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The Book of the Horse. 



through deep pools — a very angler's paradise. Like many similar districts in the Scotch 

 Highlands, it has from primeval times been the resort of the red deer. It is still called a 

 forest, although the trees with which its valleys were once filled have long disappeared. 



" The sides of the steep valleys, of which some include an acre and others extend for 

 miles, are usually covered with coarse benty herbage, here and there with heather and 

 bilberry plants, springing from a deep black or red soil. At certain spots a greener hue 

 marks the site of the bogs which impede but are never deep enough to engulf the incautious 

 horseman. 



" Exmoor may be nothing strange to those accustomed to wild barren scenery. To 

 one who has known country scenes only in the best cultivated regions of England, and who 

 has but recently quitted the perpetual roar of London, there is something strangely solemn 

 and impressive in the deep silence of a ride across the forest. Horses bred on the moors, if 

 left to themselves, rapidly pick their way through pools and bogs, and canter smoothly over 

 dry flats of natural meadow, creep safely down the precipitous descents, and climb with 

 scarcely a puff of distress these steep ascents, splash through fords in the trout streams 

 swelled by rain without a moment's hesitation, and trot along sheep paths bestrewed with 

 loose stones without a stumble ; so that you are perfectly at liberty to enjoy the luxury of 

 excitement, and follow out the winding valleys, and study the rich green and purple herbage. 



" A sight scarcely less interesting than the deer was afforded by a white pony mare, with 

 her young stock, consisting of a foal still sucking, a yearling, and a two-year-old, which we 

 met in the valley of the Barle. The two-year-old had strayed away feeding, until alarmed 

 by the cracking of our whips and the neighing of its dam, when it came galloping down a 

 steep combe, neighing loudly, at headlong speed. It is thus these ponies learn their action 

 and surefootedness. 



" It was a tract of hill land such as we have traversed, entirely wild, without enclosures 

 or roads or fences, that came into the hands of the father of the present proprietor, Mr. 

 Frederick Winn Knight, M.P. He built a fence of forty miles around it ; made roads, enclosed 

 farms for his own use near Simon's Bath, introduced a large breeding-stock of Highland cattle 

 on the moor, and set up a considerable stud for rearing full-sized horses, to which the pony 

 stock formed only a secondary consideration. 



"The Simon's Bath stud consisted of thoroughbred sires, and about thirty large well-bred 

 Yorkshire mares, together with several thoroughbred ones. It contained, among others, two 

 entire horses and three mares of the Dongola breed (of which more hereafter), and a very few 

 ponies. The result was the production of many valuable hunters, hacks, and harness horses. 



" For many years, when the staghounds or foxhounds of this wild district faced the open 

 hills, the Exmoor-bred horses soon went ahead, and in a long moor run were not unfrequently 

 the only horses left with the hounds at the finish. Twenty-eight horses of the Simon's Bath 

 stud were at one time going as the best hunters with the various packs of the neighbouring 

 counties, besides those selected by the owner for his own hunting stables. 



"The Exmoor stud was sold at the demise of Mr. Knight, sen., in 1850, by his executors, 

 and the Simon's Bath farm lands were let. 



" The efforts of the late Mr. Knight for the improvement of Exmoor did not meet with 

 the success they deserved. He persisted for many years in following the four-course system 

 of cultivation, under which he had seen, in his own time, a larger tract of sandy and far more 

 barren heaths in the north of Worcestershite converted into excellent turnip and barley land. 

 His numerous ox-teams and large corn-fields were not suited to the elevation and climate of 



