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 clergymen. The travois came into general use for transport.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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 mountain valleys where there are clouds for shelter.
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.
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 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 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Gothic horsemen
THE GOTHIC HORSEMEN. While the Romans made no special advance in horsemanship the 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
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.
Dragon beast
History says that nations who had no horses used to be terrified at the first sight of horsemen, 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.
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 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 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.
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, read this collection of Hebrew books as the secular history of an able but unholy people.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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.
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, 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
CHAPTER VI.
HORSEMANSHIP.
I. THE STRAIGHT LEG.
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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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.
Armoured horsemen
In the days of light chain mail a special saddle was evolved with a deep seat wherein 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 unchanged, with its weight distribution, high cantle, box stirrups and oiled leather seat.
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.
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 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 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.
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 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.
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, 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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 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.