The Saharenes declare that the French shoes are much too heavy, and in long and rapid excursions must be dreadfully fatiguing to the articulations, and cause much mischief to the fetlock joints. 'Look at our horses,' say they, 'how they throw up the earth and sand behind them! How nimble they are! How lightly they lift their feet! How they extend or contract their muscles! They would be as awkward and as clumsy as yours did we not give them shoes light enough not to burden their feet, and the materials of which, as they grow thinner, commingle with the hoof, and with it form one solid body.' When to these remarks General Daumas has answered, that he did not discover any of the inconveniences pointed out in the European mode of shoeing, the Arabs have replied: 'How should you do so? Cover, as we do, in a single day, the distance you take five or six days to accomplish, and then you will see. Grand marches you make, you Christians, with your horses! As far as from my nose to my ear!'
Petrus Bellonius Cenomanus,[1] more than two hundred years ago, says that the shoes used by the Turks for their horses were in his day scarcely one-half the weight of the European shoes—one of the latter having material enough to make two of the former. The Turks were accustomed to buy the large and small shoes ready made, as at present, but the holes were not made in them. They were fitted to the feet, and the holes formed when required for use. The smith sat like a tailor with his legs doubled under him; and bending over the anvil, with a well-tempered punch and hammer the shoe was perforated, and another sharp square punch was twisted round in them to widen
- ↑ Aldrovarudus. De Quadrupedibus, p. 50.
