NOTES OF A DESULTORY READER. 13*^ 



NOTES OF A DESULTORY READER 



ON THE SWIMMING POWER OF HORSES. 



On ihe capacity of liorses Ibr swimming, men's ideas are very loose and 

 various. Few who^have never been in the western country would believe how 

 very common it is there to sivim on horseback over creeks and bayous. Such 

 trifling impediments are not allowed to stand in the way of a hardy pioneer, who 

 in some respects, and especially in the mastery and use of the horse, may he 

 said to resemble the Gaucho of the South American pampas. 



Traveling once in the western country, I expressed some fear of not bemg^ 

 able, from the state of the roads and the absence of bridges over the water 

 courses, to reach a certain place by a given time. " Oh ! " said a friend, " no- 

 thing need be more certain. Take my horse and follow such a road ; you wili 

 only have to sioim the ' Big Black ' and the ' Alligator Bayou,' and you may 

 reach your destination before dark." On my appearing shocked at the necessity 

 of swimming rivers and bayous, and protesting that I could not, myself, swim a 

 foot, he very coolly answered, " Oh, never mind, my dear sir ; my horse swims 

 the driest of any horse you ever saw." 



I remember hearing, when a boy, that a horse belonging to St. Mary's cocmty 

 in Maryland, had crossed the ferry of Patuxent at Benedict, and was turned 

 loose in the rich pastures of " Battle Creek," the superb estate belonging to the 

 father of Chief Justice Tane, in Calvert county. The next day the horse, on 

 being searched for, was returned non est. It was finally ascertained that he- 

 swam the Patuxent, where it was at least a mile wide, to get home again ; so^ 

 true is it that with horses, even more than with some men. there is " no place- ' 

 like home ! " Yet some moralists of the first water would degrade them and 

 impeach the goodness of their Creator, by divesting all animals of every feeling^ 

 of friendship and sociality, and all except the coarsest and most brutal passions 

 and propensities of animal nature. Whereas every man of observation who has 

 traveled by that most agreeable of all modes of traveling, on horseback with 

 one or two good-natured, sociable and witty companions, must have perceived 

 that the horses which fall in v/ith each other on the road sometimes become 

 acquainted sooner than their riders, and part company with more evident reluc- 

 tance. They do n't wait to be introduced to each other ; indulge in no anti- 

 social or sinister speculations as to each other's wealth and standing in society ; 

 lay no schemes to inveigle or overreach ; and when, finally, they arrive at the 

 place to be baited, no degree of hunger can prompt them to rush to their meals, 

 with more evident apprehension of not getting their share, or with more impetu- 

 ous and indecent haste than we witness with disgust on the part of modern fash- 

 ionable travelers on " fashionable tours." 



But as to the swimming power of the horse. Those who were cognizant of 

 the fact of the horse swimming the Patuxent river, from Calvert to St. Mary's 

 county, where it was a mile ividc, were almost afraid to tell it, for fear of being- 

 doubted ; yet, in a book before us, " Darv/in's Voyage of a Naturalist," which 

 the Harpers have had the good taste and judgment to let us have so promptly,, 

 and which will be read with the liveliest interest by all who have a taste for 

 natural history ; this very entertaining and popular author says : " On a former 



