original companions, the horse, the cow, and the sheep; he chooses to
be a grazier rather than to till the ground. He feeds his horses,
flocks, and herds on its spontaneous vegetation, and then in turn he
feeds himself on their flesh. He remains on one spot while the natural
crop yields them sustenance; when it is exhausted, he migrates to
another. He adopts, what is called, the life of a _nomad_. In maritime
countries indeed he must have recourse to other expedients; he fishes in
the stream, or among the rocks of the beach.[2] In the woods he betakes
himself to roots and wild honey; or he has a resource in the chase, an
occupation, ever ready at hand, exciting, and demanding no perseverance.
But when the savage finds himself inclosed in the continent and the
wilderness, he draws the domestic animals about him, and constitutes
himself the head of a sort of brute polity. He becomes a king and father
of the beasts, and by the economical arrangements which this pretension
involves, advances a first step, though a low one, in civilization,
which the hunter or the fisher does not attain.

And here, beyond other animals, the horse is the instrument of that
civilization. It enables him to govern and to guide his sheep and
cattle; it carries him to the chase, when he is tempted to it; it
transports him and his from place to place; while his very locomotion
and shifting location and independence of the soil define the idea, and
secure the existence, both of a household and of personal property. Nor
is this all which the horse does for him; it is food both in its life
and in its death;--when dead, it nourishes him with its flesh, and,
while alive, it supplies its milk for an intoxicating liquor which,
under the name of _koumiss_, has from time immemorial served the Tartar
instead of wine or spirits. The horse then is his friend under all
circumstances, and inseparable from him; he may be even said to live on
horseback, he eats and sleeps without dismounting, till the fable has
been current that he has a centaur's nature, half man and half beast.
Hence it was that the ancient Saxons had a horse for their ensign in
war; thus it is that the Ottoman ordinances are, I believe, to this day
dated from "the imperial stirrup," and the display of horsetails at the
gate of the palace is the Ottoman signal of war. Thus too, as the
Catholic ritual measures intervals by "a Miserere," and St Ignatius in
his Exercises by "a Pater Noster," so the