PONIES. 425 



with coat long, shabby, and rough, matted with dirt and 

 burrs, hips extended in the air, belly puffed out with 

 sticks and bark swallowed in the vain hope of appeasing 

 the hunger that consumes him, forlorn and downcast, he 

 looks an uncouth monster rather than a horse. 



But when spring has mellowed the earth and drawn 

 from her pregnant bosom the tender grass, he sheds the 

 rough coat, scours the protuberant belly, and with 

 rounded supple form, head erect, ears and eyes full of 

 bright intelligence, he is again ready to bear his master 

 in fight or foray, worthy to be trusted even to the death. 



After endurance the best quality of the pony is his 

 sureness of foot. He will climb a steep rocky hill with 

 the activity and assurance of the mule. He will plunge 

 down an almost precipitous declivity with the indifference 

 of the buffalo. For going over swamps and marshy 

 places he is only excelled by the elk ; and he will go at 

 speed through sand hills, or ground perforated with 

 gopher holes, where an American horse would labour to 

 get along at a walk, and fall in the first fifty yards of a 

 gallop. 



The amount of work got out of him by the Indian is 

 astonishing. No mercy is shown. Tell an Indian to find 

 out something quickly, miles away, and he will probably 

 go and return at speed, though the distance made be 

 twenty miles. I have seen a party run their ponies for 

 more than an hour in mere pastime. In their drills of 

 one or two hours no halt is made to breathe the horses, 

 which, however, have opportunity at least of changing 

 gait. In the fight, already described, at Plum Creek, the 

 pursuit continued for sixteen miles, and the pursuers 

 returned from it in a hand gallop. And this work is 

 done under apparently most unfavourable circumstances : 

 a terrible bit, an ill-fitting saddle, and a rider as cruel and 

 remorseless as fate itself. 



The Indian pony is undoubtedly the same animal as 

 the mustang or wild horse of Texas and the southern 



