Food for Horses. 255 



a kind of magnified dog-whip for the special benefit of the 

 wheelers. The third and last person of the coaching show 

 is the guard, whose business is to take tips, tell the passengers 

 yarns, and induce them to patronise the halting-place shanties, 

 at which he is on the free list for food and drink. 



The ponies, or horses, if I may dignify them by that term, 

 are admirable workers for their weight, and will trot along 

 merrily and pull gamely up hill and down dale over bad 

 ground, a stage of twelve miles, once, and sometimes twice a 

 day. Their sole food is Indian corn, oat hay, and any grass 

 they can pick up on the veldt. The ' mealies ' are given in a 

 dry state, whole or crushed, or after having been soaked over 

 night in water. The oat hay, or ' forage ' as it is called, 

 consists of oats which have been cut before the grains in the 

 ears have lost all their milky character, and which have been 

 dried in the sun like ordinary hay. If the ears were allowed 

 to ripen more than I have stated, the grains would become 

 so much loosened that they would fall out of the ears on 

 too slight provocation to bear transit, or ordinary handling. 

 This ' forage ' is an excellent food. Although I have used 

 a good deal of it with horses when I lived in Calcutta, to 

 which city it is often brought from Australia, where it is 

 known as oat hay, in steamers that are loaded with horses, 

 I am unable to decide whether or not it would be a srood 

 substitute for English hay. Anyhow, it is a valuable adjunct 

 or change to a horse's food. It is sometimes used in 

 England during years in which there is scarcity of ordinary 

 hay. 



In temper, the South African horses more nearly resemble 

 the Barbs I met at Gibraltar and Malta than any other horses 

 I have seen. Both these breeds are, as a rule, very quiet, spirit- 

 less, though good slaves, and are inclined to be obstinate. Their 

 lack of ' life ' is no doubt due to the fact of their being kept 

 during their youth in a state of semi-starvation. The cause 

 of the tendency to be sulky I attribute, in the case of South 

 Africans, to their being broken-in at a comparatively late 



