214 THE WILD PONIES OF SABLE ISLAND 



The winter season levies its toll off the old and infirm. Some 

 succumb after each storm. During severe tempests, thousands 

 of tons of sand are often carried from the beach some from one 

 side and some from the other as the gale veers and shifts to all 

 points of the compass in turn, and are strewn over the island, so 

 that vegetation in spots becomes nearly smothered. Scores of horses 

 died in 1811 from insufficiency of food, the result of a hurricane 

 by which the outline of the island was, in one night, completely 

 altered. Sandhills which had formed landmarks were tumbled 

 into the sea, and hills piled up where once valleys nestled. Recent 

 wrecks disappeared, and others were brought to view of which 

 there was no record. 



In severe weather it is the habit of the horses to gather in the 

 gulches or hollows between the sandhills. Here they arrange 

 themselves in regular order, the colts in the centres, their elders 

 outside of them, and the master stallion in the most exposed 

 situation of all. The very marked droop of the rump is supposed 

 to have been developed by the constant habit of hunching up 

 the hindquarters, which are always opposed to the direction of 

 the storm and wind. 



During the American Revolutionary war much destruction 

 was caused among the herds from the common practice by filibusters 

 on both sides of raiding the island for remounts and meat. Since 

 that time, nearly two thousand horses have been exported from 

 the island and sold in Canada. 



It is startling how the type recalls the sculptures of antiquity. 

 A description of the Sable Island pony might stand for the low, 

 large-headed, heavy-shouldered, powerful-limbed animals, with 

 necks clothed with volumes of shaggy mane, and tail coarse and 

 abundant, which are depicted in the ancient sculptures of Nineveh. 

 The short, stocky horses of the Elgin marbles, ' cocked thrappled ', 

 that is, having the wind-pipe and fore-neck above its insertion 

 in the chest projected like the same parts of a game cock when crow- 

 ing, and with their haggard manes, compact round barrels, and 

 short, stiff pasterns, irresistibly suggest the Sable Island pony. 

 The same may be said of figures of the ' Tarpan ' or wild horses 

 of Tartary. The ' Sultan-stallions ' of these herds, we are told, 

 were objects of research for the chiefs of armies, who endeavoured 

 to catch them and make them their chargers. It was on a piebald 

 horse, very like these ponies, that Attila, King of the Huns, known 

 as ' the Scourge of God ' in the fifth century, rode forth to ravage 

 the civilized world. 



Descriptions of the wild herds of Mexico also tally with the 

 characteristics of the type. In both we have a low body from 



