304 SOUTHERN GAITS 



true, and he was uncertain in his rack or amble, and hard 

 to start into a canter. It would be a ticklish thing to bring 

 him back to his fine saddle paces. All those that I saw 

 and tried were what you might call a very likely-looking 

 but poor lot of a good type. For the saddle each was 

 spoiled except to sell to an Englishman, or to some 

 imitator of the English style. And of these Cairo to-day is 

 full. The Arab or Turkish swells who are thrown in with 

 the English have taken to their ways. The native official 

 will ride his horse on an overreaching trot which makes 

 one's teeth grit, when if left to his natural gaits the horse 

 would move as smoothly as a meadow brook. 



It is common to use the term " artificial gaits " in re- 

 ferring to the running- walk or rack. I have employed 

 it because it is generally understood. A new word ought 

 to be coined. Suppose we say Southern gaits. It is 

 absurd to talk of artificial gaits when, as I have before 

 pointed out, nine-tenths of all animals belonging to the 

 horse tribe in the world thus travel, and that without 

 training. The rack was understood generations ago in 

 England. One of the earliest writers on the horse, old 

 Blundeville to wit, speaks of the Spanish jennet, of which 

 there were many brought to England especially for ladies' 

 use, as going " neither trot nor amble, but a comelie kind 

 of going like the Turke" (Arab) i.e., as going some- 

 thing midway between trot and amble, either a rack or 

 a running- walk. It is more natural for a horse to rack 

 than to trot. Don't smile. This dictum is sound. I am 

 referring, of course, solely to saddle -beasts. When one 

 puts a load after a horse the trot is no doubt a better 

 gait, but it has to come by training or inheritance. 

 The wild horse everywhere gallops, or slows down into 

 what we call a canter, which is, however, not the real 

 canter, but a short, broken gallop. The park canter is 



