OREEK 1I0U8KS.] MODERN VETERINARY PRACTICE. 



[cental us. 



wore the most powerful of all the tribes, and 

 were foimd in all parts of Greece. Prom this 

 c-ircunist:iiice, tlio whole country was, at one 

 time, callcnl Pelasgia. 



From a period previous to the Trojan war, 

 Grecian fable has transmitted to posterity the 

 story of the Centaurs — semi-human horses and 

 semi-equine men, as Ovid calls them — which 

 warrants the inference that horses had then 

 first made their appearance in Thessaly,tho most 

 northern province of Greece — comprising an 

 extensive vale of singular fertility, and encom- 

 passed on every side by tlie lofty ridges of Olym- 

 pus, Ossa, Pelion, ^ta, and Pindus. It was to 

 the people of this country that the name Hel- 

 lenes — afterwards adopted as the general desig- 

 nation of those whom we, from tlie Latin, call 

 Greeks — was applied, and who early attained 

 to great power. They must have enjoyed 

 some degree of consideration before the Trojan 

 war; for Chiron, their chief, was the preceptor 

 of Achilles. They must also, however, have been 

 ignorant of the picture represented by that of 

 a man and a horse when engaged in the act of 

 riding and being ridden ; for, as the Mexicans 

 ^lid, when they first beheld the Spanish cavalry, 

 the Thessalians fled, panic-stricken at the sight 

 of the double-shaped, incomprehensible monster 

 that charged them. This is the origin of those 

 mytliic absurdities which the genius of Greek 

 sculpture has transmitted to future ages, 

 chiselled, by the most accomplished art, upon 

 their marble tablets. It is surmised that these 

 Centaurs were a tribe of Pelasgi, or emigrants 

 from Phrygia and the southern shores of the 

 Euxine Sea, which were occupied, at an early 

 period, by a colony of Egyptians, planted there 

 by Sesostris in his Phrygian and Scythian 

 expedition. Corroborative of this supposition 

 is the Grecian tradition, recorded by anti- 

 quaries, that Phylere, the mother of the Cen- 

 taurs, cohabited with Saturn in Philyreis, an 

 island near the southern shore of the Euxine ; 

 and that, from that island, she emigrated to 

 Thessaly and the mountains of the Pelasgi. 

 Mr. Touatt, in his able treatise on the horse, 

 offers another interpretation, by which the 

 origin of these monsters may more naturally 

 be accounted for. •'"The Thessalians," says 

 he, " were the pride of the Grecian cavalry. 

 Before the other provinces of Greece were 

 -scarcely ncquaiuted with the miiuo of the 



horse, their subjugation of him was bo com 

 plote, that, in the language of Slmkspearo — 



" ' Tlifsc gallanU 

 Had witchcraft in't — tlu-y prcw into their scaj; 

 And to sudi wondrous doiiij; hroui^iit their horse, 

 As they had been iM<-or])scd, and deini-n:iturcd 

 Willi the brave bea.st.' " 



This power of adhesion to the back of tlio 

 horse, however extraordinary, and however as- 

 tonishing to the Bard of Avon, has not been 

 confined only to the ancients. Mr. Dunn, in his 

 History of the Oregon Territory, and in his 

 description of the Half-breeds of that country, 

 lets us into the secret as to how this power is 

 obtained, and how he has witnessed it exercised 

 in North America. " The Ilalf-breeds," says he, 

 " are a well-informed race, and the men are 

 remarkably ingenious, athletic, and vigorous. 

 In horsemanship they are singularly adroit: 

 nor is this to be wondered at ; for, in fact, they 

 have been trained from their extremest youth 

 to the management of the horse, accompany- 

 ing their parents generally in their trapping 

 excursions on the plains and hills, on horse- 

 back. One of these practised ' Half-breeds* 

 would receive applause from Alexander of 

 Macedon himself, or the best-tutored eques- 

 trian at Astley's. He would mount tlie boldest 

 and most high-mettled Bucephalus of the 

 plains ; give him full play over level and rough, 

 high and lowj river and hill, until he brought 

 him back as tame as a mouse. The cleverest 

 fellow of this school I ever saw, was Joseph 

 McLoughlin,* a natural son of the present 

 governor and a half-bred woman. He was a 

 person of some little distinction from the acci- 

 dent of his birth, independently of his asto- 

 nishing equestrian capabilities. In seeing his 

 feats when managing a wild stallion that 

 galloped and plunged to desperation — clinging 

 to the animal as if he were an inseparable part 

 of him ; playfully tossing his bare head over 

 the upreared head of the horse; while his 

 breech clung to his back with the tenacity of 

 wax, and his heels seemed glued to his ribs, 

 with his hands fastened in his mane — he com- 

 pletely explained to me the fabulous stories of 

 the Centaurs ; for I at once saw that there 

 was some ground for the old fictions of poets 

 and painters in drawing a compound animal, 

 man and horse." 



* The name seems to denote either Irish or Scotch origin. 



