Some sixteen or eighteen years ago, an English gentleman of wealth and intelligence—Mr. Wilfrid S. Blunt—got it into his head that the way to improve the English race horse was to secure fresh infusions of pure Arabian blood. He was industrious in propagating his fad, in an amateurish way, through the columns of the English newspapers, evincing great zeal and a great lack of knowledge of the hundreds of experiments in the same direction and in the history of his own country that had proved disastrous. But he had a will of his own and a bank account that enabled him to carry out his views to their own realization. In the autumn of 1877 he made up a pleasant family party, consisting of his wife, Lady Anne, and two of her lady friends and started for Arabia, with the full determination to find the best and to buy nothing that was not of the purest and best lineage that could be found in all that country. Fortunately, Lady Anne carefully noted down everything that transpired in their journeyings and after the return wrote a very pleasant and readable book, understood to have been edited by her husband in some of its features. The title of the book—“The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates”—did not strike me pleasantly, for I never knew that any of the numerous Bedouin tribes were to be found on the Euphrates. But my purpose is not to criticise either the book or its title, but to follow the party over its itinerary and discover just where Mr. Blunt found the blood he was looking for, and upon what evidence he accepted it as “the best blood.” With this view I will carefully give his own language, so far as it applies to the point in view.
His first purchase was at Aleppo, where he got a mare he named Hagar, as he says, “for a very moderate sum.” “She was of the Kehilan-Ajuz breed.” “When purchased she was in very poor condition, having just gone through the severe training of a campaign.” “She was bred by the Gommussa, the most able of the horse-breeding tribes, had passed from them to the Roala, and had now been captured and ridden some two hundred miles, in hot haste, for sale to Aleppo.” “We never met anything in our travels that could compete with her over a distance, and she has often run down foxes and even hares, without assistance, carrying thirteen stone on her back.” This was the first experience of the English “tenderfoot” among Syrian horsethieves. According to his own showing, he bought her from the fellow who had stolen her and had ridden her two hundred miles to escape, and he accepted what the thief told about the breeding of the mare as true. The thief knew just what Mr. Blunt wanted and he shaped the pedigree and tracing to suit the purchaser. Mr. Blunt had no knowledge of this mare’s breeding, nor where she came from; still, her blood was to become one of the great influences in renovating the English race horse. This incident is of no importance, in itself, except as it illustrates the universal conditions under which amateurs buy horses in the Orient.