THE AMERICAN SADDLE. 117 



by long grass. Of all the unsightly, hideous, and dan 

 gerous things on a saddle, this excrescence is the worst. 

 It is as large as one of the crutches to a lady's side-saddle, 

 only straight, and must be fatal to the life of a man in 

 such a fall as I have referred to. The American saddle 

 is also high behind ; it has flaps like those of the English 

 make, but much smaller, and when I got into one I felt just 

 as if I sat on a deal board, with the bowsprit of a ship 

 ready to rip up the buttons of my waistcoat, or pene 

 trate my waist to the impossible arrangement of any fu 

 ture dinners. 



It is evident to me, by the make of their saddle-flaps 

 and the length of the stirrups in which they ride, trying 

 in an ungraceful way but just to touch the coalbox-look- 

 ing or clog-like thing called a stirrup at the end of the 

 leathers, that most of the horsemen in the United States 

 wish to hold on by the calves of the legs (or where their 

 calves ought to be), and that they take no grasp with the 

 knee and thigh whatever the pommel crutch being re 

 garded by them as the hold to be relied on in a difficulty. 

 Though I searched the shops in St Louis, I could find no 

 copy of an English saddle with spring bars, such as we 

 have in our hunting saddles. That safe, improved, and 

 handy invention for quickly slipping out the stirrups for 

 cleaning has never been adopted in the United States. 

 In saddlery and the art of riding, in those regions visited 

 by me, they are, as I said before, a hundred years behind 

 us. They have but one class of single-bit generally in 

 use ; they tie down the heads of their horses on all occa 

 sions (whether the carriage of the head needs it or not), 

 with martingales, and always strangle them to a con 

 siderable extent by buckling up the throat-lash to the 

 very highest and tightest hole to which it can be made to 



