A French llams and Horse Fair. 
397 
Napoleon's horses, survived tlie liardsliips of the retreat from 
Moscow. The little bidet d\dlure — the riding-horse is thus 
named — would be admirably suited for mounted infantry ; but 
as regards the cavalry charger (cheval de guerre) Count An- 
drassy's memorable observation should not be forgotten— a big 
man requires a big horse to ride, not two small ones. Mr. 
Curmac, an American gentleman of fortune living in the country, 
told me two little horses of twelve hands ran him in a large 
carriage, out and in, full eighty kilos, (fifty miles), and came in 
as though they had done nothing. Mr. Talbot — a most agree- 
able and intelligent man, of whom more hereafter as an agent 
in the English vegetable trade, and who has been sixty years in 
Brittany — drove two of these Bidets, in and out, sixty miles ; 
they were never taken out, they were not tired, and would do 
the same thing two or three times a week. Two little entire 
horses, thirteen hands, ran a heavy diligence at a rattling pace, 
and without any recourse to whipcord. 
No doubt this little Breton horse is the parent of the enduring 
Canadian pony, the delight of my youth ; the Habitans and their 
horses originally hailed from St. Malo, and in my day in Canada 
one of the most favourite of the Canadian boat-songs was "yl 
iSaint-Malo, beau port de mer." You rarely see in the Breton 
horse really good action, there is something wanting in all ; like 
the Canadians, they often run. Thei-e are many bad feet, and 
universally there is bad shoeing ; bad collared horses are un- 
known, the foals, from the first, run with their dams in harness, 
and are afterwards made to draw with a long halter arranged 
lasso fashion. It indeed requires many successive and educated 
generations, one pushing on the other, to succeed in any art, 
and to me it was almost pathetic to observe the strenuous but 
desultory attempts to arrive at an even level of good horses 
amongst a people who have little knowledge, and no cultivated 
taste, and perhaps no established standard to work up to — they 
mostly aim at nothing, and generally hit it. 
Morlaix as a centre is vraie Bretagne Bretonnante, an ancient 
and time-honoured appellation which distinguishes the Celtic as 
opposed to the French-speaking Brittany, or la Bretagne douce, 
and if I found the horses a mixed lot, what am I to say of the 
horsemen? — a mutton-hating and buckwheat-eating people, who 
drink, but not to drunkenness, crude cider corrected with potato- 
spirit. I met Breton-speaking men from the hills, the backloone of 
the peninsula, which are never higher than 1,200 feet — men from 
the so-called Black Mountains, with shaggy locks hanging down 
their backs mane-like, clad summer and winter in the shortest 
of goat-skin jackets, suggesting Robinson Crusoe without his 
VOL. XXV. — S. S. D D 
