It was in the days of Queen Elizabeth that English envoys and merchants found their way by water and the trail of the Dun pony from the White Sea to Persia and on even to Goa on the Indian Coast. The trail of the Dun horse always led to adventure. Daring traders went to swap gems for silk at the Court of the great Mogul, or sold white ladies of the Caucasus to Haroun al Raschid down in Bagdad, or to Suliman the Magnificent at Stamboul, or offered purple shell-fish dyes of Tyre to tempt the young Prince Siddatha, or came from the East with gold and frankincense and myrrh and laid them at the feet of a Child in Bethlehem, or journeyed from Sweden with swords for the Prophet of Islam. III. THE BAY HORSE OF AFRICA. [Sidenote: The Bay horse of Africa] Apart from the sacredness of the Old Testament as dealing with the origin of a religion, we may, without offence to fellow Christians, {130} read this collection of Hebrew books as the secular history of an able but unholy people. [Sidenote: Israel] The collection of stories known as Genesis consisted mainly of heroic ballads, cast in the form of verse which can be easily and accurately remembered. These ballads were recited until at the time of the Babylonian Captivity in the fourth century B.C. the people learned to write and set down their annals in the form of manuscript. We may find the stories lacking in the salt of humour; we may doubt that singers and scribes were apt to improve on the original words, piling a deal of exaggeration on the naked facts; but at the very worst these legends of old Israel are terse, clear, consistent and gloriously true to human life and character. I had read the story of Jacob the Sneak, and Joseph the Prig, of gallant Esau, and gentle Ishmael in camps of live Red Indians, before I realised that Genesis is true to primitive life as a whole, and that, after forty centuries, the legend still glows and burns in its immortal truth, beauty, and power. The story deals with wealthy Arabian stockmen. They and their neighbours bred she camels for milking, rode camels and asses, and used both for pack animals. They seem to {131} have valued oxen for heavy draught as well as for beef and hides, or they would scarcely have bothered to winter the cattle in stables. As any stockmen sees at a glance the sheep and goats were handled by experienced owners. The stock would not have paid without a market, so, as these Arab sheiks had plenty of gold, we may presume that they dealt in wool, beef, hides, and draught animals with the fortified trading towns of the watered farming districts. No doubt they sold pack beasts also to the trading caravans. There were no horses in the world as known to these folk. Abraham visited Egypt somewhere about the nineteenth century B.C. and found no horses there. [Sidenote: The Barb]