To Ride for Ninety Days. 



569 



may be relieved by the horse occasionally walking — but not at the horse's best walking 

 pace. On a long (Australian) journey, go slowly. Never remain more than two hours in the 

 saddle without dismounting for a few minutes to ease your horse's back and legs. It is easier 

 to save condition than to replace it. 



Two miles at a trot tires as much as three at a walk, walking at top speed is as tiring 

 as trotting. " An average colonial horse will carry his rider 100 miles in twelve or fourteen 

 hours." To do 520 miles, Curr recommends four days' work at twenty miles a day, and one 

 day's rest ; four at fifteen miles, and two days' rest ; two at twenty-five miles, and one day's 

 rest ; two at thirty miles, and two days' rest ; five at thirty miles, and four days' rest ; 

 four at thirty miles, and seven days' rest — that would be twenty-one days' work and seventeen 

 days' rest ; and he states, from experience of months of overland travel, that horses that would 

 lay down every night would finish the 520 fresh, and able to gallop. 



He carries on the calculation to 1,500 miles performed with fifty-six days' work and forty- 

 four days' rest, or at the rate of fifteen miles a day. When travelling in Syria, as so many 

 English and American travellers do now, Mrs. Burton strongly recommends that some one of 

 the party sees himself that the horses are duly fed every day, and examine the back of each 

 horse on unsaddling. Native attendants are capable of stealing the fodder, and working animals 

 day after day until their backs are positively festering. 



TO TRAIN A SHOOTING PONY. 



The shooting pony must lead and follow freely, creep 

 up and down banks, and leap standing any reasonable 

 fence when it has been shown to him, without requiring 

 the urging of a whip. 



He must allow himself to be loaded with dead game 

 without resistance. He must stand still with the most per- 

 fect indifference whilst his owner fires from his back, or while 

 a party shoots in succession or in volleys all around him. If, 

 in addition, he will graze contentedly whenever he is left alone 

 in a field, and allow himself to be caught without any diffi- 

 culty, if he walks a steady four miles an hour and trots 

 seven, he is, however ugly, an invaluable animal for his place. 



The modes of teaching a horse to stand to be 

 mounted, to lead, and to leap, have already been de- 

 scribed in reference to hacks, ponies, and hunters. A 

 pony may easily be made to stand still as long as his 

 master is in sight ; but a well-bred, well-fed pony is 

 apt to forget his lessons. In South America gentlemen 

 carry light shackles in their pockets, and thus restrain 

 their horses by the fore-feet whilst making calls. Another 

 way is to fasten a horse's head by a rein to one fore- 

 foot. The easier and safer plan for securing a pony is 



to use an Australian bush-bridle, like the colonial bridle holder for picketing, but of a lighter 

 pattern, with an iron spike for thrusting into the ground at the end of a light rope. 



A horse that has never been alarmed by firearms may easily be taught to stand fire by 

 commencing with snapping caps from a revolver when he is engaged in the stable in eating 



u u u 



COLONIAL BRIDLE HALTER, FOR PICKETING. 



