46 SECOND TRIP TO RUSSIA 



the Wilson Line, because their office people and captains are 

 most obliging in every way. In order to be prepared for any 

 breaking that might be required, I brought out a fine young 

 horseman by the name of " Dick" to act as rough-rider. He 

 was a willing, good chap, and I hope that I will be able to 

 give him another job with me on some future occasion. I 

 have had a fair amount of experience taking horses by sea to 

 and from India, and have learned that the great safeguard 

 to be attended to with them on board, is to put thick coir 

 matting of the door-mat type on the floors of their boxes. A 

 horse having four legs can naturally keep his footing on a 

 rocking surface better than a biped like a man, provided of 

 course that his feet do not slip, which they are extremely 

 likely to do on bare boards, seeing that horses' feet, even 

 when unshod, are comparatively smooth. When standing on 

 this matting, the animal's hoofs become embedded in its long, 

 upright fibres, so that slipping is out of the question. When 

 horses are carried on deck, as mine always have been, a 

 heavy sea may strike a box and wash it overboard, or smash 

 it to pieces. With the precautions usually taken by capable 

 seamen, this accident will rarely happen, except of course, 

 when a vessel becomes wrecked. The vast majority of equine 

 casualties on board ship result from the sufferers losing their 

 foothold and becoming dashed against the sides of their boxes, 

 or struggling until they have fatally injured themselves. This, 

 as I have shown, is an absolutely preventable misfortune, and 

 when it occurs should be put down to gross ignorance or 

 culpable carelessness. Many valuable horses, including the 

 once mighty Blue Gown, have been lost from being knocked 

 about when crossing the Western Ocean. When horses used 

 to be sent round the Cape to India in " wind-jambers " for 

 stud purposes, most of the survivors became affected with 

 chronic fever in the feet from long standing on hard boards, 

 in which case the pressure falls almost entirely on the wall of 



