THE MUSTANG, OR WILD HORSE. 463 
thunder. They considered horse and rider as one animal,— 
like the Centaur of the Greek, a supernatural one,—and 
sent them human victims for food, to propitiate their wrath. 
These facts all prove that there was not even a tradition of 
the existence of such an animal on our hemisphere at that: 
time. 
It will be recollected, finally, that led on by a remorseless 
avarice, which even the palace halls of the Montezuma, heaped 
to the ceiling with ingots of gold, could not touch, they 
penetrated far into the interior, in the fantastic search of 
mountains, whose rocks were of the precious metal without 
alloy; and rivers, whose beds were amethyst, and pearl, and 
glittering dust; and that instead of the realization of these 
gorgeous fancies, they met with fierce: tribes amidst the 
crags and valleys, who cut them to pieces. But as these 
warlike men exhibited the same terror and astonishment at 
the sight of the horse, the gallant beasts, as their riders 
fell, were permitted by the superstitious conquerors to gallop 
away for a new life of freedom upon the wide savannahs below. 
There were several entire parties of the cavaliers killed 
to a man, by these mountain hordes, all of whose horses 
escaped. These bounded away joyfully, with neighings, 
until they reached the luxuriant pasture of the plains, and 
then fell to work to multiply and replenish. 
From this royal lineage the wild horse of both continents 
has undoubtedly descended. They spread gradually from 
the pampas of California to the bleak and sterile ridges of 
Canada, where starvation and the cold dwindled them down 
to the shaggy pine-knot of a pony, retaining still the bright, 
prominent eye, and devilish, indomitable spirit of their 
ancestry. So that you see the pedigree of the mustang is 
More immaculate than that of the proudest winner of a 
hundred fields. But, independent of these historical facts, 
no man who is familiar with the Arab can cast his eye over 
