My First Ride Was An Amusing One, For Various Reasons.
My riding-habit was
left at Toronto, but this seemed not to be a difficulty.
Mrs. Forrest's
fashionable habit and white gauntlet-gloves fitted me beautifully; and the
difficulty about a hat was at once overcome by sending to an obliging
neighbour, who politely sent a very stylish-looking plumed riding-hat.
There was a side-saddle and a most elegant bridle; indeed, the whole
equipment would not have disgraced Rotten Row. But, the horse! My
courage had to be "screwed to the sticking point" before I could mount
him. He was a very fine animal - a magnificent coal-black charger sixteen
hands high, with a most determined will of his own, not broken for the
saddle. Mr. Forrest rode a splendid bay, which seldom went over six
consecutive yards of ground without performing some erratic movement. My
horse's paces were, a tremendous trot, breaking sometimes into a furious
gallop, in both which he acted in a perfectly independent manner, any
attempts of mine to control him with my whole strength and weight being
alike useless. We came to the top of a precipice overlooking the river,
where his gyrations were so fearful that I turned him into the bush. It
appeared to me a ride of imminent dangers and hair-breadth escapes. By
this beauteous river we came to a place where rain and flood had worn the
precipice into a steep declivity, shelving towards another precipice, and
my horse, accustomed to it, took me down where an English donkey would
scarcely have ventured. Beauty might be written upon everything in this
dell. I never saw a fairer compound of rock, wood, and water. Above was
flat and comparatively uninteresting country; then these precipices, with
trees growing out wherever they could find a footing, arrayed in all the
gorgeous colouring of the American fall. At the foot of these was a
narrow, bright-green savannah, with fine trees growing upon it, as though
planted by some one anxious to produce a park-like effect. Above this, the
dell contracted to the width of Dovedale, and through it all, the river,
sometimes a foaming, brawling stream, at others fringed with flowers, and
quiescent in deep, clear pools, pours down to the lake. After galloping
upon this savannah we plunged into the river, and, after our horses had
broken through a plank-bridge at the great risk of their legs, we rode for
many miles through bush and clearing, down sandy tracks and scratching
thickets, to the pebbly beach of Lake Ontario.
The contrast between the horses and their equipments, and the country we
rode through, was somewhat singular. The former were suitable for Hyde
Park; the latter was mere bush-riding - climbing down precipices, fording
rapid rivers, scrambling through fences and over timber, floundering in
mud, going through the bush with hands before us to push the branches from
our faces, and, finally, watering our horses in the blue, deep waters of
Lake Ontario - yet I never enjoyed a ride along the green lanes of England
so much as this one in the wild scenery of Canada.
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