The Horse and His Rider. Rollo Springfield
Theodosius (A.D. 385); from which we also learn that it was usual for those who hired post-horses to provide their own saddles. The edict directs that no traveller shall use a saddle weighing more than sixty pounds! Such cumbrous contrivances must have been more like the howdahs placed on the backs of elephants, than the light and elegant saddle of modern times. Fortunately for the soldiers of those days, it does not appear that the military punishment of “carrying the saddle” was devised until a later period. It was commonly inflicted on horse-soldiers, and even on knights in the middle ages, for breach of discipline. A saddle, bridle, and other appurtenances were laid on the offender’s shoulders, and he was compelled to march about for a certain length of time, without stopping, exposed to the scoffs and jeers of all who saw him thus oddly accoutred. Well for him that his burden did not amount to the liberal weight allowed by the Roman emperor!
Side-saddles for ladies were an invention of comparatively recent date. The first seen in England was made for Anne of Bohemia, Richard the Second’s queen. It was, probably, more like a pillion than the side-saddle of our day; and if any of our young readers do not know what is meant by the word “pillion,” their grandmammas may, perhaps, be able to describe the thing to them from recollection, for it was in high fashion not a great many years ago. It was a sort of very low-backed arm-chair, which was fastened on the horse’s croup, behind the saddle, on which a man rode who had all the care of managing the horse, while the lady sat at her ease, supporting herself by grasping a belt which he wore, or by passing her arm round his body—if the gentleman was not too ticklish.
Horse-shoeing was not practised for many centuries after the horse himself was in very general use; nor were hoof-protectors essentially necessary until paved tracts and hard roads became more frequent than they were in old times. The first foot defence of the horse seems to have been copied from that of his master. It was a sort of sandal, commonly made of matting, rope, or leather. The Emperor Nero, in his profusion, had his horses and mules shod with silver; and his Empress, Poppæa, was not content with less than gold for the same purpose. These sandals were very insecure, and were apt to be left sticking in the mud; they were, therefore, seldom put on the animal for the whole journey, but only at the worst places. Nor do they appear to have been adequate to protect the hoof from injury; for instance, when Mithridates was besieging the town of Cyzicus, in his first war against the Romans, he was obliged to send away his whole cavalry to Bithynia, because the horses’ hoofs were all worn down, and their feet disordered.
Here again, as in the case of the stirrupless saddle, we are lost in wonder at the fact, that men should, for nearly a thousand years, have gone on fastening plates of metal under horses’ hoofs by the clumsy means of strings and bands; and that it should never in all that time have occurred to them to try nails where strings had failed. Next to the inventive powers of men there is really nothing so wonderful as their want of inventiveness, and the stupid way in which they will continue from generation to generation, doing something very absurd from mere force of habit, and utter want of thought! It is humiliating to think, how men have been content to remain for ages separated by the smallest possible partitions from discoveries in the arts, that tend to the convenience and embellishment of life. We have had India rubber ever since America was explored, yet, until a few years ago, we made no use of it except for rubbing pencil marks out of paper!
Here follows a charade by no less eminent a person than the great statesman, Charles James Fox. Why do we introduce it in this place? That is a question which the ingenious reader will answer for himself when he shall have solved the charade. The key to it will be found in the preceding pages:—
“Inscribed on many a learned page,
In mystic characters and sage,
Long time my first has stood;
And though its golden age be past,
In wooden walls it yet may last,
Till clothed in flesh and blood.
My second is a welcome prize
For those who love their curious eyes
With foreign sights to pamper;
But should it chance their gaze to meet,
Al improviso, in the street,
Oh! how’t would make them scamper!
My third’s a kind of wandering throne,
To woman limited alone,
The Salique law reversing;
But when the imaginary queen
Prepares to act this novel scene,
Her royal part rehearsing;
O’erturning her presumptuous plan,
Up jumps the old usurper—Man.”
The various uses for which the horse is habitually employed require corresponding varieties in the make and shape of the animal. The dray horses of the London brewers are very handsome; but their beauty is of a different kind from that of the Newmarket racer. That which is a good quality in one kind of horse may be a defect in another. An animal, for instance, which is intended for the saddle ought to stand with his fore legs erect; if they slope backwards from shoulder to hoof the rider must be very cautious, for he has to do with a stumbler. A draught-horse, on the other hand, ought to lean a little forward over his fore feet when at rest. That portion of his own weight which brings down the ill-made saddle-horse on his knees, is by the draught-horse thrown against the collar, and helps him in his labour. Look at a team straining hard to drag a heavy wagon out of a rut or over some obstruction: they fling themselves forward, so as to be kept from falling only by the traces, just as you may see a man doing who tugs at a rope fastened to a canal-boat, or a truck. Again, though the hunter and the racer are both made for speed, they must each exhibit certain peculiarities of form adapted to the work they have respectively to do. The hunter requires great strength and elasticity in his forehand, to enable him to bear the shock with which he alights on the ground from a leap. In the racer, on the contrary, the principal power is wanted from behind, to propel the animal forward in his gallop; and the very lowness of the forehand may throw more weight in front, and cause the whole machine to be more easily and speedily moved. The hind-legs of the greyhound are longer than the fore-legs; the difference is still more remarkable in the hare, and it is seen in an extraordinary degree in the kangaroo, an animal whose running is a series of prodigious leaps. The celebrated Eclipse, who never was beaten, was remarkably low in front, his hind-quarters even rising above his fore ones. As we have mentioned the name of this unrivalled runner, we cannot do less than give some particulars of his history.
He was bred by the Duke of Cumberland, and sold at his death to Mr. Wildman, a sheep salesman, for seventy-five guineas. Colonel O’Kelly purchased a share of him from Wildman. In the spring of the following year, when the reputation of this wonderful animal was at its height, O’Kelly wished to become sole owner of him, and bought the remaining share for eleven hundred guineas.
O’Kelly, aware of his horse’s powers, backed him freely on his first race in 1769. This excited curiosity among sporting men; they thought the colonel must have had some extraordinary reason for betting largely on a horse that no one had ever heard of before, and that had not given any public proof of his powers. Some persons, accordingly, tried to watch one of his trials; which the owner, no doubt, wished to keep as secret as possible. They were a little too late on the ground; but they found an old woman, who gave them all the information they wanted. On their inquiring, whether she had seen a race, she replied, she could not tell whether it was a race or not, but she had just seen a horse with a white leg running away at a monstrous rate, and another horse, a great way behind, trying to run after him; but she was sure he would never catch the white-legged horse if he ran to the world’s end.
The first heat was easily won, when O’Kelly, observing that the rider had been pulling at Eclipse during the whole of the race, offered a wager that he would place the horses in the next heat (that is, that he would name the order in which they would be when the foremost reached the winning post). This seemed a thing so highly improbable that he immediately had bets to a large amount. Being called on to declare, he replied—“Eclipse first, and the rest nowhere!”