, when on a peace footing, consisted of three hundred

elephants, four thousand horses and forty thousand foot soldiers.

When Hannibal started out to fight Rome, in the second Punic war, say

B.C. 218, he had with him eighty thousand footmen and twelve thousand

horsemen; and he left thirty-two thousand soldiers at home to guard his

Spanish and his African dominions. With a proportional division of the

home troops, he then had about seventeen thousand mounted men in his

army. These were not war levies, but hardened and trained soldiers, and

it is, therefore, not remarkable that he held nearly the whole of Spain

in subjection, and practically all of Northwestern Africa. Polybius,

the soldier historian, tells us that “his Numidian cavalry formed the

strongest part of his army, and to their quick evolutions, their sudden

retreat, and their rapid return to the charge, may be attributed the

success of Hannibal in his great victories.” At an earlier period, we

learn that in the organization of the Phœnician armies the numerous

nomadic tribes were placed on their flanks, and wheeled about on

unsaddled horses guided by a bridle of rushes.

At a very remote period there were two tribes in the interior of Spain,

the Celtæ and Iberi, that were greatly distinguished for their love of

independence and their bravery in defending it. The antiquarians have

failed to give us any information as to what they were or whence they

came. They were contemporaneous with some of the early colonies of the

Phœnicians. Their tactics in battle seemed to have been to break the

enemy’s ranks by a charge as cavalry, and to then dismount and fight on

foot. They united as one people and called themselves Celtiberi. Where

they got their horses, or whether they had them before the Phœnicians

arrived, are questions that cannot be answered.

The Visigoths, or western Goths, overran Northern Italy, settled in

Southern France and eventually passed over into Spain, where they

established a dynasty that lasted over two centuries and until it

was overthrown by the Saracens, A.D. 711. Roderick, the king of the

Visigoths, went out to battle with the Saracens, arrayed in his most

showy apparel, and mounted on his splendid chariot, made of ivory and

set with precious stones. As the battle progressed he saw what he had

good reason to believe was treachery on the part of one wing of his army

and he alighted from his chariot, mounted his horse called Orelia and

rode away while his soldiers were being butchered. He was the last of

the Gothic dynasty. There had been a battle between the navies of the

Saracens and the Goths, A.D. 680, fifty-one years earlier, in which the

fleet of the Saracens had been entirely destroyed, and at that time the

Saracens occupied the whole of the southern shore of the Mediterranean.

The word “Moors,” as often used to designate the people of Northern

Africa, is not well chosen, for it really belongs to but one of many

different tribes of different names. The term “Saracen” anciently meant

only an Arab born, but since the middle ages it has come to mean any

and all adherents to the Mohammedan religion, in the usage of Christian

people, and is particularly apposite when speaking of a number of tribes

engaged in a common cause.

The people of Northern Africa were not negroes as we understand the word,

but a mixture of different races. When the Phœnicians settled among

them they were nomadic barbarians, possessing a country of great riches

without knowing it. Under the tuition of their new masters they made

great advances in many of the arts of peace and in all the arts of war.

The Phœnician blood was liberally commingled with that of the natives.

The blood carried the brains, and hence the beautiful structures that

came from their hands and heads. No purely bred nomad ever could have

conceived or constructed the Alhambra. The Phœnicians were refined and

educated idolaters, as refinement and education were understood in their

day, while the native people were literally barbarians.

The then recent and rapid spread of Mohammedanism among all the people

of Northern Africa is, on its surface, one of the most remarkable facts

in history. As a religion it served to unite, under the banner of the

Crescent, all who accepted it, and guaranteed to all who fell in its

defense immediate admission to paradise. All who did not accept it were

enemies and only fit to perish by the sword of the Saracen. The founder

of this religion died A.D. 632, and seventy-nine years afterward his

followers, in Northern Africa alone, won their great victory over the

Gothic dynasty of Spain. When once on Spanish soil they appeared to take

root there and held possession of a large part of Spain for nearly nine

hundred years.

Now that I have traversed the field of Spain and Northern Africa, from

the first dawnings of history down to the beginning of the seventeenth

century, in order to gather in all that history reveals touching the

introduction and propagation of the horse in those regions, we are

ready to summarize the facts that we have gleaned. At the periods of

six hundred (when Carthage became independent of the mother country),

four hundred, and two hundred years before the Christian era, there is

undoubted evidence, over and over again, that Spain and Northern Africa

were abundantly supplied with horses. Then, how is it possible that the

hordes of Barbarians from Asia could have supplied these countries with

horses, when they did not arrive there until several centuries after

the supply is established to have existed? Take, if you please, the

shortest of the periods suggested above, when Hannibal’s cavalry almost

annihilated a great Roman army, two hundred and sixteen years before

the Christian era. This was five hundred and seventy-two years before

Arabia had any horses; and how can “the blind leaders of the blind”

supply Hannibal’s cavalry with Arabian blood? When the people of Northern

Africa, west of Egypt, fought their way into Spain it is not known that

there was a single Arabian soldier nor a single Arabian horse in the

whole army. They were all called Arabians, however, and that pretense has

existed ever since.

The Phœnicians were the most remarkable people of all the early ages

and indeed of any age. They belonged to the Aramaic or Semitic race;

they settled in Canaan long before the days of Abraham and attained

their greatest prosperity in the days of Solomon, when his fleets and

those of his friend Hiram, King of Tyre, controlled and monopolized the

commerce of the world. More than five hundred years before this alliance,

however, they had established commercial relations with all the countries

bordering on the Mediterranean, and their ships were trading in the ports

of every country from Egypt to the Pillars of Hercules and far beyond.

There seems to be no doubt that they carried tin from Britain and amber

from the Baltic, and, of course, they had to bring something to exchange

for what they carried away. What did they bring? As amber did not enter

into the necessary arts it is not probable the trade was very large, but

tin was required by many nations in their everyday life, especially the

Egyptians, who had no foreign commerce and were thus dependent upon the

Phœnician merchants. We may conclude, therefore, that the trade in tin

was large, and as there was no Phœnician colony in extreme southwestern

Britain, the foreign traders would bring just what the Britons most

needed. If they were already in possession of horses they would not need

that kind of exchange, but if they were not in possession of horses,

that would be just the kind of exchange they would want, and probably

this was the source from which they obtained their supply. The question,

however, of how or when our British ancestors obtained their first supply

of horses has never been positively answered. That they had them in great

abundance at the beginning of the Christian era is fully established by

the experience of the Romans when they captured Britain. From their great

numbers and the skill displayed in their management in battle, it cannot

be doubted that they were there for many generations before the Roman

armies came in contact with them. Many theories have been advanced as to

how the horse may have reached Britain, but no one of them rests on so

reasonable a basis of probability as that of the Phœnician traders. If

from this source, which I am strongly disposed to believe was the true

source, it must have been during the maritime supremacy of the Phœnicians

and their colonies, and this would place the date several centuries

before the Christian era. If we were able to reconstruct the original

line of the migration of the early English horses, we would, probably,

first find them in “the land of Togarmah” starting to market at Tyre,

where they were exchanged for supplies needed in Armenia. There they were

put on board one of the great “ships of Tarshish,” and when they next

touched the land it was at one of the ports at the southwestern portion

of England, where they were exchanged for tin and other products of the

mines.

In addition to the argument furnished by this known course of trade

between nations and peoples, in prehistoric times, we have an additional

one in the natural perpetuation of racial qualities, extending through

many centuries. In reply to some questions submitted to a friend of

mine who was born in Western Persia, educated in this country, and then

returned to the land of his nativity, I have replies to my questions

bearing date of July, 1896. He is located at Oroomiah, not far from the

modern line between Persia and Turkey, and in what may be considered the

very center of ancient Armenia. He is not skilled in horse lore, but he

uses horses a great deal and is a very intelligent observer. He says

that the Persian horses have been greatly overrated and that the country

is full of very ordinary horses. He says that they are all colors, with

bays probably predominating. There is a great variety of mixed greys,

shading into white, and a few that are dappled. Then there are chestnuts,

sorrels, “mouse-color” (duns), and not many blacks. They are small, as a

rule, and a harness of small size from this country has to be cut down

for them. From this I infer that they are generally under fourteen hands.

On the whole the horses are nicely shaped, have slender, clean limbs,

small ears, and carry the head and tail well up. As a rule they are great

stumblers. With regard to gaits he says that stress is laid on a rapid

walk—a half walk and half trot. In this country we would call it the

“running walk” that may be kept up for days in succession. In speaking of

the pace, my correspondent says: “There are some horses trained to pace,

while some pick it up naturally, that is, are born pacers. The greater

number are natural pacers. Now and then one will find a rapid pacer, but

commonly the pace is a five or six miles an hour gait. There are some

that single-foot naturally, and from birth.”

He then says horses are not bred with any care. They are turned loose in

herds and the breeding is such as would naturally occur.

It will be observed that my Persian friend speaks of the different

colors “of grey, shading into white,” which suggests a possible descent

from the famous breed of white Nissæan horses kept by the great Darius

and other Medo-Persian monarchs for racing purposes. But the striking

feature in this description of the horses of Persia, or more properly,

of ancient Armenia, of this day, is the fact that they are of the same

size and color and habits of action as the horses of Britain when

first visited by the Romans, as well as when they were more minutely

described twelve hundred years later, and as they were at the beginning

of the seventeenth century, and as they still were at the middle of the

eighteenth century. As evidence on these points reference is made to

the chapters on horses of the colonial period that will follow in their

place. In ancient Armenia, as with all pastoral people of the early ages,

horses were turned out to run in herds and literally left to Mr. Darwin’s

law of “natural selection and the survival of the fittest.” So it was in

Britain to a great extent, until the eighteenth century, and so it was in

the American colonies until fifty years later; hence the same types and

characteristics prevailed and were perpetuated in all these countries.

It is sad to contemplate the present debased and semi-barbarous condition

of the descendants of a great people who for centuries stood first among

all the nations of the earth in commercial enterprise, in learning, and

in the arts. The banishment of the Saracens from Spain in the beginning

of the seventeenth century of our era was in fact the banishment of

the descendants of the Phœnicians who first colonized Spain. The

architectural structures which they left behind them, and which for

their marvelous beauty have challenged the admiration of the world, were

not the work of nomads and barbarians. They were the flashes of the old

Phœnician taste and genius as exemplified by the descendants of the men

whom Hiram sent to construct and decorate the buildings of Solomon. The

Alhambra and some other structures in Spain are all that we have to

remind us of the genius, and grandeur of Phœnicia. Whatever may have been

the character and attainments of the descendants of the colonists at

the time, the change from idolatry to Islamism was a bad one. Wherever,

throughout the world, the teachings of the “Prophet” have been accepted,

whole nations have become intolerant, murderous and brutalized, and the

modern Phœnicians are no exception. They have now lost their identity in

the follies and crimes of Islamism and we can have no sympathy for them.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ARABIAN HORSE.

The Arabian, the horse of romance—The horse naturally

foreign to Arabia— Superiority of the camel for all Arabian

needs—Scarcity of horses in Arabia in Mohammed’s time—Various

preposterous traditions of Arab horsemanship—The Prophet’s

mythical mares—Mohammed not in any sense a horseman—Early

English Arabians—the Markham Arabian—The alleged Royal

Mares—The Darley Arabian—The Godolphin Arabian—The Prince

of Wales’ Arabian race horses—Mr. Blunt’s pilgrimage to the

Euphrates—His purchases of so-called Arabians—Deyr as a great

horse market where everything is thoroughbred—Failure of

Mr. Blunt’s experiments—Various Arabian horses brought to

America—Horses sent to our Presidents—Disastrous experiments of

A. Keene Richards—Tendency of Arab romancing from Ben Hur.

Admiration always leads to exaggeration. This is true in most of the

relations of life, but in our admiration of the horse it becomes greatly

intensified, so greatly indeed that in magnifying his excellent qualities

we find ourselves telling downright falsehoods about him before we know

it. This “amiable weakness,” as we might call it, is true of our everyday

life and our everyday horses; but when we come to the horse that is the

universal ideal of perfection, everybody seems to lay aside all the

restraints of truth in extolling the superiority of his qualities. The

“Arabian horse” is the ideal horse of all the world. He is the “gold

standard” in all horsedom, with the one important distinction that the

one is real and the other is mythical. Not one so-called horseman in a

million ever saw a genuine Arabian horse, nor any of the descendants of

one; and in all the discussions of the past three hundred and fifty years

it has never been shown in a single instance that a horse from Arabia,

with an authenticated pedigree and tracing as such, has ever been of any

value, either as a race horse or as a progenitor of race horses. The

superior qualities of “the Arabian horse,” like the superior qualities of

“The Arabian Nights,” are purely works of the imagination. There is just

as much truth in the stories of Sindbad the Sailor and Aladdin’s Lamp as

there is in most of the literature relating to the Arabian horse.

I am fully satisfied that these views of the Arabian horse will not meet

with a ready acceptance by the vast majority of the horsemen of this

or any other country, but my reasons for presenting them will become

apparent as the discussion progresses. They smash too many idols and

dispel too many chimeras of the brain to be readily accepted. It takes

the average man a long time to get clear of the prejudices in which he

was born, and the first question that will be asked by the doubter is,

“Why could not Arabia have supported a race of indigenous wild horses, as

well as any other country?” Because the horse, wild or tame, has never

learned to dig a well forty feet deep, nor to draw water after it is

dug. Neither has he learned to lay up a store in time of plenty against

a time of famine. The horse could not live in Arabia without the care of

man. And, second, “Why were all the civilized and semi-civilized nations

west of Asia supplied with horses a thousand years before Arabia, when

so near the original habitat of the horse?” It is the first law of our

nature to supply ourselves with what we need. The camel always has been

a necessity to the Arab, not only to carry him and his burdens, but to

furnish nourishment and sustenance to him and his family. The camel is

adapted to the country and the country to the camel, and no other created

animal can fill that place. He is, literally, “the ship of the desert.”

The horse in Arabia is a luxury that can be indulged in only by the rich;

hence his ownership is practically restricted to the chiefs of tribes. He

is never used except for display and war. Palgrave, in speaking specially

of the Nejd tribe, says: “A horse is by no means an article of everyday

possession, or of ordinary or working use. No genuine Arab would ever

dream of mounting his horse for a mere peaceful journey, whether for a

short or a long distance.”

When we consider the immeasurable superiority of the camel to the

horse in meeting the wants and necessities of the Arab, we will not be

surprised at the immense herds of the former and the small numbers of

the latter that are bred and reared in that country. A camel can go four

days without water, and under stress, it is said, a good one can cover

the distance of two hundred miles in twenty-four hours. The camel and

the country are suited to each other, while the horse is an exotic, and

has no part in any industrial interest except raiding and robbery. My

attention was first called to this unexpected smallness in the numbers

of Arabian horses in the seventh century, two hundred and sixty years

after the introduction of the original stock from Cappadocia. The flight

of Mohammed from his enemies in Mecca to Medina took place A.D. 622.

There, setting up as a Prophet, and as holding communications with

Heaven, he soon gathered around him a number who believed in his divine

inspiration. Understanding the habits and instincts of his followers,

he soon found he must give them something to do. He called them about

him, mounted a camel, and at their head he was successful in plundering

two or three caravans, which greatly enraged his old enemies at Mecca.

Whether the anger of his enemies was kindled anew because some of the

plunder belonged in Mecca, or whether he merely deprived the Meccans of

the opportunity of doing the plundering themselves, the historian fails

to make clear. Whichever may have been the underlying reason, it led to

war. In the first campaign of the Meccans and in the first battle fought,

they far outnumbered the followers of the Prophet. There were some camels

in Mohammed’s train, but no horses. He did not lead the battle himself,

but remained in his tent and promised his followers that all who fell

in battle would be forthwith admitted into Paradise. They believed the

promise, as millions and millions have believed it since; it inspired

them with a recklessness of life, and they were completely victorious.

The result of this victory was the capture of one hundred and fifteen

camels and fourteen horses, besides the entire camp of the enemy. In the

battle of the next year (A.D. 625) between the same parties, the forces

were much increased on both sides. Sir William Muir, the historian,

informs us that Mohammed had but two horses in his army, one of which

he mounted himself and took command of his forces. This battle was not

decisive. In subsequent raids he captured many enemies and traded his

female captives for horses with the surrounding tribes, so far as he was

able to obtain them. The next year he had an army of three thousand men

and thirty-six horses, while the enemy had an army of three thousand men,

of whom two hundred were cavalry, but there was no fighting. The fame of

Mohammed as a successful and relentless pillager and destroyer had now

spread far and wide, and as a means of escape the chiefs of the larger

portion of the tribes of Arabia hastened to tender their allegiance

and obey his commands. From this forward, therefore, we must consider

Mohammed as the representative of the whole of Arabia, in both its

religious and military power. The next year his old enemies, the citizens

of Mecca, surrendered the sacred city to him without a blow, and thus

Islamism became a mighty power in the world.

It is evident from many sources other than the history of Mohammed that

horses have always been a very sparse production in Arabia. Burckhardt,

the famous traveler in the East, journeyed very extensively in Arabia

about 1814, and he gives the result of his observations on this point of

numbers as follows: “In all the journey from Mecca to Medina, between

the mountains and the sea, a distance of at least two hundred and sixty

miles, I do not believe that two hundred horses could be found, and the

same proportion of numbers may be remarked all along the Red Sea.” This

is in strict conformity with the observations of other writers, the

reasons for which have already been given.

Time out of mind, everybody has heard of the insuperable difficulty of

prevailing upon an Arab to part with his genuine, high-caste mare for

either love or money. He will expatiate, as the story goes, upon “the

beauty and graces of his mare as the light of his household and the joy

and playmate of his children, and above all as she is royally bred he

cannot, as a good Moslem, disobey the injunctions of the Prophet not to

sell such mares, but to keep them forever that their descendants may

enrich the children of the faithful to all generations.” If you ask him

more particularly about her lines of descent, he will give you fifty or

a hundred generations and land you safely on the name of the particular

one of the five mares of the Prophet from which she is descended. To

illustrate the sham of all this Major Upton’s experience, in purchasing

horses in Arabia for the East India service, may be cited. It is evident

the major understands his dealers and they understand him. He says: “In

the desert we never heard of Mohammed’s mares, nor was his name ever

mentioned in any way as connected with the Arabian horse.” He says there

is no restriction nor difficulty in buying as many mares as you want, in

any part of Arabia. This disposes of the tricky pretenses of the Arab

horse dealer when he is negotiating a sale to a man without Arabian

experience.

Some modern writers make mention of a tradition that still prevails

among some tribes as to the origin of the Arabian horse, and it is to

the effect that their best horses came originally from Yemen. This

tradition is met with in Arabia Deserta, a long way from Arabia Felix, of

which Yemen is a portion. While this tradition is of no possible value

as evidence, it is suggestive of what might be unearthed in that strange

country. The people were not nomadic, but agricultural and commercial,

and the cities were rich. The people were well advanced in the arts and

comforts of civilized life, and in their cities they had many beautiful

temples and palaces. Such a people would of necessity produce learned

men who would leave records of their national history behind them, and

especially that of such an event as the conversion of the whole people

to Christianity. Possibly the researches of scholarly men may yet bring

to light more of the facts connected with the embassy from the Emperor

Constantius and the introduction of the Cappadocian horses into Yemen, as

related in the preceding chapters.

There are many other traditions, so called, that are burnished up and

brought out whenever the crafty dealer finds he has a Richards from

America, or a Blunt from England, with his mind already made up that all

the best horses of the world have come from Arabia. To such a customer,

with his mind already at high tension in search for the longest pedigree

and the purest blood, the dealer casts his hook in something like the

form following:

“When King Solomon had completed the temple he turned his attention to

supplying his army with horses and chariots. He searched every nation

that had horses for sale and would have none but the very best that the

world could produce. He spent much of his time in admiring his beautiful

horses, and one day he was so thoroughly absorbed that the hour of prayer

passed without his observing it. He felt that this neglect to pray at the

proper time was a great sin, and that his horses had led him into it.

He did not hesitate longer, but he at once ordered all his horses to be

turned loose to the public. Some of my ancestors succeeded in securing

six of these mares, and from these six mares all the good horses of

Arabia are descended.”

Other dealers are a little more modest in their claims for the antiquity

of the pedigrees of their horses, and generously knock off about sixteen

hundred years, being content to trace to the mares of the Prophet

instead of the mares of Solomon. This still leaves them with a pedigree

only about twelve hundred years long, which beats our modern romancers

in making stud books. In order to test and select the mares that were

worthy of becoming the dams of the best horses, as the story goes, the

Prophet shut up a herd of mares, in plain sight of water, and kept them

there till they were almost famished with thirst; and then at a signal

they were all released at once, and when rushing headlong to the water

the trumpet sounds, and notwithstanding their sufferings they turn and

align themselves up in military order. In this test of obedience and

discipline, it is said, only five of the mares obeyed the signal (some

say only three) and thus the mares that obeyed, notwithstanding their

sufferings, became justly entitled to the distinctive and honored name of

“The Prophet’s Mares.” Another story is told of the particular markings

which, in the Prophet’s estimation, indicated the best horses. By one

authority he always selected a black horse with a white “forehead,” and

some white mark or marks on his upper lip. Another authority says he

always chose a bay horse with a bald face and four white legs, and so

we might go on till we had embraced every color and every combination

of marks, and we would then find that each “authority” had a horse to

sell corresponding with the Prophet’s preferences. Now the fact is that

Mohammed was neither a horseman nor a horse breeder, and the whole tenor

of history goes to show that he neither knew nor cared very much about

horses. In his first pilgrimage to Mecca, after the battles referred to

above, the privilege for which was secured by negotiation, a hundred

horsemen, it is said, were started and kept one day’s journey in advance

of the main body of pilgrims. The great numbers following Mohammed on

this pilgrimage admonished his old enemies of Mecca of the futility of

attempting to resist his power longer, and they fled from the city during

the continuance of the ceremonies. A year or two later he summoned all

the tribes of Northern and Eastern Arabia to follow him again to Mecca,

and they had too lively a sense of their own safety to disobey. Due time

was given for preparation, the rendezvous was at Medina, and a vast host

from all Northern and Western Arabia congregated there for a purpose that

might be to fight, or it might be to pray. Mohammed mounted his camel

and the word was passed, “On to Mecca.” As against such a multitude the

Meccans saw that resistance was hopeless, and the city was surrendered

without either side striking a blow. Arrayed in great splendor and

mounted on his camel, the Prophet made the requisite number of circuits

round the holy place and then entered and ordered all the idols that

had been set up there to be destroyed, and his followers then shouted,

“Allah is Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet!” Thus he became master of

all Arabia—and woe to the Christian or the Jew who stood in his way. Two

years afterward he died, and there is nothing in his life or history to

indicate that he ever owned a horse or that he ever mounted one, except

on a single occasion. In the ten short years of his public life he had

something more important on hand than to determine how to breed horses.

In studying the Arabian horse in the light of what he has done and what

he has failed to do, we are indebted to English writers for little

snatches of experiences extending back for a period of about two hundred

and fifty years. The earliest English writer who has had anything to say

about the Arabian horse was the Duke of Newcastle, who seems to have

known a great deal about the various types and breeds of horses of his

day. During the period of the Commonwealth it appears he devoted his

time, in the Netherlands, to training horses in the _manege_ of that day.

From his experience in this employment he became an expert in the form,

structure, and docility of the different kinds of horses that he handled.

When Charles II. was brought back and placed upon the throne, the duke

also came to his own, and being a personal friend of the king he became

his counselor and adviser in all matters relating to the improvement of

the horses of the realm. In 1667 the duke published his famous book upon

the horse, in which he speaks right out on any and every question that

he touches. There can be no doubt that he knew more about horses and

horse history than any man of his day. In speaking of the Arabian horse

he says: “I never saw but one of these horses, which Mr. John Markham, a

merchant, brought over, and said he was a right Arabian. He was a bay,

but a little horse, and no rarity for shape, for I have seen many English

horses far finer. Mr. Markham sold him to King James for five hundred

pounds, and being trained up for a course (race), when he came to run

every horse beat him.”

It is generally held that this Markham Arabian was the first of that

breed ever brought to England, and this seems to be established by the

fact that historians antedating his arrival make no mention of any

Arabian horse before this one, and those following always speak of this

horse as the first. In speaking of the powers of endurance of the Arabian

horse, the duke says: “They talk they will ride fourscore miles in a day

and never draw the bridle. When I was young I could have bought a nag

for ten pounds that would have done as much very easily.” The duke’s

masterful knowledge of the subject, as well as his special official

relations to the king, gave him control of whatever was done or attempted

in the direction of improving the racing stock of England. Tradition

informs us that “King Charles II. sent abroad the master of the horse

to procure a number of foreign horses and mares for breeding, and the

mares brought over by him (as also many of their produce) have since been

called Royal Mares.” It is very doubtful whether any such importation

was ever made. The question has been discussed, from time to time and

even recently, but nobody has ever yet discovered who was “Master of the

Horse,” to what country he was sent or what the character of the mares

he brought home, or where he got them. The fair presumption is that

these “Royal Mares” were myths and that they were created merely for the

purpose of putting a finish on certain very uncertain pedigrees, just as

a trotting-horse man would finish a pedigree that he knew nothing about

by saying, “out of a thoroughbred mare.” As a matter of course it has

always been assumed that these “Royal Mares” were of distinctively pure

Arabian blood. But, if we admit that such an importation was really made,

we must consider that it was made under the direction and control of the

Duke of Newcastle, the king’s mentor in all horse affairs, and this is

sufficient proof that there was no Arabian blood about the “Royal Mares.”

As the size of the English race horse and especially his weight of bone

commenced to increase soon after this time, it strikes me as probable

that this was the wise and guiding motive of the duke in making his

selections of the “Royal Mares.”