178 FERAL ttORSES. 



passing strangers, and their foals run innocently up 

 and start back with sudden apprehension. * The 

 males having but little cause for exercising their 

 intellectual faculties, and being often captured, se- 

 verely ridden, and then again restored to liberty, 

 their wild instinct is more confused than fully de- 

 veloped, and a tendency to obedience and domesti- 

 cation remains impressed on their tempers. There 

 is, nevertheless, one trait in the character of the 

 South American horses not now observed in Asia, 

 though, probably, were the conditions similar, a 

 similar effect might be expected : t we allude to a 

 disposition of becoming frantic from thirst in the 

 heated plains where water is rare, and then with 

 the impetuosity of madness, when chance or instinct 

 has at length conducted them to a pool or a river, 

 rushing forward to the brink, trampling each other 

 under foot, others sticking in the clay, and many 

 forced into the water ; causing a destruction of their 

 numbers exceeding belief. Thousands of skeletons 

 are said to blanch the borders of some localities 

 where they resort. Where, by the absence of a 

 sufficient antagonist power in a due proportion of 

 great carnivora, it is perhaps justly remarked by 

 the author of the treatise on the Horse, that " this 



* See Captain Head's graphical description in his Journey 

 across the Pampas. 



+ In Mr. Buckingham's Travels there is a case of a caravan 

 of men, horses, mules, and asses, under the influence of severe 

 thirst, suddenly coming upon a river in the dark, and over- 

 throwing each other, as each pushed his predecessor before 

 him into the stream. 



