The white Houyhnhnnm, Burr-Hurr-Hurr, made it his hobby to observe the vast seas beyond the northern coasts of Houyhnhnnm Land to see the ships pass left and right. Hundreds of years ago many an occasional ship flashed her sails at them as she passed by the island, and ever since the arrival of the cultured Yahoo, Gyuhlhlvrrrfff, more Yahoos from the northern lands took visits.

Unlike the brutish Yahoos of his land, the fair-skinned Sea Yahoos from beyond the seas were covered in clothes: some were pale and plain, and some were brown and earthy. Some of the men wore brown brimmed hats, and some of the women wore light-coloured hats and bonnets, both of which to protect them from the sun's beating rays. Many of them had been fascinated with his country, for they kept primitive Houyhnhnnms as laboring beasts, as Gyuhlhlvrrrfff described his own inverted kind and nation. To this folk of sophisticated tools and arts, his Houyhnhnnm Land is a fairyland ruled by a nation of intelligent talking horses, yet ravaged by barbarians who spend their lives dirtying themselves while fighting over precious specks on the ground. It was a secret that Gyuhlhlvrrrfff failed to protect, partly due to some Yahoos accidentally sighting or stumbling upon the island from their ships. Stricken by the intelligence of the Houyhnhnnms' culture, he spent his latter days avoiding his fellow Yahoos, preferring to spend his time talking to the local brutish Houyhnhnnms, even though he appeared to have lost his mind

From these Yahoos they learned their language and shared their knowledge and products, however grudgingly. To any Houyhnhnnm, a Yahoo is always a savage Yahoo, regardless of what language or customs he or she practices, and so deserves the treatment of an unwelcome ruffian. The Northern Yahoos' fascination gave way to greed, as certain Yahoos in black and white clothes began to seize some of the island's own Yahoos to be taken to their ships. They thought that all that the island's Yahoos can use to fight them are their fists and anything these savages can throw at them, and that the Houyhnhnnms there would only shoo them away. The Sea Yahoos, however, were armed with strange sticks that can quickly shoot little metal pellets. The sheer noise of these sticks frightened the bewildered island Yahoos into submission.

War, that is bringing many people to kill each other to finish a dispute or defeat an enemy, is a concept utterly foreign to the Houyhnhnnms' worldview. It was something only Gyuhlhlvrrrfff mentioned about as a terrible custom back in his homeland. The Houyhnhnnms can use tools with their hooves, but they never knew how to use them to hurt enemies, except butchering animals for their materials. The only fighting that they do know (as a last resort) was using their hooves to kick or trample, or biting, nothing more.

And this made it easy for the Sea Yahoos to conquer the island. Spurned by a desire to bring it and its Yahoo inhabitants under their banner, they disregarded the Houyhnhnnms' lax prohibition, and sailed in hundreds of large ships to its northern coast. They also declared that their campaign was also to save the Yahoos from the Houyhnhnnms' routine of slaughter for leather.

Two more Houyhnhnnms, one grey and one sorrel, rushed to the coast where they saw Burr watch the ships slowly grow from the distant horizon.

"Burr!" one of them called. "We need to go to the ships, now."

"But that is such a beautiful sight, Klurrhf," Burr responded.

"Have you went Hhnm-Yahoo already?" the other Houyhnhnnm said. "What the Sea Yahoos will do to you will be worse than what you enjoy seeing for the moment, as soon as they step out of their great ships."

"We must hurry, Burr, for our nobles are on the way to the ships to the New Southern Home," Klurrhf continued. "The longer we tarry, the easier will it be for the Sea Yahoos to catch us and torture us."

So the three Houyhnhnnms galloped away, down the dirt roads and into their almost-deserted capital. Bands of Yahoos, armed with sticks and crudely-hewn clubs, prowled the streets, having broken free from their Houyhnhnnm masters who regularly beat them for their misbehaviour.

One of them, a red-headed ogre of a man, pointed his club at the three. "Uugthag!" he bellowed, gesturing his lackeys to come and beat them to a pulp, "Ugthag mukh mig'-uzgumig a'agak eh! Kabuwogu, lakkizegbyo!"

"RUN!" Klurrhf cried. The three Houyhnhnnms galloped, but two of them were caught within dragnets, leaving Burr to avoid their grisly fate of being beaten, torn to pieces, and cooked on a fire. Apparently the Yahoos are more intelligent than what they used to be, but even more crueler and destructive. He fled the southern limits of the city, and past the forests and fields to the ships by the shores beyond Mount Rhuurrhurrhurrgh, where, according to Houyhnhnnm legend, their race was given intelligence from the First Mother, the Creator of their world and mother of all Houyhnhnnms. Behind him the Sea Yahoos are conquering their island, and enslaving the now-aggressive Yahoos who are killing each other on the burning streets.

But the storms above him began to coalesce into a cyclone, with its eye moving and focusing itself at his shifting location. Then it fired a blinding, searing beam at Burr, and he was gone. For a while its sudden noise and light stopped the fighting all over the island, for it was a spectacularly brief sight for both races of Yahoos to behold, and then it went away with the dissipating storm and their little peace.

With the surviving Houyhnhnnms foolishly ending up on the frozen wastes of the far south, and the last Land Yahoos being put to slavery or education to the ways of the Sea Yahoos, the Houyhnhnnm civilization – the shining star of the Southern Hemisphere – was extinguished by Yahoo hands.