In the course of the evening a little chestnut stallion

In the course of the evening a little chestnut stallion

In the course of the evening a little chestnut stallion, twelve hands, or four feet in height, jumped, at a standing jump, over the bars out of a pound upward of five feet from the ground, only just touching the top rail with his hind feet.

We had hoped to have a day’s wild stag hunting, but the hounds were out on the other side of the country. However, we had a few runs with a scratch pack of harriers after stout moorland hares. The dandy school, who revel in descriptions of coats and waistcoats, boots and breeches, and who pretend that there is no sport without an outfit which is only within the reach of a man with ten thousand a year, would no doubt have been extremely disgusted with the whole affair. We rose at five o’clock in the morning and hunted puss up to her form (instead of paying a shilling to a boy to turn her out) with six couples, giving tongue most melodiously. Viewing her away we rattled across the crispy brown moor, and splattered through bogs with a loose rein, in lunatic enjoyment, until we checked at the edge of a deep combe. Then when the old yellow Southerner challenged, and our young host cheered him with Hark to Reveller, hark! to hear the challenge and the cheer re-echoed again from the opposite cliff; and as the little pack in full cry again took up the running, and scaled the steep ascent to see our young huntsman, bred in these hills, go rattling down the valleys, and to follow by instinct, under a vague idea, not unmixed with nervous apprehensions of the consequences of a slip, that what one could do two could, was vastly exciting, and amusing, and, in a word, decidedly jolly. So with many facts, some new ideas, and a fine stock of health from a week of open air, I bade farewell to my hospitable hosts and to romantic Exmoor.

According to tradition, the Exmoor ponies are descended from horses brought from the East by the Phœnicians, who traded there with Cornwall for metals.

Sitz bath.

Fonte: Tamming Horses