There is, however, an important public aspect to this question of improving and maintaining the breed of horses. Without good horses for cavalry the efficiency of an army is very much crippled. When our Civil War broke out horseback riding in the North had as an exercise for pleasure been generally given up, and nine-tenths of the men who went into the service on the Union side could not ride. On the other hand, at least seven-tenths of those who went into the Confederate army could ride. Moreover, the North had a scant supply of horses fit for cavalry, while in many States of the South such animals were abundant. Here we had on one side the material for a quickly-made cavalry, and on the other side practically no material either in horses or men for such a branch of the army. Critics of the war attribute the early successes of the South to the superiority of the cavalry. The Northern side was obliged to wait for nearly two years before that arm of the service was equal to that of the South. Thus, this distressful war was probably continued for more than a year longer than it would have been had the two sides in the beginning been equally supplied with riders and riding horses. And in the Japanese-Russian War, now in progress, the Japanese are hampered dreadfully by their lack of cavalry. They have beaten the Russians time and again only to let the Russians get away because of the Japanese inability, from lack of horses and horsemen, to cut off the line of retreat. It is a most distressingly expensive thing to be without horses in time of war; unless proper horses are abundant in time of peace, and the people who own them use them under the saddle, when war comes there is a scarcity of men who know how to ride. Good material for cavalry in horses and men is an excellent national investment.
In addition to my chapters on the breeding of various types I have added several others on the keeping, handling and using of horses so that if an owner have only this one book, he may be able to have at least a little useful information of many sorts and kinds.
THE HORSE IN AMERICA
CHAPTER ONE
PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HORSES
The paleontologists tell us that the rocks abound with fossils which show that Equidæ were numerous all over America in the Eocene period. These were the ancestors of the horse that was first domesticated, and though there were millions of them on the Continent of North America in the period mentioned there were no horses here at all when Columbus made his great discovery, and the first explorers came to find out what this new India was like. The remains of the prehistoric horse, when first found, baffled the naturalists, and he was called by Richard Owen Hyracotherium or Hyrax-like-Beast. The first fossils discovered showed that the horse was millions and millions of years ago under twenty-four inches in stature, with a spreading foot and five toes. In his development from this beginning the horse furnishes one of the most interesting examples of evolution. When he had five toes he lived in low-lying, marshy land and the toes were needed so that he could get about. He had a short neck and short jaws, as longer were not needed to enable him to feed on the easily reached herbage. As the earth became harder, the waters receding, his neck and jaws lengthened, as it was necessary for him to reach further to crop the less luxuriant and shorter grasses. He lost, also one toe after another so that he might travel faster and so escape his enemies. These toes, of course, did not disappear all at once, but grew shorter, until they hung above the ground. The “splint bones” on a horse’s legs are the remains of two of these once indispensable toes, while the hoof is the nail of the last remaining toe.
As the neck of the horse grew longer and two toes had been dropped, the legs lengthened and by the time he became what the scientists call a “Neohipparion” he was about three feet high, and his skeleton bore a very striking resemblance to that of the horse of to-day. The teeth also changed with the rest of the animal. In the earliest specimens discovered the teeth were short crowned and covered with low, rounded knobs, similar to the teeth of other omnivorous animals, such as monkeys and hogs, and were quite different from the grinders of the modern animal. When the marshy lands of the too-well watered earth had changed into grassy plains the teeth of the horse also changed from short crowned to long crowned, so that they could clip the shorter and dryer grasses and grind them up by thorough mastication into the nutritious food required for the animal’s well being.
Indeed, the whole history of the evolution of the horse by natural selection is a complete illustration of adaptation to environment. Even to-day in the Falkland Islands, where the whole surface is soft, mossy bogland, the horses’ feet grow to over twelve inches in length, and curl up so that frequently they can hardly walk upon them. Where we use horses on hard, artificial roads it is necessary to have this toe-nail or hoof pared, and protected by shoes.
Where the horse was first domesticated is a matter of dispute upon which historians are not at all agreed. Some say it was in Egypt, some select Armenia, and some content themselves with the general statement that horses were indigenous in Western and Central Asia. It would be interesting to go into this discussion were it not that it would delay us too long from the subject in hand. At first they were used only in war and for sport, the camel being used for journeys and transportation, and the ox for agriculture. Indeed, I fancy the horse was never used to the plough until in the tenth century in Europe. The sculptures of ancient Greece and contemporaneous civilizations give us the best idea obtainable of what manner of animal the horse was in the periods when those sculptures were made. Mr. Edward L. Anderson, one of the most careful students of the horse and his history, says: “Whether Western Asia is or is not the home of the horse, he was doubtless domesticated there in very early times, and it was from Syria that the Egyptians received their horses through their Bedouin conquerors. The horses of the Babylonians probably came from Persia, and the original source of all these may have been Central Asia, from which last-named region the animal also passed into Europe, if the horse were not indigenous to some of the countries in which history finds it. We learn that Sargon I. (3800 B.C.) rode in his chariot more than two thousand years before there is an exhibition of the horse in the Egyptian sculptures or proof of its existence in Syria, and his kingdom of Akkad bordered upon Persia, giving a strong presumption that the desert horse came from the last-named region through Babylonian hands. It seems after an examination of the representations on the monuments, that the Eastern horse has changed but little during thousands of years. Taking a copy of one of the sculptures of the palace of Ashur-bani-pal, supposed to have been executed about the middle of the seventh century before our era, and assuming that the bareheaded men were 5 feet 8 inches in height, I found that the horses would stand about 14½ hands—very near the normal size of the desert horse of our day. The horses of ancient Greece must have been starvelings from some Northern clime, for the animals on the Parthenon frieze are but a trifle over 12 hands in height, and are the prototypes of the Norwegian Fiord pony—a fixed type of a very valuable small horse.”
The British horse is as old as history. He was short in stature and heavy of build. New blood was infused by both the Romans and the Normans, and when larger horses were needed to carry heavily-armored knights, Flemish horses were introduced both for use and breeding, so that by the time the Oriental blood was introduced they had in England many pretty large horses, resembling somewhat the Cleveland Bay of the present time, though not so tall by three or four inches, and not so well finished. The horses that were first brought to America by the English were such as I have suggested. But the first horses brought hither were not English, but Spanish, and these were undoubtedly of Oriental blood as were the horses generally in Spain after the Moslem occupation. But when the Spanish first came there were no horses, as has been said before, in either North or South America. Columbus in his second voyage brought horses with him to Santo Domingo. But Cortez, when he landed in 1519 in what is now Mexico, was the first to bring horses to the mainland. They were the wonder of the Indians who believed that they were fabulous creatures from the sun. The wild horses of Mexico and Peru were no doubt descended from the escaped war horses of the Spanish soldiers slain in battle. These escaped horses reproduced rapidly, and the plains became populous with them. So, also, with the horses abandoned by De Soto, who returned from his Mississippi expedition in boats leaving his horses behind. Professor Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History, has recently been conducting explorations in Mexico, studying the wild horses there, and his conclusions are proof of the accuracy of the surmises which have been made by the historians of the early Spanish adventurers.
Flanders horses were brought to New York in 1625 and English horses to Massachusetts in 1629. Previous to these importations, however, English horses had been landed in Virginia, and in 1647 the first French horses reached Canada, being landed at the still very quaint village of Tadousac. Indeed, during all the colonial times there were many importations as well as much breeding, for on horseback was the only way a journey could be taken, except by foot or in a canoe. They needed good serviceable horses, and they obtained them both by importation and breeding. I suspect that the general run of horses in the Colonial era in New England and along the Atlantic seaboard was very similar to the horse that is now to be found in the province of Quebec, Canada. Every one who has visited this province knows that these habitant horses are very serviceable and handy, besides being quite fast enough for a country where the roads have not been made first class. Harnessed to a calash, an ancient, two-wheeled, French carriage, they take great journeys with much satisfaction to their drivers and small discomfort to themselves. Then the Colonists had the Narragansett pacer, a horse highly esteemed not only for speed but for the amble which made his slow gait most excellent for long journeys. When Silas Deane was the colleague of Benjamin Franklin at the French Court during the Revolutionary War, he proposed getting over from Rhode Island one of these pacers as a present for the queen. Indeed, there are those who maintain stoutly that the virtues of the American trotter as well as the American saddle-horse came from these pacers. That may be the case so far as the trotters are concerned, for of the horses bred to trot fast, as we shall presently see, more are pacers than trotters. As a matter of fact, however, Barbs are apt to pace, and these Narragansetts may have had such an origin. In the blood of all our horse types there is some proportion of Barb blood, and we find pacers among all except Thoroughbreds. I am sure I never saw a Thoroughbred that paced, or heard of one.