292 Among Men and Horses. 



at Harrismith, Maritzburg, and Durban. He is a good 

 sportsman, hard to beat across country, an owner of race- 

 horses, and is a great favourite with everyone who knows 

 him. His horse Capsome was for several years by far the 

 best steeplechase horse in South Africa. One of the Days, 

 nephew, I believe, of old William Day, the famous trainer, 

 used to ride and train for Mr Davis. Day is a fine cross- 

 country rider. Hall is another good man between the flags. 



After Harrismith, we went to Maritzburg where the 

 annual agricultural show was being held, and I was asked by 

 the committee to judge horses and jumping. I accepted the 

 invitation with pleasure and did my best to give satisfaction. 

 This show, being a long established fixture, was well attended, 

 and the exhibits proved that agriculture was prosperous in 

 the Colony. I must, however, say that many of the saddle 

 horse sires which I saw exhibited here, at Pretoria, Bloem- 

 fontein, and Colesberg, were, to my thinking, utterly unsuit- 

 able to the requirements of the country ; in that they had 

 heavy shoulders, upright pasterns and the respective direction 

 of their back tendons and cannon bones were far from being 

 as nearly parallel to each other as they ought to have been. 

 I also noted that the baneful system of judging of the good- 

 ness of a horse's forelegs by the measurement just below the 

 knee, instead of also taking into consideration the width of 

 the fetlock from front to rear, was too much in vogue. It 

 would have given me great pleasure to have expounded my 

 views on the conformation of horses more widely than I did 

 in South Africa ; but I had no time to do so. As it was, I 

 had to refuse invitations to judge at the agricultural shows 

 in Port Elizabeth and Graf Reinet. 



Besides a couple of public exhibitions in Maritzburg, at 

 which we did well, I held a class in the town, and another in 

 the camp for the officers of the nth Hussars and Gunners. 

 Colonel Swaine, who was commanding the ' Cherubims,' was 

 so pleased with my work that he got me to teach all his 

 sergeants, as well as his officers, how to break-in horses. Sir 



