PURCHASE OF HORSES FOR THE ARMY IN INDIA. 547 
beg to differ with you, when you assert that their points of excellence are 
not those laid down in books. I admit they are not handsome ; but they 
surpass any horses I have ever seen out of Europe in the following points ; 
and I will commence with the fact of their untiring and unflinching endur- 
ance during the longest and hottest days of the year. 
“ The journeys are always calculated by the farmers, not by the number 
of miles they can travel, but the number of hours of daylight. If you ask 
a farmer how far he is going, he replies, only eight or ten hours, which jour- 
ney will average nearly seven miles an hour, the only refreshment being an 
occasional drink of water and a roll in the sand, which is supposed to make 
Cape horses quite fresh again ! This is no overdrawn character of the ani- 
mal, and I mention it first, as I consider good bottom the great quality in 
horse-flesh. 
“ The Cape colonists can never sufficiently express their gratitude to the 
late Lord Charles Somerset and the present Mr. T. B. Bayley. It is to the 
valuable English blood imported by these gentlemen, that the Cape horses 
date their excellence, and the farmer dates his prosperity. He now trots 
his produce to market behind eight well-bred horses, instead of the old slow 
and cumbrous span of eighteen pair of oxen. 
“ Good legs and feet, plenty of bone below the knee, depth of chest, with 
well-placed shoulders, great substance and broad hips, sound wind and eyes, 
with generally good action and temper, form the remaining good points 
possessed by the Cape horse to an extent hardly known elsewhere ; to which 
may be added, wonderful soundness of constitution, in proof of which I 
may mention, amongst all the horses I have examined, I have only seen 
one whose feet had suffered from fever, although hundreds in regular work 
had never been shod in their lives ; even Cape race-horses generally run 
barefooted on the very worst of race-courses. It may be argued that leav- 
ing the hoofs in a state of nature, unbound by iron, produces this general 
soundness ; but that will not hold good at Cape Town, where some of the 
shoeing-smiths are the worst I ever beheld, and I see horses travel sound 
on shoes that would astonish an English farrier. 
“Blindness and broken wind are almost unknown in the colony. At first 
I w’as Jed to suppose that the almost total absence of inflammatory diseases 
arose from the spare diet on which Cape horses are reared and kept ; but 
such is not the case. I have purchased hundreds of horses in very bad con- 
dition, and it being essential that they should, as far as possible, reach India 
fit for immediate work, I forced them (in crowded stables) with as much 
corn as they could eat, and being unable to procure the required quantity 
of bran for the voyage, have been obliged to feed highly on corn and oat- 
hay (which is one third grain) at sea. Under this treatment the casualties 
have been very few, only three dead horses have been dragged out of the re- 
mount stables, and the mortality at sea only two per cent, out of the ten 
crowded ships that have already reached India. 
“ I have a very high opinion of the present Cape horses, particularly 
with reference to their fitness for the ranks of the Indian army ; but there is 
much for the breeders to consider with, reference to the parent stock, and I 
strongly deprecate the use of Arab stallions. I have rejected great num- 
bers of horses said to be half Arabs, that were too slight and weedy for any 
army purpose. 
“ Lieut.-Colonel Bower’s description of the expanding property of the 
desert blood, as exemplified by the stock of the Arab galloway Wild Buck , 
in England, does not prove its fitness for the Cape, where no Yorkshire 
meadows are to be found, and where most of the brood mares fall into 
miserable condition, once, if not twice, each year, from the want of 
pasturage. 
