The Moors never make hay, but feed their homes upon chopped straw and barley, which they eat out of a nose-bag put over their heads, as is the custom in England; in spring they are chiefly fed upon grass. In the stables there are no mangers, but the horses are fastened by means of two iron pins driven into the ground, one before and the other behind, to which the fore and hind legs are respectively fastened in such a manner as to prevent the animal from moving more than a foot either backwards or forwards: their collar is also made fast to the front pin, which is provided with a ring for that purpose, and they cat their provender off the ground. Formerly it was the practice for the Moors, in shoeing their horses, to cut off the front part of the hoof; a flat shoe of a triangular shape was then put on, with one of the aides in front, and the other two nearly meeting in an acute angle behind the frog : but this unnatural mode of disfiguring these noble animals was put an end to about the year 1700, by an order of the Emperor Muhey Ishmael, who commanded that thence forth all his subjects should upon pain of death, shoe their horses with round shoes. The Berbers and Kabyles, the aboriginal inhabi tants of the country between the Sahara and the shores of the Mediterranean, and who are now for the most part, confined to the mountainous and most inaccessible districts of North Africa, never shoo their homes at all; yet so hardy are these animals, and so much tougher are their hoofs than those of our own horses, that \\Indium, who in the beginning of the last century accompanied a British embassy to the court of the emperor of Morocco, and who has left all interesting itecomit of his journey, assures us that he saw one of them which had travelled 50 miles without resting, and that though he had been twice during the journey obliged to cross a mountain full of rocks, yet it was not perceived that he had the least crack in his hoof, nor any apparent injury of his feet.
There is a pitrticular breed of tho noble Barbs, called SI.' rubah Er'recl& (literally Wind-Sucker), or the Desert Horse, which is only found among the tribes of the Sahara, and which, when transported beyond the sends of the Desert, soon languishes and dies. The fleet ness, temperance, and endurance of this animal, if we are to believe half the stories related by travellers, almost eurreues the bounds of credibility. " When thou shah meet a sh'rubah er'rech," pays a Moorish
proverb, " and say to his rider, 'Salem Alikum,' before he can answer 'Alikum Salem,' he will be far from thee, for his speed is like the whirlwind." By the aaaist.nce of this animal, or of the IlciHe, or Desert-Camel, the Arab can upon an emergency cross the Sahara in a short time. The Slerubah Er'reeh, however, is neither so useful nor so economical an animal as the desert-camel ; it is true that his spend is greater, but he is neither so abstemious nor so enduring. The Heirie will travel for 15 or 20 successive days, and requires but a handful of dried dates in the morning, and a supply of water every third day ; upon an extraordinary emergency be can even travel for six or seven days without this important element ; but the desert horse must have a feed of camel's milk once a day, and for this purpose there must be a couple of female camels wherever he goes. Camel's milk is his only sustenance ; and indeed it would be difficult to find him any other in the parched and arid deserts which he inhabits ; he does not like wheat, hay, straw, or any other kind of food, and if forced to live upon these substances, soon loses all his valuable qualities. In his native country the desert-horse is principally employed for the purpose of hunting the ostrich and gazelle, at which sports he is amazingly expert, nor is there any other being that can equal these animals in speed. When brought to Marocco, as is sometimes the case, these horses soon decline under the change of food and climate. " Alkaid Omar ben Dandy," says Jackson in his Account of the Empire of Morocco,' "when governor of Mogodor, had two Saharawan horses in his stables ; but finding it inconvenient to feed them constantly upon camel's milk, he resolved to try them on the usual food given to Barbary horses. He accordingly had their food gradually changed, and in a short time fed them altogether with barley, and occasionally with wheat and straw ; they grew fat, and looked better than before, but they lost their speed, and soon afterwards died, as if nature had designed them to be appropriated solely to that district whose arid and extensive plains render their use essentially necessary."