Lectures on Horsemanship / Wherein Is Explained Every Necessary Instruction for Both Ladies and Gentlemen, in the Useful and Polite Art of Riding, with Ease, Elegance, and Safety

Transcriber’s Note

BY T. S.
Professor of Horsemanship.
LONDON: 1793.


LADIES and GENTLEMEN.
PERMIT me to observe that the Horse is an animal, which, from the earliest ages of the world, has been destined to the pleasure and services of Man; the various and noble qualities with which nature has endowed him sufficiently speaking the ends for which he was designed.
It is generally supposed that the first service in which the Horse was employed, was to assist mankind in making war, or in the pleasures and occupations of the chase. Xenophon , who wrote three hundred years before the Birth of Christ , says, in an express treatise which he wrote on Horsemanship, that Cyrus hunted on Horseback, when he had a mind to exercise himself and horses.

FIRST we will suppose your horse properly saddled and bridled. Take your Bridoun-rein (if you have Bit and Bridoun) your right-hand, shifting it till you have found the center of the rein; then with your switch or whip in your left-hand, place your little finger between the reins, so that the right rein lies flat in your hand upon three fingers, and your thumb pressing your left rein flat upon the right, keeping your thumb both upon right and left rein, firm upon your fore-finger; and in this position you ease your hand a little and slide it firmly down the reins upon your horse’s neck, taking a firm hold of a lock of his mane, which will assist you in springing to mount: remember that when you attempt to mount, that your reins are not so tight as to check your horse, or to offend his mouth, so as to cause him to rear , or rein back, but that your action is smooth and light as possible.