This Country Has Many Excellent Horses, Which The Inhabitants Know Well
How To Manage.
Besides those bred in the country, they have many of the
Tartarian, Persian, and Arabian breeds, which last is considered as the
best in the world.
They are about as large as ours, and are valued among
them at as dear a rate as we usually esteem ours, perhaps higher. They
are kept very daintily, every good horse being allowed one man to dress
and feed him. Their provender is a species of grain called donna,
somewhat like our pease, which are boiled, and then given cold to the
horses, mixed with coarse sugar; and twice or thrice a week they have
butter given them to scour their bodies. There are likewise in this
country a great number of camels, dromedaries, mules, asses, and some
rhinoceroses. These are huge beasts, bigger than the fattest oxen to be
seen in England, and their skins lie upon their bodies in plaits or
wrinkles.
They have many elephants, the Great Mogul having not fewer than 1400 for
his own use, and all the nobles of the country have more or less, some
having to the number of an hundred. Though the largest of all
terrestrial animals, the elephants are wonderfully tractable, except
that they are mad at times; but at all other times, a little boy is able
to rule the largest of them. I have seen some thirteen feet high; but I
have been often told that some are fifteen feet in height at the least.
Their colour is universally black, their skins very thick and smooth,
and without hair.
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