In his horses the Arab has immemorially had the means to gratify his vanity, to give him his best beloved sport, to enable him to make war, and, above all, to run away. The distances that these horses can go on scant rations and small quantities of water seem incredible, while that they can carry heavy weight without inconvenience is entirely true, for I have tried them. But we have heard weird stories of them from the Arabic poets themselves, and also from the English who have used what they could get for their sports in India, where pony racing has ever been, since the English occupation, a most attractive diversion. A frequent expression that one comes across in old books of life in India is that some named Arab horse had a head so small that it could be put in a quart cup. That, of course, was an absurd exaggeration, but they undoubtedly have very small and handsome heads. Their heads, I am sure, were never so small nor their necks so long as the painters have represented the heads and necks of the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Barb to have been. At that time in England, however, the painters even took the liberty of exaggerating the length of neck and diminutiveness of head of the women who sat to them. It was the fashion of the time, and to that fashion we owe the loss of correct likenesses of two of the famous horses of those breeds that have left their impress upon the fleetest racers in the world, besides contributing the reproducing capacity to all the horse types that amount to anything in the civilized world. CHAPTER THREE THE THOROUGHBRED IN AMERICA