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 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
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.

Thought (14) Nothing so far explains how a couple of horses will

transference 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 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.

Thought The barriers between horse and man are tremendous.

transference 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 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.

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.

The savage So the scientific men, the missionary, the cinema people
and many others bring home impressions which would
amuse the savage. 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 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 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.

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 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 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.

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
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.

Pets The pity for young animals and the love of 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.

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
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
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.

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 Yet there is always a limitation to the Baltic conquests.

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 Wherever the Baltic people hold their conquests in Asia,
force 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 THE HELLENIC HORSEMEN. While the Baltic region

horsemen 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 The Ocean God gave Peleus a chariot team "Dapple"

horsemen 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 In the Greek statuary of the Great Age we see the

horsemen 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 Among all ancient horsemen the great problem was to

horsemen 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 THE ROMAN HORSEMEN. The Romans of historic

horsemen 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 THE GOTHIC HORSEMEN. While the Romans made

horsemen 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 THE PACK HORSE. While chariotry and cavalry were
in history 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 As the Earth reels through the Dark, and on her journey
of Asia 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 History is a jade. She has a glad eye for soldiers and
trails 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 From China to the Atlantic, and from the northern Taiga
adventurers 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.