40 



THE HOKSE. 



unpleasant to sit, and difficult to unaccustomed riders, unques- 

 tionably spares the back sinews of the forelegs many a severe 

 jar. 



He is particularly adapted to the broken, rudely tilled, and 

 rugged country, in which he is used ; where stone walls are the 

 most ordinary fences, and next to them double ditches, with a 

 turf bank or dyke between them. These latter he has a partic- 

 ularlj* clever trick of spurning with his hind hoofs, as he tops 

 them, so as to gain a purchase whence to make a second spring, 

 thereby clearing the second drain — the whole fence being usu- 

 ally too wide to be cleared at a stride, while the turf dyke is too 

 rotten and insecure to admit of its being leaped, on and off, like 

 the somewhat similar banks of Hertfordshire and Essex. 



In England he is not a favorite, his mode of leaping causing 

 him to lose time at his fences, when the hounds are flying as 

 they do in the grass countries, and also rendering him liable to 

 jump short, in case of there being a large ditch, as there usually 

 is, to the stake and bound fences. He is, moreover, not gene- 

 rally a good water-jumper, which is a fatal defect in countries 

 abounding, as the best English hunting counties do, in large 

 brooks and yawning drains. 



For American hunting, where hunting on horseback exists, 

 he is, of all others, the very horse required ; his immense pow- 

 ers, as a jumper of lieight, enabling him to hop over the stiffest 

 six-bar Yii-ginia rail-fences, as if they were nothing ; while the 

 w^oodland and otherwise encumbered character of the country 

 would render his want of speed of comparatively small account. 



I know not how, or why, it should be so ; for I have no know- 

 ledge that Irish horses have ever been imported into this coun- 

 try in sufficient numbers to have any effect on the character of 

 the American horse ; but the resemblance of the two families 

 struck me, on my first arrival in the United States, nor can I 

 yet divest myself of the idea. 



Tlie American Stud Book, from the earliest times, records 

 but three or four importations of Irish race-horses ; I myself re- 

 member but one, Harkforward, the brother of Harkaway, by 

 Nabocklish, imported by the late Judge Porter into Louisiana ; 

 and he died, almost immediately after his arrival, of the bite of 

 a rattlesnake. 



