462 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



two, sometimes; and the animal overtaken with such odds 

 must be immensely inferior to the one in pursuit ! 



So far is the fact of this inferiority from being found to 

 exist in the case of the finest of them, that I have known 

 instances of mustangs being chased for three or four days 

 together, all the time, night and day, with fresh horses put 

 in every four or five hours, and yet without any sensible 

 flagging of their speed ; without their having been sufficiently 

 pushed to prevent them from stopping occasionally to graze 

 and drink. Their great powers of endurance will not be 

 particularly wondered at, when you remember the history 

 of their origin. 



It will be recollected that the adventurers, who, lured by 

 the golden romance the stories of the earliest navigators had 

 thrown over the New World, had been induced to attach 

 themselves to the expedition of Cortez, were cavaliers, the 

 dissolute and spendthrift sons of the noble families of Spain, 

 who expecting to retrieve their desperate fortunes by the 

 realization of enormous wealth, strained the credit of their 

 friends to the last pitch that they might equip themselves 

 with a splendor worthy of their rank, and the glory of such 

 an enterprise. 



Those were the palmy days of Spanish power, and her 

 nobility could command the choicest resources of the Old 

 World ; and haughty and luxurious as they were, of course 

 nothing short of the purest and far-descended blood of 

 Barbary and the Deserts could prance beneath their purple 

 housings. Steeds, whose descent, could we believe the quaint 

 old chroniclers of the time, might be traced, without a spot 

 or blemish, back to the veritable pair who shook the big 

 drops of the Flood from their manes, and breasted its devour- 

 ing waves successfully, were the companions of the mad-cap 

 coxcombs on their perilous voyage. 



You will remember their appearance on horseback alarmed 

 the simple natives more than even their pale faces and 



