98 SEATS AND SADDLES. 



movement. In trot, for instance, the soldier, not being 

 permitted to rise in his saddle, must seek a support 

 which the stirrups cannot afford otherwise than by as- 

 suming an angle at the oilier side of the perpendicular 

 that is to say, the tread in the stirrup comes to be in 

 the direction of the point of the horse's shoulder, " tongs 

 across a wall," and the counter-action is then upwards 

 in the line of the man's thigh, against which the intes- 

 tines descend, and produce, if there is the slightest 

 natural weakness in the individual, rupture. The stir- 

 rups being far forward in the hunting or civilian 

 saddle is not so injurious in this way, because the rider 

 evades the shock by rising in the saddle, and this is 

 just what led to the English way of riding ; but the 

 cavalry soldier cannot do so. 



It is all very well to say the man must retain the 

 position prescribed for him if he is constantly on the 

 strain to do so, he simply cannot; besides which, the 

 stirrup is actually of very little, if any, use to him. 

 Two-thirds of the time and the whole of the talk ex- 

 pended in endeavouring to make a man retain an in- 

 convenient seat can be saved, and devoted to the much 

 more necessary objects of teaching him Iww to manage 

 his horse and use his weapons, if you make the pre- 

 scribed seat inevitable, and every deviation from it 

 uncomfortable; and this can be easily done. 



With the light cavalry (or Hungarian) saddle, it will 

 not do to put a man into it as it comes out of the 

 saddler's hands, and order him to sit in a particular 

 manner ; it is just as necessary, or more so, to make 

 the saddle fit the man's seat, as to make his coat or 

 boots fit his body or feet ; and this is done, after careful 

 observation of the seat, by shortening or lengthening 



