ARABIAN HORSES AND RIDERS.—Ottoman’s Arab camp, or the “Wild East Show’ as it was finally called, was one of the World’s Fair enterprises which, with various striking features, was yet financially unsuccessful. The Bedouins, with their families and equipments, were brought to Chicago by a private company, and the original intention of the promoters of the enterprise was to exhibit them in a park near the Exposition, but this design was, for some reason, impossible of execution, and the performances were given in a park in the western part of the city, remote from the Fair and from the business district. The attendance was not such as to make the exhibition profitable. Toward the end of the Fair the aggregation secured a concession in the Midway Plaisance and attained something of the popularity it might, with better fortunes, have had from the beginning. The camp of Bedouins afforded an interesting spectacle, and the rough riders of the desert showed themselves as much at home in their feats as the cowboys and Indians who gave performances elsewhere. In no show of the Plaisance or Fair proper, was a more gallant scene afforded than where these wild horsemen gave proof that the century-old reputation of their race, as horsemen, had been fully merited. Their arms and trappings were picturesque in the extreme, and the Arabian horses were worthy of their daring riders. The exhibition did not begin at the Fair in time to retrieve fully the fortunes of the company, and the beautiful horses were eventually sold, many of them remaining in Chicago.
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