It is said that a foal is able to keep with the travelling herd from the day of birth. It is said that the foal will outlast a hard day's journey—and dies afterwards. To what extent this may be true I have no means of knowing, but I believe that the leggy foal does keep up with a moving herd. It is one more bit of evidence as to the desperate emergencies of drought or storm survived by the ancient herds.
IV. SELF-DEFENCE.
Self-defence
There is a general belief among horse that man is vicious. If he were a little more intelligent we could explain to the horse that appearances are deceptive, and that we are not really vicious when we throw things at each other such as shells, torpedoes and bombs, or lay mines to blow each other to pieces on land or sea. As it is, he bases his belief that we are vicious upon our methods of dealing with him, in the use for example, of bearing reins, of branding irons, and instruments which dock tails.
My own impression, after many years of experience with both, is that man, and especially civilised man, is much more ferocious than the horse. May I venture then to quote the wisdom of a gentle Bengali Baboo who wrote an essay as follows:
"The horse is a highly intelligent animal, and, if you treat him kindly, he will not do so."
The discovery was made in Arabia, also in Kentucky, in Ireland and elsewhere, that if a foal is handled as a pet, and so brought up that he remembers nothing but kindness and constant care at the hands of men, it never occurs to him that he needs to defend himself from his master as from an enemy. He never develops the arts of self-defence. As a colt he learns that to get at his feed he must jump over a stick on the ground. As he grows the stick is raised inch by inch until jumping over it becomes a part of his accomplishments in which he takes a natural pride and delight. So with the rest of his education. Horses can learn a great deal of the language we speak, to enjoy music, to select colours, to add up figures, to take a vivid interest in sport, to share with us the terror and glory of battle. They will set us an example in faithfulness, in self-sacrifice, and every finer trait of character.
But if we teach a young horse nothing but distrust, making fear and hatred the main traits of his character, it is the last outrage upon common sense to call his honest methods of self-defence by such a name as vice. We have the power to raise up angels or devils, but if we breed a horse to be a devil, we cannot expect the poor beast to behave himself like an angel.
Varieties of character
Horses vary in character almost as much as we do, and there are with them as with us a small proportion of born criminals whose warped or stunted brains cannot be trained aright by any means we know. What we do not and can never understand is the mysterious power of saints who charm wild men and beasts to tameness, and of certain horsemen to whom the worst outlaws are perfectly obedient.