152 The Book of the Horse. 



Italy, Asia Minor, or Egypt, he is sluggish in temper, unsound in his legs, soft in hoof, and 

 wanting in stamina. The one favourable feature in our Australian horses is their great capacity 

 for work as compared to their figures. Thus, a hundred miles are frequently done in Australia 

 by very miserable-looking wretches, in fifteen hours, without preparation, and off grass. Eighty 

 miles for two days consecutively, and seventy miles for three or four days running, are constantly 

 ridden in the routine of business. In a journey of 400 miles I have started with two fat 

 horses, neither of which had been backed for a month previously, riding one, leading the other 

 with a small pack on his back, changing the saddle occasionally from one to the other. The 

 400 miles were always accomplished without trouble in eight days, and after three days' rest 

 the horses were ready to return at the same speed. Each night they were trotted out, usually 

 on very scanty grass, and never tasted artificial food of any kind. 



" My object in taking two horses — a practice which is common in New South Wales, 

 and amongst the Boers at the Cape — was because, if obliged to camp out, two horses in 

 company will generally stop well ; whereas one, however tired, will often, even in hobbles, 

 wander ten or fifteen miles, and not be found for a week. I rode thirteen stone in those days, 

 and could have done the last hundred miles in fifteen hours had I desired it. 



In overlanding with cattle — that is, driving from one colony where the cattle were bred, 

 to South Australia or Victoria, in the early days of colonisation, the drivers are allowed two 

 horses each — the work was done at the slowest possible walk, for the horses are under saddle 

 twelve hours at a stretch, and are ridden and rested alternate days. The journey often 

 lasted ten months. If the grass was plentiful the horses grew fat ; if scarce they became 

 skeletons. 



" The English specific for the improvement of the horse races had not been neglected. 

 Jockey Clubs in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, offered prizes for winners with no niggard 

 hand. The betting rings were well attended, betting was brisk, black-legs became acclimatised 

 and flourished. In fact, I know no country where racing has been carried on so extensively 

 in proportion to its population as in New South Wales. In that district you cannot find a 

 township where there are but half a dozen huts congregated together that does not boast its 

 annual races — hardly a roadside bush public-house that has not its racecourse. I have seen 

 races over stony ground, hilly ground, hard sun-baked plains rent with wide fissures, and 

 over land heavily timbered."* 



The plan recommended by Mr. Curr for the improvement of Australian horses was the 

 destruction of the mass of wild horses, and the introduction of well-shaped Arab sires (a race 

 of pure saddle horses) instead of English racing, greyhound-like stallions, bred to gallop five 

 furlongs with a feather-weight. 



Something has, I believe, been done in this direction in New South Wales. If the 

 parliaments of these vigorous colonies come to consider the wild horse a commercial nuisance, 

 he will be extinguished as wolves were in Great Britain, and by the same means. 



Mr. Anthony Trollope, a horseman and sportsman, several of whose novels form a 

 perfect te.xt-book for the tyro in the hunting-field (for his portraits are equally true and 

 unflattering), found the wild horses of Australia just as the Tasmanian colonist described them. 



" The herds of wild cattle and wild horses which roam and wander at will over the 

 pastures of distant squatters, afford perhaps the most remarkable evidence of Australian fecundity. 

 It is by no means an uncommon thing for a squatter to drive in four or five hundred wild 



• Live Slock Jotinui!, 1879. 



