A sight scarcely less interesting than the deer was afforded by a white pony mare, with her young stock—consisting of a foal still sucking, a yearling, and a two-year-old—which we met in a valley of the Barle. The two-year-old had strayed away feeding, until alarmed by the cracking of our whips and the neighing of its dam, when it came galloping down a steep combe, neighing loudly, at headlong speed. It is thus these ponies learn their action and sure-footedness.
It was a district such as we had traversed—entirely wild, without inclosures, or roads, or fences—that came into the hands of the father of the present proprietor. He built a fence of forty miles around it, made roads, reclaimed a farm for his own use at Simon’s Bath, introduced Highland cattle on the hills, and set up a considerable stud for improving the indigenous race of ponies, and for rearing full-sized horses. These improvements, on which some three hundred thousand pounds were sunk, were not profitable; and it is very doubtful whether any considerable improvements could have been prosecuted successfully, if railways had not brought better markets within reach of the district.
Coming from a part of the country where ponies are the perquisites of old ladies and little children, and where the nearer a well-shaped horse can be got to sixteen hands the better, the first feeling on mounting a rough little unkemped brute, fresh from the moor, barely twelve hands (four feet) in height, was intensely ridiculous. It seemed as if the slightest mistake would send the rider clean over the animal’s head. But we learned soon that the indigenous pony, in certain useful qualities, is not to be surpassed by animals of greater size and pretensions.
From the Grange to Simon’s Bath (about three miles), the road, which runs through the heart of Exmoor proper, was constructed, with all the other roads in this vast extra-parochial estate, by the father of the present proprietor, F. Knight, Esq., of Wolverly House, Worcestershire, M.P. for East Worcestershire (Parliamentary Secretary of the Poor Law Board, under Lord Derby’s Government). In the course of a considerable part of the route, the contrast of wild moorland and high cultivation may be found only divided by the carriage-way.
At length, descending a steep hill, we came in sight of a view—of which Exmoor and its kindred district in North Devon affords many—a deep gorge, at whose precipitous base a trout-stream rolled along, gurgling and plashing, and winding round huge masses of white spar. The far bank sometimes extended out into natural meadows, where red cattle and wild ponies grazed, and sometimes rose precipitously. At one point, where both banks were equally steep and lofty, the far side was covered by a plantation with a cover of under-wood; but no trees of sufficient magnitude to deserve the name of a wood. This is a spot famous in the annals of a grand sport that soon will be among things of the past—Wild Stag Hunting. In this wood more than once the red monarch of Exmoor has been roused, and bounded over the rolling plains beyond, amid the shouts of excited hunters and the deep cry of the hounds, as with a burring scent they dashed up the steep breast of the hill.
But there was no defiant stag there that day; so on we trotted on our shaggy sure-footed nags, beneath a burning sun—a sun that sparkled on the flowing waters as they gleamed between far distant hills, and threw a golden glow upon the fading tints of foliage and herbage, and cast deep shadows from the white overhanging rocks.
Next we came to the deep pool that gives the name to Simon’s Bath, where some unhappy man of that name, in times when deer were more plentiful than sheep, drowned himself for love, or in madness, or both—long before roads, farms, turnip crops, a school, and a church were dreamed of on Exmoor. Here fences give signs of habitation and cultivation. A rude, ancient bridge, with two arches of different curves, covered with turf, without side battlements or rails, stretches across the stream, and leads to a small house built for his own occupation by the father of Mr. Knight, pending the completion of a mansion of which the unfinished walls of one wing rise like a dismantled castle from the midst of a grove of trees and ornamented shrubs.
A series of gentle declivities, plantations, a winding, full-flowing stream, seem only to require a suitable edifice and the hand of an artist gardener to make, at comparatively trifling expense, an abode unequalled in luxuriant and romantic beauty. We crossed the stream—not by the narrow bridge, but by the ford; and, passing through the straggling stone village of Simon’s Bath, arrived in sight of the field where the Tattersall of the West was to sell the wild and tame horse stock bred on the moors. It was a field of some ten acres and a half, forming a very steep slope, with the upper path comparatively flat, the sloping side broken by a stone quarry, and dotted over with huge blocks of granite. At its base flowed an arm of the stream we had found margining our route. A substantial, but, as the event proved, not sufficiently high stone fence bounded the whole field. On the upper part, a sort of double pound, united by a narrow neck, with a gate at each end, had been constructed of rails, upwards of five feet in height. Into the first of these pounds, by ingenious management, all the ponies, wild and tame, had been driven. When the sale commenced, it was the duty of the herdsmen to separate two at a time, and drive them through the narrow neck into the pound before the auctioneer. Around a crowd of spectators of every degree were clustered—‘squires and clergymen, horse-dealers and farmers, from Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, as well as South Devon, and the immediate neighbourhood.
These ponies are the result of crosses made years ago with Arab, Dongola, and thorough-bred stallions, on the indigenous race of Exmoors, since carefully culled from year to year for the purpose of securing the utmost amount of perfection among the stallions and mares reserved for breeding purposes. The real Exmoor seldom exceeds twelve hands; has a well-shaped head, with very small ears; but the thick round shoulder peculiar to all breeds of wild horses, which seem specially adapted for inclemencies of the weather; indeed, the whole body is round, compact, and well ribbed. The Exmoor has very good quarters and powerful hocks; legs straight, flat, and clean; the muscles well developed by early racing up and down steep mountain sides while following their dams. In about forty lots the prevailing colours were bay, brown, and gray; chestnuts and blacks were less frequent, and not in favour with the country people, many of whom seemed to consider that the indigenous race had been deteriorated by the sedulous efforts made and making to improve it—an opinion which we could not share after examining some of the best specimens, in which a clean blood-like head and increased size seemed to have been given, without any diminution of the enduring qualities of the Exmoor.
The sale was great fun. Perched on convenient rails, we had the whole scene before us. The auctioneer rather hoarse and quite matter-of-fact; the ponies wildly rushing about the first enclosure, were with difficulty separated into pairs to be driven in the sale section; when fairly hemmed in through the open gate, they dashed and made a sort of circus circuit, with mane and tail erect, in a style that would draw great applause at Astley’s. Then there was the difficulty of deciding whether the figures marked in white on the animal’s hind-quarters were 8 or 3 or 5. Instead of the regular trot up and down of Tattersall’s, a whisk of a cap was sufficient to produce a tremendous caper. A very pretty exhibition was made by a little mare, with a late foal about the size of a setter dog.[228-*]