EASTERJ^ HORSES. 83 



tialities, and tlius ventilate his opinions or prejudices to 

 a world of men of experience, hard practical knowledge 

 and common sense. We cannot always rely upon opinions 

 based on practical knowledge in some matters, for obser- 

 vation and even actual contact with things make various 

 impressions, according to the disposition, experience or 

 education of the person, and indeed frequently gives 

 wrong notions, which, while they tend to puzzle the un- 

 initiated, are nevertheless easily unraveled by men of 

 natural and varied training, who have been set right 

 themselves by the knowledge and judgment of others as 

 well as those of their own. But General Dumas' 180 

 miles in twenty-four hours, for cavalry, would be seven 

 and one-half miles per hour ; that is doubtful, for there 

 is no horse can walk as fast as a man, and few if any 

 could accomplish it on a stony desert. 



Nolan was a young man when he wrote his book, and 

 his opinion respecting the ability of the English horse to 

 compete with the horses of all nations in everything, 

 wherever found, changed as he visited other countries 

 and saw for himself the superiority of other breeds of 

 horses for services and feats that he acknowledges the 

 English horse could not accomplish. He might as well 

 tell us that a black-and-tan could as easily get into the 

 rat-hole as the rat, as to say that an English cavalry 

 horse could compete with a mustang in fighting a mad 

 bull, galloping round a wheel-barrow, or in traveling sixty 

 miles a day on prairie grass for feed. Nolan certainly 

 took the bit in his teeth and ran away with his praise of 

 the English horse, as he did wi'th his subsequent de- 

 nouncement of the same animal. The forte of the 

 English cavalry horse is to go ahead and charge through 

 or over all opposition, but when he is required to compete 

 with the Arab or the mustang in their performances, he 

 must be remodeled and taught subjection to a different 

 bit from the one he yields to now. 



