From the earliest ages this noble animal has been the friend and companion of man. Prized for his beauty, loved for his docility, and valued for his strength, he has ever been regarded as the highest in value and importance of all domesticated animals. In the remotest ages, as far back as authentic history discloses anything of the life and pursuits of man, we find that the horse occupied a prominent position in his service. Painters have pictured on their canvas the majesty and grace of the spirited animal. Poets have celebrated his strength and beauty in their verses, and even inspired writers have introduced amongst their most glowing descriptions the horsemen and chariots which formed a chief feature in the pomp and magnificence of those early days.
In the most ancient hieroglyphs we find him present, and always so represented as to show that, even in the remote antiquity from which they date, he had been brought into complete and serviceable subjection. In the oldest Egyptian paintings the horse is seen only in the war chariot, and in the descriptions of the siege of Troy only the charioteer appears, from which it has been supposed that the first horses used by the Greeks were too small to be conveniently ridden. But in the lately-discovered paintings in the palace of Nimrod, at Nineveh, disinterred by Layard, and supposed to be more than three thousand years old, horsemen are exhibited both in the chase and war.
But further back than even those distant times, in the ages where authentic history merges into the shadowy light, amidst which myth and fable mingle with the real, we find this noble animal figuring, but then exalted into a semi-human sphere. The Centaurs, who inhabited the passes of Mts. Pelion and Ossa, and the great plains of Thessaly, in Upper Greece, were probably a race resembling in many respects the Tartars of this age, and are supposed to have been the first who brought the horse into subjection to man. They were fabled as being half horse and half man. They are represented as perfect horses in all respects below and behind the withers and the chest; there, at the insertion of the neck, began a human body, the hip-joints articulating into the shoulders of the lower animal, and the abdomen of the man passing gradually into the chest of the horse. Above this the human form was perfect, with the erect bearing, chest, shoulders, arms, neck and head of a complete man. They were reputed to be possessed of extraordinary mental as well as physical powers, and to be as superior to ordinary men in wisdom and art as they were in fleetness and strength. They were evidently a tribe of horsemen whom the ignorance and superstition of that early period elevated into a superior race, in the supposition that the horse and man were united in one. Everything points to them as being the first who succeeded in breaking and using the horse.
Coming down to the times of authentic history, we find the Parthians to have been amongst the most renowned for their skill in training and using the horse. Their feats of horsemanship in battle showed a complete mastery of the animal, which, in their battles with the Romans, rendered them so efficient as mounted archers.
Frequently, in ancient paintings, the mounted steed is represented without a bridle, and the Numidian cavalry are said to have guided and restrained their horses without it; an assertion by no means improbable, as a Comanche Indian of the present day will frequently jump on the back of a wild and untrained horse, and guide him by the simple expedient of covering with his hand the eye of the animal on the side opposite to that in which he wishes to direct it.
In modern times the horse has been so closely associated with man that he appears in every phase of society, and it is only when his numerous uses are considered that we realize how greatly the human family is his debtor. The knight of the days of chivalry would have been impossible but for the trusty steed which bore him so gallantly in the lists at the tourney, and amidst the deadlier strife of the battle. Before the plow and at the harrow he has multiplied the productions of the earth a hundred-fold beyond what human strength alone could have secured. Laboring before the loaded wagon, he has been a steady drudge for man. Harnessed to the elegant equipage or to the humbler “cab,” or bearing along the dusty highway the stage-coach of the traveler, he has performed a thousand offices indispensable to human comfort and advancement. It is not too much to claim for him that civilization itself would have been shorn of something of its present fair proportions but for the valuable services rendered by this noble animal.
Yet, with all his acknowledged value, the horse has been too frequently the victim of neglect and cruelty; often ill-fed, poorly sheltered, and harshly treated, till, in many cases, the innate nobleness of his nature has been obscured by vicious habits, contracted through the mismanagement or abuse to which he has been subjected, and perpetuated by ignorance and prejudice. Naturally, the horse is usually gentle and confiding; he is quick to perceive, and possesses an excellent memory, which qualities render him capable of being educated easily, and to an extent far greater than is generally supposed. Added to this, he is capable of deep and lasting attachment.
What the horse may have been in his natural state is not known, as none at present exist in that condition. The horses which at the present day are found in a wild state in Northern Asia and America, are known to be the descendants of individuals formerly domesticated. On the prairies of the West, the pampas of South America, and the plains of Tartary, they live in troops, roaming at large, without fixed place of abode, seeking the richest pasturages by day, and resting at night in dry and sheltered situations; these large troops, which have lived independently for many generations, entirely exempt from the influence of man, probably afford a tolerably correct idea of what the primeval animal was. They are generally smaller, yet stronger, than the domesticated animal, with rougher coats, stronger limbs, and larger heads. Even when adult, the wild horse is readily domesticated, and may be broken to any use without great difficulty, thus proving the natural gentleness and docility of his nature. They are captured by the lasso, bitted, mounted, and broken within an hour by the daring and skillful Gauchos.