EASTERJT HOUSES. 85 



It is in this kind of i^erformance that the mustang and 

 the small Eastern horse excels the English, which Cap- 

 tain Nolan proposes to improve by the importation of 

 stallions and mares of the Eastern breeds. But this has 

 been done long ago, and long before the captain was born. 

 The experience was favorable, for the Darly Arabian and 

 others were the result of such enterprises. We have rid- 

 den hunters by the famous Escape, out of Arabian blood ; 

 also hunters by Sir Francis, who kept the Queen's County 

 challenge cup for five years against all comers, and in all 

 these performances the cross with the Arab horse told. 

 It was this importation of foreign blood — the Norman, 

 Tartar and Arab — that has made the English horse what 

 he is under the saddle as a hunter, racer and steeple 

 chaser, and as which he is king. 



The difficulty of stopping anything of great weight is 

 demonstrated in various ways. The projectile of a ton 

 weight will bury itself sixty feet in a mound of sand ; but 

 the hundred- ton gun from which it is fired can, if ex- 

 posed, be captured and silenced by a charge of light 

 cavalry composed of mustangs, governed by ring bits 

 that enable the riders to manoeuvre round the battery and 

 cut down the gunners. Weight is power ; speed is 

 strength. It is on this principle that heavy cavalry is 

 effective, with power, in breaking infantry squares when 

 it is possible. One or tlie other must give w^ay. Either 

 the cavalry must be shot down and a breastwork of dead 

 and dying men and horses piled up in its front, thus 

 fencing out the charging ranks, or the square must give 

 way and let the troopers in. It is in such an encounter 

 as this that heavy horses are effective, and in which a 

 powerful bit, such as the ring or curb bit, is not much 

 used till the work of breaking the square is done, and 

 the melee follows, where the unwieldy horse is at the 

 mercy of the bullet and the bayonet, and whether he stays 

 in or gets out of the square his chances are against him. 



