niCK TURPIN s. (;i» 



i;50. — <-)ne hundred and twenty miles a week, at seven or 

 eight miles an hour, is all that a good highly fed horse will 

 regularly do, and keep fresh and in good condition. We know 

 that horses have been ridden and driven more than one hundred 

 miles a day. So have men. But we would not care to number 

 on our list of friends the man who could wantonly drive either 

 of them to that distance. In America, Australia, Xew Zealand, 

 and wherever horses are so unfortunate as to be cheap, some of 

 the most brutal description of men are often endeavouring 

 to gain notoriety by some such act of barbarity, 



And o'er their brimming beaker boast the inglorious deed, 

 As if barbarity were high desert. 



We have seen parties of such men start on I'resh, high 

 conditioned, well bred horses, and after riding them forty or fifty 

 miles a day for a fortnight, on good summer seed grass, return 

 with a part of the the poor brutes, worn to skin and bone, and 

 with raw backs that no man with common humanity could 

 possibly sit on. 



Happily in England men riding horses to such a state, in a 

 fortnight would at least stand a chance of being sent to prison. 

 Such are the feats we read of, without the horrors of the real 

 sidit, in books that tell us that horses in those countries will 

 travel forty or fifty miles a day for weeks together, on nothing 

 but grass. 



Dick Turpin's mare was no better than thousands of other 

 mares, but Dick Turpin was a greater brute than most other 

 riders. What the thorough bred horse will do is one thing, but 

 what he is fit to do, and what the laws of any civilised country 

 should let brutal men do with him, is quite another thing. 



137. — Cart horses will travel day after day just about as far 

 with their heavy loads at the rate of two or three miles an hour 

 as the light horses will travel with their light loads at eight miles 

 an hour, and twice as far as the light horse will continue to 

 travel at ten miles an hour. Any of them can do far more in 

 the summer season than they can do in winter. Before 

 railways were general, light cart horses in the summer season 

 often took veal to London, a hundred miles, leaving various 



