162 - MY STUD. 



whose action and mouth I was delighted, also a brown and 

 very well-bred looking mare, whose owner was a very nice 

 and fine young fellow, and who knew more about the 

 real merits of riding than any other man I met in Kansas 

 city. He asked me to pay him a visit on my return, 

 which offer I regretted I could not avail myself of, as I 

 returned by another route. The beautifully smooth ac 

 tion, mouth, and temper of the brown mare Sylph (the 

 name I gave her) endeared her to me much, and, could I 

 have contrived it, I would have taken her and the chest 

 nut horse, whom I christened Taymouth, in recollection 

 of my visit to Lord Breadalbane, to England with me. 

 Sylph had a very bad blemish as far as appearances went, 

 from having been blistered too severely on the withers, 

 where a fistula had evidently been apprehended. When 

 I was looking at her with a view to buy, the man who 

 showed her to me accounted for the eyesore on the wither 

 by saying " she had got that blemish by jumping slick 

 through a window." Rather a 'cute assertion this, but 

 difficult of belief in the first place, because the blemish 

 was perfectly even, and as much on one side of the withers 

 as on the other ; and certainly, in all the hovels called 

 stables in America that I ever saw, nothing larger than a 

 cat could have jumped, or would have attempted to jump, 

 through the vacuum which their apertures, called windows, 

 afforded. The third horse bought by me was a strong use 

 ful bay, in very good condition, not so well bred as the 

 other horses, not so fast, but with speed enough to get up 

 to a bison ; and this animal I intended to carry the fel^- 

 low called a guide, and to be used by him to trot on and 

 fix the ground on which we should from time to time en 

 camp. I regarded this horse as my hack hunter; the 

 other two were exclusively for my own riding. To this 



