CHAPTER X.
THOROUGH-BRED HORSES.
I have heard it affirmed, though I know not on what authority, that if we are to believe the hunting records of the last hundred years, in all runs so severe and protracted as to admit of only one man getting to the finish, this exceptional person was in every instance, riding an old horse, a thorough-bred horse, and a horse under fifteen-two!
Perhaps on consideration, this is a less remarkable statement than it appears. That the survivor was an old horse, means that he had many years of corn and condition to pull him through; that he was a little horse, infers he carried a light weight, but that he was a thorough-bred horse seems to me a reasonable explanation of the whole.
“The thorough-bred ones never stop,” is a common saying among sportsmen, and there are daily instances of some high-born steed who can boast
“His sire from the desert, his dam from the north,”
galloping steadily on, calm and vigorous, when the country behind him is dotted for miles with hunters standing still in every field.
It is obvious that a breed, reared expressly for racing purposes, must be the fastest of its kind. A colt considered good enough to be “put through the mill” on Newmarket Heath, or Middleham Moor, whatever may be his shortcomings in the select company he finds at school, cannot but seem “a flyer,” when in after-life he meets horses, however good, that have neither been bred nor trained for the purpose of galloping a single mile at the rate of an express train. While these are at speed he is only cantering, and we need not therefore be surprised that he can keep cantering on after they are reduced to a walk.
In the hunting-field, “what kills is the pace.” When hounds can make it good enough they kill their fox, when horses cannot it kills them, and for this reason alone, if for no other, I would always prefer that my hunters should be quite thorough-bred.
Though undoubtedly the best, I cannot affirm, however, that they are always the pleasantest mounts; far from it, indeed, just at first, though subsequent superiority makes amends for the little eccentricities of gait and temper peculiar to pupils from the racing-stable in their early youth.