Breaking to Harness. 1 99 



a state of perfect liberty during their youth, say, up to four 

 years of age, confers on them great freedom of shoulder as 

 well as soundness of limb. I am also under the impression 

 that horses brought up on hilly ground have better shoulders 

 than those reared on level soil. 



Calcutta affords to its inhabitants unrivalled facilities for 

 breaking horses either to saddle or harness ; for it has, 

 between the English part of the town and the river Hooghly, 

 a level plain of about three square miles in area, over which 

 everyone is free to ride ; and there is an ample space set off 

 for the breaking of horses to harness. For making animals 

 quiet to carriage work, some of my Colonial dealer friends 

 used to employ an ingeniously-constructed trap, called a 

 ' jingle,' which had such long shafts that if the horse which 

 was harnessed to it began to kick, he could not reach either 

 the splinter bar or the body of it with his heels. I need 

 hardly tell any experienced breaker that few things make a 

 horse stop kicking so soon and so effectively, as finding that 

 he has nothing to kick against. Another great beauty in it 

 is that the weight put on the animal's back by the shafts can 

 be easily regulated. Here again, the well-taught breaksman 

 will agree with me that the unaccustomed feeling of weight 

 on the back is a strong provocation to a young one to kick 

 or plunge. A third excellence in the jingle, which should 

 not be despised, is that, in the event of an accident or of the 

 horse becoming unmanageable, the driver can readily get out 

 from the rear part of the conveyance ! I have been told that 

 the jingle is an American invention. 



In India, everybody who, so to speak, is anybody, keeps 

 horses and rides at least once if not twice a day all the year 

 round. There, one's friends are always ready to lend one 

 horses. There is no law of trespass, and, consequently hack- 

 ing along the road is the exception instead of the rule. 

 These are the causes, no doubt, which make the percentage 

 of capable horsewomen and horsemen larger in India than 

 in England, where not more than one in twenty even out of 



