550 HORSE BUYING AND BREEDING IN SOUTH AFRICA. 
ry purposes he is infinitely superior to the imported animal whether 
from North or South America, or from Australia. Horses over 15 
hands which are not weeds, are very hard t,o find, and I doubt a re¬ 
mount officer being able to get 300 in a month out of the whole of 
Africa. I am convinced that in certain parts of the country large 
horses could be bred. At present most of the breeding is in the 
hands of Dutch farmers, who are absolutely careless about the stallions 
they employ, generally letting a pony of their own run loose among 
the mares on the veldt. Breeding on these lines it is not surprising 
that a race of ponies and not horses is the result. A well-known and 
successful breeder of blood stock out here, Mr. Charles Southey of 
Culunstock, was very keen on crossing the colonial mare with good 
hackney stallions, returning to the thoroughbred after two generations. 
He argued that the Cape mare being weedy would only become more 
so by constant crossing with the thoroughbred. Personally I confess 
to the usual prejudice of the hunting mare against the hackney, and 
I fail to see why properly selected thoroughbreds should not do as 
much as the hackneys, to produce substance, without running the risk 
of introducing softness into the colonial stock, but no importation of 
stallions by Government or private enterprise will do' any good until the 
farmer is taught to believe that it will pay him to breed larger stock. 
For his own riding he prefers a cob and if by chance he has a 15 hand 
horse generally uses him for harness; and as a rule, he will not take 
the trouble to send a mare an hour’s journey to a good horse, when he 
has a stallion of any kind running on his own farm. 
The best horse breeding districts are near Malmesbury, Colesberg, 
and Aliwal North in the Colony, the eastern portion of the Orange 
Free State, and Natal. 
Some excellent ponies are bred in Basutoland, the one portion of 
South Africa which has never been conquered by English or Dutch. 
It is a hilly country lying on the eastern border of the Free State, in¬ 
habited by the Basuto race, brave without being reckless, and adepts 
at fighting on horse-back in a mountainous country. They now live 
governed by their own chiefs under a British resident magistrate, Sir 
Godfrey Lagden, at Masern. Addicted as most Highlanders are to 
cattle lifting, they have at the same time annexed good horses and 
mares from their Free State neighbours, and the result is a race of 
hardy mountain ponies rarely more than 13.2 in height, active as cats, 
up to considerable weight for their size, and very hardy. I went out 
shooting one day with a party of Dutchmen not very far from the 
Basuto border. One of them a lanky Dopper who must have walked, 
14-st., rode all day a little Basuto of aboui-. 13.1, and it was wonderful 
to see the little beggar amble down the sides of rocky hills, often 
nearly perpendicular, down which the rest of us discreetly led our 
steeds. I give a photograph of this pony and his rider, as they are 
both types of their species. 
I bought a different class of Basuto pony for my own riding. He 
stood about 14.2, and rejoiced in the name of Lucas Jantye, the 
Basuto Chief who bred him. He had already been through one cam¬ 
paign, carrying an officer of police, and was a thoroughly comfortable 
