THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 95 



likely, the appearance of the first mounted strangers 

 may have so terrified the native inhabitants, as to 

 have sent them flying, with an awful story in their 

 mouths of the invasion of the country by a set of 

 monsters, half-man, half-quadruped. Thus it was in 

 South America, where the natives for a long while 

 believed that the cavalry of the invaders were composite 

 animals, which they called Gachupins, a word which 

 continued to be applied as a nickname to the Span- 

 iards, until they were expelled from the continent. 

 The Mongol Tartar of the Steppes is just such a 

 being as an artist would choose to form the human 

 portion of the more than half-brutish figure of the 

 Centaur. The upper portion of his frame is well 

 developed, but his weak and ill-formed legs seem 

 made only to hold him on his horse, on whose back 

 he passes most of his life, and with which he appears 

 to form as it were one whole. The Tartar's head, 

 round as a bullet, looks like a weight stuck on his 

 body to balance it in the gallop. No other expression 

 than those of animal impulses is discernible in his 

 hard features, and small, black, oblique eyes. He 

 scarcely exhibits a trace of those spiritual conceptions 

 which are to be found among all other races, however 

 rude ; he possesses not the least element of a mytho- 

 logy, or of a primitive religion. The ancients, who 

 make mention of this people, say that they worshipped 



