The South African pony, wretched little brute as he
looks, will tripple and amble on, week after week and month after month,
with a heavy man on his back, and nothing to eat but the pickings of
sour, dried-up veldt grass and an occasional handful of Indian corn; and
though you will eye him with an eye of scorn, no doubt (if he should
happen to be allotted to your use), and envy some other man his fat
Burmese or Argentine, yet by-and-by you will find out your mistake; for
the fat Burmese and the Argentine, and all the other imported breeds,
will gradually languish and fade away, and droop and die, worn down by
the unremitting work and the bad, insufficient food; but your ragged
little South African will still amble on, still hump himself for his
saddle in the morning, and still, whenever you dismount, poke about for
roots and fibres of withered grass as tough as himself, or make an
occasional hearty meal off the straw coverings of a case of whisky
bottles. With an action that gives the least possible exertion; with the
digestion of an ostrich, and the eye of a pariah dog for any stray
morsel of food; with an extraordinary capacity for taking rest in
snatches, and recouping himself by a roll whenever you take his saddle
off; and of course, from the natural toughness of his constitution, too,
he is able to stand the long and gradual strain of being many hours
under the saddle every day (and perhaps part of the night, too) in a way
that unaccustomed horses cannot do.
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