MUCH REQUIRED. 125- 



nearly all the good qualities of a very good horse, and perhaps 

 we never know how many good qualities we want in one liorse 

 until we come to try and find one fur this purpose. 



He must be a good walker, a good swimmer, and should be 

 a pleasant ambler. He must possess an iron constitution, that is 

 not likely to fail under the greatest hardships ; lie must be easy 

 and safe in his paces, clever on his legs, easy to mount, easy 

 to lead, easy to catch, easy to tether. He must be bold enough 

 to face any river, to clamber oxer rocks, to venture up and 

 down precipices, and over any reasonably soft ground, and yet 

 should have sagacity enough to refuse an impassable bog, or a 

 quick sand. In fact he should be wonderfully well bred and 

 well taught. 



260. — There is a great difference in horses for swimming.. 

 For crossing unknown, flooded, muddy, rapid rivers, we would 

 never take a horse that we did not know to be a good swimmer. 

 No horses take so easily to river work, as the colts that have 

 followed their mothers through such rivers, and have learned 

 in infancy neither to dread nor to despise them. 



In many parts of Xew Zealand horses are kept by the 

 Government for the express purpose of taking travellers across 

 rivers in which fords will often change every week, and it is 

 beautiful to see how bold, and yet how sagaciously cautious such 

 horses often become. " H you have got the seuse to let the 

 old horse alone, he will take you over all right" is the marching 

 order usually given to the traveller mounted on one of these 

 horses, to cross a river in which no man and no boat could live, 

 and in a country where more colonists have been drowned in 

 fresh water than in any other part of the wurld. Too rapid 

 and too full of timber and rocks for any boat, too benumbingly 

 cold for the best swimmer and the best human lungs in the 

 world to live in them a quarter (. f an hour ; these rivers, floe ded 

 with snow water, can often only be crossed by a very powerful, 

 surefooted, coiu-ageous horse, that knows where to swim and 

 where to walk, or by one that has a rider on his back that can 

 show him and consult him by turns. 



201. — There is perhaps no position in which we feel the value: 



