Norm53
First Sergeant
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2019
- Location
- Cape May, NJ
"The Spanish horses were also, by the purest of accidents, brilliantly suited to the arid and semiarid plains and mesas of Mexico and the American West. The Iberian mustang was a far different creature from its larger grain-fed cousin from farther north in Europe. It was a desert horse, one whose remote ancestors had thrived on the level, dry steppes of central Asia. Down the ages, the breed had migrated to North Africa by way of the Middle East, mixing blood with other desert hybrids along the way. The Moorish invasions brought it to Spain. By that time it had become, more or less, the horse that found its way to America: light, small, and sturdy, barely fourteen hands high, with a concave Arabian face and tapering muzzle. This horse didn't look like much, but it was smart, fast, trainable, bred to live off the grasses of the hot Spanish plains and to go long distances between watering holes. Possessed of great endurance, the animal could forage for food even in winter."
(Empire of the Summer Moon, p. 29)
(Empire of the Summer Moon, p. 29)