CHAPTER XXIII

.

HORSE AND MAN.

There is no mode of progression so delightful as riding on horseback. Walking, rowing, bicycling are pleasant exercises in their way, but the muscular exertion and constant exercise of judgment they call for occupy the mind partly to the exclusion of other things; so that a long walk may sometimes be only a long walk and nothing more. In riding we are not conscious of exertion, and as for that close observation and accurate discernment necessary in traversing the ground with speed and safety, it is left to the faithful servant that carries us. Pitfalls, hillocks, slippery places, the thousand little inequalities of the surface that have to be measured with infallible eye, these disturb us little. To fly or go slowly at will, to pass unshaken over rough and smooth alike, fording rivers without being wet, and mounting hills without climbing, this is indeed unmixed delight. It is the nearest approach to bird-life we seem capable of, since all the monster bubbles and flying fabrics that have been the sport of winds from the days of Montgolfier downwards have brought us no nearer to it. The aeronaut gasping for breath above the clouds offers only a sad spectacle of the imbecility of science and man's shattered hopes. To the free inhabitants of air we can only liken the mounted Arab, vanishing, hawklike, over the boundless desert.

In riding there is always exhilarating motion; yet, if the scenery encountered be charming, you are apparently sitting still, while, river-like, it flows toward and past you, ever giving place to fresh visions of beauty. Above all, the mind is free, as when one lies idly on the grass gazing up into the sky. And, speaking of myself, there is even more than this immunity from any tax on the understanding such as we require in walking; the rhythmic motion, the sensation as of night,

## acting on the brain like a stimulus. That anyone should be able to think

better lying, sitting, or standing, than when speeding along on horseback, is to me incomprehensible. This is doubtless due to early training and long use; for on those great pampas where I first saw the light and was taught at a tender age to ride, we come to look on man as a parasitical creature, fitted by nature to occupy the back of a horse, in which position only he has full and free use of all his faculties. Possibly the gaucho--the horseman of the pampas--is born with this idea in his brain; if so, it would only be reasonable to suppose that its correlative exists in a modification of structure. Certain it is that an intoxicated gaucho lifted on to the back of his horse is perfectly safe in his seat. The horse may do his best to rid himself of his burden; the rider's legs--or posterior arms as they might appropriately be called--retain their iron grip, notwithstanding the fuddled brain.

The gaucho is more or less bow-legged; and, of course, the more crooked his legs are, the better for him in his struggle for existence. Off his horse his motions are awkward, like those of certain tardigrade mammals of arboreal habits when removed from their tree. He waddles in his walk; his hands feel for the reins; his toes turn inwards like a duck's. And here, perhaps, we can see why foreign travellers, judging him from their own standpoint, invariably bring against him the charge of laziness. On horseback he is of all men most active. His patient endurance under privations that would drive other men to despair, his laborious days and feats of horsemanship, the long journeys he performs without rest or food, seem to simple dwellers on the surface of the earth almost like miracles. Deprive him of his horse, and he can do nothing but sit on the ground cross-legged, or _en cuclillas_,--on his heels. You have, to use his own figurative language, cut off his feet.

Darwin in his earlier years appears not to have possessed the power of reading men with that miraculous intelligence always distinguishing his researches concerning other and lower orders of beings. In the _Voyage of a Naturalist,_ speaking of this supposed indolence of the gauchos, he tells that in one place where workmen were in great request, seeing a poor gaucho sitting in a listless attitude, he asked him why he did not work. The man's answer was that _he was too poor to work!_ The philosopher was astonished and amused at the reply, but failed to understand it. And yet, to one acquainted with these lovers of brief phrases, what more intelligible answer could have been returned? The poor fellow simply meant to say that his horses had been stolen--a thing of frequent occurrence in that country, or, perhaps, that some minion of the Government of the moment had seized them for the use of the State.

To return to the starting point, the pleasures of riding do not flow exclusively from the agreeable sensations attendant on flight-like motion; there is also the knowledge, sweet in itself, that not a mere cunningly fashioned machine, like that fabled horse of brass "on which the Tartar king did ride," sustains us; but a something with life and thought, like ourselves, that feels what we feel, understands us, and keenly participates in our pleasures. Take, for example, the horse on which some quiet old country gentleman is accustomed to travel; how soberly and evenly he jogs along, picking his way over the ground. But let him fall into the hands of a lively youngster, and how soon he picks up a frisky spirit! Were horses less plastic, more the creatures of custom than they are, it would always be necessary, before buying one, to inquire into the disposition of its owner.

When I was thirteen years old I was smitten with love for a horse I once saw--an untamable-looking brute, that rolled his eyes, turbulently, under a cloud of black mane tumbling over his forehead. I could not take my sight off this proud, beautiful creature, and I longed to possess him with a great longing. His owner--a worthless vagabond, as it happened--marked my enthusiastic admiration, and a day or two afterwards, having lost all his money at cards, he came to me, offering to sell me the horse. Having obtained my father's consent, I rushed off to the man with all the money I possessed--about thirty or thirty-five shillings, I believe. After some grumbling, and finding he could get no more, he accepted the money. My new possession filled me with unbounded delight, and I spent the time caressing him and leading him about the grounds in search of succulent grasses and choice leaves to feed him on. I am sure this horse understood and loved me, for, in spite of that savage look, which his eyes never quite lost, he always displayed a singular gentleness towards me. He never attempted to upset me, though he promptly threw--to my great delight, I must confess--anyone else who ventured to mount him. Probably the secret of his conduct was that he hated the whip. Of this individual, if not of the species, the celebrated description held true:--"The horse is a docile animal, but if you flog him he will not do so." After he had been mine a few days, I rode on him one morning to witness a cattle-marking on a neighbouring estate. I found thirty or forty gauchos on the ground engaged in catching and branding the cattle. It was rough, dangerous work, but apparently not rough enough to satisfy the men, so after branding an animal and releasing him from their lassos, several of the mounted gauchos would, purely for sport, endeavour to knock it down as it rushed away, by charging furiously on to it. As I sat there enjoying the fun, my horse stood very quietly under me, also eagerly watching the sport. At length a bull was released, and, smarting from the fiery torture, lowered his horns and rushed away towards the open plain. Three horsemen in succession shot out from the crowd, and charged the bull at full speed; one by one, by suddenly swerving his body round, he avoided them, and was escaping scot-free. At this moment my horse--possibly interpreting a casual touch of my hand on his neck, or some movement of my body, as a wish to join in the sport--suddenly sprang forward and charged on the flying bull like a thunderbolt, striking him full in the middle of his body, and hurling him with a tremendous shock to earth. The stricken beast rolled violently over, while my horse stood still as a stone watching him. Strange to say, I was not unseated, but, turning-round, galloped back, greeted by a shout of applause from the spectators--the only sound of that description I have ever had the privilege of listening to. They little knew that my horse had accomplished the perilous feat without his rider's guidance. No doubt he had been accustomed to do such things, and, perhaps, for the moment, had forgotten that he had passed into the hands of a new owner--one of tender years. He never voluntarily attempted an adventure of that kind again; he knew, I suppose, that he no longer carried on his back a reckless dare-devil, who valued not life. Poor Picáso! he was mine till he died. I have had scores of horses since, but never one I loved so well.

With the gauchos the union between man and horse is not of so intimate a nature as with the Indians of the pampas. Horses are too cheap, where a man without shoes to his feet may possess a herd of them, for the closest kind of friendship to ripen. The Indian has also less individuality of character. The immutable nature of the conditions he is placed in, and his savage life, which is a perpetual chase, bring him nearer to the level of the beast he rides. And probably the acquired sagacity of the horse in the long co-partnership of centuries has become hereditary, and of the nature of an instinct. The Indian horse is more docile, he understands his master better; the slightest touch of the hand on his neck, which seems to have developed a marvellous sensitiveness, is sufficient to guide him. The gaucho labours to give his horse "a silken mouth," as he aptly calls it; the Indian's horse has it from birth. Occasionally the gaucho sleeps in the saddle; the Indian can die on his horse. During frontier warfare one hears at times of a dead warrior being found and removed with difficulty from the horse that carried him out of the fight, and about whose neck his rigid fingers were clasped in death. Even in the gaucho country, however, where, I grieve to confess, the horse is not deservedly esteemed, there are very remarkable instances of equine attachment and fidelity to man, and of a fellowship between horse and rider of the closest kind. One only I will relate.

When Rosas, that man of "blood and iron," was Dictator of the Argentine country--a position which he held for a quarter of a century--desertors from the army were inexorably shot when caught, as they generally were. But where my boyhood was spent there was a deserter, a man named Santa Anna, who for seven years, without ever leaving the neighbourhood of his home, succeeded in eluding his pursuers by means of the marvellous sagacity and watchful care exercised by his horse. When taking his rest on the plain--for he seldom slept under a roof--his faithful horse kept guard. At the first sight of mounted men on the horizon he would fly to his master, and, seizing his cloak between his teeth, rouse him with a vigorous shake. The hunted man would start up, and in a moment man and horse would vanish into one of the dense reed-beds abounding in the place, and where no man could follow. I have not space to tell more about this horse; but at last, in the fulness of time, when the figs were ripe--literally as well as figuratively, for it happened in the autumn of the year--the long tyrannous rule ended, and Santa Anna came out of the reed-beds, where he had lived his wild-animal life, to mix with his fellows. I knew him some years later. He was a rather heavy-looking man, with little to say, and his reputation for honesty was not good in the place; but I dare say there was something good in him.

Students of nature are familiar with the modifying effects of new conditions on man and brute. Take, for example, the gaucho: he must every day traverse vast distances, see quickly, judge rapidly, be ready at all times to encounter hunger and fatigue, violent changes of temperature, great and sudden perils. These conditions have made him differ widely from the peasant of the Peninsula; he has the endurance and keen sight of a wolf, is fertile in expedients, quick in action, values human life not at all, and is in pain or defeat a Stoic. Unquestionably the horse he rides has also suffered a great change. He differs as much from the English hunter, for instance, as one animal can well differ from another of the same species. He never pounds the earth and wastes his energies in vain parade. He has not the dauntless courage that performs such brilliant feats in the field, and that often as not attempts the impossible. In the chase he husbands all his strength, carrying his head low, and almost grazing the ground with his hoofs, so that he is not a showy animal. Constant use, or the slow cumulative process of natural selection, has served to develop a keenness of sense almost preternatural. The vulture's eye, with all the advantage derived from the vulture's vast elevation above the scene surveyed, is not so far-reaching as the sense of smell in the pampa horse. A common phenomenon on the pampas is a sudden migration of the horses of a district to some distant place. This occurs in seasons of drought, when grass or water fails. The horses migrate to some district where, from showers having fallen or other circumstances, there is a better supply of food and drink. A slight breeze blowing from the more favoured region, which may be forty or fifty miles away, or even much further, is enough to start them off. Yet, during the scorching days of midsummer, very little moisture or smell of grass can possibly reach them from such a distance.

Another phenomenon, even more striking, is familiar to every frontiersman. For some reason, the gaucho horse manifests the greatest terror at an Indian invasion. No doubt his fear is, in part at any rate, an associate feeling, the coming of the Indians being always a time of excitement and com-motion, sweeping like a great wave over the country; houses are in flames, families flying, cattle being driven at frantic speed to places of greater safety. Be this as it may, long before the marauders reach the settlement (often when they are still a whole day's journey from it) the horses take the alarm and come wildly flying in: the contagion quickly spreads to the horned cattle, and a general stampede ensues. The gauchos maintain that the horses _smell_ the Indians. I believe they are right, for when passing a distant Indian camp, from which the wind blew, the horses driven before me have suddenly taken fright and run away, leading me a chase of many miles. The explanation that ostriches, deer, and other fleet animals driven in before the invaders might be the cause of the stampede cannot be accepted, since the horses are familiar with the sight of these animals flying from their gaucho hunters.

There is a pretty fable of a cat and dog lying in a dark room, aptly illustrating the fine senses of these two species. "Listen! I heard a feather drop!" said the dog. "Oh, no!" said the cat, "it was a needle; I saw it." The horse is not commonly believed to have senses keen as that, and a dog tracing his master's steps over the city pavement is supposed to be a feat no other animal can equal. No doubt the artificial life a horse lives in England, giving so little play to many of his most important faculties, has served to blunt them. He is a splendid creature; but the noble bearing, the dash and reckless courage that distinguish him from the modest horse of the desert, have not been acquired without a corresponding loss in other things. When ridden by night the Indian horse--and sometimes the same habit is found in the gaucho's animal--drops his head lower and lower as the darkness increases, with the danger arising from the presence of innumerable kennels concealed in the grass, until his nose sweeps the surface like a foxhound's. That this action is dictated by a powerful instinct of self-preservation is plain; for, when I have attempted to forcibly drag the animal's head up, he has answered such an experiment by taking the bit in his teeth, and violently pulling the reins out of my hand. His miraculous sense of smell measures the exact position of every hidden kennel, every treacherous spot, and enables him to pass swiftly and securely over it.

On the desert pampa the gaucho, for a reason that he knows, calls the puma the "friend of man." The Arab gives this designation to his horse; but in Europe, where we do not associate closely with the horse, the dog naturally takes the foremost place in our affections. The very highest praise yet given to this animal is probably to be found in Bacon's essay on Atheism. "For take an example of a dog," he says, "and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who is to him in place of a god, or _melior natura,_ which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without the confidence of a better nature than its own, could never attain!" Can we not say as much of the horse? The very horses that fly terror-stricken from the smell of an Indian will, when "maintained by a man," readily charge into a whole host of yelling savages.

I once had a horse at home, born and bred on the place, so docile that whenever I required him I could go to him where the horses were at pasture, and, though they all galloped off at my approach, he would calmly wait to be caught. Springing on to his back, I would go after the other horses, or gallop home with only my hand on his neck to guide him. I did not often ride him, as he was slow and lazy, but with timid women and children he was a favourite; he was also frequently used for farm work, in or out of harness, and I could shoot from his back. In the peach season he would roam about the plantation, getting the fruit, of which he was very fond, by tugging at the lower branches of the trees and shaking it down in showers. One intensely dark night I was riding home on this horse. I came through a road with a wire fence on each side, two miles in length, and when I had got nearly to the end of this road my horse suddenly stopped short, uttering a succession of loud terrified snorts. I could see nothing but the intense blackness of the night before me and tried to encourage him to go on. Touching him on the neck, I found his hair wet with the sudden profuse sweat of extreme fear. The whip made no impression on him. He continued to back away, his eyes apparently fixed on some object of horror just before him, while he trembled to such a degree that I was shaken in the saddle. He attempted several times to wheel round and run away, but I was determined not to yield to him, and continued the contest. Suddenly, when I was beginning to despair of getting home by that road, he sprang forward, and regularly charged the (to me) invisible object before him, and in another moment, when he had apparently passed it, taking the bit between his teeth he almost flew over the ground, never pausing till he brought me to my own door. When I dismounted his terror seemed gone, but he hung his head in a dejected manner, like a horse that has been under the saddle all day. I have never witnessed another such instance of almost maddening fear. His terror and apprehension were like what we can imagine a man experiencing at sight of a ghost in some dark solitary place.

Yet he did not forcibly carry me away from it, as he might so easily have done; but, finding himself maintained by a "nature superior to his own," he preferred to face it. I have never met in the dog a more striking example of this noblest kind of brute courage. The incident did not impress me very much at the moment, but when I came to reflect that my sight was mere blindness compared with that of my horse, and that it was not likely his imagination clothed any familiar natural object with fantastic terrors, it certainly did impress me very deeply.

I am loth to finish with, my subject, in which, to express myself in the manner of the gauchos, I have passed over many matters, like good grass and fragrant herbs the galloping horse sniffs at but cannot stay to taste; and especially loth to conclude with this last incident, which has in it an element of gloom. I would rather first go back for a few moments to my original theme--the pleasures of riding, for the sake of mentioning a species of pleasure my English reader has probably never tasted or even heard of. When riding by night on the pampas, I used to enjoy lying back on my horse till my head and shoulders rested well on his back, my feet also being raised till they pressed against his neck; and in this position, which practice can make both safe and comfortable, gaze up into the starry sky. To enjoy this method of riding thoroughly, a sure-footed unshod horse with perfect confidence in his rider is necessary; and he must be made to go at a swift and smooth pace over level grassy ground. With these conditions the sensation is positively delightful. Nothing of earth is visible, only the vast circle of the heavens glittering with innumerable stars; the muffled sound of the hoofs on the soft sward becomes in fancy only the rushing of the wings of our Pegasus, while the enchanting illusion that we are soaring through space possesses the mind. Unfortunately, however, this method of riding is impracticable in England. And, even if people with enthusiasm enough could be found to put it in practice by importing swift light-footed Arabian or pampa horses, and careering about level parks on dark starry nights, probably a shout of derision would be raised against so undignified a pastime.

_Apropos_ of dignity, I will relate, in conclusion, an incident in my London life which may possibly interest psychologists. Some time ago in Oxford Street I got on top of an omnibus travelling west. My mind was preoccupied, I was anxious to get home, and, in an absent kind of way, I became irritated at the painfully slow rate of progress. It was all an old familiar experience, the deep thought, lessening pace, and consequent irritation. The indolent brute I imagined myself riding was, as usual, taking advantage of his rider's abstraction; but I would soon "feelingly persuade" him that I was not so far gone as to lose sight of the difference between a swinging gallop and a walk. So, elevating my umbrella, I dealt the side of the omnibus a sounding blow, very much to the astonishment of my fellow-passengers. So overgrown are we with usages, habits, tricks of thought and action springing from the soil we inhabit; and when we have broken away and removed ourselves far from it, so long do the dead tendrils still cling to us!

##