The late ruler had rarely less than 200 mares, whose value ranged between $1500 and $2000: at present, however, the number is greatly reduced. They require as much nursing as European dogs: in the morning they must be picketed in the courtyard to ‘smell the air’; during the day they must take shelter from the sun under a long cajan-roofed shed; they must at all times he defended from rain and dew; and they must be fed with dry fodder—here, as in Paraguay, the belief is that the indigenous green meat becomes fatal to imported beasts. We found the treatment very rough. The animals were ungroomed, and mostly they had puffed legs, the result of being kept standing night and day upon a slope of hard boarding. Amongst them I was shown a curious Nejdi, which reminded me of Lady Hester Stanhope’s pampered beasts; the coat was silver-white, the shoulders were pinkish, and the saddle-back amounted almost to a deformity. The favourite charger of the late Sayyid is a little bay with black points, standing about 14 hands 2 inches: its straight fetlocks are well fitted for stony ground, it wears the mane almost upon the withers, and the shoulder is well thrown back, barely leaving room for the saddle. The hind-quarter, that weak point in the Arab, is firmly and strongly made, and the tail is thin, switchlike, carried nearly straight, as usual with the best blood, and remarkably high. The beau-ideal of a Nejdi is an animal all shoulder and quarter, connected by a bit of barrel; and to this pitch of excellence we are gradually breeding up our English horses. The charger in question is of the ancient Oman race, once celebrated for endurance: the late Sayyid, however, injured his stud by crossing foal and dam, brother and sister, till the animals fined down and dwindled to mere dwarfs. I remarked that, here as elsewhere, the Arabs have learned from Europeans to trace the genealogy of their horses through the sire, a practice unknown to the sons of the desert. All the best horses in Zanzibar come from Oman: an inferior strain is exported by Brava (Barawa), and the Somali country. The latter sends good little beasts somewhat like those of the Pernambucan Province; but worn out by long marches and scant feeding, they usually die during the first rains. Upon the mainland they will live for years. Here, however, the new importations at first fatten; then they get foul; the sweat becomes fetid; they lose breath and become unfit for work, till fatal disease manifests itself by foam from the mouth. As in Malabar and Mauritius, where the field-officers have often been dismounted, it is next to impossible to keep horses in health and condition: they are also costly, $150 to $200, German crowns, being asked for Kadishs or garrons.