The Horses of the Sahara and the Manners of the DesertDaumas, E. (Eugène)
History
The Horses of the Sahara and the Manners of the Desert
Daumas, E. (Eugène)
Arabian horse; Sahara
I have only one more word to say on the portrait of the thoroughbred
horse sketched by Abd-el-Kader. The Emir takes it at one view, and as
inseparable one from the other, both the physical and moral qualities.
In his opinion physical qualities alone will never constitute a perfect
horse. He must also by his intelligence and by his affection for the
master who feeds, who tends, who rides him, unite with him as an
integral part. To demand such qualities from a horse is simply placing
him, in the intellectual order, immediately after man, just as,
according to the legend, he has been placed in the order of creation.
The Europeans are, I am aware, far from entertaining such a high opinion
of the animal, but may we not err in the opposite degree?
THE BARB.
We have often heard it said that the horse of our African possessions,
to whose rare qualities we have endeavoured to do justice, was very
inferior to the true Arabian. Notwithstanding a conviction based on a
lengthened experience and a grave study of the subject, we have made it
our duty to take up and discuss an opinion put forth with an air of
authority. We were willing to accept as umpire in this dispute, a man
whose intelligence, whose habits, whose whole life, render him a supreme
judge in all matters relating to horse-flesh—the Emir Abd-el-Kader. We
addressed to that genuine horseman a letter in which we frankly
expressed the objections which each of our assertions had encountered.
His reply to this letter is given below. It will be seen from this
curious document that the Emir does not confine himself to the
confirmation of the proposition we advanced, but develops by reflections
or by facts the whole of our opinions. According to his statement, the
Barbary horse, so far from degenerating from the Arab, is, on the
contrary, superior to him. The Berbers, he says, formerly inhabited
Palestine, where they reared the animal that has become the type of a
perfect war horse. Having emigrated to Africa through the vicissitudes
of their life of adventure, they paid the utmost attention to the guest
of their tents, the instrument of their hunting expeditions, their
comrade in the fight. Their horses thus preserved such eminent
qualities, that an Asiatic sovereign engaged in a perilous war, sent for
them from the Berbers. The reader will appreciate the value of this
historical dissertation which, from whatever point of view it be
examined, does not the less possess an interest that cannot be
contested. It is quite certain that the Barbary horse is indebted to the
climate in which he flourishes, to the education which he receives, to
the food that is given to him, to the privations that are familiar to
him, for a vigour that enables him to equal, if not to surpass the most
vaunted steeds of Persia and Upper Egypt. Supported by the following
letter, we hold ourselves justified in repeating that all the horses of
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