The Native Horse Is Rather Small, But Very Wiry And Wild.
I was once
compelled, through sickness, to make a journey of ninety-seven miles,
being in the saddle for seventeen consecutive hours, and yet my poor
horse was unable to get one mouthful of food on the journey, and the
saddle was not taken off his back for a moment.
He was very wild, yet
one evening between five and eight o'clock, he bore me safely a
distance of thirty-six miles, and returned the same distance with me
on the following morning. He had not eaten or drunk anything during
the night, for the locusts had devoured all pasturage and no rain had
fallen for a space of five months.
The horse is not indigenous to America, although Darwin tells us that
South America had a native horse, which lived and disappeared ages
ago. Spanish history informs us that they were first landed in Buenos
Ayres in 1537. We are further told that the Indians flew away in
terror at the sight of a man on horseback, which they took to be one
animal of a strange, two-headed shape. When the colony was for a time
deserted these horses were suffered to run wild. Those animals so
multiplied and spread over such a vast area that they were found,
forty-three years later, even down to the Straits of Magellan, a
distance of eleven hundred miles. With good pasture and a limitless
expanse to roam over, they soon turned from the dozens to thousands,
and may now be counted by millions.
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