HINTS ON RIDING 91 



sure. Furthermore, and this is more to the point, it 

 is as illogical to use the proficiency of the cowboy as 

 an argument for the "long leather" seat, as it would be 

 to use the expertness of the Cossack as an illustration 

 of the efficiency of the " short leather" seat. The Cos- 

 sacks, perched absurdly high on their roll of blankets, 

 have their stirrups hung so as to bring their toes back 

 on a line under their ears; their knees are completely 

 bent, and they grip with their calves and their heels 

 instead of with their knees, and yet, although they do 

 all the very things that we consider incorrect they 

 are able to leap from one horse to another at full 

 speed, mount and dismount at a gallop, pick up objects 

 from the ground, and are unequalled as a semi-civilized 

 cavalry. Or take, for example, the Arabs, the Bedouins, 

 or Spahis, who remain incredibly long hours in the sad- 

 dle, and seem part and parcel of the animals they ride, 

 and yet they, too, use extraordinarily short leathers. 

 To give other illustrations of a seat totally different 

 from that of the cowboy, and yet equally secure, look 

 at our old-time Indians, who rode with their legs flat 

 back against their animals' sides. They could enter 

 a seething mass of stampeding buffaloes and pick up 

 a dying warrior without slackening speed. 



In fact, be it in the Occident or the Orient, we find 

 that many of the great natural riders of the world, un- 

 surpassed in their expertness on a horse, nevertheless 

 "smash to atoms every commandment in the decalogue 

 of modern equitations." It is just barely possible that 

 were the Cossack, the cowboy, or the Arab to devote 

 to a seat more like our modern one the same amount 

 of time and energy that he does in learning his own, 

 he might produce even better results, but I doubt it. 

 This only goes to show, not that the principles of 



