Ishmael is the personification of the Arab people. He calls the horses to him, selects the best, and trains them for racing, for the chase, and for war. It is by their aid that he will live upon the plunder of the rich caravans that may venture upon his territory, and will make forays from the land of hunger and thirst into the land of abundance. The horse has made him King of the desert, and in return he makes a friend, a companion of his horse. Between them there is only one interest. Nevertheless, the Arabs, hard pressed to the eastward by the powerful armies of the Kings of Abyssinia, to the northward by the people of Jehovah,—one-half of them absorbed and decimated in these great struggles; and the other half shut in within their arid peninsula and divided by intestine dissensions—the Arabs degenerated, and with them their horses suffered deterioration. It was at Jerusalem the Noble, and according to the legend in the stud of Solomon, that the true type of the race was exclusively preserved. Travellers, perhaps conductors of the caravans which in those days used to arrive in Jerusalem in great numbers, receive as a gift certain horses, of whose value and fine qualities they are ignorant. But under the influence of peace commerce again discovers the long disused road from Central Asia to the seaports of Syria, and the Arabs interested in making common cause with one another reform themselves by mutual alliances between tribes. The horse, on his part, follows this new phase of their fortunes. At a later period, a fresh degeneracy arises in consequence of the immigration into Arabia of foreigners, Jews and Christians, and from quarrels among the Arabs themselves. Some few noble and powerful tribes, such as the Koreishites, for example, the most powerful and the most noble of all, had preserved a traditional love of the horse as inseparable from their original dignity. But in order that Mohammed's task should have any chance of accomplishment, it was necessary to extend to all and to popularise this exceptional passion of a few, and equally essential was it to condense into one national unity the disunited elements of which the tribes of Arabia then consisted. We have seen with what persistance the Prophet reverts to this necessity, in the Koran, in his conversations, and in his teachings, and how he made the careful tendance of horses an obligation of Mussulman life, and an article of faith in the Believer. In this manner, from the Hidjra to our own times, the condition of the Arab horses has unavoidably gone on improving. Has he not said: "Whoso feeds and tends a horse for the triumph of religion, makes a magnificent loan to Allah"?