Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

full length to eat his supper that night, he | making a light lunch, one in particular-a would say to himself" What fools these men cute fellow in his way-resting his nose-bag are! They quarrel and fight, waste their on his companion's back. Here are 'bus corn, sweat and grow thin, break their knees, horses "drawing lots;" and here is a horse and lose their wind, all for nothing. A few in a gig, a tall horse, stepping out bravely; years, and the quarrel will be all over: nothing and here is a horse in a cabriolet, a horse gained on either side but a heavy debt to pay. such as young Bailey drove -a horse of disI swear by my dam, they are worse than tinguished family, who had Capricorn for his asses!" The famous dapple grey La Noble, nephew, and Cauliflower for his brother, and who bore the Count d'Artois-afterwards showed himself worthy of his high relations Charles X.-into Paris (1814), subsequently by champing at the bit until his breast was carried the Dukes of Berri and Angouleme. white with foam, and rearing like a horse in The horse that was ridden by Napoleon into heraldry. Here is a pony in a butcher's cart Paris, by torchlight, at the beginning of the -a pony not much bigger than a Newfoundhundred days, was the identical same horse land dog, but with so much go in him that it that brought in the Bourbon prince a little dazzles you to look at his legs; and here is a while afterwards; therefore, you see, horses poor broken hack in the shafts of a miserable are exceedingly like courtiers, and very much | tumbril—a dust cart pacing along more slowly at the service of the reigning dynasty. Mr. than the long-tailed prancers, black and sleek, Thomas Carlyle makes the horse say, in his with feathers in their heads and velvet housings, appeal to man, “Am I not a horse and a half that are bearing a load of human dust to the brother?" (an asinine compliment to us, I great dust contractors' yard-the cemetery. suppose). But the fact is, the horse is our equal-I say so. Graminivorous quadruped! omnivorous biped! Which shall claim priority? Gulliver could not tolerate his own race, after a residence with the horses-no, I should think not!

Horses. I look out of my window and they walk past, trot past, gallop past; horses of all breeds and no breed, all colours and no colour, with splendid action and with none at all, horses that are three parts corn and the other blood, and horses that a friend of mine describes as having three legs and a swinger. Here is a horse that might win favourable notice in the fashionable parks; and here is another fit only for a galloping snob to ride; here is a Hansom cab horse, with all the go in him of a high-mettled racer, and here is another that looks as if it would tumble down if you took it out of the shafts. There is a brewer's dray with a team of such sleek and big horses that one sings apropos―

I wish I was a brewer's horse,

If only for half a year;

I would put my head where my tail should be,
And drink up all the beer!

Horses are vegetarians, but not teetotallers; they like a bowl of ale, and don't snort at a bottle of good old wine. There is a coal waggou unloading, and the big horses are

Horses. Here are the high-mettled racers, their pedigrees well known, their powers heavily wagered, their portraits in the print shops. It might be proper for an episcopal satirist (Bishop Hall) to ask

"Dost thou prize The brute beasts' worth by their dams' qualities ?" The Arabians are reYes, is the answer. markably particular about a horse's family, and the sire of Flying Childers was an Arabian steed with a pedigree a good deal older See them than the Duke of Devonshire's. flying over the course-see them as they are coming in neck and neck, leaving the ruck far behind, the horses surely care as much about it as the men, perhaps enjoy it more, for as old Burton has it, they gallop many gentlemen quite out of their fortunes. "Up, and let us follow the chase." The scarlet coats are gathering :

In yellow leaved autumn, the haze of the moon
Gave promise of rapture to come;

The melody woke in the sound of the horn
As we cheered the old fox from his home.

The breeze and the shout met the sun's early beam,
With the village response in full play;
All vigour my steed leapt the fence and the stream,
And was foremost at dawn of the day.

“All vigour,” that is what you expect and what

you find in a good hunter, ay and steadiness so gentle and so steady that they will take a lady over a fence as easily as though she were sitting in an easy chair at home.

Horses. Look at soldiers' horses, how well they know the bugle calls, and how promptly they obey! What pluck there is in them, c 'snuffing the battle afar off!" I read somewhere that the Tyrolese in one of their insurrections took fifteen Bavarian horses, then mounted them with as many of their men; but in a rencontre with a squadron of the regiment of Bubenhoven, when these horses heard the trumpet and recognised the uniform of the regiments, they set off at full gallop and carried their riders in spite of all their efforts into the Bavarian ranks, where they were made prisoners.

Education develops the power of the horse. Solomon says, A whip for the horse; "but Rarey says quite different. His plan was gentleness, and that wins!

lt is astonishing what an educated horse can do. Very likely you have seen some horseriding, I mean in the ring; white horses that seem to be ornamented with black wafers, cream coloured steeds with long manes, horses of all sorts that look unlike all other horses, and "play fantastic tricks ” in an atmosphere of orange peel and sawdust-what is it they cannot be taught to do? Act! they act a good deal better than the majority of bipeds; when the quadrupeds held their own at Astley's I saw Richard III. beautifully mounted, and on the mimic field of Bosworth, horses shammed to die and lay as still as death with all the fighting round them. Bless you, a well-trained horse never misses his tip or goes loose in his ponging. Pay your ochre safely at the doors if a horse is on the boards or in the circusthey are all right, always.

And now I think I have said enongh about horses to introduce the real subject of my letter. Sir-sirs-We are gcing to devour the horse-to take him from the stable and to fatten him for table and to serve his noble joints as we serve the flesh of beeves-yes, sir, we are to have horses dead and in their gravies to say grace over-is this English? I pause for no reply, but answer emphatically, no! It is an over-the-water idea, it has come from France. A long while ago-you may

The

find the story in most of the old joke-books-
a Frenchman was in London; when he re-
turned home to "the centre of civilisation"
he reported how cheaply he had fared.
butcher, he said, came round every morning
calling "caws' meat," and providing you
with sufficient flesh food for one ha'penny to
serve both for dinner and supper. He liked
the flavour; he discovered what it was; the
tradition of his experience extended far and
wide; the French, as the result, are becoming
a nation of horse-eaters, and they are going
to send culinary missionaries here to make
us eat it too. Of course, I am aware, every-
body is aware, that horse in disguise has been
eaten. Well do I remember the affecting
lines of a seaman to his rations :-

Old horse, old horse, what brought you here,
From Carisbrook to Portland pier?
I've carted stones this many a year;
Till killed by blows and sore abuse,
They salted me down for sailors' use.
The sailors they do me despise,

They turn me over, they swear at my eyes,
Cut off my meat and pick my bones,

Then chuck 'em away to Davy Jones. But this was a practice on the quiet, the trick of contractors; not so the scheme of France. They go in for horse flesh as the flesh of horse; they make the gravy out of horse shoes! They propose that we should follow their example. Why? Because our strength is beef. The roast beef of old England has been our mainstay; we have fought our battles upon it, and the French are aware of this; it is a coup d'etat, an ambitious stroke of policy from the kitchen, from the Tuileries; but such vaulting ambition will o'erleap the saddle and fall on t'other side! Firstly, I protest against horse-flesh as diet because it is likely to upset our constitution; and secondly, because I love the horse too well to eat him. Eat my horse! O Centaurs, shall I eat myself? O Sagittarius, would the horse eat me?

1 enter my protest. I procure a steaming glass of whisky and water from the White Horse cellar, hot, strong, and sweet, I gradually elevate it, previous to elevating myself, and I propose the sentiment, Go it, old hoss!

After which I subscribe myself as

Yours faithfully,

THE ODD BOY.

.

[graphic][merged small]

YE

LIFE ON THE INDIAN FRONTIER,

CHAPTER III.

MR. KEEGER.

BY A BACKWOODSMAN.

EARS had passed since the first establishment of my settlement, but it was still the greatest rarity to see a strange white face among us; and though I visited the nearest town more frequently than at the outset, it led to no settled intercourse.

Hence I was greatly surprised one morning when the sentry came into my house and informed me that a white man was riding alone along the river, mounted on a mule, which is the most unsuitable of animals in the Indian country. I ran with a telescope to the turret at the south-east end of the fort, and not only found the watchman's statement confirmed, but also that the man had not even a weapon; unless it was hidden in two enormous packs which dangled on each side of his mule. The rider drew nearer, at one moment emerging on the ridges, and then disappearing again in the hollows. At length our growing curiosity was satisfied, and a white man, a German, saluted us with an innocently calm smile. On my asking how he had come here alone and unarmed, he said cheerfully:-" Well, from the settlement. I was able to find your mulctrack quite easily. Mr. Jones accompanied me for a whole day, and during the last four I have seen nobody." It soon came out that his name was Kreger, and that he was a botanist who had come to examine the Flora about us, which had not yet been collected. For this purpose he brought with him two enormous bundles of blotting-paper, which hung on his Lizzy-so he called his gallant charger-and, like woolbags in a battery, might have protected him against Indian arrows, if he had had any missiles to reply with; but he only had a pistol in his trousers' pocket, which would not go off, in spite of all the experiments we made with it. Everybody had warned him of the danger to which he exposed himself on his journey to me; and the last pioneer he passed, a Mr. Jones, had tried to keep him back by force, but he had

merely laughed, and declared that an Indian could not touch him on his Lizzy.

There are men who wantonly rush into perils because danger has something attractive for them, and who seek them in order to have an opportunity of expending the energy they feel within them; there are others who incur danger in order to display themselves to the world as heroes, though their courage is not very genuine; lastly, there are men who expose themselves calmly and delightedly to great dangers, because they are entirely ignorant of them, and cannot be persuaded of their existence till they are surprised and destroyed by them. Such a man was our new acquaintance, Mr. Kreger; we all tried to make him understand how madly he had behaved, and that it was only by a miracle he had escaped the notice of the Redskins, which must have entailed his inevitable death, during his long solitary journey to us, and while sleeping at night by a large fire. He merely smiled at it all, and said that it could not be quite so bad, while making repeated applications to his snuffbox. As regarded his intentions of making his excursions from my house, I told him it was impossible; because when I went out hunting I did not waste my time over plants, and he, as no sportsman, would be a nuisance to me; on the other hand, we could not think of letting him wander about alone, the danger of which I confirmed by telling him various adventures of mine. For all this, I received him hospitably; gave him a place to sleep in, and a seat at table; showed him where to find corn for Lizzy, where he could wash his sheets —in a word, made him as comfortable as lay in my power.

I had long intended to explore more distant countries than those I had visited during my sporting excursions, especially the continuation of our plateaux to the north, and had made my arrangements for this tour, when Mr. Kreger surprised us by his advent. On the day after his arrival we took a walk round the fort and the garden, during which he broke off the conversation every moment, and plucked some

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »