462 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS 
two, sometimes; and the animal overtaken with such odds 
must be immensely inferior to the one in pursuit! 
So far is the fact of this inferiority from being found to 
exist in the case of the finest of them, that I have known 
instances of mustangs being chased for three or four days 
together, all the time, night and day, with fresh horses put 
in every four or five hours, and yet without any sensible 
flagging of their speed; without their having been sufficiently 
pushed to prevent them from stopping occasionally to graze 
and drink. Their great powers of endurance will not be 
particularly wondered at, when you remember the history 
of their origin. 
It will be recollected that the adventurers, who, lured by 
the golden romance the stories of the earliest navigators had 
thrown over the New World, had been induced to attach 
themselves to the expedition of Cortez, were cavaliers, the 
dissolute and spendthrift sons of the noble families of Spain, 
who expecting to retrieve their desperate fortunes by the 
realization of enormous wealth, strained the credit of their 
friends to the last pitch that they might equip themselves 
with a splendor worthy of their rank, and the glory of such 
an enterprise. 
Those were the palmy days of Spanish power, and her 
nobility could command the choicest resources of the Old 
World; and haughty and luxurious as they were, of course 
nothing short of the purest and far-descended blood of 
Barbary and the Deserts could prance beneath their purple 
housings. Steeds, whose descent, could we believe the quaint 
old chroniclers of the time, might be traced, without a spot 
or blemish, back to the veritable pair who shook the big 
drops of the Flood from their manes, and breasted its devour- 
ing waves successfully, were the companions of the mad-cap 
coxcombs on their perilous voyage. 
You will remember their appearance on horseback alarmed 
the simple natives more than even their pale faces and 
