A WONDERFUL PONY 75 



There has been a disposition among Anglo - Saxons 

 to underrate this performance. The large number of 

 horses killed or foundered with good right distresses our 

 sense of pure sport. But for all that it was a famous ride, 

 though open to serious criticism. Any horse ridden one 

 hundred and twenty-five miles in twenty-four hours per- 

 forms a great feat ; one ridden two hundred miles in forty- 

 eight hours, a greater; to ride three hundred and fifty 

 miles in three days or a bit over is little short of marvel- 

 lous, if you bring the horse in free from permanent in- 

 jury. But there's the rub, and it is on this point that 

 there is a word to say. 



Comparisons may be odorous, as Mrs. Malaprop avers, 

 but they are interesting and useful. Few people out of 

 the Army know just what our cavalry is capable of, and 

 this ride affords an opportunity, not to be lightly neglect- 

 ed, to point a moral and adorn a tale. 



The nearest approach to the Stahremberg ride by an 

 American which we can at the moment recall is that of 

 the pony which Colonel Kichard I. Dodge personally 

 knew, and which I have already mentioned. His owner 

 was a professional express rider, who carried the mail 

 from El Paso to Chihuahua, thither once a week and 

 back the next. As the country was infested by Apaches, 

 the man had to ride by night and hide by day. His prac- 

 tice was to ride the distance, three hundred miles, in three 

 consecutive nights, and rest his pony four days between 

 trips. "Six months of this work had not diminished the 

 fire or flesh of that wonderful pony," says Colonel Dodge. 

 It is true that three hundred miles is not three hundred 

 and fifty, but this pony probably not over fourteen hands, 

 and with rider, mail, and the usual plains trappings, carry- 

 ing at lowest two hundred pounds used to make the 

 three hundred miles in some sixty hours (i.e. three nights 



