124 Cross Country with Horse and Hound 



and made to jump with wicked rowels piercing his flanks, 

 there is no doubt ; but this is not horsemanship : it is tor- 

 ture. We should abhor the thought of thumb-screws or 

 the lash to force a man to any dreaded task, but we do not 

 hesitate, some of us, to rowel the sides of a horse until he is 

 in a state bordering on frenzy. He jumps as a man would 

 jump from a third-storey window with a fire behind him. 

 Do we never stop to think of the state of mind a horse must 

 be in who fears to jump a fence and hesitates until the 

 terror of punishment overbalances even the dread he feels 

 for the jump ? That his fear — in your mind — is ground- 

 less does not lessen the terror in his own mind. Spurring 

 or whipping would not lessen a child's fear of " the dark." 

 Confidence learned by degrees, however, may. What horses 

 need, too, is confidence, not spurs. What we need ourselves 

 is confidence in ourselves, not stimulants. Confidence of 

 horse and rider in themselves and in each other — any- 

 thing you can do to promote this will make both parties to 

 the partnership more proficient in cross-country work. 

 Anything you do to your horse, and anything your horse - 

 does to you, whatever it may be, in whatever form it may 

 be done, that tends to destroy this confidence, that much is 

 being done toward defeating the end in view. At the har- 

 row or in harness you may use a horse for the sole end in 

 view, as you would a machine; but hunting, as I have said, 

 is a partnership aflfair. The more intimate the association 

 between rider and horse, the better must be the results. 



No one can estimate the difference between riding a 

 horse to hounds whose heart is in the game and whose spur is 

 therefore in his own head, and one who goes through the mo- 



