HISTORY. 501 



long spears, to constellations in the heavens, which, they 

 say, are the figures of their ancestors, who, riding in the fir- 

 mament, are mounted upon horses swifter than the wind, and 

 hunting ostriches. When they bury their dead, they kill 

 several of their best horses, believing that their departed 

 friends would otherwise have nothing to ride.* 



The Horse is domesticated throughout all the settled parts 

 of South America, but is nowhere treated with the care which 

 is required to produce the full development of his form and 

 useful properties. If he is inferior in many qualities to the 

 races from which he is sprung, we may be assured that this 

 is no result of the absence of the bounties of nature in the 

 countries to which he has been carried. These are all that 

 can be desired for the perfecting of the Horse. If, in cer- 

 tain parts, a too humid atmosphere, and rank vegetation, 

 are calculated to give grossness to the animal form, there 

 are others embellished with every gift that can give to it 

 lightness, buoyancy, and grace. There are regions more 

 pure of air than the Caucasian Mountains, or the Syrian 

 Plains ; and were but a tenth part of the care bestowed on 

 rearing the Horse in these beautiful countries as in the de- 

 serts of the wandering Bedouin, it cannot be doubted that 

 South America would produce Horses equal to any in the 

 world. 



North America seems equally adapted to the temperament 

 of the Horse as any similar countries in the Old Continent. 

 The Mexican horses are derived from Spain, and seem in no 

 other respect inferior to the European, than a less careful 

 management may account for. Mexican horses have likewise 

 escaped into the woods and savannahs of the prodigious 

 countries which extend northward and eastward from the 

 Gulf of Mexico ; but they have not multiplied in the same 

 numbers as in the plains of the Plata. They have extended 

 northward even to the Rocky Mountains, and the source a 



* Head's Journey. 



