238 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



no rainfall, everything is grown by irrigation and 

 the heat is great. 



HORSES 



California was the birthplace of the American 

 romance of the horse for it was here that the hidalgo 

 met the west American pioneer and transferred to 

 him his passion for the horse and his skill in horse- 

 manship. Centuries earlier,, of course, the horse and 

 horsemanship came to the Atlantic states and carried 

 westward chiefly English ideals and policies of both. 

 Very different were the Spanish conceptions of the 

 spirit both of the man and the horse and their rela- 

 tions to each other in the business of life. Very 

 rapidly, however, the western pioneer seized and 

 appropriated this strange conception and was so 

 quickly transformed from his old thoughts and ways 

 with the horse that he convinced his successors, in 

 the great business of developing the Eocky Moun- 

 tain region and the Pacific Slope of the United 

 States, that they at first knew neither the man nor 

 the horse. The cowboy in his highest romantic 

 lines is a product of the contact of American spirit 

 and resources with Spanish grandiosity. One who 

 passed through this cowboy college writes of its 

 course of study in this way : 



"And big event indeed it was, the plaza thronged 

 from dawn until far past midnight with a jostling 

 throng, alight with the brilliant hues of serapes and 

 rebozos, and blazing with the silver and gold decked 



