“Besides the full-grown animals, Ibn Rashid’s yards contain thirty or forty foals and yearlings, beautiful little creatures, but terribly starved and miserable. Foals bred in the desert are poor enough, but those in town have a positively sickly appearance. Tied all day long by the foot, they seem to have quite lost heart, and show none of the playfulness of their age. Their tameness, like that of the ‘fowl and the brute,’ is shocking to see.” The contrast between the actual treatment of these royal animals and the following Arab recipe for rearing a colt is sufficiently striking: “During the first month of his life let him be content with his mother’s milk; it will be sufficient for him. Then, during five months, add to this natural supply goats’ milk, as much as he will drink. For six months more give him the milk of camels, and besides a measure of wheat steeped in water for a quarter of an hour and served in a nose-bag. At a year old the colt will have done with milk; he must be fed on wheat and grass, the wheat dry from a nose-bag, the grass green, if there is any. “At two years old he must work or he will be worthless. Feed him now, like a full-grown horse, on barley; but in summer let him also have gruel daily at mid-day. Make the gruel thus: Take a double-handful of flour and mix it in water well with your hands till the water seems like milk, then strain it, leaving the dregs of the flour, and give what is liquid to the colt to drink. “Be careful, from the hour he is born, to let him stand in the sun; shade hurts horses; but let him have water in plenty when the day is hot. The colt must now be mounted and taken by his owner everywhere with him, so that he shall see everything and learn courage. He must be kept constantly in exercise, and never remain long at his manger. He should be taken on a journey, for the work will fortify his limbs. At three years old he should be trained to gallop; then, if he be true blood, he will not be left behind. Yalla!” Lady Blunt thinks this represents a traditional practice of rearing colts in Arabia since the days of the Prophet Mohammet. From Hail, the party joined the Haj, or caravan of Persian pilgrims, returning home from Mecca and Medina; and after eighty-four days’ travel from Damascus their Arabian journey came to an end at Bagdad. Their route from Hail took them far north of Palgrave’s route, so that they did not visit Ri’ad, the headquarters, in Palgrave’s time, of the Wahabee ruler Feysul. Lady Blunt, however, in an appendix to her narrative enlightens us in regard to the end of Feysul, and the continued decline of the Wahabee regime after the visit of Palgrave.