The sale over, a most amusing scene ensued: every man who had bought a pony wanted to catch it. In order to clear the way, each lot, as sold, as wild and nearly as active as deer, had been turned into the field. A joint-stock company of pony-catchers, headed by the champion wrestler of the district—a hawk-nosed, fresh-complexioned, rustic Don Juan—stood ready to be hired, at the moderate rate of sixpence per pony caught and delivered. One carried a bundle of new halters; the others, warmed by a liberal distribution of beer, seemed as much inspired by the fun as the sixpence. When the word was given, the first step was to drive a herd into the lowest corner of the field in as compact a mass as possible. The bay, gray, or chestnut, from that hour doomed to perpetual slavery and exile from his native hills, was pointed out by the nervous anxious purchaser. Three wiry fellows crept cat-like among the mob, sheltering behind some tame cart-horses; on a mutual signal they rushed on the devoted animal; two—one bearing a halter—strove to fling each one arm round its neck, and with one hand to grasp its nostrils—while the insidious third, clinging to the flowing tail; tried to throw the poor quadruped off its balance. Often they were baffled in the first effort, for with one wild spring the pony would clear the whole lot, and flying with streaming mane and tail across the brook up the field, leave the whole work to be recommenced. Sometimes when the feat was cleverly performed, pony and pony-catchers were to be seen all rolling on the ground together; the pony yelling, snorting, and fighting with his fore feet, the men clinging on like the Lapithæ and the Centaurs, and how escaping crushed ribs or broken legs it is impossible to imagine. On one occasion a fine brown stallion dashed away, with two plucky fellows hanging on to his mane: rearing, plunging, fighting with his fore feet, away he bounded down a declivity among the huge rocks, amid the encouraging cheers of the spectators: for a moment the contest was doubtful, so tough were the sinews, and so determined the grip of Davy, the champion; but the steep bank of the brook, down which the brown stallion recklessly plunged, was too much for human efforts (in a moment they all went together into the brook), but the pony, up first, leaped the opposite bank and galloped away, whinnying in short-lived triumph.
After a series of such contests, well worth the study of artists not content with pale copies from marbles or casts, the difficulty of haltering these snorting steeds—equal in spirit and probably in size to those which drew the car of Boadicea—was diminished by all those uncaught being driven back to the pound; and there, not without furious battles, one by one enslaved.
Yet even when haltered, the conquest was by no means concluded. Some refused to stir, others started off at such a pace as speedily brought the holder of the halter on his nose. One respectable old gentleman, in gray stockings and knee-breeches, lost his animal in much less time than it took him to extract the sixpence from his knotted purse.
Yet in all these fights there was little display of vice; it was pure fright on the part of the ponies that made them struggle so. A few days’ confinement in a shed, a few carrots, with a little salt, and gentle treatment, reduces the wildest of the three-year-olds to docility. When older they are more difficult to manage. It was a pretty sight to view them led away, splashing through the brook—conquered, but not yet subdued.
In the course of the evening a little chestnut stallion, twelve hands, or four feet in height, jumped, at a standing jump, over the bars out of a pound upward of five feet from the ground, only just touching the top rail with his hind feet.
We had hoped to have a day’s wild stag hunting, but the hounds were out on the other side of the country. However, we had a few runs with a scratch pack of harriers after stout moorland hares. The dandy school, who revel in descriptions of coats and waistcoats, boots and breeches, and who pretend that there is no sport without an outfit which is only within the reach of a man with ten thousand a year, would no doubt have been extremely disgusted with the whole affair. We rose at five o’clock in the morning and hunted puss up to her form (instead of paying a shilling to a boy to turn her out) with six couples, giving tongue most melodiously. Viewing her away we rattled across the crispy brown moor, and splattered through bogs with a loose rein, in lunatic enjoyment, until we checked at the edge of a deep “combe.” Then—when the old yellow Southerner challenged, and our young host cheered him with “Hark to Reveller, hark!”—to hear the challenge and the cheer re-echoed again from the opposite cliff; and—as the little pack in full cry again took up the running, and scaled the steep ascent—to see our young huntsman, bred in these hills, go rattling down the valleys, and to follow by instinct, under a vague idea, not unmixed with nervous apprehensions of the consequences of a slip, that what one could do two could, was vastly exciting, and amusing, and, in a word, decidedly jolly. So with many facts, some new ideas, and a fine stock of health from a week of open air, I bade farewell to my hospitable hosts and to romantic Exmoor.
[228-*] According to tradition, the Exmoor ponies are descended from horses brought from the East by the Phœnicians, who traded there with Cornwall for metals.