In primitive Red Indian life the tribes were {136} seated too far apart to get at each other for serious pitched battles. In lack of horse transport trade was limited to the waterways, and warfare to minor internecine pleasantries which kept young men in training. From the sixteenth century the pressure of white men driving in from the Atlantic began to affect these almost civilised people, forcing them to abandon their farms, fisheries and towns, reducing them to savagery and compelling them to trespass on occupied hunting grounds. All nations were set by the ears. Then they began to get ponies, and the rest was chaos. [Sidenote: The mounted nations] So perhaps in Asia, the movements of tribes afoot may have been gradual overflows from crowded districts, and warfare a matter of cheery little forays to please the young. The possession of ponies gave a tremendous impetus to war and trade. From that time onward the tribes which were best mounted had a political future, and there was a slight handicap in favour of nations with Libyan Bays of fourteen hands two inches as compared with tribes using the Duns of Asia. The Egyptians had horses in the eighteenth century B.C., the Israelites a few in 1580, the Hittites and Canaanites in 1540, the Assyrians not until 1500 B.C. Now Egypt, Canaan, {137} Syria, Mesopotamia and Arabia had no native horses. The Egyptians got horses from the Sahara, the Asiatics mainly through Armenia. I cannot believe that the crossing of small Duns with small Bays in any region bred heavy horses for the needs of war. [Sidenote: Heavy stock and strong food] A practical nation in the breeding trade would not rely for heavy stock upon the crossing of light strains. The way to get heavy stock is with strong food. Such oases of great deserts as Egypt and Mesopotamia had very little pasture, so long as their nations prospered. Every acre then was needed for strong grains. The well-mounted conquering nations were not those with splendid pasturage like Northern Africa or Southern Russia, but those which had no pasturage at all, who were compelled to feed horses on fodder more potent than any natural grass. The King's people might go without, but one may be perfectly certain that the King's horses lived on corn. What tribe or race of folk inherited Egypt or Mesopotamia mattered nothing, what strain of horses they owned mattered very little, but the people and the horses, for the time being in possession of irrigated oases walled about by deserts, raised the chariotry or the cavalry which ruled the surrounding world. {138} [Sidenote: Chariots and cavalry] Each nation passed through a phase when chariotry were the only mounted troops of tactical use in war. The importing of the largest and heaviest horses to be had, the feeding of these with grain, and cross-breeding of the Dun types with the Bay produced by slow degrees a remount for use by cavalry.