Kitabı oku: «Small Horses in Warfare», sayfa 4
Ponies in Morocco
Mr. T. E. Cornwell, who has had twenty years' experience of travel and residence in Morocco, gives the ponies in common use in that country a high character as weight carriers and for endurance on scanty food; they are also very sure-footed. These horses he describes as Barbs, very hardy with thick shoulders; they average 14 hands 2 inches, rarely attaining a height of 15 hands. They generally receive a feed of rough straw in the morning and a ration of barley, from 6 to 7 lbs., at night; they are watered (when water can be obtained) once a day. Grass can be had at some seasons of the year, but the horses, being tethered during halts, cannot graze, and as the task of cutting grass would entail delay it is never used.
Mr. Cornwell, a 14 stone man, has ridden one of these ponies for thirty-two consecutive days, with only one day's rest, covering an average of thirty miles per day.
General Maclean, who for a long period was the "Kaid" or Commander-in-Chief of the Sultan's forces in Morocco, once tried the experiment of stabling his horses instead of picketing out in the open, which is the usual practice. The experiment did not answer, for on his next expedition every horse died; shelter for a period had no doubt rendered them susceptible to maladies brought on by exposure at night. These ponies could be purchased at a figure ranging from £8 to £11 per head. An export duty of £3 10s., which is levied on every horse sent out of Morocco, must be added to these rates by foreign purchasers.
Mr. Cornwell states that an infusion of English blood does nothing to improve these hardy Morocco ponies. Blood horses from England have been imported and crossed with the native mares, but the produce have always been leggy and less capable of continued hard work than the native breed.
Ponies in Eastern Asia
The pony commonly used in China is bred in the northern part of the country. According to a writer in Baily's Magazine, immense droves of ponies run on the plains three or four hundred miles from Pekin, and the breeders bring them down every year for sale in the more populous districts. They average about 13.1 in height, and though in very wretched condition when brought to market, pick up rapidly on good food. They are usually short and deep in the barrel, have good legs and feet, and fairly good shoulders. Speed is not to be expected from their conformation; but they can carry heavy weights, are of robust constitution and possess great endurance.
The Burmese ponies are smaller than the Chinese, averaging about 12 hands 2 inches, a thirteen-hand pony being considered a big one. They are generally sturdy little beasts with good shoulders, excellent bone and very strong in the back; sound, hardy and enduring, capable of doing much continuous hard work under a heavy weight on indifferent food. Like the Chinese ponies, they are somewhat slow, but they are marvellous jumpers.
Before the annexation of Upper Burma in 1885 the lower province was dependent upon the breeders of the Shan Hills and on the breeders in independent Burma for its ponies, as the export of stallions and mares was forbidden.
Since the annexation the Indian Government have sought to improve the native breed by the introduction of Arab pony stallions; the superior size and good looks of the "Indo-Burman," as the cross-bred is called, are, the writer understands, steadily leading to the disappearance of the pure Burmese. The half-bred Arab has much to recommend him over the pure Burmese pony in greater docility and speed; but these advantages appear to have been gained at some sacrifice of weight-carrying power and endurance.
Captain M. H. Hayes, in The Points of the Horse, states that the ponies of Sumatra, averaging about 12 hands 2 inches, are the strongest for their size he has ever seen. He describes them as "simply balls of muscle," and notes the beauty of their heads, which would seem to distinguish them as a breed from the ponies found on the mainland. The Corean pony is the smallest of Eastern breeds, but his extraordinary weight-carrying power makes him a marvel: averaging about ten hands in height and slight of build, he is nevertheless able to carry a full-grown man, on a saddle secured over a pile of rugs to atone for his small size, and to do a long day's work under a burden wholly disproportionate to his inches.
Ponies in Australia
The Australian "mail-man," or mounted postman, whose duty it is to distribute and collect letters at the remote and scattered "stations" far from railway centres, prefers small horses for his arduous work, which demands endurance and speed. Thus they are described by "Australian Native" in the Field of June 11, 1892: —
"The mail-man's riding horse is of an entirely different class [from the pack horse which carries the bags], and is probably best described as a 'big little' animal, or a symmetrical, typical English three-quarter bred hunter of 16 to 16.2 focused into 13.2 or 13.3, with slightly higher withers, which gives the appearance of a somewhat low back."
"Bearing in mind the character of mail-men's duty, it becomes evident that of necessity their horses must possess combined stamina, high courage and speed. The stamp described have these qualities in a marked degree, and, in addition, their natural paces of jog – not an amble – and daisy-cutting canter not only enable them to get over the ground with great ease to themselves but also to their riders. Moreover, these small animals are not readily knocked up, but when they do get stale and leg-weary through extra hard work on little food, a few days on good grass is sufficient for them to regain their vitality. In Australian parlance, they are 'cut-and-come-again customers,' and unlike big horses, which, when they knock up, knock up for an indefinitely long period.
"The smartest stock horses, those in use for drafting cattle, are also small, handy and well up to 12 stone, and as their prices are the same as mail-men's nags, from £4 to £8 per head, the evidence in favour of small horses for utilitarian purposes, and also on the score of economy, preponderates. Would such small animals, withal tough and wiry, be suitable for light cavalry?"
The answer to the concluding query is undoubtedly "Yes."
Ponies in America and Texas
The ponies of North-West America are famed for their powers of endurance, which are the more remarkable in view of their make and shape. These animals are without doubt the descendants of stock introduced by the Spaniards when they invaded Mexico early in the 16th century; the offspring of these Spanish horses in course of time spread over the whole continent.
Colonel Richard Irving Dodge remarks, in his work Our Wild Indians (1882), that the horses introduced by the Spaniards must have been very inferior in size, or the race has greatly degenerated; as compared with the American horse, the Indian pony is very small. As the subsequent observations of Colonel Dodge prove, these ponies, if they have lost size have lost absolutely nothing in working qualities; they have become adapted to their conditions of life and have probably gained in hardiness of constitution and endurance. He writes: —
"Averaging scarcely fourteen hands in height, the Indian pony is rather slight in build, though always having powerful fore-quarters, good legs, short, strong back, and full barrel. He has not the slightest appearance of 'blood,' though his sharp, nervous ears and bright, vicious eye indicate unusual intelligence and temper. But the amount of work he can do and the distance he can make in a specified (long) time put him fairly on a level with the Arabian or any other of the animal creation… Treated properly, the pony will wear out two American horses, but in the hands of the Indian he is so abused and neglected that an energetic cavalry officer will wear him out."
The North-West American Indian, though a marvellous horseman as a "trick rider," has apparently no idea whatever of saving his mount, whatever the distance he has to travel. According to Colonel Dodge, who has enjoyed many opportunities of informing himself on Indian usages, more especially as an enemy, he will gallop his pony till it drops from sheer exhaustion.
As showing what a good pony can do in the hands of a man who knows how to make the most of him, Colonel Dodge states that he once tried to buy an animal which pleased his eye, offering forty dollars for it; whereupon the owner replied that the price was six hundred dollars. Repeating the incident to someone who knew the pony, he was informed that the owner had not been actuated by any boastful spirit; that he had good reason for attaching a very high value to it. The man, it appeared, had been employed to carry the mail bags between Chehuahua and El Paso, nearly 300 miles apart, during a period of six months, when the roads were closed for ordinary travel by marauding bands of Apache Indians on the watch for white men.
He had to make the perilous journey once a week, and he performed it on the pony, riding all night for three successive nights, and hiding by day. The Indians, it may be added, are deterred by superstition from risking death by night; hence an additional good reason for the express rider's choice of time to travel. For six months the pony carried him between ninety and a hundred miles on three consecutive nights in each week; he went one week and returned the next in the same way. And Colonel Dodge adds that this tax upon his powers "had not diminished the fire and flesh of that pony."
Writing of the breed in another work, The Hunting Grounds of the Great West, Colonel Dodge observes that civilisation spoils this pony; accustomed on the ranche and prairie to pick up his own living when turned out after a long day's work in summer, and used to semi-starvation in winter, when stabled, shod, and fed on corn, his character undergoes a change. He either becomes morose, ill-tempered, hard to manage and dangerous, or he degenerates into a fat, lazy, short-winded cob, "only fit for a baby or an octogenarian." The latter change is the more usual. We can well understand that such would be the result.
Colonel Dodge has no doubt but that the Indian pony is identical with the Texan mustang or wild horse, concerning whose qualities we may take the evidence of a contributor to the Field. "C. E. H." writes, in an article on "A Texas Fair," published in 1891: —
"The native stock for endurance and soundness of constitution cannot be surpassed. We have owned many of these animals of from fourteen to fifteen hands, and never had an unsound one yet. They will carry one 70 miles a day without tiring; and we sold a horse aged 8 years ten years ago, which was lately disposed of for only £3 less than the sum we then received for him."
The horses raised on the plains of Uruguay, on the River Plate, have much in common with the mustang, but retain to a greater degree the characteristics of their remote Spanish ancestry in the small lean head and well-turned limbs. They are somewhat higher than the mustang, varying between 14 and 15 hands, seldom exceeding the latter height; but the natives attach no importance to hands and inches, it being an acknowledged fact that the smallest horses are in many instances the best. Accustomed to run at large until between four and five years old, these horses are sound and hardy, capable of carrying fourteen or fifteen stone all day without tiring and able to perform hard and continuous work on little food.
