Small Horses in Warfare Part 2

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 const.i.tution 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 st.u.r.dy 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 cla.s.s [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 gra.s.s 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 const.i.tution 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 superst.i.tion 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 const.i.tution cannot be surpa.s.sed. 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.

ARMY HORSES OF THE FUTURE.

Let it not be supposed for a moment that in urging the merits of small horses the writer seeks to asperse the value of heavy cavalry. Weight in men and size in horses are indispensable for such work as our heavy cavalry are called upon to perform; even the civilian mind can appreciate the mysteries of tactics so far as to recognise that a charge of heavy cavalry can effect infinitely greater results upon an enemy than men mounted on ponies of fourteen hands or fourteen hands two inches.

Authorities on military affairs seem agreed that the great improvements made in small arms of precision since the Crimean War have done much to impair the former value of heavy cavalry for direct attack; it needs no trained intelligence to recognise that cavalry advancing in close rank might well be shot down to a man in attempting to charge a foe, not necessarily under cover, over a thousand yards of fairly open ground on which such a manoeuvre is possible to cavalry. For artillery and transport, however, we shall always need powerful horses, and the draught power required is only to be obtained with height.

When it was made evident that very much larger numbers of mounted infantry were required for the South African campaign than had been antic.i.p.ated, the remount agents were instructed to purchase cobs, and to obtain these in quant.i.ty it was necessary to go to foreign countries, the United States, Argentina, and Hungary, where they could be procured.

Had the demand been made for ponies, a very large proportion of our Army's need could have been bought cheaply and quickly in this country.

For in the ponies of Exmoor, Wales, the New Forest and other districts, we possess large numbers of animals whose small size bears no relation to their weight carrying power, and whose mode of life is the best possible preparation for "roughing it" in South Africa. Very different is the case with the animals shipped from England.

For generations, now, horses for the saddle and lighter draught work have been very largely bred less as necessaries than luxuries; the conditions of their lives are artificial in a high degree, and the const.i.tution which could formerly withstand exposure, hard and continuous work and scanty feed, has been softened by pampering. To take such horses out of their stables where the temperature is regulated, where they are warmly clothed and regularly fed, and despatch them to endure the hardships of campaigning in countries where hay and oats are unknown or unprocurable, and the forage obtainable is unsuited to English chargers--in short, to most severely tax their powers under a set of conditions entirely opposed to those to which they are accustomed--is to invite heavy mortality.

The sacrifice of useful qualities to the "G.o.d of inches" is deplored only in so far as it applies to horses for mounted infantry and light cavalry. The utility of large and powerful horses is not, and never has been, questioned. In point of fact it is their value for the work in which they are employed that has done something to blind us to the very real value--for special tasks--of ponies: and if the foregoing pages do anything to prove that there is in modern warfare a place of the highest importance which can only be filled by the small horse of 14.2 or thereabouts, their object has been fulfilled.

BREEDING SMALL HORSES.

a.s.suming that the peculiar suitability of horses between 14 hands and 14 hands 3 inches for mounted infantry and light cavalry purposes is acknowledged by the authorities, and that these forces will in future form a larger proportion of our standing army, it behoves us to turn our attention to the task of breeding. The high prices obtainable for first-cla.s.s polo ponies have given a stimulus to pony-breeding, and it may be said the foundations of the industry have been laid. What the present remount market is to the breeder of hunters, so may the market for mounted infantry cobs be to the breeder of polo ponies; but with this difference, that the latter, being handicapped by the height limit of 14 hands 2 inches, and the exceedingly high standard of merit[3]

required by polo players, will have a larger proportion of "misfits." To compensate for the paucity of valuable prizes he may hope to draw in the lottery of breeding, both stock and maintenance will be cheaper, if the business be conducted on the lines which seem best calculated to result in production of the horse desired.

[3] See _Ponies Past and Present_, by Sir Walter Gilbey, Bart. Vinton & Co., Ltd.

What is required is an animal between 14.0 and 14.3 hands; it must be stout and able to carry weight, capable of covering long distances at fair speed, able to subsist on coa.r.s.e or poor food for weeks together without losing condition, strong of const.i.tution to withstand the exposure inevitable on a campaign, and the more tractable the better. To get small horses endowed with these qualifications we must look to the breeds which possess them in marked degree, to the ponies of the Welsh Hills, Exmoor, the New Forest, the Fell districts, and West of Ireland.

In these we have ponies ranging in height from 12.2 to 13.3 or 14 hands; they are compact, st.u.r.dy, and untiring; they can carry weights which are out of all ratio to their size; they live on gra.s.s, and the open-air life they lead, year in year out, has made them completely independent of the luxurious "coddling" bestowed upon other horses.

These ponies lack only the size required in our mounted infantry horse, and these essentials we can obtain from the sire we shall select.

Keeping ever in mind that an animal of the polo-pony stamp--a hunter in miniature--is required, what sire is more likely to get the desired pony than the Arab? We might use a small Thoroughbred with excellent results, but having regard to the rarity with which we find good bone and sound const.i.tution in the Thoroughbred, and also having regard to the inherent soundness and stoutness of the Eastern horse, we shall probably obtain more satisfactory young stock from Forest and Moorland dams if we use the Arab sire. Blood, it is truly urged, gives the superior speed and courage required in the polo-pony, but let us not forget that Arabs were the sires from which all our modern race-horses are descended. The best horses on the Turf to-day may be traced to one of the three famous sires--the Byerly Turk imported in 1689, the Darley Arabian in 1706, and the G.o.dolphin Arabian in 1730: all of them, it may be remarked, horses under 14 hands.

By going back to the original strain we shall obtain all the useful qualities our Thoroughbreds possess without those undesired characteristics, greatly increased size, great speed, delicacy of const.i.tution and complete inability to lead a natural life which man's long-maintained endeavours to breed race horses have implanted in them.