430 THE ORIGIN OF THE LIBYAN HORSE [CH. 



cbase with fresh horses, and pursues the fugitives to the third 

 party, which generally succeeds in so far running them down, 

 as to noose and capture a considerable number of them. The 

 domestic horse is an object of great value to the nomadic 

 tribes of Indians that frequent the extensive plains of the 

 Saskatchewan and Missouri, for they are not only useful in 

 transporting their tents and families from place to place, but 

 one of the highest objects of the ambition of a young Indian is 

 to possess a good horse for the chase of the buffalo, an exercise 

 of which they are passionately fond. To steal the horses of an 

 adverse tribe is considered to be nearly as heroic an exploit as 

 killing an enemy on the field of battle, and the distance to 

 which they occasionally travel and the privations they undergo 

 on their horse-stealing excursions are almo.st incredible. An 

 Indian who owns a horse scarcely ever ventures to sleep at 

 nightfall, but sits at his tent door with the halter in one hand 

 and his gun in the other, the horse's fore-legs being at the 

 same time tied together with thongs of leather. Notwith- 

 standing all this care, however, it often happens that the 

 hunter, suffering himself to be overpowered by sleep for only 

 a few minutes, awakes from the noise made by the thief 

 galloping off with the animal. The Spokans, who inhabit the 

 country lying between the forks of the Columbia, as well as 

 some other tribes of Indians, are fond of horse-flesh as an 

 article of food ; and the residents at some of the Hudson Bay 

 Company's posts on that river, are under the necessity of 

 making it their principal article of diet." 



At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were 

 many wild horses in Virginia^ and they became a great nuisance 

 to outlying settlers, by enticing away their domestic horses. 

 As the latter were English in origin, the wild horses were 

 modified to some extent, though the Spanish traits still pre- 

 dominated. Similarly the feral horses of East Victoria in 

 Australia became a constant source of annoyance and loss to the 

 settlers in that region, until they were at length all captured. 



For the following account of these animals I am indebted to 

 my friend Dr A. W. Howitt, of Metung, Victoria, the famous 



1 Wallace, The Horse of America, p. 204.- 



