ENGLISH VS. IRISH RIDIXG. 43 



of the Sierra Nevcada, in California, in the other. The 

 leader of the band was a jet-black horse, tall and grace- 

 fal, with a coat that shone in the sun like a silk hat. His 

 formation was of the Flying Gbilders mould and his style 

 equally suggestive of what he would do under the saddle. 

 The band was familiar with every path, gulch and Indian 

 trail in all that region, which was traversed by horsemen 

 and pack trains passing to and from the mountains, and, 

 althouo-h stranoers to the giiasi-c\Y\\\z^t[ou that followed 

 the discovery of gold, they soon fell in with the new 

 state of things and took advantage of unwary travelers 

 who used no precautions to picket their animals and set 

 a watch. 



The habit of these horses was to stealthily approach an 

 emigrant camp where saddle and pack animals were turned 

 out loose to graze for the night, and getting mixed up with 

 the wild band, each horse selectiug his favorite for the 

 night's play would, at the sight of a man on horseback, 

 at the dawn of the early morning, swinging a lasso, stam- 

 pede and take with them, in their wild flight for the far- 

 away, all the fast horses and mules that fancied the 

 chansre from slaverv to freedom, and thus became willing 

 converts to freedom's cause. These horses had been so 

 long frequenters of those parts and so frequently chased, 

 that they became so w^atchful and wary that a man on 

 horseback swinging a lasso was a terror to them, and they 

 consequently became trained to sudden flight and great 

 speed. There was evidently a strain of fine blood in 

 them that came from a superior black sire with white 

 hind feet (an evidence of blood, especially in the chestnut 

 horse), that it was said broke away from a train at the 

 time of the emigration to Oregon, anterior to the discov- 

 ery of gold in California. 



Captain Binnix, of Feather River Road ranch, lost 

 by the wild horses a fine Kentucky mule, worth 1300, 

 and vowed vengeance on the baud, offering half the value 



