Buckjn mpc rs. 43 



ridden and broken so many hundreds of Australian and New- 

 Zealand animals, that I venture to speak of the horses and 

 riders in those countries as if I had lived my life there. I 

 fail to see much merit in the mere sticking on to a buck- 

 jumper in the Colonial style ; for the success of such a feat 

 depends more on the saddle than on the rider. Although 

 any ordinary lad could learn, in a month, to sit a buckjumper 

 by the aid of a Colonial saddle ; there are very few of the 

 best professional buckjumping riders who would even attempt 

 to do so, in an ordinary English hunting saddle. Steve 

 Margarett is the only one I have ever seen able to do this. 

 Although he has spent most of his life in Australia, with 

 frequent visits to India, where I knew him ; he was born and 

 bred in Gloucestershire. I may remark that he is as good 

 over a country as on the back of a buckjumper. In Australia 

 he has frequently defeated all comers in buckjumping com- 

 petitions, in which the aspirants to fame have to ride each 

 other's horses, and consequently bring the worst they can 

 find. In one of these contests, when Steve was mounting a 

 terribly vicious brute, he pulled off the bridle, the throatlash 

 of which he had purposely left unbuckled ; so that the animal, 

 while he was on its back, was free to do everything it possibly 

 could to unseat him. As Steve stuck on to the horse, without 

 having any reins to steady himself during the desperate plunges 

 made by his mount, he won the prize amid the frenzied plaudits 

 of the delighted spectators. Steve won the buckjumping prize 

 at a horsebreaking performance I gave in aid of the Jockeys' 

 Benevolent Fund, a few years ago at the Calcutta Grand 

 Stand before the Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, and an immense 

 audience. The illustration on page 34 is a photograph of 

 an Australian rough-rider in a regular buckjumping saddle, 

 and mounted on a half-broken, underbred Colonial horse. 

 My readers will observe that the ' rolls ' on the saddle flaps 

 are made to afford a bearing to the lower part of the thighs, 

 and not to the knees. 



I may mention that if the rider of a buckjumper holds on 



