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Title: Horses
Author: Roger Pocock
Contributor: J. Cossar Ewart
Release date: March 25, 2024 [eBook #73259]
Language: English
Original publication: London: John Murray, 1916
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HORSES ***
HORSES
BY ROGER POCOCK
Author of "A Frontiersman"
Founder of the Legion of Frontiersmen
Editor of "The Frontiersman's Pocket Book"
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
PROFESSOR J. COSSAR EWART, F.R.S.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1917
FIRST EDITION ... FEB., 1916
REPRINTED ....... JUNE, 1917
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WORKS BY THE
SAME AUTHOR
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
JESSE OF CARIBOO.
THE SPLENDID BLACKGUARD.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
INTRODUCTION
I. THE ORIGIN OF THE HORSE
II. THE ORIGIN OF HORSE VARIETIES
III. HABITS OF OUTDOOR HORSES
IV. THE CONQUEST OF THE HORSE
V. THE HORSE IN HISTORY
VI. HORSEMANSHIP
VII. THE PLEASURE HORSE
VIII. THE SOLDIER HORSE
CONCLUSION
INDEX
{vii}
PREFACE.
By PROFESSOR J. COSSAR EWART, F.R.S.
Roger Pocock's book is in many ways remarkable. It affords evidence
of far more erudition than seems compatible with the unsettled and
busy life of a frontiersman. In some parts it is highly speculative,
deals with problems rarely discussed or even mentioned by
hippologists, in others it is severely practical, and affords
evidence of the close study of horses and horsemanship in all parts
of the world. The more the reader knows of cosmic changes and of the
origin, history and habits of horses, wild, feral and tame, the more
he is likely to be fascinated by "Horses." The chapters on the
History of the horse and on horsemanship are highly suggestive and
interesting, but at the moment those on the Pleasure Horse and the
Soldier {viii} Horse claim and deserve most attention. We soon
forgot about the loss of over 300,000 horses in the Boer War, with
the result that when the World War broke out in 1914 we were as
deficient in horses as in men and munitions. If the suggestions made
by a horsemaster who knows more about Range than Indoor or Pleasure
horses--suggestions as to the breeding, rearing, and management of
military horses--are duly considered we may have an ample supply of
suitable horses for our next war.
J. COSSAR EWART.
UNIVERSITY, EDINBURGH,
_September_, 1916.
{ix}
INTRODUCTION.
In the world where the horse lives there is one god. This god is
only a human creature, soldier by trade, stockrider, groom, or
drayman, but from him all things proceed. So far as the horse knows
his god made the girth gall and the harness, the oats and the
weather, and most certainly provides a lump of salt to lick, a canter
over turf, or any other little scrap of Heaven which falls into the
world. So he hates his god or loves him, fears or trusts him, trying
always to believe in him, even if he has at times to kick the deity
to make sure he is really divine. His religion, his conduct, his
whole value, depend upon that poor god, who is usually well-meaning
enough although wont to practise a deal of ignorance. To get better
horses one must improve the strain of gods.
As a god to horses I was never quite a success, however hard I tried
to live up to a difficult situation. I attempted, for example, to
learn about my horses from scientific books, yet found the scientific
writer rather trying. He calls an animal who never injured him by
such a name as Pachynolophus. This may be safe {x} enough behind the
animal's back, provided the philosopher makes quite sure that it is
really and truly extinct. But suppose he met one, would he call it a
perissodactylic ungulate to its face? Not at all! He would shin up
a tree and use worse language than that.
So if the Reader finds me ignorant, I beg him to lay the blame on men
of science who have dug up dead languages to make them a trade jargon
lest any education should reach the vulgar.
In his "Tropical Light," Surgeon General Woodruff, of the U.S. Army,
makes no mention of horses, but opens up a new field of thought.
Professor William Ridgeway, in his "Origin and Influence of the
Thoroughbred Horse," commands the respect of every horseman by his
researches in history. Professor Cossar Ewart, by far the greatest
living authority on hippology, has, apart from the teaching of his
books, most generously granted me his private criticism. For the
rest, burning my books behind me, I have ventured to write about
horses just because I love them. An old rough-neck of the American
ranges, who, living with horses, has tried to understand them, sets
down a few ideas which may be of use to horsemen.
{1}
CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGIN OF THE HORSE.
The material used in making a horse consists of grass and water. We
cannot make one because we are too ignorant. We know that for such a
making wisdom is needed beyond the last conception of our hearts,
knowledge far above the scope of our pretentious little sciences,
power omnipotent. Such attributes of wisdom, knowledge and power are
divine.
The Almighty made the horse out of grass and water. From the
generating engine which we call the sun He used certain energies
dimly perceived by our science, the chemical, physical, electrical
and psychical forces which evolved, moulded and coloured the
mechanism of a creature strong, swift, enduring and beautiful, which
is inhabited by a pure, courageous, generous spirit like that of a
{2} human child. It only remains for man to shut this creature up in
a box, and then cut off his tail.
HORSE ANCESTORS.--To find the origin of the horse, one must trace
back to the Sixth Day of the Creation, a period known to science as
the Dawn of Times Present. The lands and seas were not arranged as
in our maps, for there was a Continent on the site of the North
Atlantic, and broad seas rolled over the areas now filled by Europe
and North America. The climate, too, was different, for except along
the Equator, the skies were rarely clear, but very cloudy, with
enormous rains. The air was that of a hot-house, and, even at the
poles, trees such as the magnolia slept through the winter night, and
flowered in the warmth of the summer day. Except to leeward of big
continents and mountains the lands of the whole earth were a
continuous forest.
[Sidenote: The forest ages]
That was the closing phase of the long Age of Dragons. The principal
beasts of the sea, the land and the air were reptiles who laid and
hatched eggs instead of giving birth to living children. Few of them
were so large as the elephants and whales of our own time, the
greatest were already extinct, but still there were enough uncouth
and monstrous {3} beasts to make life exciting for the creatures on
which they fed.
[Sidenote: Longtails]
Hidden away in the forest there were little animals, of reptile
descent indeed, but quite free from family pride. These converted
reptiles were filled with the first divine quality which ever
appeared in the world, that mother-love which suckles the young at
the breast. We will call them the Longtails.
We humans often feel that there is not enough food to go round. We
find it hard to make both ends meet. We have to defend ourselves or
run from our enemies. So it was with the Longtails, who were always
hungry, hard up, and bound to fight or run. To put it roughly, some
tribes of the Longtails took to hunting, and became the ancestors of
all beasts of prey, some took to the trees as a refuge and feeding
place, and so became the ancestors of apes and men. But our business
is with those who took to a vegetarian diet and a habit of hiding or
running. These stood on tip toe looking out for danger, or ran to
escape being eaten. For such purposes the five-toed foot of the
ancestral reptile, most useful on soft ground, became somewhat clumsy
and awkward. For running they were better off {4} without a widely
splayed foot, so with the passing of many generations their needless
inner and outer toes shrank up the leg, became useless, and finally
withered away, until no trace remained. Here came the parting of the
vegetarian running animals into two big families. One family ran on
the middle pair of toes, thus becoming the ancestors of the
cloven-hoofed pig, deer, antelope, sheep, and ox. The other family
ran upon the middle or third toe, and became the ancestors of the
rhinoceros, the tapir, and the horse.
[Sidenote: Horse ancestors]
In the dense forests some of the vegetarian tribes of animals had on
the face two little bags or glands, to hold a strong-smelling liquid.
This perfume dropped on the herbage helped the members of the herd to
scent one another's trails, and so keep together for company or
defence. On the skulls of some kinds of horses there may still be
seen the hollow where the sac used to be.
The bald skin of the pig is boldly painted in splashes of pink and
brown to imitate the lights and shadows of forest undergrowth. The
forest ancestors of the horse were bald, and painted just the same
way; and their forest colouring may still be seen under the {5} hairy
coat, especially at the muzzle, where the hair is thin.
Of direct ancestors to the horse the earliest known was a little
fellow called Hyracotherium, coloured no doubt like the pig or the
hairless Mexican dog, and not bigger than a toy terrier. His range
extended from England to New Mexico, across the old Atlantic
continent. In him the original five toes had been reduced to four on
the front foot, and three on the hind, as with the tapir, who is the
very portrait of a horse-ancestor, although of larger growth.
[Sidenote: The tapir]
The tapir was ever a staunch conservative preferring death to reform.
So he remains, one of the most ancient of all living animals, and
relic of the long forgotten ages when the world was one big forest.
Nowadays the tapir range which covered all the northern continents
has shrunken to three districts widely sundered: Brazil, Mexico, and
the Malay Peninsula. In all three he is dying out, and in a few more
years will be extinct.
From the tapir's habits we may reason that the horse ancestors were
creatures not only of the deep glades of the forest, but also of
closely wooded mountain ranges. They were shy and harmless, feeding
at night on buds, leaves and the tender shoots of bushes, not on
grass. {6} To this diet the horse reverts quite readily in times of
famine, and in spring before the new grass sprouts, while the stable
vice called cribbing develops when there is not enough bulk in his
forage. The ancestors were fond of bathing, and when hunted would
take refuge in the water. It will be noted that although wild horses
do not bathe, the tame stock are excellent at swimming. The dappled
skin of the tapir had grown a coat of hair, dark brown in the
Americas, their original home. The long tail had shrunk, and in the
tapir is reduced to a mere bud.
But the main interest is in the tapir's snout, which, like the
elephant's trunk, has wonderful powers of holding and tearing down
branches, of feeling, sensing, and handling. The horse-ancestor had
a tapir snout of which the horse's upper lip is the survival. Play
with any horse and you will notice how the lips try to curl round and
grip one's fingers, to bring them within reach of the teeth. They
will curl round, grip, and tear the bunch grass or pampas grass of
the wild ranges. They are softer than velvet, delicate as a baby's
hand, sensitive as the fingers of an artist, will caress like a
woman's lips. The short hairs have an exquisite sense of touch, the
beard bristles {7} are used to sense grass with in the dark, and the
whole instrument is wondrously designed to select sweet grasses,
rejecting poisonous or unwholesome plants, so that feeding goes on
through hours of total darkness.
{Sidenote: The earlier world]
Had the Earth remained an unbroken forest under a roof of cloud there
had been no change since the Age of Dragons, no mighty drama of
Creation lifting man and horse out of the shadows to work together as
master and servant in the conquest and taming of the wilderness and
final subjugation of the World.
The one great factor in Earth's history is the lessening of the sun's
heat. Through long revolving ages the heat which the Earth received
from the sun diminished. Ever less vapour was lifted from the
Equatorial seas, the world-roof of cloud thinned out and disappeared;
direct sunshine poured down instead of the endless rains; there was
no moisture left to nourish the worldwide forest. Little by little
glades opened in the woodlands caused by drought, savannahs replaced
the timber, of tall jungle grasses, the openings widened into
prairies, and vast grassy steppes, thousands of miles in breadth,
evolved at their centres an aching core of desert. So we have
reached the phase when forest, prairie {8} and desert each claim
one-third of the land surface. We are passing on to the phase, which
Mars has reached, of world-wide desert, and beyond that is the far
future when, like the Moon, our Earth will swing dead through the
great deeps of space.
[Sidenote: The changing climate]
As the slow tremendous change of the Earth's climate narrowed the
forest, there was no longer food for all the woodland animals, and
some of them ventured out into the open glades. Here was a final
parting of the ways between the tapir who stayed in the woods and the
horse-ancestor who went out into the open. He was as yet no bigger
than a sheep, and still wore three toes on each foot, but the grass
diet agreed with him, for his tribe soon grew to the size of an
English donkey. The firmer ground no longer needed a wide tread to
the foot. Slowly the second and fourth toes shrank away up the leg,
and hung there like the dew claw of a dog, sometimes surviving more
or less even in human times, as with Julius Cæsar's charger. The
next ages evolved an animal the size of our ponies, running on one
toe hardened to the hoof we know to-day. The snout diminished, while
the tail became a fly whisk.
[Sidenote: Varieties of the horse]
So we have the beginning of a group of {9} animals the tarpan
(Prejevalski) zebra, quagga and ass. They are so much alike that one
cannot easily tell from the bones to which kind a skeleton belongs.
We must think of them, then, as varieties of the horse.
{10}
CHAPTER II.
THE ORIGIN OF HORSE VARIETIES.
PROPOSITIONS. In the study of any subject, if we can only begin by
clearing our vision, we shall have a sporting chance of avoiding
muddle.
The horse, like man or any other animal, reflects his environment in
times past and present.
1. If all countries had equal lighting, all horses would reflect one
colour.
2. If all countries were equally warm, all horses would grow the same
thickness of coat.
3. If all countries had equal moisture, all horses would show similar
endurance.
4. If all countries had one type of landscape, all horses would show
the same markings.
5. If all countries had one soil, all horses would be of one build.
6. If all countries had one weight of forage to the acre, all horses
would have one bulk.
{11}
7. If all countries had one quality of forage, all horses would have
one strength.
8. It follows that the study of light, heat, moisture, landscape,
soil, and food should explain the origin of the wild types of horses.
Our breeds are got by crossing from these varieties.
If, therefore, the facts which we find out by study shall correspond
with the reader's own experience of horses, no further proof is
needed; but if they fail to appeal to the reader's sense and
judgment, no balancing of proofs upon a point of falsehood will save
a useless book from the flames which await waste paper.
PART I. COLORATION BY SUNLIGHT.
[Sidenote: Coloration by sunlight]
The best way to train one's sense of colour is to dabble in landscape
painting. At first, one feels that there must be a personal Devil,
but with luck the colours begin to clear, showing that the tones of
night and the deep sea are based on indigo, while those of the day
are blue, red and yellow variously mixed. The blend of blue and red
is violet; the mixture of blue and yellow gives us green; and if we
want an orange we use red and yellow. The blending of all seven is
sunlight in theory, but makes mud in practice.
{12}
In nature there are permanent colours like those of the night, and
transient hues like those of the sunrise or sunset. So the blue of
the sky and yellow of the earth make the green of living plants which
seems to be permanent until, in decay, the blue turns out to be
transient, and passes away leaving the herbage yellow. It is odd
that the natural food of the horse is dried herbage from which the
blue has faded.
And so it is with man. We may eat green salads, containing transient
blue, but the permanent colours of our food are free from blue, and
based on red and yellow. Neither horse nor man would fatten on blue
food.
[Sidenote: Magic of sunlight]
Sunlight shining through blue glass will stop the growth of plants.
The various actions of coloured light upon the human body are being
studied in many hospitals.
[Sidenote: Climate and colour]
The blue indigo and violet, or actinic rays, appear to have a special
mission in burning bad microbes, such as the germs of disease. A
green forest, for example, despite the permanent yellow in its
colour, is said to be partly transparent to these rays which kill
germs lurking in the soil. The flesh of men and beasts is red and
yellow, save only for the blue tinge of blood from which the oxygen
has {13} been exhausted. Yet even despite its colouring, the tissue
of the flesh is partly transparent, so that actinic rays may kill
bacilli, and sunshine is used as a medicine for the sick. But the
rays which begin by killing germs may be strong enough in time to
burn the living tissues. For that reason man and the greater animals
are armoured by red and yellow liquid paints in the layers of skin,
which vary in strength and volume with the degree of sunlight in each
climate, from pale hues in cloudy districts of low sun to an intense
black in the tropics.
Stocks native to forest shelter such as men, elephants and pigs are
guarded only with skin body colour. Those exposed to direct
light--horses, cattle and sheep, have also a coat of hair as a second
armour against the actinic rays, and this also varies in colour with
the strength of sunshine, from white in the regions of snow to the
golden dun of lions and tigers, the dun and bay of horses and the
black of many species in regions of strong light.
In men and other animals there is little red flesh covering for the
brain, the spine and the great ganglia of the nerve machinery. So
many animals like the lion and bison have manes as an extra shield
for the nerve centres. {14} The human head and neck, for instance,
grow hair, not to encourage barbers, but for the prevention of
sunstroke, and this varies in colour with the degree of sunlight. So
all natural breeds of horses have a dark forelock and mane with a
streak of strong brown or black colour from the withers to the root
of the tail, thus guarding the whole length of the spine. This
armour and shield defines for us two primitive types:
The Bay of the Desert produced in fierce light the year round.
The Dun of the Steppes produced in fierce light limited to the summer.
[Sidenote: Protective colour]
And here the need of clear thought leads to a new definition of
"protective" colour.
The dun Siberian tiger, largest and fiercest of all cats, hunted the
Dun pony of the Steppes. The dun lion of Africa hunted the Bay
horse. Had both cats and both horses been painted sky blue, their
relative chances in the chase would be exactly the same. They do not
owe meat or safety from attack to their body colour. Both species
would have perished under the actinic rays of sunlight but for their
equal shield of non-actinic colour.
The purpose of body colour is defence from actinic light. Only the
markings are {15} protective as concealing animals from one another.
So far I have not been able to find in books about horses these
applications of facts accepted by men of science, which are of use to
horsemen. In the light of such evidence the close hogging of horse's
manes needs reconsidering.
PART II. THE GREAT ICE AGE.
[Sidenote: The great Ice Age]
Unless a fellow can swim he has no business to go out of his depth;
but if he minds his business, he loses all the fun.
It is the application of these two principles which leads me to a
problem in the history of the horse which nobody has solved.
The species is native to the Americas, where it became extinct. One
theory of this extinction imagines a germ, like that of
horse-sickness, whose range covered all latitudes from tropic to
sub-arctic. Such a hearty microbe as that would seem unusual.
The other theory relates to a disagreeable change in the climate,
which overwhelmed the drainage basin of the North Atlantic with a
field of massive ice. That seems conclusive until one reflects that
the Pacific slope of the United States and the continent of South
America remained as warm as ever. The cold {16} of the Great Ice Age
does not explain the wiping out even in North America of the camel,
elephant, tapir and horse.
[Sidenote: The Ice Age]
It has been my good fortune to make a series of voyages to Bering Sea
and Norway in the winter, and in summer along the flanks of both the
St. Elias and the Greenland ice-caps. In these journeys by sail and
steam, in boats, in canoes, with many landings and scrambles across
county, I was able to test the theories of Glacialogists against the
actual facts of the Great Ice Age.
The Croll theory makes the orbit of the Earth to change at regular
intervals into a long ellipse. By roasting one entire hemisphere it
provides vapour to cover the whole of the other hemisphere with snows
which do not melt. Evidence is scratched up and made the most of for
previous ice ages. An imaginary series of cosmic cataclysms is
invoked to explain one merely local unpleasantness.
Another theory sinks Central America--politically quite a good
idea--and throws the Gulf Stream into the Pacific, leaving the North
Atlantic to be frozen. It does not explain the American lobe of the
icefield which brushed the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in a
region outside the influence of the Gulf Stream.
{17}
It was never the business of Glacialogists to notice that under the
inland ice and the great lava floods of Greenland lie pressed
magnolia leaves in the high Arctic. These tell me of cloudy skies
saving the summer's warmth all through the polar night, of a vast
cloud sphere sheltering the whole Earth from a sun much hotter than
we know to-day. The Ice Age to me is an incident in that clearing of
the skies which dried the world-forest, made the grass steppes and
deserts, and evolved the horse.
[Sidenote: The Ice-field to-day]
The Glacialogists make the Ice Age an episode of the past. Without
the slightest relevance to any obliquity of the Orbit, or vagaries of
the Gulf Stream, the Ice-cap persists to-day as a living fact. I
have been there, have seen it, and cannot be persuaded otherwise.
The forces which created the Ice-cap are still at work, and as they
merely strengthen or relax, the Icefield grows or shrinks. These
forces made the Ice flood to plough the fields and train the folk for
seeding a crop of human empires--British, American, Russian, and
German world-powers. The ice which prepared town-sites for Moscow,
Petrograd, Berlin, London, and New York, may come again to sweep them
all away. We are not behaving ourselves so very nicely.
{18}
I have no theory as to what forces enlarged or contracted the ice
flood. The theme of this study is the horse, a creature of grass and
water constructed by the forces in sunshine and fresh air, and
coloured by the skies. To the skies we must look if we would trace
his origin, to the mechanism of the Ice-cap if we would know how his
varieties were specialized out of the general type. So let us have a
look at the machinery which made and maintains the Ice-cap.
PART III. THE SOU'-WESTER.
[Sidenote: The Sou'-wester]
We have to study four regions of one great Sou'-wester wind, which is
known to navigators as the South-west Counter-Trade.
WESTERN REGION. The tropic sunshine lifts masses of hot, tremulous
vapour from the surface of the Equatorial Pacific. This vapour lifts
to a great height and there condenses into clouds. The clouds are
swept by the south-west wind and form their floor at a height above
the sea of about two miles. The Rocky Mountains reach up bare and
stony hands to clutch at the flying moisture and bring down whirling
snowstorms. On sweep the cloud fleets across the Canadian Plains
with rarely a drop of rain to spare through the summer for the
thirsting grass beneath. But {19} slowly the cloud-floor slopes
downward until at last the cloud-fleets come to ground, and the
breath of the sou'-wester becomes visible as the Northern Forest.
Beyond that forest the wind trails its cold vapours over the
sub-Arctic tundras of North-Eastern Canada, lashing bleak rains on
Baffin's Bay, to spend the last of its moisture in the form of snow
upon the Greenland Ice-cap.
[Sidenote: Central region]
CENTRAL REGION. From the eastern part of the Equatorial Pacific,
about the neighbourhood of the Gallipagoes, a second echelon of the
sou'-wester brings its immense load of flying clouds high in the air
across the United States to slant down out of the skies and brush the
Atlantic in the Forties. Strong gales trail their clouds along the
Gulf Stream, taking a deal of warmth out of that current. Exposed
trees in North-western Europe are slightly bent by the stress of
Atlantic gales, while all the trailing clouds discharge their cargoes
of warm rain across the Baltic Region. The British Isles, for
example, get an annual ration amounting to thirty cubic miles of
water fresh from the Equatorial Pacific.
These two large _echelons_ of the sou'-wester carried the vapour
which once fell as snow to form the Icefields of the Great Ice Age.
{20}
[Sidenote: The Ice-cap]
The skies were clearing. The planet was being stripped of its cloud
roof, so that its warmth from the sun was radiated at night and in
winter directly into Space. Except to leeward of the Gulf Stream,
the lands of the North Atlantic are still sub-Arctic as in Labrador.
These lands were more extensive then than now, forming a bridge about
a thousand miles wide from Arctic Canada across Smith's Sound to
Greenland, and thence by way of the Faroes to Scotland, which was
part of the European main. On this bleak bridge which spanned the
North Atlantic permanent snows heaped up to mountainous heights
forming the nucleus of the giant Ice-cap. Its western lobe touched
the Rocky Mountains and the Missouri Valley, its eastern wing covered
the Russian plains as far as Moscow, and southward flooded the German
Empire. It may be that the North Atlantic bridge, remnant of an
elder continent, sank slowly until it foundered under its load of
ice. So the sea melted the ice and the climate began to mend.
EASTERN REGION. A third _echelon_ of the sou'-wester comes from the
equatorial belt of South America down to 15°S. This does not take up
any great load of moisture, for the {21} wind blows nearly dry across
the heights of air which overhang the Atlantic. It has little
moisture to spare for the Mediterranean summer, none at all for the
levels of the Sahara, Arabia, Persia, and the deserts of Central
Asia. The lands to leeward of Brazil are deserts.
FAR EASTERN REGION. In Asia, the movements of the sou'-wester are
complicated by the south-west monsoon, and the immense ranges of the
Himalaya. Eastward lies one more _echelon_ of the South-west Counter
Trade. Just as the sou'-wester in the North Atlantic is warmed by
the Gulf Stream, so the sou'-wester of the North Pacific is warmed by
the Japan current. Before the uplift of the St. Elias Alps, the
region of Alaska, and of Bering-Sea was a warm and well-watered
lowland. Alaska still grows gigantic timber in latitudes where North
Scotland and South Norway have only scrubby bushes.
PART IV. THE STORY OF BERING LAND.
[Sidenote: Bering land]
Any reader who is really and truly interested in tapirs will remember
that some live in the Malay States, and the rest of them in South and
Central America. Between these countries there is a slightly
flattened facet of the planet filled from remote ages by the Pacific
Ocean. Nobody with the slightest {22} liking for tapirs would
suspect them of swimming across, and since their family existed there
has been no land passage round the southern edge of the Pacific. So,
if we would find the ancient tapir range which once connected Malaya
with Mexico and Brazil, we are driven to search for a pathway round
the North Pacific.
The map of the ocean floor shows the Pacific Deep as reaching
northward to the sixtieth parallel. Beyond that lie the new shoals
of Bering Sea, with a ground-swell so terrific in winter that I have
seen a hard-bitten middle-aged seaman driven mad with fear. This is
the site of Bering Land, an ancient country about the size of
Scandinavia, which joined the mainlands of Asia and North America.
The latitudes of this land were those of Norway, and it formed the
basin of the lower Yukon.
Before there was any polar cold on Earth, when the magnolia blossomed
in Greenland, this cloudy rain-swept country was warm enough for
tapirs. As the sky cleared it managed to harbour camels, and became
a pasturage for animals of the horse family. Let us see then whether
these were of the actual species we call the horse.
{23}
[Sidenote: The landscape]
THE LANDSCAPE. Warm lands with little sunlight, such as Ireland,
have green turfed grasses. The polar summer which is one long day
covers all pastures with a blaze of flowers. The bushes also yield a
bounty of blossom and wild fruit. The mosquito season is the great
event of the year.
So we may see the meadows beside the lower Yukon, green pasture
starred with flowers, bushed, wet, mosquito-stricken range for the
bearded Celtic pony, utterly unlike the sun-baked golden steppe of
the Dun horse. We must cast back to earlier times when Bering Land
was clouded, torrid, range for ancestors of our modern horses, the
pasture which changed the brown tapir of Brazil into the skewbald
tapir of Malaya. At that time pre-glacial America had seven species
of three-toed horse-ancestors, some of which may have ranged westward
across Bering Land into Asia, and there given birth to the stock of
the Old World.
With the onset of the Great Ice Age the growing weight of the
American Ice-cap seems to have strained the loose skin of the Earth,
which, in the Columbia Basin cracked, pouring forth floods of lava to
overwhelm a region nine hundred miles in length, eight hundred wide.
{24} A series of rock waves folded, forming the coast or island
ranges from California northward and culminating in the stupendous
Alps of St. Elias. There gathered a lesser Ice-cap, pouring its
glaciers down the Alaskan and British Columbian fjords.
It was this barrier of ice which put an end to all migrations of
animals. The Alps of St. Elias closed the path-way between those two
groups of continents which so far had been the common breeding ground
for beasts and men. Within the narrowed breeding ground of the
Americas the horse together with the camel, and many other species,
became extinct.
[Sidenote: The deluge]
Old Bering Land had become sub-Arctic, the home of the Mammoth, a
maned roan elephant. Then the Pacific flooded the plains of the
Lower Yukon, and formed the shoals of Bering Sea. Both in Asia and
in America faint memories remain of a drowned world. In Assyria and
in British Columbia the legend tells us of a hero, and of rescued
folk in a fleet of three hundred canoes.
So the two groups of continents were finally cut apart at Bering
Straits. And now a ring of flaming craters girdles the Pacific, the
fit finale to a tremendous drama.
{25}
PART V. THE MARKINGS OF THE HORSE.
[Sidenote: Markings]
Darwin wrote of the probable "descent of all existing races from a
single dun-coloured, more or less striped primitive stock to which
our horses occasionally revert."
The stories of the Great Ice Age and of Bering Land have shown us a
variety of swiftly changing climates in which the original three-toed
dun striped ancestors begat a special type of horse for each kind of
habitat. The high lands and high latitudes, the low lands and low
latitudes, the tall grasses, the short grasses, the open woodlands,
the northern downs and valleys, bred each their special type of the
wild horse.
EVIDENCE OF THE WIND. It is not so very long since the last clumps
of timber vanished from the steppes. Still on the North American
range one finds the trunks and roots of forest trees, which silicate
swamps have changed into masses of jaspar onyx and chalcedony; and
these have not had time to sink as stones do into the soil. In a
seven hundred mile ride across the Canadian plains, I found a living
clump of three pines distant a hundred-and-fifty miles from the edge
of the shrunken forest. Such shelters have indeed so lately
disappeared that the horse has not yet learned the trick of {26} wind
endurance. If his ears and nostrils were not so fearfully sensitive,
he need only face up wind, and the hair of his body would be blown
down flat to protect him. As it is, the extreme sensitiveness of his
face compels him to stand or drift with buttocks turned to the gale,
tail tucked, head down. It is only in that position that the hair is
blown up from the skin and fails to give him protection. We may
conclude then that he was inured to torrid summers and even to polar
winters before he had to encounter strong gales away from shelter.
Long after the three-toed ancestor had become a horse, the steppes
had abundant tree clumps for wind breaks in heavy weather.
[Sidenote: African bays]
THE AFRICAN BAY. In every striped horse it seems a general rule that
the body stripes are curved in such a way as to point to a spot on
the ground midway between the four legs. The leg bands merely cut
the upright lines of the limbs so that these disappear. Some natural
process of colour photography has made the body stripes a bold copy
of the upward and outward spread of the tussock grass. It was for
concealment then among the rich forage of the tussocks that some of
the parent species wore a gorgeous livery which passed on to the
Zebra.
{27}
[Sidenote: The Saharan range]
From all accounts the Sahara is the bed of a recent sea, but,
possibly along its eastern side, a horse range extended from the
Soudan to the shores of the Mediterranean. Such range had not less
than ten inches a year of rainfall, carried by the sea breezes from
surrounding waters. There was moisture enough for trees, and there
are abundant traces of quite recent timber.
The winds were drying, the clouds were burned out, the light was
increasing to a terrific strength, and the tussocks began to fail.
On the American range I have noticed that these tall grasses,
abundant only thirty years ago, have become quite rare since the
pasture was overstocked. As the tall grasses perished and streaks of
naked desert crept into the dying pasture, all hope of concealment
for horses was at an end, the brilliant striping ceased to have any
value, and the need for speed outweighed the need for sleep. Three
and a half hours for sleep, standing, suffices the modern horse.
And as the cover vanished, every possible military precaution became
imperative against surprise by lions. The gay striped painting had
become a danger, and whole colour was the last chance of concealment
for purposes {28}
of rest. Close herding by the stallions, a single line formation
with vedettes and flankers, signals by cries and stamping, and, above
all things, speed, were needed to save the horse under the new
conditions. The arched markings on the face of the striped horse
changed to a star, the leg bands to stockings: white marks to
identify members of the herd on the darkest nights. Such markings
are very common among horses of desert descent.
[Sidenote: Painted horses]
As the deadly actinic rays of light poured into the body between its
bars of painting, the natural dye secreted in the skin began to fill
the bright streaks with strong colour. So the striped Dun became the
desert Bay, with black points and white markings, gifted with the
intelligence needed in family and tribal life, but above all things
endowed with a speed which was the despair of lions and is the glory
of all honest horsemen. So entirely was the danger from lions
overcome that the Bay horse has forgotten the art of bucking, which
once was needed in fighting beasts of prey. Speed has given the
steel-hard hoofs, the steel-strong limbs, delicate modelling to cut
the resistance of the air, the tail set and carried high for the
finest steering, and almost every other trait of our Barbs and Arabs.
So {29} intense is the light in his native pasture that even the
refracted glow from the ground has had to be met by dark colouring of
the under surfaces, wherein he differs from the horses of higher
latitudes.
[Sidenote: Zebra, quagga, ass]
ZEBRA AND QUAGGA. Southward from the great Desert the forest of
Equatorial Africa is bordered to the eastward and the south by grass
lands. In these a few patches of jungle and tussock grasses have
preserved the colouring of striped horses down to our own time.
Their painting is most brilliant towards the Equator, fades in the
higher latitudes, and in Cape Colony only the neck and shoulder
stripes remained in the Quagga breed. The land does not continue
into the latitude of the Dun horse. It is quite possible that with
the coming of the Boers tame cattle ate off the Quagga pasturage, but
rifles have put the wild stock to an end with the advance of human
settlement.
THE ASSES. These creatures of mountainous deserts are coloured like
the boulders of a hillside, but rely for their safety rather on high
intelligence and sure-footed speed. Being desert animals of course
they are dry inside, so that their efforts to produce the most
beautiful music merely rub leather against leather like {30} the sole
of a creaking boot. They should be petted like operatic tenors, and
indeed there are no animals in the world who improve so rapidly in
response to decent treatment.
There is a legend that the ass who carried the Cross of our Lord
Christ upon the way to Calvary had ever afterwards its shadow on his
back, still worn by the African breed as a special badge of honour.
It is called the endurance mark, and this with the same leg bands is
the special brand of the Dun horse of Asia.
[Sidenote: Dun horses]
THE DUN HORSE. It was in the Yellowstone Park that I paid ten
dollars for a thirteen hand pony called Buck, a bright Dun with the
endurance cross and leg bands. Below the black knees and hocks he
wore white stockings, and had black mane, tail and points. He taught
me the real protective colour for short grass. His upper and lower
body lines were the curves of prairie ridges, while the limbs were so
cross-coloured that the upright lines became invisible, save when he
moved, at about two hundred yards. It was lucky that he always came
at my call, because so far as my poor eyesight went, he was lost to
me every evening so soon as I sent him off to graze. His wall eye
and game knee were acquired from meeting Christians, but an odd trick
of carrying {31} the lower jaw sideways while he was thinking, an
unusual sweetness of character, and most uncommon pluck, may have
been primitive traits. He trotted with my pack a thousand miles,
until in Utah I gave him to a cowboy rather than take him on into the
desert ahead, where he might die of thirst. I did not know in those
days that he was a desert horse who knew a deal more about finding
water than ever I shall learn.
[Sidenote: Wild species dying]
The horse became extinct in the Americas, the Quagga in South Africa,
the wild Bay in Northern Africa. The numbers of the wild asses and
of the zebras are shrinking rapidly. The wild Dun, or Tarpan, whose
range was the whole steppe of Russia and North Asia, is now
represented in three small districts of Mongolia by the Prejevalski
herds. So far, then, as wild horses are concerned, the species is
dying out.
Among tame horses, to judge from what one sees in the larger stables,
there must be at least one hundred Bays, Browns and Chestnuts to
every real Dun. All breeders select from the Bay type as
distinguished from the Dun, whose only special value is in endurance.
In the run-wild or feral herds, however, the Duns have a fair chance,
and form a large proportion of the stock. They are not only hardy
but {32} also fertile. If man became extinct, the steppes and
prairies would breed Duns, and gradually kill out the other types.
[Sidenote: Dun and Bay]
From the fierce dry heat of the Gobi Desert to the utmost rigors of
Siberian cold, the Dun will thrive wherever there is grass. His coat
is warm and cool for any climate, greasy enough to shed rain, and
proof against every weather except wet driving snow or a strong gale.
Through the longest winters he keeps alive by grubbing through the
snow to get at grass. The droughts of summer may so increase the
journey between food and water that he gets very little time for
rest, but somehow he manages to pull through, the last of all horses
to yield to difficulties. Lacking the speed and beauty of the Bay,
he lives where the Bay will die. In danger or difficulty the Bay is
a fool in a panic, while the Dun keeps cool, reasons, and uses common
sense with a strong, hearty valour. One would select the Bay for
pleasure, but the Dun for serious work under the saddle, for road
endurance, for long and rapid marches, and all that makes mounted
troops of value in campaigns.
Just as the working man may be rendered irritable and even vicious by
unfair treatment in our social life, the working horse is made {33}
ill-tempered and dangerous to handle by bad horse-mastership. So the
Dun has a terrible reputation, and in his defence I am a sort of
Devil's advocate. He is the typical range horse whose manners and
customs will be the theme of the next chapter.
PART VI. CLOUDLAND.
[Sidenote: Cloudland]
We have seen the close resemblance of warm winds and seas between the
North Atlantic and the North Pacific; but it was only in the North
Atlantic region that the great Ice Age, in long pulsations, widened
and shrank its Icefields. Ten thousand years ago (Wright) in the
Niagara District, and seven thousand years ago (de Geer) in Finland,
the edges of the Icefield were withdrawn for the last time, and the
climate began to get warm and comfortable.
In America and in Europe, as the ice retreated, a belt of tundra
crept closely in its wake, and in the rear of that a belt of green
turfed grasses.
In Eastern Canada, and North-western Europe these green turfed
pastures are varied with woodlands of such trees as cast their leaves
in winter. Amid these changes the horse had vanished from North
America, but survived in Asia, and slowly extended his range as the
ice retreated from Europe. In Europe {34} as in America, man also
widened his hunting grounds in the wake of the melting Icefield.
In the big region of the south-west wind the lands which surround the
North Sea and the Baltic are different from all others, being under a
low sun, cloudy, with only one day's sunshine out of seven. And
Cloudland breeds a special type of man with blue eyes, a ruddy skin,
and hair of chestnut, bay, brown, or dun, colours like those of
horses.
Under the grey skies of Cloudland, man lacks the protective colour
which in all other regions of the world defends the body from actinic
light. I think we shall find this true of the horse also.
The original striped colouring of the Bays and Duns never developed
in Western Europe with its climate of cloudy skies and verdant
pastures.
[Sidenote: The white horse]
THE WHITE HORSE. Now let us study the conditions following the Ice
Age in Southern Russia. Here the Dun horse has a white coat for
sunny snowy winters. Rumour says that foals are not born white, and
it must be remembered that snowy winters are recent even as grassy
plains.
This whiteness is not, like the summer colouring, a paint issued by
the body to tint {35} the hair, but a mere absence of any colouring
matter. It is as though the animal saved his stores to paint his
inside to a warm red during the cold season instead of wasting it in
mere vanity upon his outer clothing. At the same time nothing could
be more reasonable than a white coat for concealment against a snowy
background. Hares, Eskimo, and lots of other tribes are most
particular in this matter, and among the best people of all snowy
regions a white suit is the correct mode for winter. It may be that
some tribes of ponies neglected to change in the spring, and so
became conspicuous in summer, a fatal error where there are wolves
about. These were not likely to prosper and raise children except
under man's protection, so one suspects that white coats for summer
wear date only from the human period. Men had a feeling, too, that
the white horse was so beautiful that he must be sacred, a special
gift of the gods. Without any special merit, being indeed of lower
stamina and endurance than any other horses, the white stock were
favoured by breeders. Left to themselves, they would die out rapidly
in any sunny climate. One notes, however, that the Persian wild ass
has a silvery white coat, the hue of his native desert. There are
many animals whose {36} dark hair is white at the tips, so that they
are really brunettes who masquerade as blondes.
[Sidenote: Bearded horses]
BEARDED HORSES. The ancient horse-eating artist-savages of France
have left us portraits of ponies strongly bearded under the lower
jaw. In the earliest portrait we have of the Celtic pony (Ewart),
Odin's eight-legged Sleipnir shows the coarse bearded cut of jaw.
The Celtic pony types are bearded to the northward, clean-shaven
towards the southward parts of their wide range. The Prejevalski,
who is the Tarpan of Asia, is slightly bearded. So is the Kiang or
wild ass of Asia. One finds the beard bristles in all the northern
breeds of horses, not in the desert stocks to the south. Why then
should northern horses want to grow a beard?
A horse has so small a stomach that his day's work to get sufficient
grass is seven hours. Up to about fifty degrees of north latitude,
he gets seven hours of daylight even in mid-winter. Northward of
that he needs beard bristles to aid him in feeling and selecting
grass in the darkness. Southward of that, if he is hunted by wolves
or tigers, he needs a few beard bristles for night grazing except in
cloudless regions where there is always starlight. So, {37} roughly,
the range of bearded horses is that of long dark nights.
[Sidenote: Size]
THE REGISTER OF SIZE. The size of horses varies with their
nourishment.
On the scattered but rich bunch grasses of the desert, where there is
much travel for a little food, the pasture registers the stature of
the Bay as about fourteen hands two inches.
The scattered but rich bunch grass of the American steppe makes
horses prosperous in summer but famished in the winter, so that the
pasture registers a smaller horse than that of the desert--up to
thirteen hands. Under the same conditions we may take the register
of the Dun in Asia as up to thirteen hands.
The poor grass of the British moors registers a pony of ten to eleven
hands.
Strong feeding of grain and hay registers stabled horses up to
nineteen hands.
The great abundance of green turfed grass the year round in
North-western Europe should, under its best conditions, register as
large a horse as either steppe or desert.
[Sidenote: The three pastures]
THE THREE PASTURES. The Bay pasture and the Dun pasture are each of
continental size, whereas the green pasture is only a small province.
In the same way, the rock formations of the Bay and the Dun pastures
are each {38} continuous for several thousands of miles. In sharp
contrast is that little ragged edge of a great continent known as
North-western Europe, a district which has many times been flooded by
the sea, each bath making new beds of rock.
The lowlands of Great Britain, for example, have been frequently
submerged, and the island shows samples of almost every rock
formation known upon the earth. This European pasture then is not
only small, but also varied in its rock formations, its soils, and
its landscape. One may get a standard horse of registered size in
the Bay range or the Dun range, but would expect to find on the green
range of Europe not only many colours, but also many types derived
from the primitive stock, strains of all sorts and sizes. A glance
at three formations will show how much the build and size of a horse
is varied by the rocks.
GRANITE. In North-western Europe the granitic or speckled formations
form upstanding moorlands. The poor but abundant grass maintains
ponies both light and heavy of build, derived from several kinds of
ancestors. They are so secured from attack by beasts of prey that
they do not need to run far and fast on ground where running would be
dangerous. {39} These are grouped under the general name of Celtic
pony.
[Sidenote: Limestone and clay]
LIMESTONE. Allowing for some districts, like the central plain of
Ireland, where the Ice-sheet has left the country very badly drained,
a limestone formation usually makes dry soil. The vegetable mould
may hold a little water and make mud, as on the chalk downs, but the
rock is so porous that most of the rain soaks down, and the waters
run mainly underground. Moreover, the vegetable mould gives chemical
qualities to this water, which is enabled to dissolve the rocks and
form caverns on the underground water courses. At the same time the
water becomes 'hard' with lime in solution, so that the springs will
petrify moss and twigs.
The dryness of the ground tends to make horses sound of bone. The
carbonate of lime in the water supplies them with the material for
bone. As the result the bones are very light in proportion to their
strength. So this pasture registers a well-built and very light
horse. If such an animal is of Bay blood, he is larger and swifter
than the Arab, lacking only in soundness and in travel endurance.
CLAY. As clay holds water, its soils provide abundance to the grass
roots, and so produce {40} thick turf with a great weight of green
forage to the acre. Such heavy feeding without any exercise in
search of water, would, after the killing out of the wolves, tend to
produce a large, heavy, slow-going gentle horse with steady nerves
such as our draught stock, lacking in that soundness of feet and legs
which is limited to the breeds of arid regions.
[Sidenote: Horses of Cloudland]
So far, the argument presents for the green pastures of cloudland
horses of several colours; and, for the varied rock formations in the
North Sea and Baltic basins, horses of many types.
[Sidenote: Forest varieties]
Professor Ewart traces among the ancient wild horses of the forest
species three very distinct types:
1. At the time when the glacial drift of the Rhine and Weser valleys
had a climate like that of the Outer Hebrides of to-day, the
conditions of cold and damp matured the Diluvial horse (Equus
Caballus occidentalis). This animal stood fifteen hands, had a
longer face than the general forest type, was coarsely built, had
heavy fetlocks, a short upright pastern, a broad round foot. This is
the cart horse breed.
2. The Grimaldi Grottoes in the Riviera preserve remains of a
forest-upland horse, {41} large, coarse, heavy in build, with a
short, broad face, and a flat profile.
3. The Solutré Caverns of France preserve paintings made by ancient
savages of a small stout, chunky, bearded horse, rather like a long,
low Iceland pony, with a short broad face, elk-like nose, and low-set
tail, rough-haired towards the root. He stood from twelve to
thirteen hands in height.
From these three forest varieties our draught horses are mainly
descended; but there were also in Ancient Europe two other species
besides that of the woodlands.
_A_. Siwalik type. A fifteen-hand horse, lightly built like the
modern thoroughbred. The forehead recedes at an angle from the line
of the face, and there is a prominence between the eyes. The limbs
are long, withers high, and tail set on high.
_B_. Prejevalski Tarpan steppe type, the Dun of Northern Asia. The
face is long, narrow and straight. The nasal chambers are large,
causing a Roman nose. The limbs are clean, with close hocks and
narrow feet. Height twelve to thirteen hands.
We must think then of such types as the Forest and Siwalik adapting
themselves to the soils of North-western Europe.
{42}
PART VII. THE CHANGING LAND.
The North Sea is only a recent flood in an old river valley. We must
consider it not as a tract of permanent water, but as a lost hunting
ground of our own ancestors, a pasturage for horses not very long ago.
[Sidenote: A valley in Cloudland]
In the year 5200 B.C. the Scandinavian glaciers, shrinking at the
rate of about one mile a year (the rate of shrinkage in the Alps of
St. Elias), withdrew from the province of Finland and the Baltic
Lake. Let us suppose that, in that year a traveller from civilised
Egypt made his way down the Rhine, and so entered the valley of North
River, which is now flooded by the North Sea. At first this river
wound its level way between low chalk downs, but presently the Thames
came in from the West, and forested swampy clay-lands extended
northward. Abreast of Aberdeen came the last chalk downs, and beyond
that lay Arctic tundras where the delta widened to an ice-drifted sea
nearly abreast of Faroe.
The whole valley was as varied in rock and soil as Eastern England,
with little lakes, ridges of boulder clay, and downs of gorse and
bracken. Northward across this verdant land crept succeeding waves
of the fir, the oak, and the beech.
{43}
Out on the delta coast, far to the right, beyond a deep sea channel,
rose the white Ice-cap of Sweden, whose Ice-flood filled the Norway
fjords with berg-breeding glaciers. Far to the left rose the
ice-clad Grampians.
The Delta people and those of the Baltic Lake were poor savages
living upon shell fish, and making mounds of shell refuse round their
hearths. Inland were stronger peoples who had lake villages or
trenched encampments on headlands of the downs.
[Sidenote: Cloudland horses]
As the grass followed the advancing fir woods, the primitive stock of
Cloudland returned to pastures from whence it had been driven by the
cold. These were not Duns, Bays, or striped, but native Cloudland
horses adapted to this region of little sunshine. Strong Dun was not
needed to guard them from the actinic rays of sunlight, so their dull
colour had yellowish, brownish and reddish tones which blended with
the landscape, such colours as are worn by the Celtic ponies of
Britain and other Atlantic isles.
The wild horses were evolving three utterly different types. On the
chalk downs, and on the limestone tracts north of the Humber, there
were lightly built, slender, graceful horses of fair height. On the
clays there were {44} horses, heavy, coarse, and slow. On the
Breton, British and Scandinavian moors there were Celtic ponies.
[Sidenote: The deluge in Cloudland]
It needed but little sinking of this land to flood the Delta, and
open a long channel up the North River valley. The sea washed out
the clay foundations of the forests. The sea breakers wielded
boulders of the glacier-drift and hurled them like battering rams
against the dissolving limestone of low cliffs. The tide swung
gravels to tear out bays in the foreshores. Winter frosts cracked
the headlands, and summer rains melted the ice cracks so that the
capes fell into the sea in landslides. Thus the sea widened, biting
its way deep into Europe until men began their losing fight with
dykes for the saving of doomed netherlands. The North Sea cut its
way through chalk downs into the English channel. The tribes who
held fortified headlands of the chalk downs and set up temples at
Stonehenge and Avebury on the mainland of Europe, about 1800 B.C.
found that their country had become an island.
The old horse pasture of North-western Europe was split into sundered
provinces by the advancing sea, but the breeds, native to a lost
valley are still almost identical on either shore. The Breton and
British moors have {45} one type of Celtic pony whose ancestral range
extended across the Straits of Dover. The clay fens of Lincolnshire
and of Holland still have draught horses alike in build and in
colour. The limestone districts north of the Humber have the same
tall horses as the similar provinces across the water in Schleswig,
Holstein and Jutland. The granitic lands of Scotland and Norway have
one type of the Celtic pony. (Low's Domesticated Animals.)
It is none of my business, but I cannot help feeling that the
flooding at about the same period of the Lower Yukon and North River
Valleys is something more than a coincidence. The Geological people
are always cocksure that the sea cannot rise, that an hemisphere--the
Southern, for example, cannot be flooded, and they assume quite
blandly that lands have sunk, without explaining why. Their theories
never seem really to fit that mighty wilderness, to which I have seen
them come as visitors or strangers. Science will never understand
until it learns to love.
PART VIII. THE HUMAN INFLUENCE.
[Sidenote: The human influence]
We have now reached a stage of the argument which shows for Europe no
continental type like the Bay or the Dun, but a horse stock of varied
colouring, of diverse heights and {46} builds, and most curious
dispersions as native to the green pastures of Cloudland.
[Sidenote: Shuffling of the horse pack]
The problem in nature was intricate as a jigsaw puzzle, before man's
interference broke that puzzle into little pieces. Our ancestors
were not such fools as to import Duns from Asia for purpose of
breeding, but in their wars and migrations drifted Asiatic Duns and
South Russian white horses across the face of Europe. No wars of
invasion brought Bay horses out of Africa; but as each tribe needed a
better strain of horseflesh, the Bays were carried in the courses of
trade to Europe.
THE HUMAN INFLUENCE IN CROSSING HORSE STRAINS.
[Sidenote: Scale of colour values]
THE CHESTNUT. This colour is possibly bright Bay from African blood
crossed with a slight proportion of golden Dun. Both in the humans
and the horses, chestnut hair goes with a certain temper described as
sanguine, generous or fiery if we happen to be in a good temper, or
untrustworthy and vicious if we dislike the person. Setting aside
the cold sorrel, or light chestnut, which in my own mind is
associated with commonplace horses and with one or two very bad
women, the real chestnut, with its red-gold glory, makes most of us
catch our breath with its beauty. In human {47} hair it so appeals
to artists as to be generally reserved for the most sacred
portraiture. In horses, it so appeals to horsemen as to rank next
bright Bay in the scale of values.
THE BROWN HORSE. This is a colder, washed-out tone of Bay.
THE BLACK HORSE. Among feral and range horses, those of the very
darkest bay and brown become brown-black under the summer sunlight.
True black is unknown among outdoor horses, and can only be due to
special selective breeding.
THE GREY HORSE. All greys are obviously crossed between white and
the various whole colours.
The primary horse colours are Dun and Bay.
The secondary colours are white, black, grey, chestnut, and brown,
whole colours shared by human and horse folk.
The tertiary colours are crosses of white with Bay, Dun, black,
chestnut, brown, which produce the various roans. Beyond that the
human hair withdraws from competition.
The quarternary colours are crosses of white with whole roans,
producing strawberry and cream roans, and roan-balds; while a
peculiar mixture of white with black, bay or chestnut, gives us the
piebalds and skewbalds.
{48}
The white horse has been saved from the wolves by man, but the
secondary, tertiary and quarternary colours are also very largely the
result of man's work in crossing the primitive strains of Europe with
the imported African Bay within the last couple of thousand years.
MIGRATION. The Romans imported millions of negro slaves who have not
left a trace of their blood in Europe. Wave after wave of Blonde
Migration from the Baltic has conquered the Mediterranean states, but
left no fair descendants. The negroes become extinct in Europe. The
blondes become extinct on the Mediterranean.
[Sidenote: Correcting by sunlight]
And so with horses. Imported horses fail to breed healthfully in the
damp provinces of India and Brazil, while horse sickness makes a
clean sweep of them in many parts of Africa. It is probable, with
horses as with men, that no sudden importation to regions outside
their native zone of sunlight results in permanent healthy breeding.
The imported strain dies out unless it is constantly renewed. Hordes
of Asiatics with Dun horses have swept from time to time into Europe,
and into India, but Dun horses are scarce in both regions, and do not
exist in large numbers except in Scandinavia and in Katywar.
{49}
So the strong action of man in sudden floodings of Europe with Bays
from the desert, Duns from the steppe, is outweighed by a stronger
law of nature. With strains of horses as with tribes of man, the
penalty for sudden migration from their native zone of light is
gradual extinction.
Yet is there one difference between Bays and Duns. The Dun is not
worth renewing, and so dies out unnoticed. The Bay is worth breeding
and so persists.
PART IX. THE BRAND OF EUROPE.
[Sidenote: The brand of Europe]
In nature's immense and gentle processes, throughout the amazing
story of the Europe horse, the bewildering actions of forgotten
tribes of men, and the sun's own slow adjustments, a single force
persists in branding the stock with a sign of ownership.
A partial eclipse of the sun had made his figure that of the crescent
moon. Standing under some oak trees, beside the road puddles made by
recent rain, I noticed that the bars of reduced sunlight which came
down through the leafage shone upon the little patches of water. The
image of the crescent sun was reflected upside down.
The bar of sunlight coming down through leafage acts as a lens to the
sun's image. The {50} woodland glade is a camera. The coat of a
woodland animal is coloured by the direct action of light, is
sensitive to light, is a sensitized film for colour photography. To
the peculiar reversed and condensed rays shining through leafage into
the woodland camera, the coat of the horse responds, forming rings of
deeper colour limited to the parts of the animal which are exposed to
direct light. In the course of many generations, the rings become
permanent and are known as dapples. The dappling in the dappled
light of woodlands gives concealment both to hunting leopards and to
hunted horses.
Since dapples have not been traced to any other country, and may well
be native to woodlands of Western Europe, it seems fair reasoning
which gives that special quality of colour to a type we will now
define as the European horse. I do not contend that the woodlands
were more extensive than the open downs, or that any large proportion
of European horses developed dapples. I do contend that a certain
stocky build and well conditioned heaviness of type more or less
dappled is characteristic of Western Europe, just as a more or less
striped Dun is typical of Asia, and more or less striped Bay typical
of Northern Africa.
{51}
[Sidenote: Professor Ridgeway's theories]
I am nothing more than an old rough-neck. My poor little theories
about the Europe horse have the impudence to contradict a great
authority. Professor Ridgeway brings historic proof that the Tarpan,
who is the Prejevalski, the wild Dun of Asia, inhabited the green
pasture of Europe, that he was a small scrawny and foul-tempered
person unfit to ride, and that his crossings with the slender
imported Bay produced our gigantic sturdy and gentle draught horse.
I have ridden so many Duns, packed so many, loved them so much, that
I am sure they would agree with me in bucking hard against Professor
Ridgeway. I do not believe that the Dun wore his tawny colour in
green pastures where he would be a target. I do not believe that the
wild Dun in an average district was small, scrawny or vicious. I do
not believe that a horse of the Dun type could be an ancestor to
draught stock. History is the lens through which we see the
past--out of focus.
Against the evidence of history and the proofs of science, I have
nothing to offer except the common heritage of sight and reason, with
that experience which trains a fellow to interpret landscape and to
care for horses. I cannot expect others to ride as I have through
{52} the green pasturage of Cloudland seeing as I do under the
combed, trim countryside of to-day the fierce rough wilderness of
prehistoric times and of outlandish frontiers. It is not by asking
the way or reading sign-posts that one reasons out the route of a
day's journey, but by a vivid sense of light, form, colour and
atmospheric distance, the old familiar structure of the rocks, the
slopes of drainage, the course of running waters, the shape of woods
and trees as fashioned by the wind, the ancient dangers deflecting
trails and roads, and the phenomena which result in forts and
churches, villages and towns.
[Sidenote: Sensing the country]
So one senses the radiant perfumed land and sees how it shaped and
coloured its native horses. It was from that raw material the
breeder wrought just as a sculptor models clay into his statuary.
Under his hands the wild traits disappeared, the short-sighted pony
grew into a long-sighted hunter, sound hoofs and limbs were softened
to unsoundness, the language of signs gave place to understanding of
human speech, while discipline of the harem and the herd became
obedience in the fields of sport, of labour, or soldier service.
[Sidenote: The dapple sign]
I would not have my reading take the place of thinking, but rather
use books to inspire {53} thought and be thankful to them for
correcting blunders. Thus, aiming at the truth, no matter what I
hit, I see in Western Europe a horse-currency which is of striped
extraction, and, like a coinage in bronze, silver and gold, has
evolved its moorland ponies, its lowland draught stock, and its
upland running breeds. The measure of Bay blood stamps out its
values; and, where one can decipher a device, it is to read the
dapple sign for one of the sun's own kingdoms.
{54}
CHAPTER III.
HABITS OF OUTDOOR HORSES.
I. THE RANGE.
The North American range of the run-wild herds enlarges northward out
of Mexico and covers the region between the Mississippi and the
Pacific Ocean up to the edge of the Northern Forest in Canada. This
gives an area of three million square miles, a range much the same
size as Europe, the United States, Australia, Brazil, or Canada. The
eastern half is a prairie, the western a desert shaped like a swell
of the sea about eight thousand feet high at the top, and laced all
over with a skein of mountain ranges thrown like fisherman's net and
broken all to pieces. Moreover, the southern or higher half of this
desert is cleft to the roots by sheer abysmal chasms known as the
Cañons.
It has been my good fortune to ride from the edge of the Canadian
forest along the general line of the Rocky Mountains to a place just
{55} twenty miles south of Zacatecas in Mexico, which is the southern
boundary of the Stock Range, on the Tropic of Cancer. I have also
ridden from Regina in Saskatchewan to Red Bluff in California. These
two routes cross the grass from north to south, and nearly from east
to west, making a rough total of seven thousand miles.
[Sidenote: The wilderness]
The land as I knew it first had just been stripped naked by the
hunters who swept away almost the whole of its native stock of bison,
deer, and antelope, wild sheep and goats, together with the hunting
animals, such as wolves and panthers who earned a living there. The
land as I saw it next was overstocked with ponies, cattle and sheep,
so that the grass was poor. The land as I saw it last was being
fenced, watered and ploughed by pioneer settlers. In thirty years I
witnessed the passing of the wilderness and its frontiersmen.
A meadow gives a totally false idea of the herbage which built up the
strength and vigour of the ancient pony herds. It is a mixture of
many grasses and other plants all closely turfed together so that a
horse cannot readily select what he likes best. The grass contains a
deal of water, stays green throughout {56} the year and tastes sour
between the teeth. One finds turfed pasture in forests and their
outskirts, and usually where there is rainfall enough for crops, as
in Western Europe and on the eastern half of South Africa. That, I
think, is not the pasture which made the hardy range horse.
[Sidenote: The natural pastures]
Where there is less than eight inches of rain one finds the range
grass, of separate plants with the bare earth between. The three
American kinds are the bunch grass of the hollows, a tall tussock
with tap roots reaching down to moisture; the little buffalo grass
from two to four inches high; and the gramma grass of the same size
which inhabits Mexico.
One may presume that the tussock fed the oldest herds and that, as it
failed, the pony took to eating the shorter grasses.
The horse in a meadow pasture does not eat the ranker growths, but
grazes the shorter, smaller kinds of grass. From this we may reason
that the little buffalo grass of the ranges is the typical food of
the species. The leaves of this plant are green in the spring but
soon cure to a golden tawny colour, which changes to brown in the
autumn, and a washed-out, greyish brown in winter. As they cure, the
leaves curl downwards one by one until the {57} plant becomes a ball
or tuft exceedingly springy underfoot, sweet as a nut in taste, and
equal in food value to standing oats.
[Sidenote: Conditions of the stockrange]
As one approaches the desert the land is sprinkled with bushes which
protect themselves from being eaten with a very strong nasty taste,
or deadly thorns. Of these the sage brush comes first, a thousand
miles wide followed by a thousand miles of greasewood and acacia
varied with forests of cacti. The grass becomes more scanty as one
forces a way onward into the heart of the desert, where there are
regions of naked rock and belts of drifting sand.
As the annual rainfall varies from year to year the desert tracts
expand or shrink by turns. As the winds swing from side to side, or
wax or wane in their supply of moisture, a fertile region is made
desolate for a few centuries as Palmyra, or a desert shrinks before
the spreading pasture. In cycles the desert blossoms or withers, but
with the millions of years it slowly widens.
Such, then, were the conditions of the stockrange to which the
ancient herds had to adapt themselves, learning to dispense with the
shrunken meadows, and make the most of varying crops of bunch grass.
{58}
The taste for green pasture is so far forgotten that range horses
will swim rivers and break fences to escape from the richest of
meadows and get to the desert hillsides which seem to grow nothing
but stones. Where sheep tear the bunch grass out by the roots and
leave stark desert, the horses' lips and teeth are so delicately
adapted to this feeding that they never uproot the plant.
[Sidenote: The grazing rules]
It is a sound rule that range ponies do not travel beyond their
necessities of grass and water. Leaving the water, they graze
outwards, forming a trampled area which widens daily as they feed at
the edges. So, riding across the rich and untouched grass lands of
the south-western deserts, I have come to a line where the pasturage
ended abruptly, and beyond were innumerable pony tracks leading from
six to ten miles to a water hole. The wild horse looked upon that
ring area as the tame horse does a stable, with water and feed
conveniently arranged. That was his home, and if man or the storm,
or wolves drove him a couple of hundred miles away to better feed and
water, he would always break back at the first chance, travelling
steadily with little delay for grazing.
A horse's neck is exactly long enough for {59} grazing on level
ground, but I never saw one try to graze downhill. Neither does he
readily graze directly up any steep place, preferring to quarter
along the hillside, rising very slightly.
[Sidenote: Rules in grazing]
His first rule in grazing then is to crop uphill.
But the moment the air stirs he applies his second grazing rule,
which is "feed up wind."
If he had the man's way of reasoning, he would argue thus, "If I
graze down wind I smell myself, the grass, and the dust. But if I
graze up wind I get the air clean to my nostrils, and can smell an
enemy in time to fight or run."
His third rule is to graze if possible homeward or towards shelter.
If the grass is plentiful he feeds quickly, and has time for rest on
warm sheltered ground or in the lee of timber. If food is scant, he
gets no time for rest.
On the natural range there are hollows to which the surface waters
have carried the ashes of burned grass. These alkali licks are
needed to keep horses in health; but rock salt in the stable seems to
meet their wants. Failing that they will lick brick walls. Even the
licking of a man's hand is a means of getting salt from the skin
rather than making love.
{60}
II. BETWEEN GRASS AND WATER.
The best way to measure the distance and the sort of ground which the
ancient herds were accustomed to traverse between grass and water, is
to study the conduct of a horse in dealing with steep places.
[Sidenote: Horses on cliffs]
I was dining with some friends at Gibraltar when the story was told
of long ago times when a couple of mad midshipmen rode ponies for a
wager up the Mediterranean stairs. This is a stone stairway up the
eastern wall of the Rock which is sheer and some thirteen hundred
feet high. The story had special interest for me because my father
was one of the two mad middies. He had told me that the ponies were
not frightened, except at the last flight of all when the Atlantic
wind was blowing into their faces over the summit. There a step was
missing, the ponies reared, and both lads had to dismount, losing a
wager for which the leader had undertaken the ride.
The ponies were Spanish, of the type which re-stocked North America.
I frightened an English horse into hysterics with such small rock
walls as I could find in Wales, but have never known an American
range animal to show very much alarm. My worst climb was made in
twelve hours, with {61} three horses up a 3,600 foot cliff where a
trail would have been a convenience. The pack and spare horses
pulled hard at times because, although ambitious animals, they would
have preferred some other way to heaven. That is why the lead rope
got under the saddle-horse's tail, which made him buck on a ledge
overhanging blue space where there really was no room. A little
later the led horses pulled my saddle horse over the edge of a crag.
I got off at the top, and the horse lit on his belly across a jutting
rock about twelve feet down. He thought he was done for until I
persuaded him with the lead rope to scramble up again. Near the
summit the oak and juniper bushes forced me to dismount, leading the
horses one at a time under or round stiff overhanging branches on
most unpleasant ground. They showed off a little because they wished
to impress me, but I found out afterwards that horses or even cattle,
held at the foot of that cliff until they are hungry, will climb to
the top for grass. The place is known as The Gateway and leads up
out of the Cañon Dolores in Colorado to the Mesa la Sal in Utah.
Much more dangerous was a 4,000 foot grass slope down from the Mesa
Uncompaghre into the Cañon Unaweep. I managed that by {62} leading
the horses and quartering the slope in zigzags. I was much more
frightened than they were.
[Sidenote: Bad ground]
Many times I have ridden along the rim rock of cliffs of any height
up to a mile sheer, and so far from being afraid, I found some horses
preferred the very edge. One may ride slack rein where one would
never dare to venture afoot.
But although range horses like cliffs, they are poor climbers. One
may ride them up any place where a man can climb without using his
hands, but they will never face a step above knee high. Sometimes I
have been obliged to pass my rope round a tree and pull my horse down
walls that he dared not jump. Even then he would argue the point.
[Sidenote: Horse sense]
American railway bridges have no pathway, and when one leads a horse,
stepping from tie to tie, he thinks he has five legs. With two legs
down, and a train expected or a bear sauntering ahead, he looks so
damned patient that one begins to realise an obscure trait in his
character which needs explaining. It is easier to take him across
bridges than to ride or lead him through a waterfall. He prefers a
waterfall to a corduroy-timbered swamp road when it happens to be
flooded and afloat. I have tried him with quicksands and moss {63}
holes and glare ice on the mountain tops. Because I cannot swim I
have stayed in the saddle swimming lakes, rapids, and rivers which
run sand. Still worse are beaver swamps under a tangle of deadfall
timber, and old avalanches. All these and sundry other kinds of evil
ground a horse accepts as fate so long as he trusts his man. It is
not his business. It is the man's affair. One begins to think that,
like a savage, he lacks continuous purpose of his own and is merely
the meek victim of his destiny. And that is exactly where the man is
fooled. When a horse really wants grass, water, or to get home, he
rivals the white man in sustained purpose, and does his own job with
an intelligence and courage which he never gives to that of his
employer. In other words, the difficulties of travel between grass
and water gave to the ancient ponies the highest possible qualities
of endurance, valour and skill. These qualities are latent in every
horse.
There is a more important lesson to be learned by practical study of
wild range.
The range has two types of herbage, the bunch grass and the thorned
or aromatic bushes. The bunch grass is the staple food, the bushes a
reserve in time of drought. The use {64} of the reserve food has
taught the horse to adapt his stomach to a change of diet.
[Sidenote: The trail to water]
Compared with farm land the range has very little food to the acre,
supports only a small population of grazing beasts, and, in its
distances between food and water, has trained the horse to a deal of
exercise as well as to endurance of thirst. On the other hand the
needs of travelling for water and of grazing have reduced his time
for sleep to about three and a half hours per day, which he takes
standing, however weary, unless he is quite confident as to safety
and kind treatment. In brutally managed stables horses are apt to
sleep standing, because they are not off guard.
At first glance, too, the water on level range, however distant from
the edge of grass may be safely visited. Yet as one approaches the
stream by slopes of the usual coulee, densely bushed with poplar and
wild fruit trees; or, coming down open grass, enters a grove of
cottonwood along the level bottom, one begins to note that the horses
appear to be nervous. A bunch of loose ponies will let the wisest
mare scout ahead while they string out in single file to follow all
alert, picking their way most delicately, pointing their ears at all
sorts of smells and sounds, and glancing backward {65} often as they
go. Again one watches tame horses watering at a trough, always
alert, on guard. If one of them makes a sudden movement the rest
will at once shy backward. Some horse are so nervous that they have
to be watered singly. Always a horse drinks while he can hold his
breath, lifts his nostrils to breathe deep and fill his lungs, then
takes a second drink, perhaps a third, and turns away abruptly.
There is no lingering at the waterside. At the bank of lake or river
no range horse goes deeper then he need, or offers to take a bath.
[Sidenote: Race-memories of peril]
Here are race-memories of mortal peril from a daily watering in face
of instant danger and of sudden death. I have seen so many horses
piteously drowned in moss or mudholes that I understand why they
tread cautiously as they approach wet ground. The bush beside the
water is apt to be full of snakes who come down as horses do, to
drink in the gloaming, and are not easily seen. The bush beside the
water is the lurking place of every beast of prey, and everybody
knows how horses go stark mad at the smell of bear. What chance had
the ponies, strung out on a bush trail, against grey timber wolves?
What thoroughbred fighting horse would ever have a chance against the
{66} Siberian tiger, or the African lion? Cougar, puma, jaguar,
leopard--the cats of all the world with their sudden spring at the
withers or throat of a range pony, have taught his descendants their
art of self-defence. That we must deal with later.
III. THE FAMILY.
We have broken up the family life of our horses, and are apt to
forget that they ever had private affairs of their own.
[Sidenote: The harem]
Twice on the range I have met horse families. On the first occasion
the family happened to be grazing near the trail as I passed. The
stallion was furious at my intrusion, trotted up to me and stood
glaring, pawing the ground, his great neck arched and splendid mane
and tail rippling astream in the high wind. My saddle and pack
beasts, a pair of gentle geldings, were rather frightened, disposed
to halt, even to run away but for my voice keeping them to their
duty. The stallion's mares had stopped grazing to admire their
master, each with an observant eye cocked at me and an expression of
smugness not to be beaten in any Bigotarian chapel. Then, as I
laughed, the stallion, with a loud snort of contempt, swung round,
lashed dirt in my face for defiance, and trotted off to round up his
harem and drive them out {67} of reach lest my evil communications
should corrupt their morals.
On the second occasion I took a half-broken pack-train into a pasture
on the bench of a cañon, so that the spring grass might cure an
epidemic of strangles which had killed seven and sorely weakened the
rest. The pasture belonged to a wild stallion who lived there with
his family of young mares, colts and foals. He stole my twenty-five
mares, added them to his harem, and made off. I was obliged to build
a corrall, round up the whole bunch, cut out my mares, and drive the
harem out of the district. Meanwhile my stock had lapsed from
civilised ways and become wild beasts who had to be broken all over
again before it was possible to use them for pack-train work.
They say that a horse family depends in size upon the powers of the
strongest stallion, who rises to command by fighting and defeating
all competitors, and holds his command by single combat with the
leaders of rival families who try to rob him.
[Sidenote: The commanding stallion]
The commandant stallion is able to hold a family of fifteen to fifty
head, but there must be some who by conquest of rival leaders, and
stealing of their harems, rise to commands on a much larger scale.
Ranging his family {68} between grass and water, he is most
particular to close herd his mares, to hold his own pasture which he
never leaves except under dire stress, and to have special places
where he casts his droppings. In range life the geldings have
separate families, and their own private runs.
There is not very much known about the internal arrangements of wild
harems, but a good deal can be guessed from watching the Red Indian's
pony herd, the Cow outfit's bunch of remounts, the Mexican remuda,
the Argentine tropilla, the stock of a horse ranch, or even a herd
camp of Mounted Police, all units of horses living more or less the
wild life of the range. From these it is known that a feral pony
herd keeps a certain military formation while grazing, with the
weaker animals ringed by the stronger, and a few vedettes and
flankers thrown out to watch for danger. At the assault of a wolf
pack the formation closes, the fighting horses and mares making an
outer ring, close-set and facing outwards. When a wolf comes within
range, the nearest horse swings round and lashes out with the hind
feet to kill. As American wolves only pack in winters of famine this
event is rare, but in one case an Indian boy who was herder to a
Blackfoot tribal camp, was, with his mount, placed {69} by the
fighting herd at their centre for his defence, and was able to watch
the whole battle until his people came out to the rescue.
In breeding and fighting the Commandant stallion is sole authority,
but it has been noticed that some wise old mare usually decides the
time for moving and leads the marches.
It is said that a foal is able to keep with the travelling herd from
the day of birth. It is said that the foal will outlast a hard day's
journey--and dies afterwards. To what extent this may be true I have
no means of knowing, but I believe that the leggy foal does keep up
with a moving herd. It is one more bit of evidence as to the
desperate emergencies of drought or storm survived by the ancient
herds.
IV. SELF-DEFENCE.
[Sidenote: Self-defence]
There is a general belief among horse that man is vicious. If he
were a little more intelligent we could explain to the horse that
appearances are deceptive, and that we are not really vicious when we
throw things at each other such as shells, torpedoes and bombs, or
lay mines to blow each other to pieces on land or sea. As it is, he
bases his belief that we are vicious upon our methods of dealing with
him, in the use for example, of bearing reins, of {70} branding
irons, and instruments which dock tails.
My own impression, after many years of experience with both, is that
man, and especially civilised man, is much more ferocious than the
horse. May I venture then to quote the wisdom of a gentle Bengali
Baboo who wrote an essay as follows:
"The horse is a highly intelligent animal, and, if you treat him
kindly, he will not do so."
The discovery was made in Arabia, also in Kentucky, in Ireland and
elsewhere, that if a foal is handled as a pet, and so brought up that
he remembers nothing but kindness and constant care at the hands of
men, it never occurs to him that he needs to defend himself from his
master as from an enemy. He never develops the arts of self-defence.
As a colt he learns that to get at his feed he must jump over a stick
on the ground. As he grows the stick is raised inch by inch until
jumping over it becomes a part of his accomplishments in which he
takes a natural pride and delight. So with the rest of his
education. Horses can learn a great deal of the language we speak,
to enjoy music, to select colours, to add up figures, to take a vivid
interest in sport, to share with us the terror and glory of battle.
{71} They will set us an example in faithfulness, in self-sacrifice,
and every finer trait of character.
But if we teach a young horse nothing but distrust, making fear and
hatred the main traits of his character, it is the last outrage upon
common sense to call his honest methods of self-defence by such a
name as vice. We have the power to raise up angels or devils, but if
we breed a horse to be a devil, we cannot expect the poor beast to
behave himself like an angel.
[Sidenote: Varieties of character]
Horses vary in character almost as much as we do, and there are with
them as with us a small proportion of born criminals whose warped or
stunted brains cannot be trained aright by any means we know. What
we do not and can never understand is the mysterious power of saints
who charm wild men and beasts to tameness, and of certain horsemen to
whom the worst outlaws are perfectly obedient.
Among ourselves there are certain dreams such as the falling dream,
the flying dream, and that of being eaten by wild beasts, which are
supposed to be race-memories dating from the time when man was a
forest animal like an ape, before the immortal Spirit entered into
his body.
Among horses there are race-memories dating from ancient times in the
wilderness when {72} the pony was driven to self-defence on pain of a
violent death. These race memories take the form of habits, and
explain the various methods by which the horse defends himself from
human enemies.
Pawing, for example, is the subject of many theories. Not that the
habit really needs explanation, because we fidget ourselves when we
have nothing better to do. Yet when a horse paws the water at any
drinking place, the learned are apt to say he does it to clear away
the mud. I doubt if any horse is such a fool. Other observers note
that the action is really stamping, a motion of race-memory dating
from the time when thin ice had to be tested to see if a frozen river
could be safely crossed. That sounds most reasonable, until one
wonders dimly how it accounts for either pawing or stamping on dry
ground.
[Sidenote: Race memories]
If then the fidgets must be explained by any theory of race memory,
one would suppose that the gestures used in killing snakes or in
scraping through snow to get grass might very well have come down
through the ages. I think though that if I had four hoofs and an
irritable temper, I might be allowed to indulge in cow-kicking or
striking without my symptoms being used as a pretext for abusing my
dead ancestors.
{73}
We have seen that the old range harem adopted military formations,
and went into action well organized for defence against wolves. They
kicked, but any range cow, addressed on the subject of milking,
without hereditary training as a kicker, can give points to the
average horse. Yet where the cow is merely obstinate the horse is
reasonable.
[Sidenote: Horse mastership]
He is marvellously swift as a critic of the horseman, ready to kick
the same abundantly at the slightest sign of ineptitude or nerves, or
to render a cheery obedience to one who understands. The man who
walks nervously through a stable making abrupt movements to avoid
possible heels is sure to be criticised with contusions by any horse
with a decent sense of humour. Yet if one understands the signs of
thrown-back ears and balancing in readiness for the kick, one has
only to tell the animal not to play the fool, then watch his
shamefaced grin at being found out. It is so easy to charm the most
irritable horse with a little hay while one is busy with him in the
stall. He cannot, like a man, think of two things at once, and in
military stables, horse-masters who have their grooming done while
the horses feed will find that even dangerous kickers become gentle.
That is of course contrary to much theory and {74} more army
practice; yet it is not forbidden, and being easily tested is well
worth trying before it is condemned.
[Sidenote: Kicking]
Having nearly cured my horses of kicking, I am still extremely
anxious to persuade young horsemen to get as close as possible to a
horse while grooming him, so that no kicker has room to deliver the
full force of the blow, which may be fatal. Horses are very careless
among themselves, kicking each other for fun while they forget that
the iron shoe may break a leg. I have noticed also that a horse who
deliberately gets himself disliked will very soon be the victim of
organized attack, a comrade being told off by the rest to lay for
him. In this way during the last six months I have been obliged to
have four horses shot for fractured legs.
Horses in pasture will often stand in pairs, head to tail abreast, so
that each with his whisk of tail can keep flies from the other's
face. One will nibble and lick along the other's neck and withers
out of kindness, adding a bite or two for fun. So in the stable,
horses bite one another for fun, but if they apply the treatment to a
man it is a sure sign they are badly educated, and liable to get
their noses smacked for their pains.
{75}
[Sidenote: Faults and remedies]
PIG-JUMPING is the plunging action which civilised horses suppose to
be genuine bucking. It is not so much self-defence as an expression
of joy.
KANGAROO-JUMPING is unusual, but must be great sport for a horse who
knows the trick. It never fails to astonish.
REARING. To cure a rearing horse, throw him on his near side. When
ready to throw, draw the rein taut, the off rein tightest; then as he
rears, keep the left toe in the near stirrup, but get the right free
of the off stirrup with the knee on the horse's rump, for a purchase
as you throw your body suddenly to the left. The Horse loses his
balance and crashes to the ground while you step clear. As you do so
draw the taut off rein back and low to the pommel. So you will raise
the head and prevent horse from rising.
Never strike a horse on the head for rearing.
BOLTING AND STAMPEDES. Horses were trained by wolves and other
dangers of the range to run at the warning neigh of their stallion
commanding. Sudden and blind panic is a trait innate in the horse
character, and the best preventive is the human voice. Singing hymns
or any familiar songs in chorus is the very best way of preventing a
stampede; but, {76} judging by my own voice, is rather apt to panic
any horse who has a good ear for music.
[Sidenote: Balking]
BALKING. There is a story of a New England farm horse drawing a load
of hay, whose master had no influence with him. After trying for an
hour to persuade the animal to move, he made a bonfire under its
belly. When the flames caused him discomfort, the horse moved
on--eight feet, exactly enough to bring the bonfire underneath the
hay.
Tap quickly with a whip behind his knees, hitting them alternately.
He will mark time then walk to get away from the whip. I heard
lately of a stranger who walked up to a balking horse, rolled a
cigarette paper and placed it carefully in the animal's ear, then led
him unresisting along the road. Mr. Horse was wondering, 'Why the
deuce did he put that thing in my ear?' He forgot to balk. No horse
can think of two things at the same time.
BALKING AT A GALLOP. Whereas refusing to start is evidence of a
misguided past, the sudden refusal to take a jump may indicate that
the horse lacks confidence in his rider, or that the reins are very
badly handled, giving him no chance of taking off with head free.
{77}
To balk at a gallop means throwing the body back and bearing against
the ground with all four feet, head down.
PROPPING. This is balking at a gallop and taking a series of springs
in that position, each with a rigid crash on all four legs. The
rider has a tendency to continue his journey alone. Propping is much
favoured by range horses.
This completes the list of defensive measures remembered by civilised
horses.
[Sidenote: Little ways]
TREADING. They have also invented a few methods of expressing their
feelings. When a horse presses his hand on my foot, and adds to the
tenderness of the greeting by waving his other hand, I know he means
to impress me, although I may not have leisure at the moment to hear
what he has to say.
TAKING IN THE SLACK. When a horse takes the seat of my breeches
firmly between his teeth as I try to mount, he may not wish me to
ride, or possibly he wishes to criticise the English riding costume.
Breeches with puffed sleeves are perhaps an acquired taste.
CROWDING. A horse may corner or crowd me when I try to leave the
stall after feeding him, and if he hugged me he could do no more to
express his pleasure. But if he will not let me re-enter his stall
while he feeds, I suspect some {78} groom has been stealing his oats
from the manger.
JOGGLING. Soldier horses on the march are obliged to keep the pace
set by the leading file. If that pace is beyond their walk, they
keep up by joggling. To break a joggling horse to a walk, stand in
the stirrups, place the free hand on his neck, and bear with the
whole weight of your body.
To return now to defensive methods.
BUCKING. To lower the head, and spring into the air, humping the
back, drawing the feet close together, and coming down on all four
rigid, for the next spring. Repeat. It is useful when starting a
spring with the head north to twist in the air and come down facing
south; or to make the series of jumps in a narrow circle and then
bolt at a tangent; or to buck on the run, dislodging the rider first,
then the saddle which can be kicked to pieces. If the rider is
dragged his brains can be kicked out.
SUNFISHING. To buck, coming down on both hind feet and one fore,
while doubling up the other free limb. This brings one shoulder to
the ground, and to sunfish is to drop alternate shoulders. Very few
horses know this exercise.
{79}
SCRAPING. To run or buck under low branches or against trees or
walls. Some civilised horses know this.
BACKFALLS. These may be used to add to the general effect of either
rearing or bucking. I once bought a black mare seven years old,
snared in the forest, who had probably never seen a man. When ridden
she bucked, and while bucking threw herself seven times on her back,
three falls being over a cut bank on to a rocky river bed. Towards
evening she cricked her neck, and showed blood at the nostrils,
making an awful picture of despair. During the night she slipped a
foal, of which there had been no sign. Before dawn she died--a case
of broken heart. The horse breaker, an English gentleman, stayed
with her throughout, and was not hurt.
[Sidenote: Acts of passion]
So far we have dealt with acts of hot-blooded passion, culminating in
suicidal rage. The fiercest buckers, having dislodged the rider,
will turn at once to grazing and wait with cheerful defiance for the
next bout. Almost all horses are sportsmen and there is nothing that
they dread more, or are so careful to avoid as treading upon a
disabled man. Even in cavalry charges a man down has only to lie
still so that the horses can see exactly where he {80} is, and they
will all leap clear. They dread placing a foot on anything which
might collapse or roll, and so cause a dangerous fall.
[Sidenote: Man killing]
There remain extreme cases in which horses are guilty of deliberate,
planned murder.
SAVAGING is practised by civilised as well as by range horses. It is
a sudden, and often unprovoked, wide-eyed staring rush with teeth
bared, an attempt either to inflict a dangerous bite or to get a man
down and trample him to death.
HOLDING WIND. The only case I know of was that of a fine buckskin
gelding for whom I paid a rifle, a suit of clothes and ten dollars in
trade with an Indian. It seemed impossible to get the girth properly
tight until, after three days, I concluded that my suspicion of his
holding wind was merely foolishness. All the same I used to regirth
a mile or two out on each march. I had regirthed at the top of a
mountain pass, and was mounting, when he suddenly let out all his
wind and bolted over rock heaps. The saddle came down with me on the
off side, I was dragged, and afterwards woke up to find myself maimed
for life. Then we had a fight, which he won. It turned out
afterwards that holding wind until he could catch out and kill his
rider was an old accomplishment for which {81} the horse was famous.
This is the only case I have known of unprovoked, carefully planned,
and deliberate crime, as distinguished from self-defence.
Vices are human qualities. The worst possible vices with regard to a
horse are,
To show fear.
Meanness or neglect in fending for him.
Cruelty or ill-temper.
V. THE SPIRIT OF THE HORSE.
[Sidenote: Spirit of the horse]
The young of the church and of the universities who know all about
everything, and attach a deal of importance to their funny little
opinions, are quite agreed that the lower animal is an "it" as
automatic as a slot machine. Put in a penny and the machine utters a
box of matches. Put in food and the animal develops energy. So much
is perfectly true of animals and men, for our bodies are automatic.
Moreover, the animal has "instincts" which impel "it" to beget a foal
or a litter of puppies. Humans, with the same instincts are impelled
to beget a bumptious young bacteriologist, or a pair of curates.
In a like way the wolf, the Christian, or the tiger mates with one
wife, while the horse and the Moslem both prefer a harem.
{82}
Shall we say, then, that the wolf is the more religious, or the horse
not quite so respectable?
[Sidenote: The horse spiritual]
A certain Sergeant Parker, of the Northwest Mounted Police, went on
patrol with a saddle horse. They got lost in a blizzard, and in the
succeeding calm the man became snowblind. On the seventh day, the
horse saw an outfit of freighters passing in the distance. He ran to
their sleighs. He whinneyed to the horses, who understood his talk,
and he beckoned to the men, who were not so clever. Then the men
noticed that his belly was terribly swollen by long pressure of the
girth. They followed him. At a distance of one and a half miles
they came to a tract of prairie with the snow grubbed up where the
horse had been scratching for grass. In the midst was a heap of snow
like the mound of a grave, on which lay Sergeant Parker in seeming
death. His long delirium, beginning with visions of angels and
closing with a dream of meat-pies, had ended in coma just at the
verge of death; while the horse stayed on guard until it was possible
to get him rescued. So much was told me afterwards by the man.
The other day in France a British soldier was killed, whose horse
remained with the body for two days, out in the zone between the {83}
opposing armies, exposed to a hurricane of fire beyond example,
refusing to be rescued, moved by a love stronger than death.
[Sidenote: The horse immortal]
The young of the clergy will tell us all about the lower animal who
does not subscribe to the tenets of the church, and so must perish
everlastingly despite the Father's care. Yet if they read the
Prophets and the Revelations they will find chariots of fire, and see
in visions the deathless chargers ridden by Archangels. Are all the
Hosts of Heaven infantry? We have the full authority of the Holy
Bible for an idea that horses may be immortal.
But then the young of science have assured us that the clergy talk a
deal of nonsense, and that the Holy Scriptures are so much folk lore.
Our modern teachers, unused to sleeping outdoors, have never seen the
great heavens thrown open every night. They believe in nothing they
have not seen, and those I meet have not seen very much. To them the
lower animal is hardly a personal friend, but rather an automaton
steered by instincts, built on much the same principles as a
dirigible torpedo. The "instincts" have to account for deeds which
in a man would be attributed to love or valour.
I often meet young people who gently wave {84} aside my life
experience while they crush me with some religious or scientific
tenet to which they attach importance. Sometimes this bias has
caused total blindness, more often they lack sympathy; but any horse
can teach fellows who have eyes to see with, and hearts to
understand. Then they will realise in him a personality like that of
a human child.
I do believe that there are men and horses in whom the spirit burns
with so mighty and secure a strength that it cannot be quenched by
death; and that there are others in whom the flame burns low or has
been blown out.
[Sidenote: The horse psychic]
Everybody has acquaintances who possess a certain sense, not yet
quite understood, which enables them to read unspoken thoughts; to
see events in the past, the distance, or the future as happening to
their friends; or to be conscious of certain states of the atmosphere
produced by strong human emotions; or to see or hear phenomena which
some folk attribute to discarnate spirits. Such people are called
psychic, and, if they use their powers as a means of earning money,
they are defined as frauds. As a blind man does not deny the
existence of eyesight, so, if I am not psychic myself, I have no call
to decry the honest people who possess this gift. I have heard {85}
stories told in all good faith of dogs and horses showing uneasiness
and alarm at apparitions which men failed to see, of so-called
"ghosts," for example, in places which had been the scene of a
violent death. Without careful investigation one can scarcely treat
such tales as evidence; but it is quite possible that some horses,
like some women, are strongly psychic.
[Sidenote: Sense of humour]
That horses have a crude sense of humour is known to every horseman.
To rip the cap off a groom's head and drop it in the water is the
sort of joke which appeals to a horse or a little boy. Once I was
standing beside a friend who sat in a dog-trap, and each of us
enjoyed a glass of beer while we passed the time of day. Just for
fun the pony drank half my beer, but when I brought him a bowl of the
same, pretended to be an abstainer. That pony would visit his
master's dining-room of a morning to remove the covers and inspect
the dishes for breakfast.
Another friend of mine once had a horse named Kruger, black roan with
a white star on each flank. It had been his life's ambition to be a
skewbald, and disappointment had lopped both ears over a glass eye,
so that he looked like the very Devil. A greyhound body, long legs
and a mincing gait completed his {86} unusual list of beauties. Some
fourteen years after my friend had sold out and left that country,
accident brought me to Fire Valley, British Columbia, and dire need
of a new pack animal constrained me to buy the horse. Perhaps for
political reasons, or to evade the police, by this time old Kruger
had changed his name to Spot. Frightened of him at first, my partner
and I discovered his great talents as a pack-horse. Besides that, he
was brave, loyal, and gentle, and above all things humorous. A rough
passage of mountains brought us to settlement, where men would laugh
at Spot, but horses never dared. One had only to say "Sick 'em!" as
to a dog, and Spot would round up all the horses in sight and chase
them. His face was that of a fiend save for a glint of fun in the
one eye he had for business. For about fourteen hundred miles he
spread terror before him, stampeding bunches of loose horses but
always coming back with a grin, as though he said, "Now, ain't I the
very Devil?"
[Sidenote: The horse comrade]
In the North-west Mounted Police, a detachment of us used to ride
down bareback with led horses to water at the ford of Battle River.
Close by was a wire cable for the ferry. On one occasion, my horse
as he left the water turned under the cable to scrape me {87} off his
back. Failing in that, he returned higher up the bank, and this time
I was scraped off into a pool of dust. Out of that brown explosion
of dust, I looked up in time to see his malicious pleasure in a
successful joke.
And so one might set forth instances by the score, all to the same
monotonous effect, that humans and horses have a sense of humour.
[Sidenote: Limitations and tricks]
Please imagine a man to have his hands and feet replaced by boxes of
horn such as the hoofs of a horse, and that, so disabled, he is tied
by the head in a cell. Reduced to the conditions of horse-life in a
stable, the man would be as clever as a horse in the use of lips and
teeth. He would slip his headstall or break his head-rope, open the
door and escape until such time as the need for food and water drove
him back to prison. When asked to go to work, he might give a clever
impersonation of a lame horse. He might also copy the trick of the
beggar horse who gives the love call to every man who enters the
stable, fooling each of them with the flattery of special homage, a
sure way to gifts of sugar, apples or carrots. Or he might copy the
horse who whiles away dull times by keeping a pet cat, or bird, or
puppy. It seems odd, too, that the most dangerous human outlaws and
man-slaying horses are {88} gentle with small animals and children.
So long as we punish unoffending horses with imprisonment in dark
cells, we may expect them to show traits of character evolved by the
treatment of prisoners in the Middle Ages.
Horses, dogs, and men are oddly alike, too, in the way they dream,
with twitchings of the limbs to illustrate great exertion, and
snortings, murmurs and groans, which take the place of speech.
So horses just like humans are dour or cheery, truculent or cheeky,
humorous or stolid, some with a lofty sense of dignity, while others
behave like clowns. Some horses are like some children, exacting
until they are petted, while other children and horses hate to be
pawed. Both will sulk or quarrel, play the fool or grumble, make
intimate friendships or bitter enemies. I think, though, that the
love of sport, and the desire to excel are much more general with
horses than with children.
[Sidenote: The horse musical]
In a military camp I asked some women to tea, and turned loose a few
Beethoven records on the gramaphone. At the first tune all the
horses in pasture assembled at the fence, stood to attention while
the music lasted, and when it was over scattered off to grass. They
certainly love music. At the same camp, by {89} some mysterious
means they got wind of the fact that twenty of them were to be sent
away. Until the detachment actually marched off, their conduct, for
twenty-four hours on end, was sulky and mutinous. Afterwards both
groups immediately mended their manners.
[Sidenote: Signals]
Everybody who lives with horses learns that they exchange
confidences, arrange for concerted action and try to tell us their
troubles. Nobody knows how they talk, few of us can tell what they
are talking about, but so far as the evidence goes they seem to
express their feelings rather than their thoughts. Here then are a
few of their signals:
(1) When a horse throws his ears to point forward and down, and he
makes a short, sharp snort it means "Wheugh! Look at that now!" If
he throws himself back on his haunches while he points and snorts, it
means: "Oh, Hell!" If he points, snorts and shies a few yards
sideways in the air, he is playing at being in a terrible fright. It
means: "Bears!" He is not really frightened, for when he is tired
out he will pass a railway engine blowing off steam without taking
the slightest notice.
(2) One ear lopped forward and the other back, head sideways, gait
sidelong, may be {90} defined in the words of a learned Hindu: "Sir,
the horse with which your Honour entrusted me has been behaving in a
highly obstreperous and devil-may-care manner."
[Sidenote: Horse speech]
(3) The love call is a little whinney, soft, sweet and low.
(4) The demand for food is a rumbling neigh.
(5) A cheery neigh greeting other horses in passing means: "How d'ye
do!"
(6) A loud trumpet peal of neighing at short intervals is a demand,
sometimes a piteous appeal to other horses to join company.
(7) The groan of great pain is the same as that of a man, and may be
attended by crying, when tears run from the nostrils. The sound is
heart-rending, beyond endurance.
(8) The scream is only uttered in sudden and mortal agony as from
burning, or from some kinds of wounds received in battle.
[Sidenote: Signs and protests]
(9) Ears thrown back even ever so slightly express anger, but thrown
back along the neck mean fighting rage. In wild life the fights
between stallions are mainly with the teeth, and horses forced to
fight as a sport for men, as in ancient Iceland, rear up against one
another, striking as well as biting. The ears are thrown back to
save them from being bitten.
{91}
(10) Rage and pretended anger are expressed by a sudden squeal, the
signal of attack.
(11) Gestures of pain.
Stamping is merely impatience.
Pawing may be due to colic. If also the animal sweats and keeps
looking at his flank, there is certainly pain in the abdomen.
Pointing with a forefoot. When standing, a horse rests his hind legs
by changing weight from one to the other at intervals of a minute.
As he has no mechanism to do this with the fore limbs, he expresses
pain in one of them by pointing the foot forward. He rests better
facing down a slope then facing up as in a stable, and when in pain
may be relieved by tying to the stanchion instead of to the manger.
Dragging the fore foot means injury to the shoulder.
Head out, chin up, feet apart, and sweating, mean that the chap is
choking.
Head down and tail tucked in, mean misery or sickness.
(12) Gestures of joy.
Bright eyes, a glossy coat, head carried proudly, and tail high, dry
nostrils, hard droppings, free movement, and a willing gait are signs
most eloquent of health. To pass the time of day with other horses,
shy at the {92} clouds, paw the moon, and dance, with pig jumping or
even a little bucking after breakfast, are signals of youth, joy and
good fellowship.
Then one may watch the play of the nostrils making a thousand
comments on scents borne in the air, while the ears will point and
quiver to all sorts of sounds beyond man's hearing. The mood will
change from sober thoughtfulness in the shadow of clouds or trees, to
sheer intoxication of delight with sparkling frost, dew on the
flowers, sunshine in the skies. No creature on earth expresses
feeling with sweeter quickness than a happy horse.
(13) Nuzzling is sometimes an appeal for help, more often an
expression of loving sympathy.
[Sidenote: Thought transference]
(14) Nothing so far explains how a couple of horses will put their
heads together, touch nostrils, and in a second come to some sort of
mutual understanding, which leads to immediate concerted action such
as the bolting of a team. In one or two cases I am not sure that the
nostrils actually touched. In many cases when I saw nostrils rubbed
together or the beard bristles in contact, no sound was made within
the compass of my hearing. Neither were there such lip movements as
would be {93} made by speech, nor was there any self-conscious,
found-out expression in the faces of conspirators caught plotting
against the white men.
When I have been in company with some very dear friend, and one of us
would answer out loud to an unspoken thought of the other, or both of
us were moved to say the same thing in the like words, we called that
thought-transference. When my horse came to me in camp, and standing
behind caressed my neck or ear with his lips or nostril trying by
thought-transference to tell me all about his pain or sorrow, he
might get his face slapped before I realised exactly what he said.
Only as I learned to welcome horses when they came to me, I seemed to
sense their feelings. They converse among themselves by
thought-transference, and try to speak that way to men they trust.
[Sidenote: Thought transference]
The barriers between horse and man are tremendous. Think what it is
for a fastidious creature, with powers of scenting which can descry
clean standing water at nearly five miles without wind, to come near
a meat-eating creature like a man, powerfully and offensively
scented. Suffering from nausea without obtaining the relief
permitted to a {94} man, the horse must overcome an intense dislike
before he accepts our friendship. He senses our defects of
cowardice, cruelty or selfishness, perhaps drunkenness, vices
out-ranging his capacity for evil. He knows that we are physically
small, slow, sometimes even lacking in muscular strength. Yet taking
us all in good part, he submits his will to an intellectual force,
grasp and speed which seem to him supernatural, and to an authority
which he venerates as divine.
{95}
CHAPTER IV.
THE CONQUEST OF THE HORSE.
We have now some vague idea of the ancient horse; so it is well we
should know what manner of man was the savage who caught and tamed
him.
Living a great deal, and travelling much alone among savages I have
been more or less tolerated; and the savage has told me what he
thinks of the white man. He looks upon the scientist as an
amateurish unpractical sort of person who cannot ride or cook. The
missionary can be profitably humbugged. The tourist is a source of
revenue but apt to be intrusive and ill-mannered. As to the cinema
folk, one tribe of savages refused to play any more because they were
defeated in every film. They were granted one massacre of the whites
to cheer them up.
[Sidenote: The savage]
So the scientific men, the missionary, the cinema people and many
others bring home impressions which would amuse the savage. {96} Our
people are so badly informed that they suppose the savage to be
dirty, ferocious, immoral and uncouth as the Sydney larrakin, the
cockney rough, the New York tough and other poor degenerates of our
race. It is true that the Fuegans were dirty, but we should not
speak ill of the dead. Some South Sea island tribes are cheerfully
ferocious, and make much of the white man at table although he does
taste salty. The Pathan, if one calls him a savage, takes a delight
in immorality. But uncouth? The commonality of the English-speaking
nations have a deliberate preference for ugly costume and
decorations, foul speech is usual among men, vulgarity is a privilege
of both sexes, and awkwardness of bearing is almost universal. Who
are we to call the savage uncouth? Compared with a white man, the
savage is a gentleman anyway and usually sets us an example in purity
of speech, often in cleanliness, chastity, and good faith. He
differs from the healthier types of white men in having slightly less
energy and vitality, in lack of sustained purpose and in being never
quite grown up. Except in Africa, our microbes and not our valour
conquered him, and his failure to rival us in material progress was
due to lack of material rather than want of {97} brains. The
ferocious savage of fiction could not have tamed the horse.
It is quite likely that men killed and ate ponies for ages before it
occurred to our ancestors that the creatures would be a deal more
useful alive. But how was Four-feet overtaken and killed by
Two-feet? Science has nothing to say on that point. We are not told.
Science has discovered that in Western Europe there were various
phases of culture which are called (1), the Eolithic, when men used
natural stones for weapons, (2) the old Stone Age, when flints were
flaked to make spear and arrow points, (3) and the new Stone Age,
when stones for weapon heads were ground and polished, (4) the Bronze
Age, (5) and the Iron Age. It is true that flaking flints for
flint-lock guns continues in England in face of all theories of the
Neolithic, because a flaked flint will make sparks, whereas a ground
flint won't. It is also true that Europe is the only part of the
world with flints for flaking. The general application of the theory
is also a little difficult on the Western American range, where there
are fine silicate stones; but, in defiance of the Neolithic culture,
the savages persist in flaking them for spear and arrow points while
they {98} deliberately grind stones for club heads, axe heads, and
mortars. Still worse, the debauched Eskimo grind and carve stone
lamps, but in their heathen blindness use bone and ivory for the
heads of harpoons and bird darts. The savages I have known belonged
to the Old Bone Age.
[Sidenote: The hunter]
How then with his slow feet and poor weapons was the hunter to
surprise the alert sentries of a pony herd, get within range before
they fled like the wind, or drive a bone-tipped spear through the
shaggy hair?
It seems to me that man, like other hunting animals, despairing of
getting meat from a pony herd on the range, would lie in ambush near
the watering places, and where the ponies had to string out on a
narrow trail they were caught at a disadvantage. There spear and
arrow could earn abundant meat. Outside the bush, too, the valley or
cañon walls had caves and defensible places where a tribe could lodge
within easy reach of game, water and fuel.
In the South-western desert of America I have seen hundreds of cave
and cliff villages, some even occupied by surviving tribes whose
methods of hunting and location and defence would correspond with
those of the more {99} primitive pony hunters of prehistoric France.
It seems, too, that those hairy aborigines who split pony bones for
marrow may possibly have known the daintiest dish of Red Indian
cookery, Crow entrail, more politely known as Absaroka Sausage.
In savage tribes there is a rule that a man of the Smith sept may not
marry among the Smiths, but seeks his bride among the Browns or
Robinsons. But the septs are usually called after some animal, so
that for Smith we may read Pony, for Brown we may read Eagle, for
Robinson say Wolf. Moreover, the children play a game of two sides
in which Master Wolf impersonates a wolf with cries and dances, and
if the rival side laughs they pay forfeit. So Miss Pony plays at
pony, and Master Eagle plays at being an Eagle. Out of this game
perhaps comes a play of the grown-ups; in which I have seen a
candidate for the secret society of the Healers impersonate his
tribal Bear or Beaver before the Doctors of the order who admitted
him to their circle. This play may be the origin of a mystic rite
known as Calling the Game. For certain Doctors can wear a wolf skin,
and give so beautiful an imitation of a wolf that all the deer and
bison are deceived. His job is to excite their {100} curiosity so
that, as he draws slowly away, the herds will follow him. The nearer
animals draw back with misgiving, but those in the rear press on to
get a view until, as the wolf-man gathers speed, the moving herd runs
hard. It is then that they find themselves running between
converging lines of stone piles, and women jump up from behind these
cairns waving their robes and yelling. The herd stampedes to the
edges of a sheer cliff, too late to check their pace after the
leaders have seen the peril ahead. The rush of the herd drives
onward into space, and hundreds, even thousands of great beasts fall
headlong to lie dead or mangled in heaps on the rocks below. So the
tribe assembles for great feasting, and heavy labour.
[Sidenote: The trap]
The hides were needed for clothing, shields, tents, and rope; the
brains for dressing skins; the sinews and guts for bow-strings,
lashings and thread; the hoofs and horns for weapon points, hafts,
handles, spoons, cups, window lights, and glue, which mixed with oil
made a dressing for leather; the gall for cleansing; the hair for
felting or weaving; the fat for lamp oil and candles. The meat in
large flakes was sun-dried for storage. The dried meat, pounded,
mixed with berries and filled {101} with melted fat made pemmican,
the best of winter foods.
Where there were no cliffs over which a herd could be driven, the
practice of calling the game was just the same, but the narrowing
avenue of stone heaps led to the gate of a ring fence into which the
big game were penned for slaughter.
This ring fence has many countries, many names, being the pound or
corrall of North America, jaral of Mexico, kraal of Africa, keddah of
India, circus of Rome, bull-ring of Spain and old England. With the
advancing ages the perching of spectators on the fence became the
Auditorium of the circus, Stadium, and Colosseum, and the baiting of
beasts and men, the wild beast fights, the mimic battles, and
martyrdom of saints, varied the savage programme with racing,
tournaments, and athletic sports.
So far as our subject is concerned, however, one need only note that
herds of wild animals, the fighting males, the mothers and their
young of many species much too swift for men to run down in the open,
were captured alive and unhurt. Among these were ponies with their
mares and foals.
[Sidenote: Pets]
The pity for young animals and the love of {102} pets are native
traits in human character, and universal among savages.
The savage hunter brought kittens and puppies into camp to be the
playthings of his wife and children, and from these pets descend the
whole of our cats and dogs. And in the tribal captures at the
corralls were all sorts of young animals claimed by the women and
children because they were not worth killing. These ponies, cattle,
deer, sheep, goats and antelope grew up with human kind, glad to get
shelter from the wolves at night, allowed to graze in safety outside
the camp by day. If they proved useful the men were tolerant. The
useful kinds were even protected at grass by boys told off as
herders, to run them into camp at the first sign of danger.
[Sidenote: Milch mares]
The mother who ran dry of milk, saw foals getting milk from the
mares, and would have mare's milk for her child. The mares who gave
most milk were preferred to others. From this came the natural idea
of breeding from good milch mares to improve the strain, and get a
larger yield. And thus the use and value grew of mare's milk with
its many preparations as a staple food for children, then of
grown-ups, until the practice of herding tame horse stock became
general among the hordes {103} of Asia. Since then it has been found
that cows gave more and better milk than mares.
As the wild game migrated between their high summer range and their
lowland wintering grounds the savage tribes followed in search of
meat. With the beginning of the pastoral age the need was urgent of
moving the flocks and herds between the summer and the winter
pastures. But as yet there were no beasts of draught or burden to
carry the tribal camp. That meant the keeping of two camp
equipments, or maybe a camp upon the highlands to supplement the
village in the lowlands; and it was doubtful policy to leave valuable
tents as a prey for marauding rivals. A larger and a bitter need
arose when the tribe must move, and old folk who lacked the strength
to travel must be left behind. There is nothing so terrible in
savage life as the necessity of leaving old men and women exposed
upon a hilltop after the tribe has moved. The poor old thing is
provided with warm robes, a fire, fuel, water and some food, but as
the days pass the last cinders, carefully raked together, sink to
dust, and the cautious wolves close in for the final rush. Savages
love as we do, think as we do, and their life which has for us some
glamour of romance is full for them of sordid realism. So {104} we
may reckon well that some good matron grudged the loss, at moving
time, of tent poles, the cutting of which had cost her heavy labour,
done as it was without steel tools like ours.
[Sidenote: The travois]
She saw the tent poles left behind when the milch-pony herd moved
off. She told the herders to lash a pair of her poles, one on either
side of each pony's neck with the ends trailing astern. The next
idea was to lash a couple of cross bars across the trailing poles
behind the pony's hocks, and that was enough to keep them at a proper
angle. It was easy then to lash a skin robe in position between the
trailing poles and the two cross bars, making a sort of basket,
something to carry the old mother, who must otherwise be left behind
to perish. Here then was transport which enabled the tribe to march
with its tent poles, old folk and baggage. One can imagine how the
medicine men protested against so shocking a violation of the laws of
nature, which decree that the aged shall be left as a meal for our
hunting companions, the range wolves. But here the priests would
find themselves opposed by the common sense of every man and woman;
so they would doubtless yield with an ill grace, after enacting a law
that this new means of transport was a special privilege for aged
{105} clergymen. The travois came into general use for transport.
[Sidenote: The cart]
The next step was less obvious, an idea which would appeal to men of
inventive minds; and I have noticed that it is only in civilisation
that the inventor is treated as a public enemy. The savage actually
admires a man with new ideas. The travois frame was a heavy drag,
and the draught pony was apt to delay the march. Why not have a
round log as a roller under the trailing ends of the poles? Too
heavy. Cut away the bulk of the roller, fining it down to a mere
axle bar, with a disc at either end to roll along the ground. The
larger the disc the better it rolled, so disc wheels were built, with
a hole in the middle into which the ends of the axle bar were bolted.
As one may see in the many countries where disc wheels are used by
farmers, the first idea of lightening the disc was to cut out four
large holes, leaving the timber shaped like a rough cross with a rim.
But that cross was too weak to carry weight, so its arms had to be
strengthened with four spokes, lashed on with raw-hide; next the four
spokes replaced the arms of the cross, and a rim was built enclosed
in a raw-hide tyre. The raw hide, put on wet, and shrinking as it
dried, made a quite serviceable tyre. So {106} was the wheel
invented, and the first four-spoke pattern gave place to the six and
eight-spoke methods of strengthening the rim. The whole process from
roller to four-spoke wheel would easily occur to one inventor in his
experiments.
[Sidenote: The chariot]
Meanwhile the skin basket in the travois frame was changed to a floor
of raw-hide lacing, on which a man could stand with bent knees
driving. He needed shelter, so a dashboard was made of oiled
bull-hide, quite translucent but proof against spears, arrows and
pony kicks. As a curved surface made weapons glance when they hit,
this dash-board was rounded at the front, and carried along the sides
enclosing the driver's stand.
So far a one-horse vehicle, a sort of sulky, had been invented; and
it may be worth noting that the creaky old Red River cart of
Manitoba, although made with steel tools, contains no trace of metal.
Its gait is a walk. But it was obvious that by using a pole instead
of a pair of shafts, two ponies could be driven, and trotting became
quite possible so far as the grass extended. Still one hesitates to
use the stately name of chariot for a vehicle on three-foot wheels,
drawn by shaggy ponies from the milch herd. Yet it had use in war
because the machine could be driven by a charioteer, leaving {107}
the warrior free to use his weapons. At least it brought the
warrior, after a long march, at a decent speed fresh into action;
and, although he fought afoot, he had the chariot to rally upon, for
cover and a position when hard pressed. The British warrior ran
along the shaft to the attack, retreated behind the dashboard for
defence.
[Sidenote: Red Indians]
THE RIDDEN HORSE. Many a time have I seen the pony herd drift out to
pasture, or trail down of an evening to the water hole; but I do not
remember a herder going afoot. For boys to ride on herd was only
natural, and I have no doubt that ponies were both ridden and packed
from very early times. We may find guidance here from Red Indian
practice.
The Blackfoot nation were a woodland people, and, as first known to
the white men, lived on the head waters of the North Saskatchewan at
the southern edge of the Great Northern Forest. In the earliest
years of the nineteenth century some Kootenays crossed the Rocky
Mountains from the west, and arrived in the Blackfoot hunting grounds
with the first ponies ever seen there. They made a good sale to the
Blackfeet, which started a steady trade. Moreover, the Blackfeet
made no bones about taming and riding these feral {108} ponies, and
holding them on herd. For better hunting and convenience in herding,
they moved about three hundred miles to the southward out on the open
prairies, but well within sight of the Rocky Mountains, which made a
stronghold in the event of disaster, a hunting-ground in seasons of
scarcity. They took to bison hunting for a livelihood.
The daily bathing, winter and summer, in a very brisk climate, the
sweat baths which preceded all religious rites, the freedom from
vermin, the chastity of the women, the valour of the men, the purity
and spirituality of their life, their wonderful psychic development,
and hypnotic medical practice distinguished the Blackfeet even among
the glorious tribes of that region. In grace and endurance as
horsemen they have not been equalled in our time. Young warriors
were trained in the ordeal of fasting and prayer in solitude until
they had contact with the unseen; next in the ordeal by torture; and
last in the ordeal of war. A warrior assembled a party of young men,
and after they had been purified and blessed, they took the war path,
mounted, or more often afoot into the territory of some neighbouring
tribe, such as the Gros Ventre, Absaroka, Sioux or Crees. Their
mission was to enter {109} the hostile camp at night, loose and drive
off the war horses tied at the lodge doors, or stampede the tribal
herd, and drive straight for home. These little excursions,
practised by all the tribes, led to occasional unpleasantness between
them, and engagements were fought when one side could lure the other
into an ambush, cut off a hunting or war party of the enemy, or
surprise a hostile camp. Fighting mounted with lance or bow and
arrows, the Blackfeet developed forty thousand cavalry within
twenty-five years from the day they first saw a pony. Shock action
was unusual, and the tactics were generally those of cavalry in
reconnaissance. A raw-hide string round the pony's lower jaw, and a
robe tied on the back with a surcingle completed the equipment; but
the warrior, whose costume was a breech clout, would usually be
attended by a pack pony to carry his war kit and face paint for use
on occasions of high ceremonial, or a full dress battle.
[Sidenote: Barbarians]
It is a superstition of running and jumping horsemanship that a big
horse and a little man are the right combination for travel. The Red
Indian of the Plains would average five foot ten, and his pony say
thirteen hands, a big man on a very little mount. The United States
cavalry were on the average smaller {110} men on very much larger
horses. They sometimes intercepted Indians on the march, but rarely
overtook them. Closely pursued, Chief Joseph commanding the Nez
Percé tribe, marched with his women and children fourteen hundred
miles, before the United States forces succeeded in intercepting
their flight. In the case of the Blackfoot outlaw Charcoal, up to a
hundred-and-sixty Mounted Police were engaged for four months
catching him. So on the whole the primitive savage, once he had a
pony, was not deficient in mobility. And given the pony, he became
the Mounted Barbarian whose Hordes played havoc with the elder
civilizations. At the very dawn of History three hundred thousand
head of Turanean chariotry romped down on the Persian Empire. They
are said to have been very haughty and oppressive to the poor
Persians.
The fact that range men travelling are usually attended by a herd,
change ponies at every halt, and so ride fresh mounts two or three
times a day, gives them a mobility with even the smallest ponies
which has never been matched by one-horse cavalry. It was not the
foray, but shock action which had to wait, until the crossing of
stocks produced the war horse.
{111}
CHAPTER V.
THE HORSE IN HISTORY.
I. THE DAPPLED HORSE OF EUROPE.
THE BALTIC PEOPLE. The Baltic, which once drained through Lapland to
the Arctic, became, as the icefields melted, a land-locked lake until
a local sinkage of the rocks opened its Danish channels into the
Atlantic. At the same period the North Sea was eating its way up the
old vale of North River.
The melting of the icefields had left these Baltic and North-River
Provinces of Cloudland an ill-drained country of bare rock wastes, of
boulder tracts and clay, cluttered with lakes and swamps. It was
long before its damp and frosty soils yielded a scanty crop, eight
bushels of wheat, for instance, in Plantaganet England as compared
with thirty-six bushels, the present average. The only wealth was
that of fisheries in cold and deadly shallows.
Here, in a rapidly improving climate, was a school of manhood which
educated poor savages who lived on shell-fish, driving them {112} by
straits of famine to exercise a varied skill as fishers, hunters and
farmers with the changing seasons. As these people always bred more
bairns than they could feed, their overcrowding led to bickerings,
and mutual recrimination weeded out all but the best fighters, while
pestilence swept away those who were not not quite hardy. The
blue-eyed, fair-haired ruddy folk of Cloudland grew tenacious of
life, and very hard to kill, thrifty, austere, fiercely
self-governing. Never has the world known men more formidable,
adventurous, abler or more daring than these Vikings of the northern
seas, and pioneers by land who set forth out of Cloudland to find
homes. They had a strong preference for other people's homes.
[Sidenote: The Baltic folk]
To realise the temper of the Baltic, glance for a moment at the old
quest for cod, and the curing stations for stock-fish which formed a
series of stepping-stones to bridge the North Atlantic, and so led to
the discovery of North America. The founding by blonde adventurers
of the Hohenstaufen and Romanov dynasties, and of the British
kingdom, are Baltic roots from whence have grown the German, Russian,
British and American world powers holding dominion over half the
Earth. All that steam is to the mechanism of the planet, or to {113}
our own industrial engineering, the Baltic Force has been in history.
Long before the dawn of historic times the Baltic region was brewing
human storms, which swept outward in all directions, but mainly into
regions toward the sun. It is not blind accident which leads the
modern Prussians to seize the coal and iron fields of Belgium, the
oilfields of Galicia, or the copper mines of Serbia; for, not only
are Baltic storms of overwhelming strength, they are organized by
strategists, led by tacticians and concentrate attack upon the most
useful countries.
[Sidenote: Limitation to conquests]
Yet there is always a limitation to the Baltic conquests. When the
blonde conquerors seized Greece or Italy, Spain or Asia Minor,
districts enclosed by sea and mountain barriers they always held
their own. When on the other hand they conquered a country open to
attack such as Germany or Russia, Hungary or the Balkans the next
wave of the Tartar Hordes has overwhelmed them by sheer weight of
numbers. So the early Balkan conquests on the Mediterranean were cut
off from the homeland by swarms of Asiatics whose dark haired
descendants, known as the Alpine stock still hold large mountain
regions from the Black Sea to the Rhone.
{114}
[Sidenote: The Baltic force]
Wherever the Baltic people hold their conquests in Asia, Europe, or
America, a nation arises of mixed blood from their marriages with
black-haired natives or fellow emigrants. A few centuries after the
settlement, four hundred years or so, the austere republic, or
monarchy of free men with a king as Leader, blossoms into a grand
empire, ablaze with genius, rich, corrupt, decaying.
But, if the Baltic colonists have settled to sunward of the 49th
parallel, the sunlight begins to affect the nerves of the blonde
emigrants, to weaken the children, to give a feverish energy to
business, to kill off the unsheltered outdoor workers, and emasculate
the sheltered aristocracy. A few centuries later the dark-haired
natives of the region have time once more to resume their ancient
habit of sitting in the sun. They made the statues and portraits of
fair gods and saints, blonde kings and heroes. "Once upon a time,"
they say, "we had Olympic games. Our cavalry were irresistible. We
ruled the entire world!" But the race of the blonde conquerors has
perished from among them, gone like last winter's snow save for a few
surviving aristocrats, and some poor melting drifts of peasantry up
in the {115} mountain valleys where there are clouds for shelter.
[Sidenote: Hellenic horsemen]
THE HELLENIC HORSEMEN. While the Baltic region itself was still
sub-arctic, perhaps with no horse-stock as yet much better than
Celtic ponies, the oak woods of the Danube valley were breeding
sturdy Dapples, while the Tartar hordes with each invasion scattered
Duns as far as central France. Even the white horse of the Southern
steppes, rare and held sacred by the Northern people, was known in
Central Europe. So when the fair Achaeans came to Greece they
brought not Celtic ponies but Duns, and a few Dapples picked up upon
their journeys.
In the sagas of the Northmen, as in the legends of Achaean Greece the
blue-eyed, ruddy, tawny hero makes love or war to worship a fair
woman. The vein is epic, but there is a difference of mood; for in
the North its atmosphere is one of gloom and terror shadowed by awful
Fate, but in the south of sunny splendour, gallantry, and joy. The
theme of the winged horse has its weird Valkyrs riding to find the
slain through battlefields at night, and its gay flying Pegasus in
the Sahara, who will not be caught save with a golden bridle made by
magic.
{116}
[Sidenote: Achaean horsemen]
The Ocean God gave Peleus a chariot team "Dapple" and "Dun" by name,
both with great flowing manes, "swift as the winds, the horses that
the harpy, Podarge bare to the West Wind as she was grazing on the
meadow beside the stream of Oceanus." Peleus lent the team to his
son Achilles. Then Achilles' charioteer was killed in battle, and
the horses mourned. "Hot tears," says Homer, "flowed from their eyes
to the ground as they mourned for their charioteer." The fellow used
to oil their manes, poor dears. They wept from the eyes, and not, as
modern horses do, from the nostrils. But then you see they were not
ordinary horses, because their mother was a harpy (_vide_ books on
Unnatural History), and their sire was the West Wind. They were
foaled on the shores of the Western ocean: Dapple of the woods, Dun
of the grass lands. And Pegasus was a Bay from Africa. So one finds
in the oldest myths of the Hellenes record of the three primary
stocks from whom all modern breeds are descended.
To these Hellenes the hearth, the log cabin and the mother were
sacred, the bases of all religion. The hearth became an altar, the
cabin a glorious temple of white marble, the mother a goddess whose
statue was ivory and {117} her robes of massive gold. Outside their
holy faith nothing was taken very seriously, and the people had
special delight in nonsense animals. The centaur or man-horse was a
prime favourite, and they did not worry over his stable management, a
most revolting job. The man mouth would refuse the forage urgently
required by the horse-body, and if they compromised on oats as
porridge, even that would pall. Still centaurs would be gentle, and
less likely to butt, than the buck unicorn of our own mythology. The
Centaur Cheiron indeed was not only gentle but the eminent headmaster
of the earliest public school. Solving the diet question with fish,
game, fruit and wine, he lived to a good old age.
For a people of so lively a mind as the Greeks, progress was rather
slow in the use of horses. Supposing the siege of Troy to have
happened about 1000 B.C. they were solely dependent on chariotry in
war while King Solomon had 12,000 cavalry.
Three centuries later the Greek colonists of African Cyrene, that
"city of fair steeds and goodly chariots," sent home shipments by
direct sea trade of desert Bays for breeding. With the improvement
of the horse stock four-horse chariots began to compete in the
Olympic {118} Games of B.C. 680. By B.C. 640 the ridden horse had
become of consequence enough to share the great honours of the
Olympiad, but still the tactical use of cavalry was delayed. Greece
is a small rough country much broken by sea channels, and no more
suitable than Scotland for the effective use of the mounted arm in
war. So, even as late as the Battle of Marathon, the Persian Horse
found the Hellenic army afoot; not until the fifth century was the
Greek Cavalry of any consequence.
[Sidenote: Hellenic horsemen]
In the Greek statuary of the Great Age we see the Hellenic horses
clearly as though they lived. The chariot horse was a noble
half-bred carriage animal standing at least sixteen hands. The
cavalry remount stood about fourteen hands with a head of
unmistakeable breeding from the Bay, and a general chunky comfortable
build which suggests the Dapple, but certainly not the Dun who had
served with the heroes of the Achaean age. The Welsh pit pony, used
as a yeomanry remount, exactly corresponds with Xenophon's careful
description of the ideal cavalry horse. "A double back," says he,
"that is, when the flesh rises on both sides of the spine, is much
softer to sit upon, and more pleasing to the eye than a single one."
That was before the days of {119} saddles, and horsemen had tender
interest in the double back--the characteristic back of dappled
horses. Of the Hellenic seat we will speak in the chapter on
straight-leg riding.
[Sidenote: Ancient horsemen]
Among all ancient horsemen the great problem was to reserve both
hands for the use of weapons. This involved a life training in
steering by pressure of the knee or calf, but dressing in military
formation was still impossible without control of the horse's mouth.
Many nations used a nose-band, or a twitch round the lower jaw, and a
head-rope for steering; but still in practice the formation would be
that of a mob. So Xenophon seems to have borrowed the bitt from the
chariot harness, using a rough one for breaking, and a smoother kind
for trained horses. His illustrious cavalry owed their prestige and
power to a proper formation, and ingenious tactics.
[Sidenote: Roman horsemen]
THE ROMAN HORSEMEN. The Romans of historic times were descended from
a fair race of the Baltic region, and the blonde aristocracy still
ruled among a dark Mediterranean population. Their culture was
adopted, and mainly Greek. Their original Dun and Dapple horse stock
was crossed from early ages with African blood, and as time went on
they commanded the use of every decent horse strain in {120} the
world. Their officials were _Curules_ as a class from the word
_Currus_ for chariot, whose seats of office were chariot chairs, and
their state allowances included chariot horses. Their gentry were
known as _equites_ or horsemen. They developed a mania for chariot
racing, and their four factions known from the racing colours blue,
green, white and red, outlasted the Western Empire to be a public
nuisance in Constantinople. And yet a people may have money to bet
on racing who in their hearts care nothing more for horses than does
the sporting cockney.
Rich youngsters might swank on horseback to impress the girls, but
one does not read very much about a mounted aristocracy like our own,
with gallant games like polo or manly pleasures such as modern
hunting. At heart the Romans of the Empire were anything but
horse-proud. In their military practice they never aspired to the
glories of the old Greek Cavalry, or bred a horseman tactician to
compare with grand old Xenophon.
Some fifty years before the Christian era, Livy described the heavy
cavalry only as using bridles. This being interpreted means that the
Roman dragoons were able for shock action, while their Hussars
steered by the knees and fought in open disorder.
{121}
On the whole it is difficult to ascribe to the Romans any advance in
the art of horsemanship except in the matter of draught. The heavy
engines which correspond to a modern siege train required not only
draught beasts--oxen possibly, but also the paved causeway. The
Roman road for horse traffic was as big an invention in its effect on
civilization as the steam railway of our modern transport.
THE NORTHERN. Let us turn back to the Northern Ancestors of both
Greeks and Romans. The Heimskringla shows the ancestral home of the
Norse to have been in Russia. By the time they colonized
Scandinavia, they were discarding the chariot, were fighting on
horseback, and had waggons as well as sleighs. A Bronze age waggon
at Copenhagen differs little in structure from those in use to-day.
This waggon confirms the stories of gods heroes and kings riding and
driving powerful horses at least as large the big Duns of modern
Scandinavia. The theory of scrawny little ponies appears to the
sheer nonsense. The evidence points indeed to a more general and
more advanced practice of horse management than than either the Greek
or the Roman.
[Sidenote: Gothic horsemen]
THE GOTHIC HORSEMEN. While the Romans made no special advance in
horsemanship the {122} fair Barbarians of Germany and Gaul evolved a
notable idea. The gentleman rode to war attended by a couple of
mounted serfs who had a remount for him if his charger fell, or even
replaced his loss in the fighting line. In late times the Gothic
gentleman became a knight, and his attendants were esquires in
training until they won their spurs.
See then how the Latin word _equus_ for a horse gives us _equites_ as
the rank of the ancient gentry of Europe, and Esquire the rank of our
modern gentleman. The French word for horse: _cheval_ gives us
Chivalry and Chevalier. The Spanish word _caballo_ gives us Cavalry,
Caballero, and Cavalier. The horse has taught us more than ever we
taught him.
[Sidenote: The pack horse in history]
THE PACK HORSE. While chariotry and cavalry were mainly engaged in
killing civilization, the unobtrusive pack pony did almost as much as
the ship in spreading culture along the channels of commerce. From
the port of London for example a pack trail starting at Tower Hill
ran westward along Newgate, Holborn, Oxford Street, and Bayswater
Road, crossed the Thames at Oxenford, then branched to the gold mines
of Dolgelly and the tin deposits of Cornwall. Along this artery
flowed the Phoenician culture.
{123}
[Sidenote: Pack trails]
A little later the merchants of North-western Europe in search of
salt, landed at the Cinque Ports of Kent. Their pack trails
converged to drop down Blackheath Hill. From thence the one trail
coasted the southern edge of the saltings of Southwark by way of Old
Kent Road and Bedlam, striking the first firm ground in the river
bank at Lamb's Hythe (landing), where the Bishop of Canterbury
afterwards built his town house. From Lambeth at low tide there was
a ford to Horseferry Road on the Isle of Thorns in mid-river. From
the island site of the City of Westminster, there was a broader but
very shallow ford across the north arm of the Thames. One may see
the north bank of the Island at Great George Street, Westminster; but
the site of the pack trail is lost. It took up the ridge between the
Tyburn and Bayswater brooks, avoiding the mudholes of both, along
Park Lane. At Marble Arch it swung into the Bronze trail, to leave
it presently at Tyburn Tree, and strike up Edgeware Road, and so via
Watling Street to the salt wells in Cheshire. It was along the
Bronze trail and the Salt trail that civilization found its way into
England.
Were I a merchant I might see in wool the single origin of my
country's wealth; were I a {124} broker I might see in stocks and
shares the origin of prosperity. Each to his trade; but as an old
packtrain captain I have ridden many a hundred miles, noting the
grass-grown bridle paths along dry ridges, the hesitating down-hill
curves of ancient roads as they approach wet ground, the outer
hedging and the inner hedging as highways narrowed down when they
were paved, and public house signs, such as the Packhorse, dating
from the recent centuries when still the traffic of old England was
done on cargo ponies. It needs but a little scouting to show clearly
the story of some fifteen hundred years of England's progress down to
the time when Cæsar's strength was taxed on joining battle with the
British tribes. Our people, like the Gauls, had roads and chariots,
armour of bronze and gold, old trades, and industries and towns
before the Romans came.
II. THE DUN HORSE OF ASIA.
[Sidenote: The Dun horse of Asia]
As the Earth reels through the Dark, and on her journey spins like a
sleeping top, we only notice the changing of the seasons while she
swings round her great orbit, and the swift passage of flying nights
and days. It is only when one is quite alone in the far wilderness
that one begins to feel the Earth in motion, and after sunset to
watch her shadow climb the {125} eastern sky. To roll one's bed down
beside the waning camp fire, to turn in and smoke the evening pipe,
to lie looking up at the stars, is to know that one is only a speck
of loose dust on a flying sphere, flung eastward at a thousand miles
an hour, yet held down by the pull of the Earth's weight safe from
being whirled away into space. Loose adventurers like me, loose air,
dust, water, and loose tribes of men are all being flung with the
surface, pulled by the centre of the Earth, and drifted about all the
time without our knowing why.
Of course the weaker tribes have been flung eastward so far as there
was land, and stay where they were thrown in China, Indo-China,
Burma, and Bengal. Only the stronger races have thrust against the
motion of the planet. These dark-haired sallow Asiatics, Scythian,
Hun, Tartar and the rest were bred in regions of strong sunlight,
filling their native steppes until they were overcrowded. They were
harmless shepherds and herders who did a little hunting. But for the
Dun pony we might not have heard much about them. When they tamed
the pony the savages became barbarians, the little scattered tribes
were welded into formidable hordes. And then they swarmed like
locusts eating up the world under {126} some ruthless Caan, a
Genghis, a Timour, burning all civilization, trampling out the embers
of human reason. And in their wake came twilight--the Dark Ages.
[Sidenote: Pack horse trails]
History is a jade. She has a glad eye for soldiers and sportsmen
whose business is destruction, but turns a sour face from lousy
pilgrims to the shrines of Faith, poor craftsmen and scholars
burdened with the tools of Progress, drab merchants who carry Culture
in their packs, and all the messengers of civilization. Of these her
annals are curt and negligent. She has plenty of gossip about Kings
more or less human as advertised by scribes more or less venal; but
keeps no chronicle of the pack trails on which the little Dun ponies
carried all that made civilization to the camps of the barbarian and
the savage. She told us nothing about the hundreds of opulent cities
which now lie dead and buried in the Mongolian deserts. One does not
like to speak ill of a lady, but her sense of truth is always
moderate.
Adventure is not officially authorized as one of the Muses, but she
is as truthful as History, and a deal more amusing as a guide.
[Sidenote: Dragon beast]
History says that nations who had no horses used to be terrified at
the first sight of horsemen, {127} and cites the instances of Peru
and Mexico when Empires collapsed in superstitious fear. It seems
quite natural then that the first mention of the horse in China
should call him Dragon-Beast. He was not really formidable, being
only a Dun pony carrying no doubt the good Mongolian pack apparel
which consists of a saddle, and a detachable cargo rack, the oldest
rigging known. His cargo was a lodestone, a rock of magnetic iron
which served the Chinese Emperor as a compass. When the pony wanted
to go west, and the magnet insisted on north his celestial majesty
probably saw a jolly good bucking match.
[Sidenote: The adventurers]
From China to the Atlantic, and from the northern Taiga to the Indian
ocean the old world was threaded all across with pack trails snaking
from water to water over the deserts and pastures, the forests and
the hills. Except in the very dry districts where camels, asses and
mules were employed for transport, the Dun ponies did all the
carrying over-land. From China to Europe was a three years' journey,
not because of the distance but by reason of the robbers who made the
trail unsafe. At each market town the packtrain captains waited,
perhaps for months, until a caravan assembled sufficiently large to
{128} undertake the journey. There were periods when great Tartar
Caans controlled the whole of Asia north of the Himalaya, together
with the grass land known now as European Russia. These monarchs
from Zenghis to Kublai and later had post trails with post horses,
and horses in relay for ambassadors and despatch riders bearing a
golden tablet of office. Old Kublai for example was busy building
Pekin when he sent the Polo brothers as envoys, riding post with the
golden tablet, to visit the Pope in Rome and ask for a batch of
priests to teach him the Christian faith. For years young Marco
Polo, nephew of these merchants, rode post as envoy, visiting every
realm in Asia. Very different were the ramblings on the pack trails
of that rare scamp Fernão Mendes Pinto who in the sixteenth century
worked as a slave on the Great Wall of China, travelled with marching
armies, and as a fugitive tramp found his way by mysterious Lhassa,
to the coasts of further India. Another colossal journey was that in
the eighteenth century of Vitus Bering the Dane with his Russian
trappers, and Stellar the German naturalist trekking on horseback to
the sea of Okhotsk. There they built a ship, and sailed in search of
the mysterious straits of Anian leading through {129} Meta Incognita
to the Atlantic. They found America, but were wrecked at the tail
end of the Aleutians. The surviving trappers built a ship and loaded
her with sea-otter skins. These they sold in Pekin for wealth beyond
dreams of avarice, and so returned riding as rich men home to their
native Russia.
It was in the days of Queen Elizabeth that English envoys and
merchants found their way by water and the trail of the Dun pony from
the White Sea to Persia and on even to Goa on the Indian Coast.
The trail of the Dun horse always led to adventure. Daring traders
went to swap gems for silk at the Court of the great Mogul, or sold
white ladies of the Caucasus to Haroun al Raschid down in Bagdad, or
to Suliman the Magnificent at Stamboul, or offered purple shell-fish
dyes of Tyre to tempt the young Prince Siddatha, or came from the
East with gold and frankincense and myrrh and laid them at the feet
of a Child in Bethlehem, or journeyed from Sweden with swords for the
Prophet of Islam.
III. THE BAY HORSE OF AFRICA.
[Sidenote: The Bay horse of Africa]
Apart from the sacredness of the Old Testament as dealing with the
origin of a religion, we may, without offence to fellow Christians,
{130} read this collection of Hebrew books as the secular history of
an able but unholy people.
[Sidenote: Israel]
The collection of stories known as Genesis consisted mainly of heroic
ballads, cast in the form of verse which can be easily and accurately
remembered. These ballads were recited until at the time of the
Babylonian Captivity in the fourth century B.C. the people learned to
write and set down their annals in the form of manuscript. We may
find the stories lacking in the salt of humour; we may doubt that
singers and scribes were apt to improve on the original words, piling
a deal of exaggeration on the naked facts; but at the very worst
these legends of old Israel are terse, clear, consistent and
gloriously true to human life and character. I had read the story of
Jacob the Sneak, and Joseph the Prig, of gallant Esau, and gentle
Ishmael in camps of live Red Indians, before I realised that Genesis
is true to primitive life as a whole, and that, after forty
centuries, the legend still glows and burns in its immortal truth,
beauty, and power.
The story deals with wealthy Arabian stockmen. They and their
neighbours bred she camels for milking, rode camels and asses, and
used both for pack animals. They seem to {131} have valued oxen for
heavy draught as well as for beef and hides, or they would scarcely
have bothered to winter the cattle in stables. As any stockmen sees
at a glance the sheep and goats were handled by experienced owners.
The stock would not have paid without a market, so, as these Arab
sheiks had plenty of gold, we may presume that they dealt in wool,
beef, hides, and draught animals with the fortified trading towns of
the watered farming districts. No doubt they sold pack beasts also
to the trading caravans.
There were no horses in the world as known to these folk. Abraham
visited Egypt somewhere about the nineteenth century B.C. and found
no horses there.
[Sidenote: The Barb]
Beyond the skyline of the western desert from Egypt to the Atlantic
ranged the Bay horse, the Barb of times to come. He was a delicate,
swift creature, very brave and gentle. His arched neck bore a black
and streaming mane, his tail was set high and carried clear of the
rump. His eyes were set low, wide apart from which the dainty muzzle
tapered, to sensitive nostrils and to lips like velvet. Legends of
later times, and other countries made him son of the west wind, while
custom gave each of his families a surname. They {132} have always
been exempt from labour, attended by human servants, treated as a
nobility. From very early times they were admitted to the private
family life of the Libyan people, and driven with the four-spoke
wooden chariot until both men and women learned to ride them.
[Sidenote: The Libyans]
In much the same spirit as our country folk go to town for shopping,
it was the pleasant custom of these Libyans to raid Egypt. Between
war and commerce the Egyptians brought Bay horses into their own use
at some time later than the visit of Abraham, but prior to that of
Joseph. This might be about the eighteenth century B.C. the era of
Stonehenge.
Shortly afterwards horses and chariots began to appear in the
painting and sculpture of Egyptian artists. Horses must still have
been scarce when the Pharaoh gave to Joseph a signet and royal robes,
but only lent him his second best chariot. It is true that the
people already owned a few horses, for in the great famine Joseph
accepted them in trade for grain.
[Sidenote: The ridden horse]
It was in that generation that the dying Jacob, speaking from
knowledge common among the civilized Egyptians, mentioned both ships
and horses. He was frank enough to call {133} his son Dan "an adder
in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall
fall backward." Here is the earliest mention of the ridden horse.
It was in Jacob's funeral procession to his native stock range east
of Jordan that there appeared "both chariot and horsemen, a great
company."
One suspects a trace of swank in the story of that "great company."
Jacob's countrymen were sheep herders, destined to go afoot for
centuries to come. The Egyptians used chariots, but never took to
riding as a habit. Merchants were trading horses to the Hittites,
but that (until Ptolemy Philadelphus made water holes, and a highway
in the second century B.C.) was done in face of extreme difficulty.
The week's passage of the Desert of Sin could be made only in the
first two months of each year, and even then the horses must be
refreshed from water bags carried by camels. On the whole it is
likely that the great company of chariots and horsemen was a poetic
device for making the most of Joseph's posthumous importance.
[Sidenote: Horses in Genesis]
According to Manetho, the well-known Egyptian historian, somewhere
about the twenty-first century B.C. a most objectionable
sheep-herding tribe of Arabs began to infest {134} lower Egypt.
Manetho is prejudiced; but just as in modern Western America where
the sheep herder is rated among cattle men as something rather lower
than a dog, it is amusing to see how the poet in Genesis admits that
shepherds were an abomination in the eyes of the Egyptians. If one
dates Abraham's visit to Egypt in the twenty-first instead of the
nineteenth century B.C. old Manetho and the Hebrew poet are perfectly
agreed as to the Hyksos-Israelite invasion.
The Genesis narrative shows the insidious way in which the children
of Israel drifted down into Egypt, then how they made themselves
agreeable as office holders, and by introducing frogs, flies, lice,
cattle sickness and other improvements until at last the Egyptians
waxed desperate and ran them out of the country. Manetho says that
these Hyksos people occupied lower Egypt east of the Nile from
Memphis to the sea, and later on established a dynasty with six Kings
in the succession. After five centuries the Egyptians combined under
the Thebaid Kings of upper Egypt, and drove the Hyksos across the
Desert of Sin into Palestine. It is quite possible that in Genesis,
and Manetho's History we have the two sides of one story, and that it
was the {135} possession of the Libyan chariot which made the
Egyptians powerful enough to rid themselves of the artful but not
very warlike children of Israel.
It is amusing to note the ways of the tribal poet in Israel who
describes the murrain of cattle as killing off every horse in the
length and breadth of Egypt, then out of spite kills them all over
again by drowning in the Red Sea.
[Sidenote: Chariots and horsemen]
Setting the date of the Exodus at B.C. 1580, it would be about B.C.
1540 that the Israelites were afraid to attack the Canaanites who had
good iron chariots. In the same way a nation armed with muzzle
loading guns might hate to molest an army with quick-firing
artillery. Forty years later, about B.C. 1500, horses began to
appear in Mesopotamia, a bad lookout for Israel, destined some six
centuries afterwards to be trampled under by Babylonian chariotry.
Some day we shall have a science of comparative chronology to guide
us in our studies, and so be able to see how little improvements in
horse-breeding, or the use of iron in building chariots, affected the
rise and fall of nations. In the meantime some known facts of Red
Indian history may help us to understand events in ancient Asia.
In primitive Red Indian life the tribes were {136} seated too far
apart to get at each other for serious pitched battles. In lack of
horse transport trade was limited to the waterways, and warfare to
minor internecine pleasantries which kept young men in training.
From the sixteenth century the pressure of white men driving in from
the Atlantic began to affect these almost civilised people, forcing
them to abandon their farms, fisheries and towns, reducing them to
savagery and compelling them to trespass on occupied hunting grounds.
All nations were set by the ears. Then they began to get ponies, and
the rest was chaos.
[Sidenote: The mounted nations]
So perhaps in Asia, the movements of tribes afoot may have been
gradual overflows from crowded districts, and warfare a matter of
cheery little forays to please the young. The possession of ponies
gave a tremendous impetus to war and trade. From that time onward
the tribes which were best mounted had a political future, and there
was a slight handicap in favour of nations with Libyan Bays of
fourteen hands two inches as compared with tribes using the Duns of
Asia.
The Egyptians had horses in the eighteenth century B.C., the
Israelites a few in 1580, the Hittites and Canaanites in 1540, the
Assyrians not until 1500 B.C. Now Egypt, Canaan, {137} Syria,
Mesopotamia and Arabia had no native horses. The Egyptians got
horses from the Sahara, the Asiatics mainly through Armenia. I
cannot believe that the crossing of small Duns with small Bays in any
region bred heavy horses for the needs of war.
[Sidenote: Heavy stock and strong food]
A practical nation in the breeding trade would not rely for heavy
stock upon the crossing of light strains. The way to get heavy stock
is with strong food. Such oases of great deserts as Egypt and
Mesopotamia had very little pasture, so long as their nations
prospered. Every acre then was needed for strong grains. The
well-mounted conquering nations were not those with splendid
pasturage like Northern Africa or Southern Russia, but those which
had no pasturage at all, who were compelled to feed horses on fodder
more potent than any natural grass. The King's people might go
without, but one may be perfectly certain that the King's horses
lived on corn. What tribe or race of folk inherited Egypt or
Mesopotamia mattered nothing, what strain of horses they owned
mattered very little, but the people and the horses, for the time
being in possession of irrigated oases walled about by deserts,
raised the chariotry or the cavalry which ruled the surrounding world.
{138}
[Sidenote: Chariots and cavalry]
Each nation passed through a phase when chariotry were the only
mounted troops of tactical use in war. The importing of the largest
and heaviest horses to be had, the feeding of these with grain, and
cross-breeding of the Dun types with the Bay produced by slow degrees
a remount for use by cavalry.
Earliest in the running were the Hebrews, for about 1000 B.C. King
Solomon built stables for 40,000 chariots, and as many as 12,000
cavalry. As early as 700 B.C. Armenia, being in contact with the
Asiatic and Russian horse stocks, became a large horse breeding
establishment, supplying remounts southward to Asia Minor, where in
B.C. 560 King Croesus of Lydia had good cavalry, to Syria and
Palestine, to Assyria, and to Persia down to the fourth century. But
in the meantime shipping had grown in the Mediterranean, and ships of
sufficient burden to carry African Bays began to supply the Greeks.
From the pony chariots of the fourteenth century B.C. a steadily
improving stock marked the rise of Hellas. The Achaeans of 1000 B.C.
had imported Bays. The Greeks of 400 B.C. had cavalry. Then came
the breeding of fine horses in Macedonia, and, after the death of
Philip in B.C. 336, the mounted troops of his {139} great son
Alexander swept like a whirlwind across the Eastward deserts to where
the monsoon rains made India populous. By this time cavalry had
replaced the chariot. At the era of the Christ a chariot was still
used when a victorious general entered a city in triumph. But the
use of chariotry in war was limited to remote barbaric tribes such as
the British.
[Sidenote: The chariot]
The chariot for practical purposes was extinct before a single horse
had found his way over the long dry marches leading out of the world
to the remote oases of Arabia. Strabo the geographer, who at the era
of our Lord made a survey of the known world, found that the horse
had not yet entered Arabia. A land indeed where no water can be had
except from wells was not a possible range for pastured horses, and
the horse has not sufficient thirst endurance to be of much use for
transport between the oases, whereas asses and camels were to be had
much cheaper.
[Sidenote: The Arab horse]
It was in the earliest Christian centuries that Arabian chiefs began
to import Bay horses from Egypt. It seems likely that the beginning
of their sea-trade enabled them to do so. While almost all nations
of Europe and Asia were compelled by the need for heavy war horses to
feed grain and to cross the imported {140} Bay with their native
stock, the Arabs tried to preserve the purity of the desert breed.
Even at this time eighty-five per cent. of high caste Arabian horses
are Bays; and there is only one strain of any importance, the Hamdani
so crossed with Russian Tarpans as to be white or grey. It must be
remembered, however, that the demand of the Indian and European
markets for greys and for heavy cross-breds has led the Arabs to
breed extensively from their low caste strains. Moreover, the
neighbouring regions of Syria and Mesopotamia sell cross-bred horses
as "Arabian" regardless of colour, and of honesty. The Bay mares of
the real Arabian aristocracy are never sold, and of the horses very
few reach the market as compared with the numbers of low caste
animals forming the ruck of the trade.
Down to the seventh century A.D. the Arabs were busy breeding from a
very few imported Bays their meagre supply of horses. So far as the
possession of horses went they would not have attracted much
attention but for the coming to Arabia of steel weapons.
[Sidenote: A result of Islam]
From prehistoric times the Swedes had been mining iron, and their
trade routes led by river, to Novgorod, where lived a trading family
the Romanovs, from whom descend {141} the Emperors of Russia. By
river boat and by pack trail the Swedish iron found its way to many
markets. Towards the seventh century the iron reached the Arabian
oases to be forged into weapons of Islam. When the Arabian horsemen
were armed and inspired by Mahomet they set out to conquer the world
in the name of Allah. With the Moslem conquests eastward to Delhi,
and westward through Spain to Poictiers, the Bay Horse passed into
the commerce of mankind, adding to the endurance of the Asiatic Dun,
and the strength of the European dappled horse that touch of
gentleness and fire which quickens a dull animal into a living spirit.
{142}
CHAPTER VI.
HORSEMANSHIP.
I. THE STRAIGHT LEG.
[Sidenote: The straight leg]
THE SEAT. Among the Red Indians I have known, the mounted people
were the Blackfeet, Stonies, Crees, Yakimas, Navajos, Moquis, and a
few tribes in Mexico. So far as I can learn no Indian was ever
taught to ride, or heard of riding as an accomplishment to be
learned. The commonest equipment was a blanket and surcingle; but
all the horse apparel used by white men was eagerly played for in the
gambling games. The riding seemed to be natural, with a perfection
of grace one rarely sees among white men.
The man rode down to his crotch, yet the forward slant of the thighs
gave rest to the pelvis bones upon the horse's back, while the lower
leg hung vertical and loose.
At halt or walk the whole seat was loose, but as the pace increased
at trot or canter the {143} thighs locked with a grip of tremendous
power, rigid save for the play of the skin. From the waist upward
the poise was quite erect, and supple, with the shoulders slightly
eased.
At a gallop the lower legs wrapped round the horse's barrel, and the
movement of the man as seen behind an edge of skyline was like the
flight of a bird.
For pony racing boys rode instead of men. Since the boys' legs were
not long enough to wrap round the horse, the thighs were lifted,
nearly horizontal, the lower legs bent sharply back, and a surcingle
was strapped across the knees. Still the perch was on the animal's
back, and not on the withers, as in the negro gait so much admired
under the name of the American racing seat.
Was the Red Indian seat straight leg or bent leg? With stirrups it
was straight leg. For boy jockeys only the racing gait was bent leg.
[Sidenote: The Greek seat]
A reference to the sculptures of Pheideas, and Praxiteles (fifth
century B.C.) shows that the Greeks rode at slow gaits with the same
leg as the Red Indian, but like him bent the knees very sharply at
racing speed.
At first sight these Greek sculptures from the Parthenon rather
remind one of the Red Indian seat. A little closer study shows that
{144} the models chosen by the sculptor were not horsemen, but
carefully selected athletes. They were no more horsemen for example,
than the glorious athlete represented at high tension by Watts in his
equestrian statue of Physical Energy. The back is too much curved
for that of the Red Indian, who earned a living on horseback from his
childhood, and kept a professional watch on the horizon rather than
an amateur's nervous observation of the pony's ears. So one turns
away from the misleading splendours of Greek sculpture, to the
professional guidance of General Xenophon, a horseman who knew his
business. "Whether he uses a cloth or rides on the bare back we
would not have him sit as one who drives a chariot" (bent knees),
"but as if he were standing erect with his legs somewhat astride, for
thus his thighs will cling closer to his horse, and he will be able
to wield his lance and shield with more force."
This seems to show that for freedom in the use of weapons the Greek
cavalry adopted straight leg riding before they had saddle or
stirrups. So far as I can learn the Hellenic seat passed on into
Roman practice, but through the Dark Ages which followed the fall of
Rome there seems to be no guidance as to {145} the conduct of
horsemen. Horses were not saddled in England until 631 A.D., and the
first pictures we have which reveal the horsemanship of the Middle
Ages are the Bayeux tapestries of the Norman Conquerors. Now for the
first time horses were used by farmers to till the land. Chain mail
had replaced the scale armour of the Barbarians. A perfectly
straight leg locked the horseman aft against the cantle, forward
against the stirrup of a weight-distributing saddle.
[Sidenote: The war saddle]
THE WAR SADDLE. During the five centuries in which body armour
slowly increased in weight, and horse armour was added to the burden,
the dappled woodland horse of Northern Europe was bred from strength
to strength to take the growing load. So we came by our Destriérs,
now known as the cart horse breeds, such as the Percheron, Cleveland
Bay, and Suffolk Punch, and the heavy draught such as the Shire and
Clydesdale.
Plate armour is still worn a good deal on the stage, in pageants and
in military tournaments. Men used to this armour tell me that a
horseman who rides less than his weight while his limbs are free,
rides more than his weight when he is cramped in movement.
Suppose then that a 190 pound man in 90 {146} pounds of armour makes
a dead weight of 280 pounds. Add harness and horse armour, and the
total weight is about 400 pounds. At a canter this load would
certainly need a draught horse weighing not less than 1,500 pounds.
Using the English saddlery one would prefer the heaviest draught
animal.
Now take a load of 350 pounds in mining machinery and add 50 pounds
for an apparejo pack equipment. This total dead weight of 400 pounds
would make a light cargo for a 1,000 pound mule or horse, who would
carry it without distress a day's march up a range of mountains.
But note well that the bearing surface of the equipment on the
horse's back is about two square feet with the English saddle, and
nearly eight square feet for the usual apparel of horses in heavy
packing. As anybody would rather carry two buckets of water than
one, because the load is halved by being properly distributed, so
will the horse prefer a heavy load distributed over the whole rigid
area of the ribs to a light load concentrated on a few square inches.
The distribution of the load is of greater importance than its weight.
[Sidenote: Armoured horsemen]
In the days of light chain mail a special saddle was evolved with a
deep seat wherein {147} the rider was locked against the cantle by
the straight thrust of his legs against box stirrups. As chain mail
gave way to the heavier plate armour, the saddle bars were more and
more widely padded until they covered every available inch of the
rigid ribs.
Nobody seems to have noticed that with every kind of armour a chamois
or buckskin lining afforded a rough-grain leather strapping for the
unarmoured seat and thighs, and this gave a greasy grip against the
oiled saddle.
As the use of gunpowder advanced, piece by piece the armour was put
aside, until now nothing remains but the cuirass; but the leather
lining retained its usefulness, and leather breeches are still in
very general use among modern horsemen because they give an excellent
grip on the saddle.
Armour had reached and passed its greatest weight when the Spaniards
conquered the new world, and the Conquistadores took to Peru and
Mexico their weight-distributing saddle, buckskin grip, high cantle
and box stirrups. The strays from their horse and cattle stock bred
feral herds which spread into North America. So stock riders were
engaged to handle the Spanish cattle on Andalusian ponies. They kept
the old war saddle quite {148} unchanged, with its weight
distribution, high cantle, box stirrups and oiled leather seat.
[Sidenote: The stock saddle]
Next came the American of the North to learn from Texans their art of
handling stock, and almost throughout the Western States the Vaquero
was replaced by the Cowboy. Both were abstemious and hard-working
men. In their valour, gentleness, skill and power as rough-riders
they were equals, and hardly surpassed. The methods of both in
horse-breaking were altogether vile, and the horsemastership almost
as bad. But there the equality ends; for the cowboy had endurance
and vitality beyond all comparison in the modern world, was master
where the Vaquero of Mexico is servant, had the brains and character,
the chivalry and high initiative of a ruling race. Without the Red
Indian grace in horsemanship, the American cow-puncher takes rank
with the knight-at-arms and the cavalier among the greater horsemen
of all ages. It is well to give him the credit for experienced and
practical good sense in matters of horsemanship and equipment.
[Sidenote: Horse mastership]
THE RANCHE HAND AS HORSEMASTER. While a pony sold at ten dollars he
was not considered worth educating. A professional broncho buster
took him in hand for five {149} dollars, and smashed him. The pony
was a wild animal, timid but ferocious. The broncho buster was not
at all timid, but he was ferocious to an extent which horrified the
animal, and intelligent to a degree which reduced the victim to
abject obedience. So the horse surrendered and came into the care of
a cowpuncher. They started out together on the range, and if they
felt fresh of a morning there would be a bucking match which both of
them rather enjoyed. There was no ill feeling, for after all a horse
is as good a sportsman as any man. Then came the work of handling
cattle, and the horse enjoyed that sport which taxed all he had of
courage and skill and endurance. It made a partnership between two
persons who loved sport, and dealt with cattle as mere lower animals.
There was hearty good fellowship between horse and man, which
sometimes ripened into a love stronger than death.
Of horsemastership as understood in civilized life there never was a
symptom. When the puncher, after long months of abstinent living,
happened to ride into a town, he stepped off his horse, threw the
rein to the ground and left the animal standing in the street while
he got drunk. Afterwards the pony would carry {150} him homeward
unless he became dead drunk and fell off. The pony went to camp
anyway, to get himself unsaddled and join the herd. Sometimes the
puncher didn't even get drunk, being broke, or in love, but that made
no difference to his meticulous neglect of the whole practice of
horsemastership as explained in books.
And the ponies prospered, usually fat as butter because they lived a
perfectly natural life.
[Sidenote: The cowboy]
THE RANCHE HAND AS HORSEMAN. Nobody taught the budding cowboy any
art of riding. It was merely a habit. When the saddle taught him to
sit well down and ride straight leg he ceased to tumble off. When he
left off interfering with the rein the horse steered clear of holes,
and there were neither stumbles nor falls.
From camp gossip he knew that a horse cannot buck if one keeps his
head up. If the novice did amiss the foreman or some elder cowhand
advised him. The pride of a great calling made him a stickler for
exquisite form in riding, and the emulation to beat rival outfits
imposed on each a high standard of efficiency. The work was usually
done at a canter to allow of the lightning swiftness in {151} turning
to head off cattle, wherein the punching of cows closely resembles
polo. Travel on the other hand was alternate trotting and walking.
The seat at the canter was almost Red Indian in its grace. The seat
at the trot thrust the buttocks against the cantle, and raked the
body at a slant very stiffly forward, the back forming a straight
line, and the head thrown up so that the eyes were level to the
horizon. This trotting seat was ungainly, but, like the more
graceful English trotting, was supposed to ease the horse.
Undoubtedly the horsemanship was fine, especially in the delicate art
of roping, and never more so than in the occasional use of a pony as
pack animal on journeys. The single-hand diamond hitch in loading a
pack horse is a very fair test of a man's all-round skill and
deftness with the hands. Other signs of fine horsemanship might be
noted in the suppling of leather work, the pride in a clean gun, and
a youthful delight in silver ornament of belt and spur and bridle.
[Sidenote: The ranche horsemanship]
In the study of American range horsemanship it is well to remember
that the experts who contributed to the practice were not limited to
ranche hands, but included scouts, the military, forest, fire, game
and other types of rangers, trappers and wolfers, express riders,
prospectors, {152} traders, the Rocky Mountain outlaws, the sheriffs
and marshals and Mounted Police. The equipment is mainly of Spanish
origin, and named with Spanish words.
II. EQUIPMENT OF HORSEMEN.
[Sidenote: Equipment of horsemen]
The healthfulness of a horseman's life has developed to the fullest
extent his natural passions both in love and war, and it is a notable
fact that the males of nearly all species who love and defend their
mates go very bravely dressed. So in all ages both military and
civilian horsemen have worn an honest bravery and gallantry of
equipment suited for loving and fighting, for quests of bold
adventure and of conquest. Much that in a clerk or craftsman would
be grotesque is seemly for mounted men.
THE SWEAT PAD. In Queensland, Argentino and pack train practice, it
is usual to lay on the horse's back a soft sugar sack, a crash towel
or other fabric not likely to slip or crinkle. This is called the
sweat pad. Its first purpose is to receive the special marks made by
any turning or chafing of the horse's hair which may be the
beginnings of a gall. Its second purpose is to take the sweat, hair,
scurf, grease and dirt which would not be noticed on a dark blanket,
but is easily seen and rubbed or washed out of a {153} sweat pad.
The third purpose is to keep the blanket perfectly clean for the
man's use at night. With saddle and pack horses the horseman gets
two blankets, a canvas pack cover and his rain coat, enough material
for a luxurious bed.
[Sidenote: The blanket]
THE BLANKET. Because the numnah makes poor bedding one prefers a
blanket. If one cuts a hole in a numnah to ease an incipient blister
on the horse, the edges of the felt are apt to cause more blisters.
Another advantage of a blanket is that it can be folded in a great
many ways to make the saddle fit more perfectly, or to relieve some
part of the back which shows signs of galling. The usual size of
blanket folds once lengthways, then once, or a fold of three
crossways. Take care to have a fold, and not edges of blanket to the
front, lest it ruck under the saddle.
THE AMERICAN STOCK SADDLE. As the Mexican wooden tree was never
strong enough, the American has rivetted to the fore ends of the bars
a fork of wrought steel which is surmounted by the horn which takes
the strain in roping. In the twentieth century this arch has widened
to make a larger opening clear of the withers, and it gives heavy
shoulders to the saddle. To save weight the old square skirts {154}
have been trimmed and rounded. The seat still slopes sharply from
front to rear, throwing the rider's weight against the cantle. The
horse-hair cincha (girth) is replaced by one of lamp wick, which
causes less irritation. The latego or strap to take the purchase in
cinching up the saddle has been replaced by the English strap and
buckle to save time. There is a loss, however, in efficiency,
because the old double-rig saddle with two cinchas (the second for
mountain use and for bucking horses) had two pair of rings, and one
was able to sling a single cincha forward or aft in case the skin
showed chafing. A centre-fire rig is never so adaptable for various
kinds of use.
[Sidenote: The stirrup]
STIRRUP. The word means mounting rope, and the ideas of adjusting
the rider's balance, and of locking him against the cantle are only
after-thoughts. In great cold a steel stirrup would cause dangerous
freezing of the feet, and in great heat the metal is apt to burn
them. Hence, in Mexican practice, the use of a hardwood stirrup with
a leather floor, and to guard against acacia thorns this is enclosed
in a leather box called the tapadero. American practice has
dispensed with the leather, and lately reduced the bent-wood stirrup
to a mere ring, so large in some cases that the foot {155} will go
through, and thus expose the rider to a risk of being dragged to
death. The men of to-day are less practical than those of the old
real frontier.
[Sidenote: The Australian saddle]
THE AUSTRALIAN STOCK SADDLE. The Australian stockman has done all
that was possible to enlarge the bearing surface of the English
saddle. He has also added pads, on the same principle as those of a
lady's saddle, to retain the knees. The first flight of horsemen
have their saddles made with the leather inside out, because the
inner surface gives a better grip. By removing the stuffing down the
middle of the panel they make a groove to take the leg. Thus by
ingenious makeshift they have evolved a practical equipment for their
sound, straight-leg horsemanship. As horsemen their best
stock-riders are certainly not surpassed by any men of our race, and
when one considers that their walers are larger and more powerful
than the general stock of North America, Australian roughriding must
be rated even above the American. I notice, however, that when they
use American equipment they seem to like it better than their own.
THE RECADO. A careful analysis of the Argentino equipment shows that
it is the home-made {156} effort of a first-rate horseman to produce
a practical, weight-distributing saddle. The best and most improved
forms, however, lack the strength of the Mexican rigging, which the
Mexicans themselves reject if they can afford the North American.
THE MCCLELLAN SADDLE. So far as I remember this model it made no
pretence of weight-distribution, while it was coloured black, an
excellent device for hiding defects in leather. The saddle was much
praised in the United States Army, and may account for the failure of
mounted troops to rival the mobility of range horsemen.
[Sidenote: The bitt]
THE BITT. Because our own eyes are intended for long sight, we are
apt to imagine that the horse has the same habit of studying the
horizon. Yet when one lives with a range horse one discovers that he
has never seen or imagined any such thing as an horizon. Everything
beyond a hundred yards is blurred; but if he were in the habit of
reading the newspaper he would hold it about six feet from his eyes,
for within that distance his sight is in better focus than our own.
[Sidenote: Horse's sight]
His eyes differ from ours in having also a much wider angle of
vision. One might compare our eyes to a brace of guns in the fore
{157} barbette of a warship; and the horse's eyes to two guns thrown
out on sponsons wide of the ship, so that they can be swung round to
cover the whole horizon. See how the horse's head is raised so that
his own body does not intercept his backward sight. See how the head
widens to place the eyes as far apart as possible, while the skull
tapers upwards to give him a clear view of the sky, and tapers
downwards to give a clear view of the ground. There is nothing in
the whole sphere of possible vision which the horse cannot see by
lifting and lowering his head.
The intention of the eyes, then, is not to see the distances ahead,
but to scrutinize at close range all overhanging branches of the
trees, the minutest details of surrounding bush, and most especially
with microscopic detail everything underfoot.
Everybody knows that the horse is clever in avoiding the earth heaps
made by burrowing animals, but I think there is also reason to
believe that he can distinguish by relative dampness or dryness, and
plant growth of the soil those tunnels and chambers of badgers and
other ground game which do not reach up to the surface. It is only
at full gallop that he fails to see the surface indications of blind
{158} burrows, and is apt to blunder into them with disastrous
results both for himself and for his rider.
But what has all this got to do with bitts? We must advance the
argument to a further stage.
[Sidenote: The slack rein]
In the eighteenth century the Evangelist, Richard Wesley, rode on his
preaching tours some seventy thousand miles on English highways.
Because he could buy them cheap he always used stumbling horses. As
he rode he would let the rein drop while he read the Bible, and
presently would find the stumbler cured. There are some horses, he
said, who will stumble over their own shadows, but nearly always a
slack rein will cure them. Then one can sell them at a better price,
and so make money to pay the expenses of travel.
To prevent stumbling, the range man trains his horse to slack rein,
and in this matter reverts to an old war practice. The steering of
horses by the knee is most excellent horsemanship.
Because I lacked the suppleness for steering by the knee it has been
my practice to let the rein lie on the horse's neck. If any steering
is needed, it is easy to have the two sides of the {159} rein tied in
a half hitch, and, holding the knot between thumb and finger, to slap
the rein on the side of the neck to show which way one is going.
Only if the horse needs handling one rides him on the rein with the
utmost possible gentleness of the hand. But if the bitt comes into
serious use it is better to have one which will lock on the lower
jaw. I find my broken-bar snaffle pulls up a bolting horse in about
five jumps, but so far only one or two out of many horses have needed
so much severity. The range horse rarely pulls, and I scarcely
remember seeing a double rein in use among range horsemen.
[Sidenote: Voice and rein]
The greatest disadvantage of the rein is that it serves like a
telegraph wire to carry the vibrations of fear. I prefer to use a
voice which I can control rather than a hand which is apt to betray
me. A low-pitched, quiet voice is very useful if one's hands are
rough; and the training of hands is a grace limited to civilized
horsemanship.
There is a certain pattern of headstall which has the cheek strap
coming down to a piece of brass which is best described as a D or
squared ring. The nose band ends at the front side of the squared
ring. The chin piece ends at the {160} after side of the squared
ring, and carries the end of the headrope. From the bottom side of
the squared ring hangs a snap to take the ring of a snaffle. So one
keeps the headstall on the horse, and snaps the bitt on or off.
The advantage of curb bitts seems to be mainly in dealing with
dangerous, or very powerful horses, or for an additional delicacy in
steering; but range men prefer to make appliances as simple as
possible, and rather dread a complicated gear which may go wrong in
sudden emergencies.
SADDLE WALLETS. For the general purposes of travel I carry in the
wallets a tin of gall cure, a medicine case containing chlorodyne,
and tablets of quinine, carbolic acid, cascara, a salicylate and
permanganate of potash, with a lancet, forceps, surgical needles and
silk, and a dressing; a mosquito salve such as oil of pennyroyal, and
some netting; a toothbrush in a case, soap in a tobacco pouch, and a
towel; toilet paper; a little sealed bottle of matches for
emergencies; an emergency ration such as cake chocolate; luncheon;
something to read; notebook and pencil.
THE HORSEMAN'S DRESS.
[Sidenote: The horseman's dress]
PROTECTION FROM LIGHT. In the history of the North American
wilderness there are {161} three very distinct phases. The buckskin
period of heroic adventure; the period of blue shirts and overalls
marked by chaotic disorder and the period of yellow khaki and brown
clothing with orderly progress.
The period of blue clothing, however, was one of perfect law and
order in the wildest parts of Canada; of comparative disorder in the
North-Western States, and of total chaos in the South-Western
deserts. Even in Western Canada, suicide was common, and terrific
drunks would seize in a moment upon whole communities; but the
Mounted Police, wearing scarlet, kept their discipline so that
homicides were almost invariably hanged, and robbers imprisoned with
prompt efficiency.
In the North-Western States, the suicides, drunks, lynchings,
robberies and homicides were considered as privileges of a free
citizenship. There were vestiges of government.
In the South-Western States, the only law was that of the revolver,
and duelling took the place of government.
In the three regions the amount of disorder varied precisely with the
intensity of the sunlight, and lawlessness ceased with the
introduction, at the turn of the twentieth century, of yellow, khaki
and brown colours in clothing.
{162}
[Sidenote: Colour and morals]
All this may be coincidence. The latitudes of the South-Western
desert in the Northern hemisphere correspond with those of the South
African veldt in the Southern hemisphere. Moreover, the population
of the American desert region was about equal to the British Field
Force in South Africa. The American frontiersmen wore blue, the
British soldiers khaki. Passing from one region to the other, I was
astounded by the contrast between the blue-clad frontier supporting
four hundred riders by the single industry of robbery-under-arms, and
the khaki-clad army which in three-and-a-half years scored only one
act of robbery. The peaceful civil population was engaged in blood
feuds, promiscuous homicide, and every kind of violent crime; while
the fighting army won the hearty confidence of the Boer field force
by its chivalrous protection of the Boer women. In the one case
crime was universal, in the other almost unknown.
And this may still be all coincidence.
The Great War is fought, mainly in latitude of scant sunlight. The
German forces, clad in blue-grey, have made a practice of rape,
slaughter of women and children, torture and murder of prisoners,
sacking and burning of cities, bombing of unarmed folk, fighting
{163} with liquid fire and with poisonous gas. The khaki clad armies
have not as yet been charged with military crimes. The blue-clad
French army has not fought among a foreign population, has not in
fact been tempted or found a motive which makes crime attractive.
It is beyond the limits of coincidence that where large numbers of
white men live an unsheltered life and wear a single colour, those
dressed in blue are guilty--except the French--of violent crime, from
which those dressed in compounds of red and yellow are altogether
free.
[Sidenote: Clothes and light]
To the blue, indigo and violet rays of light a white man's body is
transparent as so much water. When he lives outdoors his health is
normal so long as his body is sheltered by colours which beat back
the actinic rays of light. If he wears blue, white, grey or any
other colour transparent to these rays, they burn right through him,
destroying all germs of disease, and so allowing the body to develop
tremendous energy--the keynote of frontier life. After a few years
of this, the actinic rays begin to destroy the tissues of the body,
and nerves break down. The symptoms of neurasthenia are:
{164}
(1) Hysteria, expressed in wanton crime.
(2) Dipsomania, expressed in tremendous debauches following long
spells of abstinence.
(3) Suicide.
Every range man will remember how these three forms of nervous
disorder have wrecked the lives of his friends, and how the best men
were taken, not the weaklings. If so much disaster is avoided by
wearing colours which protect the body from actinic burning, it seems
a reasonable conduct to avoid blue clothing, and to copy the
hues--such as dun, bay, or brown, which nature provides to guard the
animals.
PROTECTION FROM CHILLS. To absorb sweat, all underwear should be
woollen.
[Sidenote: Dress for concealment]
CONCEALMENT FROM ENEMIES. Man is the only animal whose figure is
upright, cutting the lines of the landscape, and therefore
conspicuous at a great distance. A single colour is therefore more
easily seen than two blobs of colour such as a khaki shirt and brown
trousers, or a bay shirt and dun trousers. As armies paint their
guns in broken splashes of colour, men's uniforms should not be whole
coloured if they are to blend with the landscape.
[Sidenote: The hat]
THE HAT. The Red Indian calls the white {165} men "hat-wearers," and
takes notice of our baldness. Savages who wear no hats are never
bald. Why then should we wear hats? I think that on the range, if
we began early enough, we should do well to let our hair grow for the
protection of the head and the nape of the neck from the sun. On the
old American Frontier the pioneers did grow long hair because a man
with no scalplock was not worth killing, and therefore barred from
councils of the Indians.
The primitive hat of the range was a disc of bison skin, sodden, and
the middle, thrust into a hole in the ground, was filled with stones.
A leather string laced round the edge kept the brim from flopping. A
leather band fitted the crown to the head.
Later came a Mr. Stetson of Philadelphia, with a copy of this range
hat in beaver-fur felt soaked in shellac, and so felted that the
edges did not flop. A bootlace round the front of the hatband passed
through an eyelet above each ear, and was tied with a hard knot
behind the head. This prevented the hat from blowing away and let in
air behind the head to ventilate the crown. Pinching the crown with
four dints for the words North West Mounted Police, branded the
cowboy Stetson as a {166} soldier's hat which was adopted in South
Africa by most of the mounted Irregulars of the British Empire, and
by the Boy Scouts who copied the design in felt of rabbit fur.
[Sidenote: The measure of warmth]
A rival type of slouch hat which flopped down all round was used by
the ancient Greeks. Looped on one side it was worn by the Cavaliers
of the British Civil War, looped on three sides it became the cocked
hat of the eighteenth century, and on two sides, of the Napoleonic
era, surviving in diplomatic uniforms and those of naval officers and
civic functionaries. Looped on one side again it was worn in the
American Civil War, and by British Africanders and Australasians.
Softened and not looped it replaced the stiff-brimmed Stetson on the
American range.
[Sidenote: Shirt and breeches]
SHIRT. It was among the Eskimo that I learned the philosophy of the
shirt. These very practical folk wear a hooded shirt, close-fitting
at the throat, wrists and waist. For summer the material is cotton
or serge, for winter the warmest furs; but in any case it forms a bag
of air warmed by the body. The shirt then consists of an outer
garment of skin or a textile fabric, and an inner garment of heated
air protecting the vital organs. Opened at neck and wrists it is the
coolest of garments, {167} closed it is the warmest for any given
weight. In contrast a coat or jacket is open at the bottom, the
front, the neck and the wrists, so that four times the weight is
needed to produce the warmth of a shirt.
Military dress is always a belated copy of the civil costume in each
period.
It is designed by a contractor whose motive is to obtain the handling
of public money. It is approved by a military official who has never
done a day's labour or a day's fighting with the weapons of the
enlisted man. Hence the persistence of the Roman tunic which excels
all known garments in cost, weight, the cramping of the lungs, and
the disabling of the arms and shoulders whose perfect freedom is
needed for wielding weapons and tools. For working or fighting it
has to be removed.
The mounted civilian rides for pleasure in a coat, the mounted
soldier rides for duty in a tunic, the range horseman rides for a
living and wears a shirt. By the exercise of human reason the range
man protects his vital organs at a fourth part of the cost, weight,
and encumbrance to which the fashions have subjected the sportsmen
and the soldiers.
BREECHES. The dress of a gentleman has always been that of the
mounted warrior. {168} When plate armour had to be given up because
it was no longer bullet proof its lining survived in the form of
leather breeches. These leathers are usually whitewashed, but they
are still worn by the British Household Cavalry, who are "Gentlemen
of the King's guard"; by hunting men; by the mounted servants who
used to be armed retainers and still wear livery as such; and in the
_charro_ dress of Mexico. They belong to the tradition of
aristocracy.
[Sidenote: Philosophy of trousers]
The principle of breeches is a close fit for the inner surface of the
knee and thigh, because with heavy material such as leather or cloth
any wrinkles against the saddle will tear off one's skin and cause a
deal of pain. With bent leg riding, the outer surface of the thighs
had to be loosened, and this loosening has developed into monstrous
puffed sleeves which expose the Englishman to ridicule on an
irreverent stock-range.
[Sidenote: Trousers and boots]
TROUSERS. During the French Revolution, gentlemen in the town dress
of the period, with knee breeches and silk stockings, had their heads
chopped off, and all who valued their health took to trousers as an
expression of liberal opinions. Trousers to the heels as
distinguished from trousers tucked into boots {169} are still worn in
Russia to indicate liberal views. An ultra-royalist is not content
with long boots, but must add rubber overshoes to make his feet look
large.
Away from the influence of English fashions, the horsemen of the
world wear trousers; of cloth in the Russian Empire and South Africa,
of moleskin in Australasia, of duck in North America. Any kind of
tight clothing which cramps the limbs is looked upon as an
abomination.
BOOTS. Long boots were recommended by Xenophon to the Greeks, low
shoes are older still. Both save the natural strength and spring of
the ankle which is needed in mounting a horse, useful in riding him.
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century the increase of town
life and improved paving made boot-tops worn under trousers appear
superfluous in weight, cost and discomfort. Thus came the ankle boot
as an economy and a comfort, but coupled with it was a lacing to
"support" the ankle. To lace a man's ankle or a woman's waist is to
replace with a merely stiff material the strong elastic muscles of
the natural body, and sap the necessary health and strength which God
has given.
{170}
[Sidenote: The logic of boots]
In all outdoor life long boots ensure dry feet, and the top should
reach the knee-cap to be of real use in wet ground, or when one
kneels cooking beside the camp fire. The boot legs guard one against
venomous reptiles and insects, and protect the shin bone which, for
lack of any muscle, is liable to be broken by many kinds of accident.
Lacing either a long or an ankle boot puts an end to free ventilation
of the foot, making the skin to sweat, to soften, and in many cases
to become offensive.
For horsemen the boot leg is a useful protection from the chafing of
stirrup leathers.
In war the soldier who wears laced boots is obliged to sleep in them,
whereas long boots, kept properly greased, are so quickly put on that
it is safe to remove them at night. For infantry, the world's
marching record was made by Colorado miners as volunteers for the New
Mexico campaign. They wore long boots, as do the Russian and
Germanic armies whose marching is said to be better than that of the
French and British who have laced the ankle.
[Sidenote: The boot-leg]
The boot leg should not be shaped like a bucket to catch rain as with
the United States Cavalry, or like a stovepipe to cripple a man afoot
as with British horsemen. Without being tight like the puttee for
the production {171} of varicocele, the boot leg should fit close.
The ankle should be supple as a stocking, and "bellowsed" to make
sure of suppleness. The counter should be of the hardest possible
leather, thick, but fining upwards to an edge, and so made that when
the man's foot spreads the foot of the boot, this fine upper edge,
closes over the ball of the heel to prevent chafing. For the
horseman the heel should be broad and flat, or high and tapering to
prevent it from getting through the stirrups.
The boot-top of the seventeenth century came well up the thigh, but
was turned down in summer for coolness, showing the brown inside of
the leather. Later on this turned down top was replaced for
smartness by a useless detachable cuff. For smartness also, the
English leg was made rigid, disabling the wearer. Lately I went to a
smart London maker for boots to suit my need of a supple ankle, flat
heel, and modelled counter. The sales gentleman made me feel acutely
that I was a cad, the workmen struck, and the proprietor corrected my
design, revenging himself in his bill for the delay he caused me. It
is in details such as this that one feels that the whole art of
horsemanship in England has become a frozen convention, and is dying.
{172}
[Sidenote: Spurs]
SPURS. The spur was a prick or goad, from Roman times down to the
thirteenth century. With plate armour came a rowel on a long shank.
This rowel has shrunk in Europe to a small sharp weapon which draws
blood, but on the American stock range it has increased in size to an
average of three inches. The larger the points are the more they can
be blunted, and the less they hurt a horse. On the old American
range an Englishman removed the rowels from his spurs or adopted the
blunt rowel before he was considered fit for human society.
The rowel should be loose enough to rattle, so that at night one may
go to one's horse in pasture, and, knowing the sound of his master,
he will not run away.
A gentle spur is used to encourage and not to hurt a horse, to bring
him to attention, to aid in fine steering. It may be locked in the
girth so that, holding on by one leg one may lie behind the horse's
neck when under fire, or pick up a rope from the ground.
NECK CLOTH. A kerchief loose round the neck saves the top of the
spine from sunstroke. It should be of any colour not containing
blue, of the lightest silk for use as mosquito bar at night, and
twenty-six inches square for use as a {173} sling, bandage, or
tourniquet in case of accident.
[Sidenote: Shaps]
SHAPS (from Chapareras--protection from chapparal or thorns of
acacia). These are leggings reaching from waist to heel of heavy
oiled leather. They differ from trousers in having no seat or fly,
but consist of two trunks each laced or buckled down the outer seam
of the leg, and attached at the waist to a half belt. The two half
belts are tied together in front with one turn of a leather string,
ready to break apart if they get caught on the horn of the saddle in
bucking, and fastened again with buckle and strap behind.
The woolly or hairy fronted snaps made for snowy or wet districts are
more plentiful among tenderfeet, showmen and cinema actors than they
ever were upon the modest stock range. The usual pattern is of plain
brown leather, nearly black with use. It is sometimes fringed, or
ornamented with silver dollars or even twenty dollar golden pieces
down the outer seam.
The uses of shaps are to give a grip in the saddle, to shelter the
legs from heat, cold, rain, snow, to serve as armour against kicking,
biting, scraping, backfalls, rolling and other diversions of horses,
the horns of cattle, rocks, {174} thorns, snakes, scorpions,
tarantulas, rope abrasions, grass fires and other little discomforts.
Their excellent comfort in the saddle, and in lieu of blankets at
night, would be enough to justify their use, but without them one
would be hurt or even seriously killed in course of the day's work.
As they make walking difficult they are useless for all the purposes
of war.
[Sidenote: Arms and morals]
ARMS. On the great ranges Romance is just as prevalent as sunshine,
and Emotion blows as freely as the wind, but in this study we have to
do with Reason. In cold blood we are trying to study equipment and
methods of men whose lives depend upon sound, practical, unbiassed
common sense.
When a fellow takes to the range what are his motives? If he goes
out to hunt for trouble he will do well to buy a large,
well-balanced, accurately-sighted, blued revolver of a simple pattern
not readily clogged or damaged. He will devote his leisure for many
months to practice at all ranges, in all sorts of weather, in light
and darkness, afoot and mounted until he can fire a double-roll
fusillade. If he gets killed at practice, so much the better for the
public. If not he has only to take to the range and make himself a
general nuisance {175} until he meets a better shot than himself. I
never met a man with more than twenty-seven notches on his gun-stock,
but have known plenty who took an honest pleasure in blotting out
unnecessary gun-fools.
If a fellow takes to the range, who is not in search of trouble, but
merely intends to earn an honest living and make a decent home, he is
better without a weapon. When I was a younger fool than I am now,
and took a delight in revolvers, and bluffed with a gun, it nearly
always got me into trouble. I found that it was a poor thing to
shirk the first obligation of manhood, which is self-reliance, and
sink to mere dependence on a weapon.
[Sidenote: Self-reliance]
Nobody who can possibly run away is fool enough to encounter
single-handed a homicidal maniac on the war path, a gang of
vigilantes or desperadoes in a nasty temper, or a hostile tribe of
savages. Against such odds the use of a weapon in the open is merely
suicide. The first thing needed is an inward prayer which makes
one's nerve quite steady. A serene manner fills the enemy with
misgivings that one has unseen support. To throw one's weapon to the
enemy as a gift is to surprise him into talking. Once he begins, the
more vociferous he is, the sooner he talks himself out. {176} A
maniac temper will evaporate in talk in about forty-five minutes, but
savages will sometimes last two hours or more before they are quite
run down. After the first laugh one may walk away in safety. It is
not safe to be seen in the state of collapse which follows the
overstrain.
The killing of live creatures or even men has always been abhorrent
to me. I am not sure of having murdered anything bigger than a crow
with a broken leg, who had to be knocked out with a stone as an act
of mercy. Not being a sportsman I may not advise on the use of
weapons for sport.
[Sidenote: Range weapons]
WEAPONS. There are three weapons used only by range horsemen. The
lasso, known on the range as The Rope, consists of a noose which is
spun by a delicate play of the thumb, thrown to its length, and the
strain taken by saddle and horse as it catches a running beast. We
share this practice with the ancient Peruvians, Sarmatians,
Sagartians, and Scythians, and the modern Tartars of the Asiatic
steppe.
The bolas are three egg-shaped weights connected by as many plaited
strings with a rawhide rope, and thrown like the riata to catch wild
animals. This instrument belongs to Patagonia and the Argentine
pampas.
{177}
[Sidenote: The stock-whip]
The stock whip. This is an Australian development of the switch. It
consists of an 18-inch wooden tapering handle, a keeper of kangaroo
hide, a 10-foot thong of kangaroo hide in a tapering 12 or 16 plait,
an 18-inch tail of green hide, and a plaited cracker of sewing
cotton. At a range of twenty feet one flick knocked a revolver out
of my hand and lashed my wrist to the thigh, making me a disarmed
prisoner, yet causing no more pain than the brush of a fly's wing.
It convinced me as to the usefulness of this weapon.
III. THE WAYS OF RANGE HORSEMEN.
On one occasion it was my privilege to assemble seventy horsemen
whose united experience of the stock-range covered the grass lands of
Asia from Mongolia to Hungary, Eastern and Southern Africa, all
states of Australasia, Patagonia, the Argentine, the Llano, and every
state and province of the open pasture in Mexico, the United States
and Canada. Among us we compiled a brief text defining our ideas of
range as distinguished from civilised horsemanship. The text was
printed as a chapter on "The Horse" in "The Frontiersman's Pocket
Book" (John Murray), which I compiled and edited on behalf of the
Legion of Frontiersmen. The present volume {178} is merely an
application of these range principles to the study of horses and
horsemanship.
The pretension of range horsemen as a class is to earn a living by
the use of cheap working horses, riding with a weight-distributing
equipment and pack transport, while we base our mobility upon a herd
of remounts.
[Sidenote: Pleasure horsemanship]
For pleasure horsemanship our feeling is one of admiring envy. No
men are better able to appreciate the incomparable gallantry and elan
of the hunting field, especially in Ireland, the beautiful spectacles
afforded by racing, horse shows, and tournaments, the grand pageantry
of state functions in European capitals. Even such pretty futilities
as Portuguese bull-baiting and the Haut Ecole of France appeal to us
as horsemen. As to military horsemanship we have an unbounded
admiration for the fine driving of the Royal Horse Artillery, and the
obstacle riding of the Mexican Regular Cavalry. On the other hand we
are not stricken with awe at the circus tricks of the Cossack,
although we may be surprised to see a luggage strap used for girth.
Nor are we emulous of the horse-killing man-endurance rides which
used to be considered good sport by European cavalry. We can do the
little circus tricks ourselves, {179} and make our endurance rides
without killing our horses.
[Sidenote: Horsemanship]
Among ourselves we are more critical. The Mexican ranchero for
example wears a revolver on the belt, a sword on the saddle, a silver
bridle, a suit of leather beautifully laced with gold or silver, and
a most prodigious hat. But do these fine feathers make him a fine
bird? Or is the prancing arch-necked horse made sprightly by pinched
shoes and a spade bitt?
By contrast the Boer is the most slovenly of horsemen, both in his
old slop suit and in his flapping gait, but in scouting and fighting
by far the best instructor we ever met, and either as enemy or friend
we love his manhood. If horsemanship is an expression of manhood, we
do not mind the form if we can get the fact. More manhood goes to
the making of one Boer than to a hundred Mexicans.
Searching for the elements distinctive of range horsemanship, as
contrasted with the pleasure, the military and the working
horsemanship of civilization, a few essential things come clearly
into view.
ROUGH RIDING. When a range man is asked if he can ride, as a matter
of course he says "No." But if he really wants to come up against
the champion outlaw horse of the {180} neighbourhood his denial is
not emphatic. Like a professional singer asked for a song, he
excuses himself, and pleads to a certain dryness in the throat, but,
when the money inducements are sufficient, owns up that he thinks he
can ride.
The rough riding of the range is incomparable, but as the broncho
buster is usually smashed internally if not killed outright within
three years of practice, this worst possible method of breaking a
horse is lacking in practical value.
[Sidenote: Rough-driving]
ROUGH-DRIVING. Our rough-drivers are perhaps the greatest horsemen
living, and their feats are the more glorious because there are no
spectators to give the stimulus of their applause. A single example
may be permitted here:
Constable Harty, of D Division in the Royal North-West Mounted
Police, was driving a four-horse team with a waggonette, his
passengers being the Earl and Countess of Aberdeen, Viceroy and
Vicereine of Canada. Fording one of the fiendish Alberta rivers the
near wheeler lay down and drowned herself, while the waggonette, half
afloat, was being tilted in danger of capsizal. The teamster swam
under and with his knife attempted to cut the {181} dead mare out of
harness. Failing in this he climbed up, stood astride with bent
knees on the waggon seat, and lifted the team up the river bank to
safety while the dead mare dragged under the wheels.
[Sidenote: Rough riding]
So varied are the styles in horsemanship that nobody pretends to
leadership, and every man of real experience counts himself a student
rather than a master. Only the other day an Instructor in Equitation
showed me how to trot a horse straight down a steep slope of grass,
explaining it was so good to supple the animal's shoulders. Of
course I always knew I was a fool, but never before had I realized
the abysmal depths of my own ignorance.
So far then as an old fool may be permitted, I venture to submit some
gossip on the average range practice of a day's march in the
wilderness. The equipment for horse and man is already dealt with,
except in regard to packing, a subject which would need a special
volume.
[Sidenote: The art of travel]
In Mounted Police regiments there is a rule that no constable may
travel alone on journeys exceeding a day's march. It is a good rule,
because a chap may get hurt or be left afoot, and so perish for lack
of a helping hand.
It is easy enough to warn a fellow not to travel alone in wilderness,
but quite impossible {182} to take even one's own advice. Most
likely nobody else is going in that direction, or the fellow who
offers his company would make a first-rate stranger. But in any case
three horses will travel better than one, and by changing about one
gets a longer march. That is why one generally travels with ride,
pack and spare mounts. As to the pack, the load at which an average
animal can keep pace with the mounted man is one hundred-and-twenty
pounds, and with such a cargo should not be stopped either by swamps
or rivers, bush or mountains. The weight may seem excessive for one
man's supplies, but it is always worth while to carry a ration or two
of grain.
An advantage of the three-horse method is in the encouragement it
gives them on the trail. They are quick to scratch up friendship
among themselves, are never happy except in company, and running
together may take their man into fellowship.
[Sidenote: The art of buying]
BUYING. So long as the American range was really wild an unsound
horse was palmed off on the nearest townsman, or shot, or turned
loose as worthless. To-day the proposal to buy a horse in any
western town brings forth are amazing collection of relics, cripples,
colts, curios, and criminals. The old timers will {183} not sell
except to horsemen, but when they offer a horse one may buy
blindfold. Except in dealing with real frontiersmen one takes a
horse on approval or not at all.
After the main essentials of a pure heart and four legs, I look for
large eyes with no white showing, and a broad forehead. If a horse
is nervous when approached, he cannot be relied upon in emergencies.
If he is less than seven years of age he is not fully matured for
work which needs endurance. I prefer a gelding as being less
flighty, less apt to break back than a mare. I will add dollars to
get a glutton, close quickly with the offer of a horse in really hard
condition, refuse a rough-gaited trotter as a gift, and cannot be
paid to ride a beast who bucks. As to the 'points' by which a
civilised horseman judges horseflesh, they are all very nice if one
has plenty of money. The prices have trebled since the turn of the
century.
MAKING FRIENDS. There are many little kindnesses which help to ease
the labour of a horse. He has just as much pride as a man in smart
equipment, has vanity enough to relish a glossy coat, to show off in
company, challenge for admiration with gallant carriage of his neck
and tail, and prove himself much {184} swifter than his fellows. Pet
him a little and he will insist upon being fussed with. Give such
dainties as sugar, apples or carrots, and he will ever be nuzzling at
your pockets. His low, soft love call for greeting of a morning is
well worth while for any man to earn. This is not given to the man
who thinks of a horse as "it."
[Sidenote: Saddling and mounting]
THE SADDLING. After throwing the saddle on, pass the hands all over
the blanket under the flaps to see there is no rucking. Lift the
blanket into the arch of the saddle to be sure that no pressure will
rest upon the withers. Shift the saddle aft until quite sure it is
free of the shoulder blades. Girth up, and be sure the horse is not
holding his wind. If there is doubt the off knee in his stomach will
make him relax his lungs.
MOUNTING. The weapon, be it spear or rifle, must be wielded with the
right arm, so the rein is held by the left hand. To secure the rein
with the left hand involves mounting on the near side of the horse.
There is an advantage, however, in departing from universal practice
and training the horse to be mounted from either side. One may be
hurt and unable to mount on the near side when there is peril in
being left afoot.
{185}
THE FIRST MILE. Walking the first mile supples the horse and eases
the harness. A horse who holds his wind can then be butted with the
knee in his stomach while the girth is pulled up to the proper notch
for safety.
[Sidenote: Punishment]
PUNISHMENT. If one thinks of a horse as a little child one cannot be
far wrong. One does not flog a child. Discipline there must be with
horses as with children, or both grow worthless, but punishment is
the surest possible sign of the man's incompetence, for the horse
rarely understands the motive, or understanding becomes mutinous.
Nine times out of ten after punishing my horse I have found out that
I had been myself in the wrong by saddling too far forward and
cramping the shoulder-blades, by some defect in putting on the
blanket, knotting the headrope badly, or failing to watch the
farrier's work in shoeing. The seeming misconduct was due perhaps to
agonizing pain, as in one instance from a hidden ulcer. So when my
horse forgets his manners, loses his temper, or goes badly, I examine
my conduct to find where I am to blame.
It is an outrage and disastrous to the horse's morals to strike him
in front of the saddle. The exceptions to that rule are for great
experts only.
{186}
[Sidenote: The pace that saves]
PACES. Whether the wild horse trots, is not a subject in which the
range horse has given me any guidance. In handling stock he usually
goes on grass and prefers to canter. In travel he usually goes on a
road, and distinctly prefers to trot. From careful watching I doubt
if he likes trotting on grass, as the hoofs are apt to brush and may
stumble against the turf. A canter on road or very hard ground jars
him, and is likely to cause injury to feet and legs.
There are certain artificial gaits most variously named such as the
tripple, rack, pace, and side pace adopted I think under compulsion
of lazy horsemen who find them comfortable. I have known horses
using such gaits to lag miserably until I persuaded them that
trotting was permitted, after which they cheered up and gained in
speed.
As a slow walk tires both man and horse much more than the trot or
canter, it is easy, by riding on the rein and using a little
persuasion, to train an average animal in fast walking.
On the whole then a steady alternation of trot and walk, making the
day's gait about five miles an hour, is the best economy for journeys.
On marches exceeding fifty-five miles a day the canter, trot and walk
become alternate {187} gaits, but journeys must then be broken with
days for rest.
HILLS. Trotting or running a horse down hill is a matter for
high-powered animals. With ordinary horses the down slopes must be
reserved for walking, the level and upward slopes for trotting. The
longer and steeper hills involve walking, but even in them there are
dips and levels which permit one to vary the pace, nursing the horse
through the march in the least possible number of hours. It is the
flagging, not the brisk day's work, which causes most fatigue.
[Sidenote: Seat]
SEAT. I have seen horses prosper under all the different and
possible methods of decent horsemen, and do not believe that form
makes any difference. From the Red Indians of the plains I learned
to sit skin tight and upright at the trot and canter.
Having no voice to boast of, I test my seat at the various gaits by
singing, and if there is any sign of quivering in the notes, look
well to my grip and balance, lest I jar the horse. His ears express
horror, but his kidneys seem at peace; and I have usually fattened
thin horses on my journeys. The skin-tight seat is that which is
practised and recommended by all range horsemen.
{188}
[Sidenote: Ease]
EASE. General Sir Robert Baden-Powell kindly advised me as follows:--
"Letting men sit side-saddle on a tired horse is the easiest way of
giving it a sore back. At walking gait it is far better for the
rider to dismount and walk. The loup or lobbing canter is the
easiest pace for man and horse. Except a continuous walk, the round
trot is the most tiring. Frequent cantering and walking
alternately--the rider then going on foot--is the way to get over the
ground in going a long distance."
The above note is one of high authority as applying to English
equipment; but I found it received with a certain lack of respect by
men using a weight-distributing saddle. We all sit side-saddle when
we please, or more often ride on one thigh or the other. None of us
have seen sore back except with lean or exhausted horses, worn out
saddlery, or in cases of gross neglect.
The range man does not look upon riding as a formal parade, but likes
to practise circus tricks, or lounge at ease while he smokes, reads a
book, sings, or plays some musical instrument. I have seen the
cowhand wile away the time by eating a quart of pickles. For my
part, a luncheon from the wallets is part of the {189} procedure of
every pack drive, followed by a comfortable nap in the saddle.
Horses often doze at a walk, even, I suspect, at the trot, and a nap
for man and horse adds a great deal to the endurance of both.
As to going afoot, it takes a very steep down hill track to enforce
such a thing upon me. Rumour says that we will walk half a mile to
get a pony from pasture in order to ride a hundred yards on an
errand. But to be afoot is for the range horseman the last depth of
calamity and degradation.
My last experience of this was a traverse of the Canadian Rockies,
when my partner and I rode along the bed and bars of a river until we
were washed away. After that we took to the bush, a wonderful
labyrinth of deadfall, beaver swamp and snowslides, which we managed
to climb through by following the tracks of some wapiti. We had to
work about twenty hours a day, and the four days reduced our clothes
and boots to rags, but our luck was better than that of another party
of four men who tried the same pass that season and were not heard of
afterwards. I will not tempt young travellers by giving them the
name of that pass.
GUIDANCE. While the range man never walks, but makes the saddle his
home, and {190} lives at ease, it would be an error to suppose him
unobservant. In wild countries one's life depends on alertness.
[Sidenote: Scouting]
Few range men trust a compass, which may be lost or broken, is hard
to read at night, difficult to steady at any time, and apt to point
at one's gun. Point the hour hand of your watch at the sun, and half
way to XII is south (for the northern hemisphere). If the sky is
overcast polish a coin or finger nail and hold a match or a pin upon
it vertically. The upright match will cast a shadow made by the
unseen sun.
So much for the rule of thumb, but one's real reliance is on the
indications of the landscape: the reading of trees and bushes as
shaped by the prevalent wind; the reading of rocks or tree trunks for
any mosses or lichens which grow on the side (north for northern
hemisphere) on which the sun does not shine; and sundry other signs
local to different regions.
The constant habit of locating north grows to an instinct. In
Petrograd, as a stranger unable to ask questions or read signs in
Russian, on level alluvial land, in a thick winter night, without
having seen one inch of the route before, I was able to walk by the
shortest {191} cut three and a half miles directly to my hotel.
If it is vital to know north, it is equally important to read
country; to see by the slopes of the ground the direction of streams
and watersheds, and to observe the phenomena of crossing or
converging routes. One learns in time to forecast the nature of the
country beyond the horizon.
[Sidenote: Trail appearances]
Most important of all is the difficult reading of tracks and the
glints on grass, also the movements of birds and animals which in an
arid country are signs for finding water.
For the rest, it is useful to note the tracks on the trail showing
who passed and when.
It is wise, on meeting a man, to observe his horse brands, equipment,
and all the many clues which show who and what he is as distinguished
from what he says. It is a gross breach of taste to ask him a
personal question; but by knowing all about him one may gauge the
value of his trail directions. There is indeed a need for
cautiousness, for not one man in a hundred gives accurate directions
which can be safely followed. In central Colorado there used to be a
lady rancher whose copious trail directions had endangered so many
travellers that, for a radius of two {192} hundred miles, approaching
horsemen were always warned by the neighbours to be deaf to her siren
voice.
GUIDES. Much as I like the savage as a man, I am cautious in
engaging him as guide. On two occasions I arranged that my guide was
to be shot if he showed up at home without my written release.
Knowing that detail, my first guide was a success, but the second
left me to die, and went home without my certificate.
Rather than put one's trust in guides, maps, trail directions, the
compass or any other form of vanity and vexation, it is wiser to rely
on common sense in scouting. And there the indications given by
one's horse are always valuable.
[Sidenote: Scent, sight and sound]
SCENT. It is doubtful if man or horse is ever perfectly healthy in
civilization. Both suffer from chronic catarrh, so that the smaller
animal has to carry and use a handkerchief. Under range conditions
the kerchief is more useful round one's neck, for the nostrils are
dry, and, both in horse and man, the senses are more active. At half
a mile I have smelt a mountain river--like a wet knife. Once, at
about five miles on a windless day my two horses snuffed a fresh pool
and bolted for it at {193} full gallop despite my frantic protests at
their apparent madness. Considering that we were lost in sand-rock
desert, all three of us owed our lives to that small distant smell.
The more vivid perfume of cattle I have caught up easily at
four-and-a-half miles on the wind, but by their conduct I think my
horses had that savour some miles before it reached my duller senses.
I think the scenting powers of a horse are about ten times as strong
as mine.
SIGHT. Although short-sighted, I have, with the aid of eyeglasses,
bringing my vision up to normal, seen waggon dust at sixteen miles, a
colliery smoke at twenty-three miles, and detail of a mountain scarp
at seventy miles in the clear prairie air. So far as I could get any
direct evidence, I never knew a horse to see anything at much more
than a couple of hundred yards. It seems to be only in civilization
where the smells and sounds are bewildering, that the horse becomes
long-sighted up to perhaps a mile.
HEARING. The value of a horse's sense of hearing as compared with
that of a man is very difficult to judge. On a still night I have
heard men's calls from behind double windows at one and a half miles;
and am not at all sure {194} that an average horse beats that. And
yet, judging by the constant signalling of a horse's ears which point
at every sound, I think his sense of hearing catches vibrations above
the register of human ears, and many notes at close range too faint
to impress our senses.
Whatever a horse may smell, hear or see, he points out with nice
gestures of the ears and nostrils which are of infinite value for a
man to read and understand. They convey to the practised eye all
sorts of warnings and useful little hints. It is the training in
peace of the habit of observation which makes the scout for war.
[Sidenote: The fear of shadows]
THE FEAR OF SHADOWS. Once I took a range horse into a forest where
there were flocks of sheep, herded a good deal of nights by cougars
(_Felix concolor_) who prospered on their mutton. These cougars used
to come round my camp, liked it, I think, because there was no
gun-smell, and sang most wonderfully, sitting so near that I could
see the gleam of firelight on their eyes. I liked them, but my horse
would stand astride the fire trembling. I tried to explain to him
that this was vanity, because he was really far too thin to be
edible. While the cougars had nice fat sheep for the asking, why
should they care for horse bones! But all the signs he gave of
loneliness and fear {195} I have seen many a time since then when I
have taken range horses far into the woods.
[Sidenote: Halts]
HALTS. If only to give my horses a chance to stale and, with a
gelding, to make sure that the sheath is clean, I make a short halt
after each two hours. At every halt the genuine horseman throws his
rein to the ground so that a horse will be tripped if he attempts to
break away. Range horses are trained to stand to a thrown rein, and
if necessary are given a sack of earth to drag until they learn the
wisdom in obedience. If one has to tie the horse to anything, a
supple bush is better than a rigid tree, lest he pull back with his
whole weight for the purpose of breaking the rein or rope by which he
has been fastened.
In my short halts I always hold the rein while the horse gets a bite
of grass or a little water. The reason for this is that he may be
suddenly frightened by a snake or a bustling squirrel, and if he
breaks away it might be awkward to be left afoot: so many men have
been left afoot and perished.
In the greatest heat one may water horses fully if they stand knee
deep in pool or stream; but if they drink their fill they go
sluggishly afterwards and need to drink the more. For a man a sip of
cold tea allays thirst better than {196} a pint of water, and for
neither the horse nor the rider is it wise to drink to repletion
until after the day's work.
In lone travelling with a pack horse I always make the day's work in
a single drive rather than waste time unloading and loading the pack
in a day which may prove too brief for the finding of a camp before
dark. The earliest rising, the most urgent driving are needed to
make sure against a dry camp, or being caught in bad ground by the
fall of night.
[Sidenote: The night halt]
THE NIGHT HALT. In country where the grass is eaten for miles
surrounding watering places, or where there is danger from hostile
savages, I always drive on from the evening water until I can camp in
safety on good pasture. Also one needs a margin of time to walk the
last mile or two, bringing the horses in cool at the end of the day's
work.
[Sidenote: For horse-comfort]
Rather than let horses stand shivering in a wet or cold gale, it is
better to march, and keep travelling until shelter can be found.
In great heat it is better to travel at night, but one should be in
camp from about 12.30 to 3.30 a.m., the usual sleeping hours.
As to horses in camp, one must throw them to pasture beyond the
camping place, so as to hear them passing if they attempt to break
{197} back. It may be necessary to hobble or even picket one of them
as a precaution, or if they lack water to hobble all who cannot be
picketed. If any animal is to be hobbled or tied up, the mare comes
first.
In forest, where horses are ill at ease, especially if pasture is
scanty, I hang a bell to the neck of every horse, and camp at some
spot where the back trail can be fenced, then sleep against the gate.
On some occasions I have watched all night.
Where flies are bad, it is kindly to bank a fire with damp herbage
which makes a smoke in which the horses can shelter. It is in forest
and fly country that one has greatest need of a few feeds of oats in
the pack, or even slung to the saddles.
If a horse is sweating and exhausted, I rub him down with whiskey or
any other form of alcohol, because its rapid evaporation cools and
refreshes him. A little alcohol rubbed on the part heated by the
saddle enables one to feed grain even in short halts.
For cold and exhaustion I give sugar, if possible in the water. The
carbon is fuel which enters the blood, and so becomes exposed to
oxygen in the lungs, where its burning produces the heat which warms
the body.
{198}
In hot weather, oatmeal and sugar in water make a refreshing drink
useful to horses as to working humans.
If a horse is leg-weary and stiff, a rub down or massage with
liniment slacks the strung tendons.
[Sidenote: Sores]
SORES. I never unsaddle without making a careful search for water
blisters or any sign of chafing. These found in time can be marked
with axle grease, which registers a black spot on the sweat pad or
the blanket. The blanket can then be folded in such a way as to
relieve the pressure, or a bit of sacking shaped into a ring to
enclose the threatened spot beneath or between the foldings of the
blanket. The same kind of padding can be made under the girth for
the relief of girth galls.
Despite the utmost care, horses in soft condition or when underfed,
or wearing harness which has hardened or warped after long spells of
wet, are liable to sores. I have cured most terrible cases by a
daily practice of riding the patient to sweating heat, then suddenly
unsaddling, and lashing on cold salt water. The various copper
ointments known as gall cures are worth their weight in gold so long
as one works the horse, but have the defect of forming a hard scab
which breaks away before {199} the wound is ready. One abscess
caused by a warped saddle tree defeated me altogether and put the
animal out of action for four months. As to sores in the starvation
of the northern forest, the story would be too terrible to tell.
[Sidenote: Cracked heels]
CRACKED HEELS. In cold weather, if we do not dry our hands before a
fire after we have washed them, we are liable to chapped skin. Wet
followed by cold, especially from muddy ground, causes cracked heels.
The prevention by thorough drying after every wetting may be
impossible and this form of lameness is difficult to cure. A washing
with soft soap, and a thorough drying, followed by packing in grease
is the best range practice I know of, but does not always succeed.
[Sidenote: Feeding]
FEEDING. In making the feed as varied as possible I have fallen into
error more than once. A bran mash, for example, is best when there
is no march on the following day. I made a horse dangerously ill
with scouring by turning him into an abandoned field of green and
standing maize. On another occasion, turning hot, wet, exhausted
horses into a shed for shelter from a storm, I found out too late
that a sack of oats had been spilt upon the floor. The result was
colic.
{200}
Feeding horses to perfection needs a touch of artistry. Small feeds
of grain, for instance, by making the animal ravenous for more,
enable one to double his allowance without stalling him. Salt,
sugar, carrots, apples, help to keep up his interest in life, as
rewards to be earned, and tokens that one really cares for him. If a
horse is scoured a dose of salt water will help him. For colic one
has to lead him about while the pain lasts, and above all things
prevent him from rolling, which is sometimes fatal.
It is long now since I had to dispense with a fire for fear of
advertising my camp to hostile savages, and the old glorious range in
North America is woefully shrinking before the advance of settlement.
The rancher who made the traveller welcome as a guest is replaced by
a surly farmer who takes money for rental of his barn-yard. The
range horseman who used to own the town when he rolled in from the
plains is now considered, as Europe views the gypsy, with suspicion.
One trait of the range rider recalls the past. No man lays a hand on
our horses unless he wants a fight. It is a rule that the horseman
tends his own stock so long as he is able to stand. He must be very
ill or badly hurt before he surrenders that.
{201}
At range stables where there is a dust bath one unsaddles on arrival
to let the horses roll. At town stables where there is no dust bath
one slacks the girths, removes the bitts, gives half a drink, and
some hay. An hour later when the rider is fed he comes back to cool
horses who can be unsaddled without fear of any blisters which might
turn into sores. Then comes full watering, and grain. While the
horse is busy eating, pick out his feet, dry out wet heels, scrape
off mud, and wisp down. After the stall is cleaned, and bedded, and
the manger filled with hay for the night, the horseman is off duty;
but a range man prefers to sleep in the barn loft in order to save
his horses in the event of fire, and be up early with the morning
grain.
IV. RECORDS.
[Sidenote: Records]
Writing without notes or books, it is difficult to recall the records
of long distance riding which form the best tests of endurance, and
so give one a standard of value for man, equipment and horse. Driven
to rely on memory I note first that the historic records are vague,
giving but scanty data. Everybody knows for example that Bucephalus
(Ox-head) the Thessalian charger of Alexander the Great was a horse
of notable endurance, but the question {202} is--what could he do on
continuous journeys? Charles XII. of Sweden rode in a hurry from
Constantinople to Dantzic, but what was the time for that distance,
and was it done by one horse or by reliefs? Dick King, a despatch
rider, made good time on one horse from Port Elizabeth to Port Natal,
but I do not remember his gait for the six hundred miles. Somebody
who was not Dick Turpin, but possibly another rogue of the same name,
made a single march from London to York on a mare called Black Bess,
but that was a horse-killing feat, as much disqualified by decent men
as the Inter-Army horse-killing rides which disgusted the horsemen of
Europe not many years ago.
[Sidenote: Records in civilization]
In the nineties Lieutenant Peschkov, a Cossack officer, rode a Dun
pony from Vladivostock to Petrograd. This at any decent gait is a
world record for a road ride, on a route with hotels at every stage.
But legend makes the gait thirty-eight miles a day for six thousand
miles, and on that I have my doubts. Working across country I found
that my best horse did one thousand three hundred and seventy miles
at twenty-one miles a day; and the next best one thousand and forty
at the same pace; but on the whole trip, made with four successive
{203} mounts, the three thousand six hundred miles took two hundred
days. This works out at the very poor average of eighteen miles a
day But for delays in buying horses the average would have been
twenty-one miles, and I doubt if any horse outside of fairy tales can
do much more on a six thousand mile journey.
Apart from the vagueness and doubtfulness of the stories, the
standard which they set up for comparison seems to be very low as
compared with the annals of range horsemanship. The following
records were made for the most part with half or three-quarter bred
range raised horses, and all with weight-distributing saddles.
[Sidenote: One day rides]
ONE DAY RIDES. A friend of mine, an Australian stockman, with a
weight-distributing saddle, and leading a pack animal, crossed the
state of Victoria from the Murray to Melbourne, one hundred and
forty-three miles by the route taken, covered in twenty-six hours.
A constable of the Royal North-West Mounted Police of Canada with a
forty-two pound stock-saddle on a buckskin gelding, rode from Regina
to Wood Mountain Post, one hundred and thirty-two miles by sunlight,
and the horse bucked him off at the finish.
{204}
On enquiry I found that the trail between Forts Macleod and Calgary,
Alberta, one hundred and eight miles, had been ridden in a day by
most of the Mounted Police and cowboys who happened to go that way.
[Sidenote: Records on the range]
SIX-DAY RIDES. Kit Carson carried military despatches from Omaha to
Los Angeles and back (circa 1841), a lone ride through hostile tribes
of four thousand four hundred miles. When he was resting at Los
Angeles he joined a party of Mexican gentlemen each taking one saddle
horse. The six men rode along the California coast from Los Angeles
to San Francisco, six hundred miles in six days. Only two of the
party changed horses.
Among the Robbers' Roost, and affiliated gangs of Rocky Mountain
outlaws, I found that it was their custom to plant little bunches of
ponies here and there in pasture. When they happened to be in a
hurry they would travel from pasture to pasture, and at each of these
take a fresh mount. Six hundred miles in six days was not unusual
they told me, and, from what the sheriffs said who tried to catch
them, I think that the robbers spoke in moderation. They were much
the most truthful men I have met on the stock range.
[Sidenote: Long marches]
MARCHES WITHOUT REMOUNTS. In the {205} North-West Mounted Police we
reckoned a day's march at forty-two miles for saddle horses. On
Colonel Irvine's three hundred mile march to prevent the North-West
Rebellion of 1885 we carried all fuel, forage and supplies in sleighs
so that the speed was reduced to that of a convoy, but it worked out
at forty-two miles average, ending with sixty-two miles on the last
day.
A two thousand two hundred mile Viceregal tour is said to have worked
out at forty miles a day; but one patrol I rode in of seven hundred
miles only gave thirty-four miles a day for average, even with
occasional change of horses. It was bad, shocking bad, but has it
been equalled by any mounted troops of Europe?
MARCHES WITH REMOUNTS. On the cattle industry a Roundup Outfit is
commanded by the owner or by his foreman. Under him are three
separate departments: (1) The cook, who drives a waggon which carries
the men's bedding and is fitted up as a kitchen. The waggon forms a
moving base to the expedition, and travels about ten miles a day.
(2) The horse wrangler is a herder in charge of the herd of ponies
used as remounts. (3) The working force of cowboys.
Each rider has his own string of ponies {206} usually seven in number
running with the herd.
[Sidenote: Mobility of stockmen]
ROUTINE. Long before dawn the wrangler drives the herd home to the
camp, where two men hold ropes outward from the waggon, making a
rough enclosure in which the ponies are handled. Each rider selects
from his own string the pony he needs for the morning's work. At
noon the herd is run in and he picks out his afternoon horse. At
supper time the herd is run in and he selects his horse for night
duty.
The rider uses his first three horses and his second three horses on
alternate days, keeping the seventh in reserve. These animals are
not fed with grain, but live entirely on the range grass. By
changing his mount six times in each two days he is able to ride on
grass-fed ponies at an average rate of fifty miles a day for a period
of eight months. The distance ridden in this season is 11,150 miles.
{207}
CHAPTER VII.
THE PLEASURE HORSE.
I. THE BENT LEG.
The human mind may be likened unto a stable with horses all in a row.
That strong team Tradition and Custom are overworked. Bias and
Prejudice have plenty to do. Passion and Vice get an occasional
airing, and Vanity has daily exercise. But Reason is kept in his
stall, the master's own mount, stale for want of use. He is not
popular with the other horses, he is not easily ridden, is heavy to
handle, and goes painfully lame from having been kicked too much.
Let us try him:
THE BENT LEG. So far we have traced the straight leg method of
riding from savage life through the Greek practice and that of the
Ages of Armour. We have seen the European war seat and war saddle
adapt themselves to range practice in wild countries, and so become
the basis of outdoor horsemastership.
{208}
[Sidenote: Oriental horsemen]
In sharp contrast to the straight leg and weight distributing saddle
which has always attended the use of the European horse, is the
universal practice associated in all ages with the Bay horse of
Africa, and the Dun horse of Asia. My bits and scraps of reading
present a general picture of the Oriental horseman as highly perched,
with a bent leg and a long reach, preferring light scale or chain
mail to heavy armour, prone to a swift onset, a brisk melée, and
speedy disengagement since the days of the Parthian cavalry down to
the Moslem conquests, and on to the chivalry of India, the cossacks
of Russia, and the hapless Dervishes of the Soudan. From Mongolia to
Morocco across the whole breadth of the Oriental World this high
perch, bent leg and long reach seem to be universal in all ages.
In arid countries the ass and the camel were ridden long before the
pony, and it seems quite possible that their pad saddles were
transferred to the horse without much alteration. My first
impression of this was during a donkey race in Portugal. Our mounts
stood well over fifteen hands, magnificent animals. The saddle was a
broad flat pad like that of women athletes in a circus, and, gripping
its sides with one's calves, the seat was fairly secure. {209}
Anyway a galloping ass is a deal better ride than a bullock. I was
winning the race when my moke, being of the Moslem faith, knelt down
to say his prayers, and I went on alone.
[Sidenote: Eastern stock]
From watching Moors, Cossacks, Jockeys and other bent-leg horsemen I
have an impression that a similar halt of the steed for a moments'
prayer would have the same effect; but that the Spanish Picador,
meanest of the straight-leg riders, would manage to stay in the
saddle.
In the days of armour the gentleman-at-arms wore doublet and trunk
hose, riding light horses for hunting, hawking, or even travel.
Ladies rode also, and there was cantering where the ground permitted.
But I cannot recall any mention of jumping in England until the time
of the Civil War. Prince Rupert escaped a pursuit of heavy cavalry
by jumping. A fugitive cavalier pursued by Roundheads, leapt from
Wenlock Edge.
By this time a few Barbs, and Eastern horses alleged to be Arabian,
had added a new strain to the English stock. Oliver Cromwell, for
instance, a notable breeder before he went into politics, had an
imported sire. The thoroughbred, who is 7/8 Arabian by blood, made
jumping possible.
{210}
In the days of Queen Elizabeth England was still a sheep range,
producing wool as the staple industry, and supporting five million
people. Sufficient grain was raised for feeding the small
population; and to keep the sheep off their crops the people had
invented a fence peculiar to Britain. This fence consisted of an
earthwork of ridge and ditch called a hedgerow. The ridge carries,
and the ditch waters, a row of bushes, trimmed yearly to make it
strong and dense, and known as a hedge. Unlike rigid fences the
hedge may be safely jumped by horses who have the courage.
As the population increased the swamps were drained and forests
cleared for farming and, outside the sheep down, the whole country
was meshed with an intricate small skein of hedges.
At a period when guns were very short of range, and poison was still
dear, the foxes became abundant and destructive, so that a special
hound had to be bred able to run them down. This was a matter of
business until foxes made it a sport, and from about 1740 survived as
sportsmen rather than be extinct as merely vermin. There was no
detriment to the land from hunting on winter fallows; and, but for
the fox, our people would have been {211} driven to invent some other
way of breaking their necks to let off surplus energy.
For rich people there is no cleaner or healthier form of pleasure, no
better training in nerve and all that makes a man.
[Sidenote: Leadership]
The training for leadership among the Germans is a matter of beer and
fencing, among the Americans of office work, among the British of
field sports. Which method is best to save leaders of men from
corruption, and decadence? The mettle of our pastures gives cool
judgment in administration, leadership in affairs, and in times of
peril a sterling worth of manhood proof against disaster.
Far be it from me then to deride the British horsemanship. Any
horseman who can tolerate so slippery and unreliable a contraption as
the English saddle is greatly to be envied and admired.
Always a timid horseman but emulous, I made two attempts to ride the
damned thing, and came to grief without the least delay. The third
try was quite a success, the occasion being a cavalry charge into a
converging fire at point-blank range. I was much too scared to fall
off, and so came to the conclusion that any fool could ride anything
if his attention were sufficiently distracted by a hail of bullets.
{212} After that I went to the best horseman I could find in England
and asked him to explain the merits of his saddle. "The English
saddle," said Lord Lonsdale, "is made for falling off. You see it
throws the rider clear of a falling horse."
[Sidenote: The pleasure saddle]
This really explained the English saddle in terms of sport, which any
fellow ought to understand. So I tried the saddle again, and found
that one could ride straight leg at any gait quite easily by merely
dispensing with the stirrups. It was almost as good as bareback.
But with the leathers shortened, riding bent-leg, one could actually
use the stirrups. Since then I have put my stock saddles away, and
taken recruit lessons in the riding school. A little powdered resin
on the leather straps of one's breeches makes them look quite smart
and deceives the Instructor in Equitation. Still, I am a novice,
trying in vain to rise at the trot with that poke forward of the head
which so beautifully imitates the movement of a hen as she enquires
for worms.
It is only by practical testing that I learned the qualities of the
English saddle, and so brought it into comparison with that of the
stock range. It is not easy to free one's mind from bias, to realise
that perfectly sane men {213} have reasonable methods other than
one's own, and that the mere fact that one's critic is an obnoxious
bounder does not dispose of all his arguments. I venture to claim
that the range horseman has intelligence equal to that which guides
British horsemanship, and added to that the deeper intimacy of one
who allows no hired hand to touch his horses, who cares for them as a
hireling never can, and whose life depends upon his competence. It
is from the range point of view that I venture now into the field of
criticism.
To teach a novice to ride with the stock saddle I lead him on to talk
about his girl. By the time he forgets that he is exaggerating on
horseback he rides quite decently.
To teach a novice to ride with the English saddle is a matter of long
and severe training. In the end he rides in spite of a saddle, which
is by no means an aid to horsemanship.
[Sidenote: The two saddles]
The difference between straight leg and bent leg riding is not of the
slightest consequence to the horse. To ride the stock saddle with
comfort the leg must be straight. To ride the English saddle safely
the leg must be bent. The total difference then is one between two
saddles, the English model being excellent for sport, but otherwise
quite useless; while the {214} stock saddle, which cannot possibly be
used for flat racing or jumping, is of value to a man earning a
living on horseback.
II. THE INDOOR HORSE.
[Sidenote: The indoor horse]
HIS HOUSE. Because we love horses we have been seeking guidance from
nature as to their management. "Nature" is only a sort of nickname
for God, who bids us love our horse neighbours as all other
neighbours. If our religion is not a sham it consists of love, and
these our neighbours need a love which must be filled with live
intelligence.
I doubt if God believes in the church I belong to, but I am sure He
approves of our poor attempts to do our loving duty as horsemasters,
as soldiers, or in any trade to which we have been called. This is
the spirit in which I dare to adventure upon criticism, approaching
civilized horsemastership from the singular point of view of the
range horseman.
I do not presume to criticise the management of thoroughbreds, but
wish to speak merely for common horses with whom I may claim
friendship.
In buying a range-bred horse one takes the legs and feet almost for
granted, but in civilization one deals with doubt and misgiving
because the animal for sale is presumably a {215} wrong'un. The one
thing that amazes the range man is the astounding number of ailments
contracted by civilized horses on only four legs in a limited span of
years. It is a strong presumption that there must be something in
civilized horsemastership to account for the general unsoundness of
the stock, the lack of endurance, the total failure in mobility.
The vital needs without which a horse will perish are water and
grass. It is considered that the water flowing from limestone rocks,
which carries carbonate of lime, is best for building bone. It seems
quite possible that other mineral bearing waters have their
usefulness in supplying elements needed for blood, muscle, or nerves.
[Sidenote: Food]
The natural food of a horse is sun-cured tuft grass growing in arid
regions, but a perfect imitation is the usual mixed feed of oats,
chaff and bran, with the common equivalents used for varying diet.
Next in value is the upland pasture of damp climates, worst is the
meadow grass. The conditioning of horses in any green pasturage
depends upon grain, but one should not in any feeding neglect rock
salt.
If sunshine and fresh air were vital needs pit ponies would not live.
Sun and air are no more necessities to a grown horse than eyesight is
to {216} a man. So one needs to examine carefully and to reason
closely as to the actual value even of air and sunshine.
The range is dry, parched, and above all things hard; and from the
hardest ground come the breeds of especial value by reason of sound
limbs and steel-like hoofs. The hardness of ground is due to the
fierce light and heat of desert climates.
Again it is known that sunlight kills the germs of nearly all
diseases, provided the air can reach them.
Unless they are robbed of their coats horses are almost indifferent
to the greatest known extremes of dry heat and dry cold; yet, if
exposed to wind they lose weight rapidly, and are intensely
susceptible to draughts. The horse's natural shelter is a wind break.
[Sidenote: The stable]
To meet all these conditions the stable in rainy climates must have a
roof to keep the standings dry, and yet should be roofed with glass
to let in sufficient light to kill all germs of disease.
Yet any stable, warmed by the heat of horses, however carefully
cleaned, is fouled by their dung and water, and so becomes a forcing
house to breed disease unless one removes the walls. There should be
no walls, but the {217} stable should be built like a Japanese house
with transparent and portable screens, close fitting against
draughts; which can be set up on two windward sides with every shift
of the weather. By no other means can the diseases be swept away
which make the stabled horse a byword for unsoundness.
[Sidenote: Paved floor]
If regions of hardest ground produce the best legs and hoofs, it does
not follow that stables ought to be paved. Natural ground however
hard is springy, but pavement is dead hard and slippery at that. The
English horseman explains "It haint the 'unting as 'urts the 'orses
'oofs, but the 'ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer, on the 'ard 'igh road." All
who have seen the strains and tensions of cowpunching and noted the
perfect soundness of cow ponies will agree that it haint the 'unting.
But anybody who watches English horsemen with pleasure horses has
noted the exceeding care with which they are ridden on the dirt
rather than on the crown of a road, on the grass by the road rather
than on the highways, and on any open route across country, rather
than on the roadside. They get very much less hard going than the
average range horse. The draught horse may suffer from the highway,
but certainly not the hunter who is equally unsound. {218} Yet both
have standings as a rule on a paved floor for not less than eighteen
hours out of the average twenty-four.
[Sidenote: The stable floor]
A notable difference between the sound outdoor horse and the unsound
indoor horse is in this matter of standing, for the range animal
visits but does not live in a stable, while the unsound animal spends
three fourths of his time on a hard pavement. I have noticed also in
travel that when I brought weary horses to a stable with a wooden
floor their pasterns always swelled over night. On a metalled or
paved floor the swelling was almost as bad as on wood, whereas on
earthern standings there was never the slightest trace of
inflammation.
In recent handling of some sixty army horses I took them from pasture
to horse lines without noting much unsoundness on either ground.
Unsoundness developed when I took them to paved stalls, but was much
diminished when I moved them to earth-floored sheds. I find too that
notable horsemasters have removed the pavements from their stables in
favour of clean, dry, well-drained earth standings; or, failing that,
lay bedding a foot deep.
But my experiment has gone further. My horses have not only earth
standings, but sheds so built that they are walled only to {219}
windward. The gain in general health is beyond all question. Both
in theory and in practice I have reason to believe that earth-floored
sheds walled to windward only will cure the chronic unsoundness of
stabled horses, provided that the strongest light possible is brought
to bear for the killing out of disease germs. On the same principle
which imports cats to look after our rats and mice, one might
introduce some benevolent microbe whose duty it would be to eat
disease germs in a stable floor.
III. THE INDOOR HORSE.
[Sidenote: Work]
HIS WORK. So far analysis has shown two types of equipment: the
weight-distributing saddle for war work, ridden straight-leg by
soldiers, stockmen and others earning a living; and the light
slippery saddle for running and jumping adapted to the bent-leg
riding of pleasure horses for sport.
The saddle is but one of several factors in horsemanship, so we must
isolate these factors one by one before we can reach conclusions from
our study.
For the purpose of isolating the several factors in horsemanship, The
Legion of Frontiersmen managed to organize a series of tests on
English highways. In each test two groups {220} of three or four
horsemen apiece, working in rivalry, rode fifty to fifty-five miles
on a Saturday, then back again on the Sunday. Afterwards a
veterinary surgeon reported on the condition of the horses.
[Sidenote: Indoor horses at work]
The first test was made under conditions of unusual heat, and after
one serious case of heat prostration the homeward run had to be made
at night. The riders were veterans to the age of seventy-two, with
an average of two old wounds, and more than two war decorations per
man. Our cab and 'bus horses finished like the riders, in good time
and condition, but did not equal the usual gait of the annual Stock
Exchange competition of men afoot on the same London and Brighton
road.
SADDLES. We never had the rival types of saddles tested by teams,
but each man rode his own, and for short marches like ours the
difference was slight. The men with stock saddles were less weary,
and their horses fresher, but not to any notable degree.
SEAT. In one test a competitor failed us, and was replaced by a
sailor who had not ridden before. At first he butted his horse
backwards into shops, so we had to change about for ten miles until
we found the best mount for his peculiar needs. After that there
{221} remained one hundred miles, and his horse got the best report.
A sailor has balance, and given that mere form is not important.
TYPE OF HORSE. We hired 'bus and cab horses because they were cheap;
but in one of the competitions were opposed by a group of horsemen
riding their private hunters. Our working horses finished fresh and
on time, but the pleasure horses broke down and had to come home by
train.
[Sidenote: Horses at work]
I might enter into the details of a dozen other exercises which
tested the indoor horse and the English equipment, but all may be
summed up in a single broad generalization. The pleasure horse and
his equipment are so highly specialized for running and jumping that
they have ceased to possess the slightest value for civil and
military working horsemanship.
{222}
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SOLDIER HORSE.
[Sidenote: Regular cavalry]
A habit of enlisting for campaigns has given me some desultory
training with British irregular and auxiliary forces--Horse, Foot and
Guns. Without the slightest pretensions as a soldier I have enjoyed,
on active service, watching the military practice in horsemastership
in its amusing contrasts with the methods of frontier life.
It seems to me that the British and especially the Irish
horse-breeding, and the national amusements for mounted men--hawking,
stag-hunting, fox-hunting, steeplechases, flat races, and polo--for
example, have given to British mounted troops the basis of a
horsemastership which has been gratefully copied by civilized armies
and disabled the mobility of all alike. The cult of the pleasure
horse has ousted the old sober methods of war horsemanship. This may
in part account for the chasing of the Spaniards and Portuguese by
their lively American colonists, of the British by the {223}
Argentines, Americans and Afghans, of the French by the Mexicans, of
the Germans by the Damaras, of the Italians by the peoples of
Erythrea and Cyrenaica, and of the Russians by the Japanese. Three
hundred thousand of my countrymen spent three-and-a-half years in
persuading fifty-five thousand Boers to accept full compensation for
their losses. This episode filled with unholy joy the nations which
had not lately been whipped by mere outsiders because they had
prudently abstained from war. One does not recall, however, so very
many recent campaigns in which barbaric horsemanship has been put to
shame and flight by any regular cavalry.
So, if my adventure in uncouth criticism bears incidentally upon
British methods, its motive is merely to discover why civilized
mounted troops are not quite a success in dealing with irregulars of
the open range. If Army methods are really the best, they should
have an unbroken chronicle of victory. If range methods are really
the best, the military art of horsemanship needs thinking over by
every civilized horseman who loves his country.
If the defeat of civilized armies is not explained by their
horsemastership, it is not less in need of explanation.
{224}
[Sidenote: Armies]
I hold it as an article of faith that the British Army is not
excelled, man for man, by any in Europe, but does greatly surpass all
others in its power of adapting itself to new conditions, maintaining
its powers at great distances from its base, and perfecting in its
troops the highest ideals of manhood. And yet in all armies men are
taught to obey before they think, and, thought being secondary to
discipline, is rather apt to lag. The discipline which creates a mob
into a weapon tends to disable men in army trades other than that of
fighting, so that the departmental or thinking departments are less
efficient than the executive. Character is trained to a supreme
degree, and the military courts are cleaner, quicker and more direct
than the civil in doing justice. Yet intellect takes its chance of
surviving discipline. In a world which is managed by men too old to
be receptive of new thought, the person with original ideas is looked
upon as a public enemy, and the Army is always certain he must be an
awful bounder. The aeroplane, for example, was more important as a
military idea than anything since the invention of gunpowder, but the
inventors and manufacturers in several countries went bankrupt while
they waited in vain for orders from. {225} the armies. The German
War Office was the first to come to their rescue.
It is only by such reasoning as this that one understands why mounted
soldiers are given breeches with buckskin straps to help them to grip
a saddle specially treated with beeswax to make it slippery.
Constructive thought would remove the strapping to make the breeches
slippery as the saddle; or, if a grip is wanted would retain the
strapping, and roughen the saddle seat and panels by using the
leather inside out, or replacing the surface with buckskin.
[Sidenote: The hunting-seat]
Early in the eighteenth century British racing and fox-hunting became
fully organized sports which needed bent-leg riding and a slippery,
light saddle. The British Army was not officered by professional
soldiers, but by sportsmen who bought commissions. The training of
officers was in the hunting field, and the old straight leg,
weight-distributing war saddle gave place to something really
up-to-date. This was the military saddle, too cumbersome for running
or jumping, too small for weight-distribution, and therefore useless
either for sport or war.
Meanwhile the Riding Masters who were professional soldiers, and
ceased to learn when {226} they began to teach, wrought with
fanatical zeal to compel straight-leg riding on a bent-leg saddle,
and so got a magnificent tally of ruptures and sore tails. In 1805
Prussian instructors were brought to England to enforce the
straight-leg seat on the bent-leg saddle. It is only in the
twentieth century that this wonderful kidney-crusher military seat
has been mercifully abandoned. The army has adopted the hunting
seat, and one reads the last word in Major Birch's book on "Modern
Riding."
[Sidenote: Horsemanship for war]
"The rough-riders from the Royal Artillery Riding Establishment,
using the hunting seat, sat perfectly without either reins or
stirrups over a five-foot six-inch rail--one horse jumping six
feet--besides other formidable obstacles, which proves that no better
seat could be wanted for practical work."
The practical work, one notes, for a civilized Army, is jumping!
What is the horse to be used for? Pleasure?
By all means let the high-strung, highly-fed, massaged,
hospital-bred, courageous, and powerful but exceedingly delicate
blooded horse be used for pleasure, and for pleasure only. One does
not use a racing yacht for cruising, because she is too fragile, or
for cargo because {227} she has no stowage. Use the blooded horse
for running and jumping, with a day's rest following each day's
sport. It does not matter if the rider's weight is concentrated on
the space of a postage stamp. It only matters that the equipment be
light for high speed, and slippery to throw the rider in case he is
not wanted on the saddle.
[Sidenote: Mobility]
What is the horse to be used for? War? Then if we love our country
let us forget tradition, take a rest from filling up returns, and set
ourselves to the exercise of human reason until we find out what we
really want. Why do we use the horse in war? To carry men, to haul
guns, and draw supplies. Why do we use the horse for transport? To
quicken the pace, and ease the labour of men. Why do we need this
mobility? In order to concentrate troops at distant points where
they were not expected. Mobility is not jumping on Germans, but the
long, swift march that covers and supplies the advance or the retreat
which shall decide the issue. Mobility may include the getting and
rendering of vital news, the sudden seizure of a strong position, or
even the special privilege and glory of shock action.
Those of us who indulged ourselves in the {228} habit of thinking,
knew many years ago that mechanical transport would carry and haul
men and supplies much quicker than horses could upon a highway. But
we also observed that war destroys the road, and that campaigning is
a cross-country exercise wherein the horse can hold his own against
the car.
In the same way we knew as far back as 1896 that aerial warfare would
evolve in three phases: reconnaissance, fleet engagements, and
occupations in force with aerial transport.
Yet, while the car and the aircraft have been foreseen by everybody
who took the trouble to think, we have to deal in fact with present
needs for troops transported by horses, for whom the word mobility
means rapid and sustained haulage and carriage of weight. It is not
the art of jumping hedges, because they do not exist in any probable
terrain of war.
What then, are the factors for mobility?
[Sidenote: The pleasure horse]
BREEDING. In the throes of war for our existence, while every luxury
must be dispensed with and every available man called to the colours,
the British Government is solicitous to preserve hunting and racing.
The authorities would preserve the trade of horse-breeding lest there
be scarcity of army remounts. Let us breed pleasure-horses, they
{229} tell us, in order to secure a stock of working horses. So let
us encourage yachting to give us ships for cargo. Let us breed
guinea-pigs as material to coin guineas. "If a yard of soap will
make a flannel waistcoat for a pig, how far is it from the dome of
St. Paul's to Christmas Day?" So mental confusion verge upon madness.
The mettle of our pastures, and perfect artistry in selective
breeding, have given to the British Isles the leadership of nations
with almost every type of domestic livestock. But the high
specialization of each type for a single function disables it for
every other use. We have never bred a horse specialized for that
single purpose of rapid and sustained marching, which is mobility.
Our pleasure horses, excellent for sport, are expensive, delicate,
unsound--lacking in endurance when we put them to serious work. As
yeast is to dough, blood is to any livestock, and there must be
thoroughbred blood in any working horse who has to face the terrors
of modern war; but if there is any guidance in the origin and natural
history of horses, the one type to give mobility to an army must be
bred away from all green grasses and soft ground, on those arid
plains which alone can make sound limbs, hard hoofs, {230} strong
teeth and high endurance. It would be most reasonable to breed from
Duns.
[Sidenote: Breeding the war horse]
As the Royal North-West Mounted Police of Canada have double the
mobility of any regular troops in the world, their system of getting
horses may be worth considering. Certain ranches of Western Canada
have imported British thoroughbred studs, and bred from range mares a
strain known as the Broncho. Averaging fifteen hands two inches, and
1,025 pounds in weight, these gelded horses and mares are raised on
range grass under range conditions, broken at the ranches and bought
for the Mounted Police at contract rates.
Ranches in any arid lands of the Empire such as Southern Alberta,
South Central British Columbia, Western South Africa, or Australia,
would supply a stock for the army much sounder, and more enduring
than any horses which can possibly be bred on soft ground or green
grass.
[Sidenote: Management]
MANAGEMENT. Our analysis of the stable showed the closed shed as a
forcing house for disease germs, and the metalled floor as preventing
a horse from resting on his feet. To copy the natural conditions of
healthy range life the building needs the dry floor which {231}
involves a roof, earth standings on which a horse can rest, and a
wind screen to keep out bad weather. In practice this open
earth-floored shed kills out the germs of disease, rests the horse,
and so prevents or cures the maladies of the feet and legs which
disable indoor stock. But, while the horse is fairly sound so soon
as one adapts his home to the conditions required for his health; no
indoor life trains either horses or horsemen for the mobility needed
in campaigns.
The civilized stable management with grooming and massage, clipping
and singeing, docking and trimming of tails, hogging the manes, and
all the practice which involves the use of clothing is excellent with
the indoor horse. In the same way a hospital is good for the sick,
but not the sort of gymnasium which makes men strong and hardy. The
treatment makes a horse glossy and beautiful, but sensitive rather
than robust. It does not make the horse an outdoor person able to
face bad weather, rough feeding and long marches. For that we must
consider outdoor management as applied to an outdoor horse.
[Sidenote: Indoor management outdoors]
The British South African Field Force lost 340,000 horses, some of
them civilized, others from wild ranges. I was serving in an
irregular {232} unit when a bunch of Argentine remounts arrived in
camp. They showed signs of exhaustion from their voyage, but had not
been pastured after their landing in Africa. The grass surrounding
our camp was fairly good, free from disease, and secure from attack
by day. So the officer commanding shackled the remounts in our
lines, and I was punished for feeding mine with grass. There was no
hay, so the horses had straight oats. As the sky cleared or clouded
the weather was frosty or snowy, so the horses were blanketed. The
blankets were always sodden except when they stiffened with ice. On
the fourteenth day the last of these horses died. The whole was a
beautiful exhibition of stable management applied to outdoor horses
without a stable. I do not remember an instance of army authorities
consulting range horsemen as to the management of range horses on any
range. Neither has it occurred to any army that the outdoor horseman
may have useful knowledge concerning the outdoor horse. And yet the
sacrifice of 340,000 horses might have aroused misgivings as to the
Army system of management.
[Sidenote: Pastured horses]
I am writing from practical experience in stating that in the British
Army authority {233} exists for billeting horses in pasture with half
rations of forage at the discretion of the officer commanding the
unit. Pastured horses condition very rapidly, but soften a good deal
in a wet season, so that one needs as usual to supple the harness
with oil, and also to provide some sheepskin for padding of parts
which cause chafing. To meet the need of having horses instantly
available, I used two fields, the richer for night pasture, the
poorer for my horse lines and drill ground. As horses in pasture
grow wild and difficult to catch if chased about by recruits, I had a
rope tied to a tree near the corner of the field, and held outward by
two men, forming an enclosure into which the herd was drifted for
catching after the night's rest. Drifting and catching needed no
more time than the work of unshackling on the lines.
The system of pasturing by night ensures a clean bed for horses to
lie down, whereas the lines, however carefully cleared of manure, are
very soon fouled by staling, while the ground is trampled into mud or
dust. Old horse lines make most dangerous ground for camps long
after the visible dirt has been grassed over. The insects and germs
from the horse lines are liable to affect the health of troops.
{234}
[Sidenote: Management outdoors]
Except under management of most unusual skill, any assemblage of
horses is liable to stampede. I note this in a camp which has lost
two men killed and one wounded, with two horses killed and two
wounded within the week, fair evidence that stampedes are dangerous.
But the danger is greatest where horse lines and camp lines are set
close abreast, so that, if the horses stampede, the men are trampled
to death. A stampede from herd or pasture is seldom the cause of
serious accidents.
Docking or trimming tails, and hogging manes are hardly wise
outdoors, considering that the mane and tail are special devices of
nature to keep off flies. As horse lines are an excellent breeding
ground for flies, it is precisely on these lines that manes and tails
are needed.
Further, it seems unwise to remove with a brush that natural oil in
hair and skin which preserves a horse from being left stark naked to
the rain. The grease which merely clogs the brush, was needed by the
horse, and if it is taken away it should be replaced. Horses if
groomed outdoors should be groomed and oiled so that the hair may
shed rain and keep the skin dry.
It is argued that the massage action of good {235} grooming
stimulates the supply of oil to the skin and hair; but from careful
observation I think this applies rather to the long and severe
grooming of stabled thoroughbreds than to that lick and a promise
which horses in the lines actually get in bad weather. Just enough
grooming is done to remove the oil, but not enough to stimulate the
supply.
I note that the more disastrous practices are those of tradition and
custom, and are difficult to trace if one is seeking authority from
the Regulations and authorized manuals. These are framed in a most
reasonable spirit, and allow wide discretion to the Commanding
Officer. So far as my experience goes, experience and research has
not only been tolerated by the Authorities, but actively encouraged
and helped.
[Sidenote: Equipment]
EQUIPMENT. The application to Army use of a saddle made for falling
off seems a little eccentric until one begins to reason. The idea is
not without value, because an Army in time of peace is really a
school of manhood, which needs extending until every youth has been
made into a man before he gets a vote as a citizen. At a cost of
life not greatly exceeding the death-rate from closed windows
(phthisis) we have under stress of war an {236} actual national
training in manhood which has averted the fall of the British Empire.
Moreover, the British military training manufactures a gentleman who
can be trusted by the enemy with the care of his wife and daughters.
If it is useful in the making of his manhood we should not grudge him
a saddle for the prevention of riding. Morally, such a saddle is as
good for Tommy as it is for the rich folk of the hunting field.
[Sidenote: Equipment for mobility]
It is when one begins to consider mobility in the field that the
pleasure saddle seems an odd selection. Why not a skipping rope?
Troops using the English equipment have rarely averaged twenty-one
miles a day. Troops using the stock saddle have rarely gone so slow.
The old war saddle has a record of nine hundred years in every kind
of warfare; and has survived the extreme test of the stock range in
replacing the English saddle with the Mounted Police, and mounted
troops of Canada. Only the mistaken energies of sportsmen in the
British Army displaced the practical equipment designed by soldiers.
A return to the old saddle would increase the mobility of all mounted
troops.
HORSEMANSHIP. A hundred years ago the recruit came from a farm and
had been raised {237} on horseback. Even the riding masters of the
period could not quite spoil his natural horsemanship. To-day the
recruit comes from a town, looks on the horse as dangerous, and lacks
the muscles of hip and thigh which must be developed before a man
rides well.
[Sidenote: Military methods]
For civil purposes, the stock saddle, and a little guidance from
horsemen will teach a man to ride, and the riding school would merely
delay his progress. But Army purposes require a firm seat, a gentle
hand to control the horse for military formations, and a perfect
suppleness from the waist upwards for the use of weapons. These
three vital needs involve a riding school. So the rookie is
introduced to the riding school horse. Outside the school that horse
is an iron-mouthed brute, who joggles, and cannot be induced to work
apart from his comrades. Inside the school he understands the riding
master's talk, goes through the drill with or without a rider, and
tries to have some fun out of his rookie to pass away the boring
hours until he gets home to stables and a meal.
[Sidenote: The riding school]
The first job is to give the rookie confidence in the horse. To
inspire the rookie with confidence, the riding master flicks the
horse's heels with a long whip. The rookie's confidence {238} that
he will tumble off is nearly always justified, and in many instances
his nerve is broken. Then the bully calls his victim a coward, and
the rookie, made unfit for mounted work, drifts to some staff
employment or transfers to a unit of foot. The use of dummy horse
for beginners would develop the riding muscles without risk of
spoiling the man. It would be reasonable also to tell the recruit
that a little fuller's earth to absorb the moisture on his chafed
skin will avert most agonizing pain.
It is a curious streak in military character that there is a
tremendous fuss over a horse gall the size of a sixpence, but that a
man skinned from crotch to knee is blamed as a malingerer if he
applies to the doctor for help.
The saddle being worse than useless, the rookie is glad to be quit of
such an obstacle to his progress in riding. Moreover, his puttees
being worn with edges up, they catch in the horse's turned down hair,
and so give him a chance to grip bareback. Leave out the saddle
altogether and the plucky and intelligent recruits of the new armies
are quick to gain confidence as horsemen. They learn by sensible
methods taught to the Greek {239} rookies of Xenopohon's
ever-glorious Ten Thousand.
[Sidenote: Riding establishments]
There are three types of Riding Establishment: the closed building,
so hot that it stupefies the man just when he needs his brains; the
ring in a field which has at least the blessings of fresh air; and
the open field of the up-to-date instructors. A cheery and
sympathetic Riding Master will do better under a roof than a bully
can even in the open field, but the best and most rapid training I
have ever seen was given in open field by a Regular soldier who
abstained from losing his temper. In civil life I had seen a range
horseman teaching English pupils with equal success, and the methods
of the two masters were identical. Men who had never mounted before
were taught within a week such circus tricks as jumping, wrestling
bareback, tug-of-war mounted, and making horses climb over ugly
ground. It was a punishment to be excluded from the lessons. From
the civilian school pupils passed out after six months' training and
earned a living as stock riders. From the military school the men
were transferred to a station with the old ring menage and never
recovered the resulting leeway. Given equally good instructors, I
should say that one month's {240} training in open field is equal in
value to four months in the outdoor menage or five months in an
indoor riding school.
[Sidenote: The outdoor training]
In training men my first measure was to select sympathetic
instructors, and relieve for other duties any N.C.O. who showed the
slightest infirmity of temper. Released from all bullying, nagging
or fear of punishment, my rookies were sportsmen who would greet me
with a cheery grin. The second measure was to cut out the element of
monotony in routine, so that the riding field became a place of
surprises, of varied sports and competitions where each man tried to
excel. From the first I would take the whole class away from the
schooling for an occasional joy-ride along the grassy roadsides,
slowly increasing the pace from walk to joggle, and finally to long
trot on the home stretch. When we came to be tested against other
units we had no reason to regret our unorthodox methods of training.
My second month's riding school would involve a very serious
schooling for officers and Non. Coms, in teaching them how to handle
a unit training for field mobility. It would be limited to three
exercises all of which I have tested with success in England during
the past decade.
{241}
FIRST EXERCISE. Taking a feed and haversack rations to make a day's
march and practise the noon halt.
SECOND EXERCISE. Taking vehicles or pack animals according to size
of unit, to make a two days' march with a night bivouac. Instruction
is needed in the use of natural wind breaks and slopes of ground,
also to adapt the sweat pad, blanket, overcoat and saddle, into a dry
camp regardless of the weather.
THIRD EXERCISE. After extensive practice at the home camp, in
cooking without any utensils except the pots and cups for the tea or
coffee, to make a night bivouac without any kitchen transport.
So far one could dispense with the camp equipment, and almost the
whole kitchen; but concurrently with this training to drop needless
baggage, there would be first exercises for scouting and road
reports, vedettes, flankers and despatch riders.
[Sidenote: Factors of mobility]
MOBILITY. The factors for mobility may now be added up: The breeding
of horses on pasture natural to the species; sheds to secure dry
earth standings and a wind break; outdoor management; a
weight-distributing saddle; an actual training of men and horses to
rapid and sustained marching with reduced transport. {242} With
these few measures the mobility of mounted troops could be doubled.
[Sidenote: The wings of an army]
To quadruple the mobility of mounted forces one has merely to add the
stock-range system of a pony herd supplying two mounts per man. In
an enemy's country each horseman would ride, and lead his spare
mount, changing over at halts. A march would be continuous with
short halts, up to the limits of endurance for the men and horses
available, and this after proper training would not be far short of
one hundred miles a day. From the moment when a war of positions
culminates in advance or in retreat, flying brigades or even
divisions could play havoc with enemy's plans by threatening his
lines of communication. The raid, as practised by the Confederate,
General Morgan, in the American Civil War, is no longer healthy
because there are aircraft about. Detached units cannot, as in past
times, be left in the air to forage for themselves; and yet mobility
of the screen and wings may prove as useful an aid to a marching army
as claws are to a crab.
{243}
CONCLUSION.
This book has been written in spare hours off duty while the air
throbbed all round me. The crackling rifle fire at the butts, the
uproar of the batteries at practice and frequent bursts of bombs, the
buzzing aeroplanes as they pass overhead, rumble of transport trains,
and tramp of marching troops, bands on a Sunday, and choirs of
trumpets sounding the evening calls are echoes, all of them, from the
great thunders of the Armageddon.
The sounds will die away into the distance to a last muttering beyond
the skyline. Then those who are left of us will put away our weapons
and our saddles, and go back to civil life. But we shall all be
changed.
No man returning from a journey, has ever come back with the same
self into his former life. From this travail we shall come changed
into a different world. A new and realized manhood will meet a tried
and bettered womanhood. We shall not any more be able to live
content in the old world of selfishness and {244} slackness. We
shall demand for men a training of their manhood, for women a
training of their womanhood.
[Sidenote: The makings of manhood]
We shall value manliness more than scholarship, ease or wealth, or
even the freedom we fought so hard to save. Food has no flavour
until we have been hungry, rest has no value unless we have been
weary, life has no zest save that from fierce endeavour, it is the
work we do which builds our strength. The manhood of our fathers
came by use of arms, and of horses, by going down to the sea in
ships, by hard, rough living, taking risks and enduring pain, by
generous giving and honest loving.
The manhood of our sons will not be made by indoor life, by ease, by
softness, by selfishness or vice. The body as well as the mind and
the spirit must have daily training, renewal and growth, if we would
avert disease, corruption and decay. The future has nothing to add
to the past save in the hazards of the air, the fierce delight of
handling aircraft, and the hardening of all our fibres in the
conquest of the skies. It will be long, however, before the
aeroplane can alight in forests, on mountains, rough ground or stormy
water, or venture very far from the bases of supply. Till then our
industry and our wars will still need horses, and {245} even
afterwards we shall hardly be able to spare them from our pleasures.
In the past, the horses carried our ancestors out of savagery through
barbarism into civilization. They saved us from the barren labour of
Chinese, Egyptian and Indian cultivators, and gave us the large
opportunities of our country life. Horses and shipping added all the
continents to our estate, the conquest of the world to our arms, the
glamour of adventure to our history. If only we can learn to
understand horses with a quicker sympathy, a bolder reasoning, the
training which our fathers had as horsemen, will be bettered in the
training of our sons.
{246}
INDEX.
Acacia, 57.
Action [of Light, theory of, Chap. II. and p. 160.
Afghans, 223.
Africa, 29, 31, 56, 177, 230.
Agriculture, horses in, 145.
Alaska, 21.
Alberta, 230.
Alcohol, 197.
Alexander the Great, 138, 201.
Alkali, 59.
America:
Central, 16;
North, Chps. I. and II., horsemen of, 148;
South, 20.
Ancestors of horse, 2.
Apples, 200.
Argentine, 152, 177, 223; Remounts, 232.
Arabia, 28, 70, 139, 209.
Armenia, 137-8.
Armies, 224.
Armour, 145.
Arms, 174.
Ass, 9, 29, 30, 35, 130, 208.
Assyria, 14, 136, 138.
Atlantic, 2; Continent, 5.
Australia, 152, 155, 169, 177, 203, 230.
Babylonia, 135.
Backfalls, 79.
Baffin's Bay, 19.
Balance in riding, 221.
Baltic, 19, 42, 43, 111.
Barb, 28, 131, 209.
Bathing, 6.
Bay, 14, 31, 32, 46, 117-8, 129 _et seq._
Bearded horses, 23, 36.
Bells, 197.
Bent leg riding, 143, 207.
Bering Land, 21, 24.
Bering Sea, 16, 21, 24.
Biblical record, 129.
Billets for horses, 233.
Birch, Major, "Modern Riding," 226
Biting, 74.
Bitt, 109, 119, 156.
Bivouac, 241.
Blackfeet, 107, 116.
Blanket, 153, 198.
Black horses, 47.
Blisters, 153, 198.
Bolas, 176.
Bolting. 75.
Bone, 39.
Boers, 29, 179, 223.
Boots, 169.
Branding, 70.
Brazil, 5, 48.
Breaking back, 58.
Breeches, 167.
Breeding horses, 137, 228.
Bridges, 62.
Bridle, 115, 120.
British Columbia, 24, 230.
British Isles, 19, 43, 107, 139, 211.
Broncho, 148, 180.
Brown horses, 31, 47.
Buckskin horses, _see_ Dun.
Bucking, 28, 61, 78, 150.
Build of horses, 10.
Bulk of horses, 10.
Bushes as reserve of food, 63.
Buying, 182.
Cactus, 57.
Camels, 22, 208.
Camps, 196.
Canaan, 135-6.
Canter, 186.
Capture, 101 _et seq._
Carbon in food, 197.
Carrots, 200.
Carson, Kit, 204.
Cart, 105.
Cart horse, 40.
Cavalry:
Assyrian, 138;
British, 211; charges, 79, 178;
European, 178;
Greek, 117-8-9;
Hebrew, 131;
Lydian, 138;
Mexican, 178;
Moslem, 141;
Regular, 223;
Roman, 120.
Celtic pony (Ewart), 36, 39, 43, 44.
Centaur, 117.
Chapareras, 173.
Character, 71, 81.
Chargers:
of Angels, 83;
Black Bess, 202;
Bucephalus (Alexander's), 201;
of Charles XII., 202;
Julius Cæsar's, 8;
Odin's, 36;
Pegasus, 115-6;
Peschkov's, 202.
Chariots, 106, 110, 117, 121, 133, 139.
Chestnut horses, 31, 46.
China, 127-8.
Choking, 91.
Cincha, _see_ girth.
Circus, 101.
Civil War:
English, 209;
American; 242.
Clay, influence of, 39.
Cleveland Bay, 145.
Cliffs, 60-1-2.
Climate, Chaps. I., II.
Climbing, 60-1-2.
Clipping, 203.
Clothing, 231-2.
Cloudland, 33, 34, 51, 52, 111.
Clydesdales, 145.
Coat, thickness of, 11; protection, 26.
Cold, 196.
Colic, 91, 199, 200.
Colorado, 61.
Colosseum, 101.
Colour of horses, 4, 14 _et seq._, 46 to 53.
Colts, 70.
Columbia Basin, 23.
Communication among horses, 89 _et seq._
Compass, 190.
Constantinople, 120.
Cooling a horse, 196-7.
Copper ointments, 198.
Corduroy roads, 62.
Cornering, 77.
Corrall, 101.
Cossack, 178, 208.
Cowboys, 148, 205.
Cracked heels, 199.
Cree Indians, 142.
Croll theory, 16.
Cromwell, Oliver, 209.
Crowding, 77.
Curb bitt, 160.
Cyrene, 117, 223.
Damaraland, 223.
Danube, 115.
Dapples, 50, 53.
Dappled horses, 111 to 141.
Darwin, 25.
Dashboard, 106.
Defence, methods of, 28, 66, 68, 71.
Denmark, 45.
Dervishes, 208.
Deserts, 7, 8, 14, 57, 133.
Destriérs, 145.
Diamond hitch, 151.
Diluvial horse, 40.
Directions, trail, 191.
Disease, 216.
Docking tails, 2, 70.
Double back, the, 118.
Dragging the forefoot, 91.
Dragons, age of, 2.
Draught horses, 41, 121.
Dreams of horses, 88.
Dress of horsemen, 161.
Drinking, habits in, 65.
Driving, 106, 180.
Dun horse, 14, 31-2, 51, 115-6, 121, 124 _et seq._
Dung, special places for, 68; indications of health, 91.
Dust bath, 201.
Ears, movements of, 89, 90, 91, 92.
Eating horse flesh, 97, 99.
Egypt, 131 to 137.
Elizabeth, Queen, 210.
English methods, 151.
Equatorial regions, 18, 19.
Equites, 122.
Equipment, 152.
Erythrea, 223.
Europe, Chap. II.
Ewart, Prof. J. Cosser, F.R.S., vii.-x., 40.
Exhaustion, 197.
Eyesight, 156.
Family life of horses, 66-7.
Feeding, 199, 200; when groomed, 73; by breeders, 137, 215.
Fighting methods of, 68, 90.
Fires, Camp, 200.
Foals, 69.
Foot of horse, 4, 8, 87.
Forage, 11, 215.
Forelock, 14.
Forest horses, 7, 40, 41.
Forest, Horses in, 194, 197.
Formations in defence, 28, 68.
Fox hunting, 210 _et seq._, 225.
France, 36, 41, 122, 178, 223.
Friends, Making, 183.
Frontiersmen's Pocket Book, 177.
Frontiersmen, Legion of, _see_ Legion.
Gait, 186.
Gall cures, 198.
Galls, 153, 198, 233.
Gaul, 122.
Geldings, 68.
Genesis, 129 _et seq._
Germany, 122, 211, 223, 225.
Germs, 15, 216.
Gestures, 9, 194.
Ghosts seen by horses, 85.
Girth, 80, 154, 198.
Gothic horsemen, 121.
Grain, Feeding, 137, 197.
Gramma grass, 56.
Granite, Influence of, 38.
Grasses, 27, 55-6.
Grazing, 7, 59.
Greasewood, 57.
Greeks, 115, _et seq._, 138, 143.
Greenland, 16, 17, 19.
Grey horses, 47, 140.
Grimaldi grottoes, 40.
Groaning, 90.
Grooming, 73, 74, 231, 234.
Grooms, 78.
Guidance in travel, 189.
Gulf Stream, 16, 19.
Habits, 72.
Halts, 195.
Hands, Training of, 159.
Harem, The, 66.
Harty, Constable, 180.
Hats, 165.
Haul Ecole, 178.
Headstall, 159.
Hearing, 193.
Heat, 198.
Hedges, 210.
Heels, 198, 201.
Hellenes, 115.
Hills, 187.
Herd, 68, 107.
Hitch, 151.
Hittites, 133, 136.
Hobbles, 197.
Hogging mares, 15, 231.
Holland, 45.
Hoofs, 8, 28.
Horse-fights, 90.
Horse-flesh, 97.
Horse sickness, 48.
Humour in horses, 85 _et seq._
Hungary, 177.
Hunting, fox, 210, 225.
Hyksos, 134.
Hyracotherium, 5.
Ice age, 15-6-7, 33.
Ice, Horses on, 63, 72.
Icelandic horse fights, 90.
Immortality of horses, 83.
India, 47, 139, 208.
Indians, Red, 68, 107-8-9-10, 135, 142.
Instincts, 81, 83.
Intelligence, 63, 69, 87.
Ireland, 23, 39, 70, 178.
Israel, 129 _et seq._
Italy, 223.
Japan current, 21.
Japanese, 217, 223.
Jaral, 101.
Jockeys, 207.
Joggling, 78.
Joseph, Chief, 110.
Jumping, 70, 209, 221, 226.
Kangaroo-jumping, 75.
Katywar, 48.
Keddah, 101.
Kentucky, 70.
Kiang (_see_ ass), 36.
Kicking, 68, 73, 74.
King, Dick. 202.
Knights, 122.
Kraal, 101.
Kruger, a horse comedian, 85.
Labrador, 20.
Lasso, 176.
Legion of Frontiersmen, 177, 221.
Libya (Cyrene, 117), 132, 135
Light, Action of, Chap. II.; in stables, 218.
Limestone, Influence of, 39, 215.
Lincolnshire, 45.
Liniment, 198.
Llanos, 177.
Longtails, 3.
Lonsdale, Earl of, 212.
Low's Domesticated Animals, 45.
Macedonia, 138.
Malaya, 5.
Mammoth, 24.
Management, 230.
Mares, 1, 3, 14, 66, 116, 234.
Manetho, 134.
Markings, 10.
Massage, 231, 234.
Meadows, 55, 58, 215.
Memory, 65, 71.
Mesopotamia, 135.
Mexico, 5, 55, 147, 153, 177, 178, 179, 223.
Microbes, 12, 15, 216.
Migration, 49.
Milk of Mares, 102.
Missouri, 21.
Mobility, 110, 227 _et seq._; Summary, 241.
Modern Riding, by Major Birch, 226.
Moisture, 11.
Mongolia, 31, 127, 177, 208.
Moqui Indians,
Morgan, Gen., 242.
Morocco, 208.
Moslem, 141, 208.
Moss holes, 63.
Mounted Police, _see_ Police.
Music, Enjoyment of, 70, 88.
Muzzle, 6, 58.
Navajo Indians, 142.
Neck, 58.
Neckcloth, 172.
Nez Percé Indians, 110.
Normans, 145.
Norsemen, 111, 115, 121.
North Sea, 42, 44.
Norway, 16, 45.
Numbers, Sense of, 70.
Oatmeal, 198.
Oiling harness, 233; horses, 116, 234.
Olympic games, 114, 117.
Oriental riding, 208.
Outdoor management, 231.
Outlaw horses, 71, 87.
Paces, 186.
Pachynolophus, ix.
Pacific Ocean, 21, 22, 24.
Pack horses, 67, 122, 127, 146, 152, 182, 196.
Pack trails, 122, 124, 127.
Pad saddle, 208.
Pain, 90, 91.
Panic, 75.
Parker, Sergt., Adventure of, 82.
Parthians, 208.
Pasture, 6, 33, 37, 74, 196, 215.
Patagonia, 177.
Pawing, 66, 72.
Pegasus, 115, 116.
Percherons, 145.
Persians, 110.
Personality in horses, 84 _et seq._
Peruvians, 176.
Photographic colour, 50.
Pick, Hoof, 201.
Piebald horses, 47.
Pig, Colour of, 4.
Pig-jumping, 75.
Pit ponies, 215.
Pleasure horses, Chaps. VII., VIII.
Pointing ears, 87; forefeet, 91.
Police, Royal N.-W. Mounted 82, 86, 180, 181, 203, 230.
Polo, 151.
Polo, Marco, 128.
Portugal, 178, 208, 222.
Posting, 128.
Pound for catching stock, 101.
Practical jokes by horses, 85, 86, 87.
Prairie, 7.
Psychology, 84 _et seq._
Prejevalski horse, 9, 31, 36, 41, 51.
Propping, 77.
Protective colour, 14, 30.
Punishment of horses, 76, 185.
Quagga, 9, 29, 31.
Quartering slopes, 62.
Queensland, 152.
Quicksands, 62.
Race-memories, 71
Racing, 120, 225; seat, 143.
Raids, 242.
Range, The Stock range, 54 _et seq._, 216, 242.
Rearing, 75.
Red Indian, _see_ Indian.
Recado saddle, 155.
Records, 201.
Rein, 62, 76, 195.
Re-muda, 68.
Reptile, 2, 3.
Resting, 59, 64, 189.
Riding, 118, 143 _et seq._, 220, 226.
Riding school, _see_ School.
Rhine, 42.
Ridgeway, Prof., x., 51.
Riviera horse, 40.
Roan horses, 47.
Roads, 52, 121.
Rocky Mountains, 16, 54, 108, 189, 204.
Romans, 119, 144.
Rope, Use of the, 62, 176.
Rough-riding, 179, 180; driving, 180.
Royal Artillery, 178, 226.
Russia, 31, 35, 121, 137, 140, 208, 223.
Saddle:
American, 153, 213;
Argentine, 155;
Australian, 155;
English, 146 _et seq._, 211 _et seq._, 235;
McClellan, 156.
Saddling, 184.
Saddle tree, 199.
Saddle, weight distributing, 219.
Sagebrush, 57.
S. Elias, Alps of, 16, 24.
Sagartians, 176.
Salt, 59, 198, 200.
Sarmatians, 176.
Savaging, 80.
Savannahs, 7.
Scent, 4, 93, 192.
Scandinavia, 48, 121.
Schleswig, 45.
School, Riding, 212, 237 to 240.
Scotland, 45.
Scouring, 200.
Scouting, 190.
Scraping, 79.
Screaming, 90.
Screens for stable walls, 217.
Scythians, 176.
Self defence, 66.
Sense of touch, 6.
Shadows, Fear of, 194.
Shaps, 173.
Shire horses, 145.
Shirts, 166.
Shoulder, Injury to, 91.
Shying, 89.
Signals made by horses, 89.
Sight, 156, 193.
Singeing, 231.
Singing, Uses of, 75.
Siwalik horse, 41.
Size of horses, 37.
Skewbalds, 23, 47.
Slack rein, 62.
Sleep, 27, 64, 189.
Sleighs, 121.
Smudge, 197.
Snaffle, 156.
Snake-killing, 72.
Soap, Soft, 199.
Solomon's Cavalry, 117; Chariotry, 138.
Solutré horse, 41.
Sores, 153, 188, 198.
Soudan, 208.
South Africa, 29, 31, 56, 177, 230-1.
Speed, 28.
Spine, 14.
Spirit of the horse, 81.
Sport, Sense of, 70, 88.
Spurs, 172.
Squealing, 91.
Stables, 201, 214 _et seq._
Stadium, 101.
Stallions, 28, 66, 67, 68, 75.
Stampedes, 75, 234.
Stamping, 72, 91.
Standing, Manner of, 91.
Standings for horses, 217-218
Steppes, 7, 14, 41.
Stockrange, _see_ Range.
Stock whip, 177.
Stomach, 36.
Strabo, 139.
Strength, 11.
Straight leg riding, 143, 207.
Stirrup, 154.
Stony Indians, 142.
Striking a horse, 26, 27, 29.
Stumbling, 158.
Suffolk Punch, 145.
Sugar, 198, 200.
Sunfishing, 78.
Sunlight, Coloration by, 11.
Suppling a horse, 185.
Surcingle, 109.
Swamps, 63.
Sweating, 91.
Sweat-pad, 152.
Sweden, 140.
Swimming, 6, 63.
Syria, 140.
Tail, 6, 28.
Tapir, 5, 22.
Tarpan, 9, 31, 36, 41.
Tartars, 115, 176.
Tears, 90, 116.
Teeth, 59.
Temper, 73.
Thames, 42.
Thirst, Endurance of, 64.
Thoroughbred, x., 214.
Thought transference, 92.
Throwing a horse, 75.
Touch, Sense of, 6.
Tracking, 191.
Training, 70.
Travel, 181 _et seq._
Travois, 104, 105.
Treading, 77, 79.
Tropical light, x.
Trotting, 66, 186.
Trousers, 168.
Tunic, 167.
Turpin, Dick, 202.
Tying a horse, 195.
Turfed pasture, 33.
Tussock grass, 26.
Unsaddling, 201.
Unsoundness of horses, 214 _et seq._
Utah, 61.
Valkyrs, 115.
Vaquero, 149.
Vice, 71, 81.
Waggon, 105, 121.
Water, 58; horses in, 62.
Watering, 64, 65, 72, 98, 195.
Wallets, 160.
War, viii., 70.
Warming a horse, 197.
Weapons, 176, 184.
Welsh pit pony 118.
Wesley, Richard, 158.
Whicker, 90.
Whinney, 90.
Whip, 76, 177.
Whiskey, 197.
Wheels, 105.
White horses, 35.
Wind, Holding the, 80, 184.
Winds, 18 _et seq._, 25, 26, 196.
Winged horses, 115.
Wolves, 58, 68.
Women, 132, 209.
Woodruff, Surgeon-Gen., x.
Working horses, Chap. VII.
Yakima Indians, 142.
Yukon, 24, 45.
Zebra, 9, 29, 31.
Zenophon, 118, 120, 144, 169.
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