I20 The Book of the Horse. 



attempts to revive it, made at a very great expense by the Government, have failed. Probably 

 the cessation of local demand for riding-horses had had a depressing elTect. This was not 

 always so. A friend of M. de Tocqueville's remembered a wedding amongst the vicille noblesse 

 at which "many of the ladies arrived on horseback, followed by a servant leading a donkey 

 which carried the ball-dresses in a band-box." In the coach-house of the De Tocquevilles was 

 a horse-sedan, a vis-a-vis, with a pair of shafts behind and a pair before, to which two cart- 

 horses used to be harnessed instead of men (in China mules are thus harnessed to litters), in 

 order to pay visits where there was no road for wheeled carriages ; and even at that date Mr. 

 Senior found the peasantry carrying their harvests home in a sort of cradle on a horse's back, 

 — six sheaves on each side— the lanes being just wide enough to admit a loaded horse. 



E.xtinguish hunting in this country, extinguish a resident nobility and gentry who make 

 riding on horseback a fashion, e.xtinguish farmers who ride in favour of peasants who drive 

 ox and cow carts, and the decline of the quality and numbers of riding and driving horses 

 in England would be certain and rapid. 



CAM.'\RGUE, LORRAINE, AND BRETON HORSES. 



Amongst the breeds of French horses which, like the Limousin and the Ardennes, have 

 been superseded by modern style of cultivation and modern demands, it is impossible to pass 

 over the Camargue, if it were only for the place it holds in a very interesting epoch of the 

 history of France. 



The river Rhone, before flowing into the Mediterranean, forms a vast delta, an island to 

 which the name of Camargue has been given. On this for centuries flourished races of half-wild 

 cattle and half-wild horses. According to tradition, the Camargue horse dates from the in- 

 troduction of Numidian cavalry, v/hcn, in the year of Rome 629, Flavins Flaccus occupied 

 Aries; and received further recruits of African blood from the colony of Julia, and from the 

 two invasions of the Saracens, who occupied Provence about A.D. 730, and again at the epoch 

 of the Crusades. 



It was from Camargue that the Camisards— the Calvinists of Cevennes, whom the per- 

 secution of Louis XIV. and the pious Madame de Maintcnon drove into rebellion — formed 

 their cavalry. 



At any rate, whatever be the origin of the Camargue horse, lie is to this day characterised 

 by a sort of Tartar air, peculiar to animals living in a wild state. 



They were not esteemed for warlike or parade purposes in the twelfth, thirteenth, or four- 

 teenth centuries, ages when every cavalier and every cavalier's horse was barded with steel ; 

 they were too small and light of bone. 



There is reason to believe that at one period the resident gentry of Camargue took 

 particular pains to keep up the quality of the breed, both by importations from Africa and 

 by the castration of inferior colts; but with the Revolution of 1789 these special precautions 

 disappeared. 



They still run wild during winter, in herds of from twenty to one hundred each, under 

 charge of mounted herdsmen, who use the lasso with considerable dexterity, either for catching 

 horses or wild cattle. 



One of these wild horsemen is the hero of a picturesque romance by Madame Georges Sand. 



The wild horse of the Camargue, fed entirely on wild land, is little better than a pony, and 

 generally of a light grey colour. A cross with a thorough-bred sire brings a very good animal, but 

 the produce, like the Exmoor cross, requires better food in winter than the grass of the wild 



