Album of Horses

by Marguerite Henry

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  Album of Horses

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  THE ARAB

  THE THOROUGHBRED

  THE HUNTER

  THE POLO PONY

  THE MORGAN

  THE STANDARDBRED

  THE AMERICAN SADDLE HORSE

  THE TENNESSEE WALKING HORSE

  THE HACKNEY

  THE PERCHERON

  THE BELGIAN

  THE CLYDESDALE

  THE SHIRE

  THE SUFFOLK PUNCH

  THE LIPIZZAN

  THE MUSTANG

  THE APPALOOSA

  THE QUARTER HORSE

  THE PALOMINO

  THE SHETLAND PONY

  THE WELSH MOUNTAIN PONY

  THE CHINCOTEAGUE PONY

  THE BURRO OR DONKEY

  THE MULE

  THE ROUTINE OF HAPPINESS

  NO SUGAR, THANK YOU!

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT MARGUERITE HENRY AND WESLEY DENNIS

  THE ARAB

  SUN SCORCHING THE DESERT, WITHERING bushes and spears of grass. Sun beating down on the camel train, parching the lips of riders, slowing thoughts, slowing camel feet, slowing all living things of the desert except—except the small, delicate mares capering alongside the caravan.

  Silently the cavalcade moves beneath the fierceness of the sun until out of nowhere a cry tears the desert stillness. Sand clouds whirl and hulk along the horizon. An enemy tribe! As one, the riders leap from their camels onto the backs of the mares and gallop toward the enemy, white robes billowing, lances gleaming in the sun.

  Now steel meets steel and the mares are no longer playful. They are whirling dervishes—spinning on their hocks, charging, rushing ahead, missing a flying lance, wheeling, stopping, starting, galloping until lungs are fit to burst.

  This is tribal warfare. This is Arabia from the ancient days until the time when the deadly lance almost wiped out the fiery little steed.

  Always the desert warrior preferred to ride a mare to battle. Banat er Rih he called her, which in Arabic means “Daughter of the Wind.” And that is how she traveled—a quick gust when the enemy pursued, a steady pace when no one threatened. Endless miles today and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. And all of this she could endure on the scantiest fare, on dry herbage and bruised dates, and even dead locusts when there were no grasses.

  But no matter how meager the fare, her master saw that her thirst was quenched. On the march he carried an animal hide to make into a water vessel especially for her, and at night he milked his camel and gave the fresh, foaming milk to the mare before he fed his family. She was one of his own tentfolk, eating what they ate, dozing when they dozed. Children sometimes slept between her feet, their heads pillowed on her belly.

  It is doubtful if the desert men loved their horses as pets. Rather, they depended on them to warn, with loud neighings, of the enemy’s approach, to carry them swiftly and safely in battle. And so a good mare was almost never for sale. She was better than gold or silver in the purse. She was wealth, freedom, and power. She was life itself. To sell her was unworthy; to give her away, a princely act.

  An Arab chieftain jealously guarded his mare’s reputation for swiftness. And he bred her to only the noblest of stallions so that the pedigree of the foal became sacred. Often it was inscribed on parchment and tied in a little bag around the foal’s neck, with a few azure beads to keep away evil spirits.

  When a foal was several months old, it was given a camel as nurse-mare. The big clumsy creature adopted the nimble little one wholeheartedly, screaming in worried tones if it strayed, snorting softly when it came near. She refused to move from camp unless the foal accompanied her.

  It was common practice to take these foals along on the march, letting them frisk beside their sedate stepmammas. Sometimes during the monotonous journey a young Bedouin boy would spring lightly onto a colt’s back, clinging stoutly with naked legs. As simply as that, first training began. Later, as a three-year-old, the colt would be taught the movements of galloping in figure eights, changing leads at every turn, halting in mid-career, and all this was accomplished without punishment of any kind. Horsemen of the desert were patient. They had Time.

  To judge the qualities of an Arab horse, the desert men would study the head first. Were the eyes like those of the antelope, set low and wide apart? Enormous and dark in repose? Fiery as sun and stars in excitement? And the ears—did they prick and point inward as if each point were a magnet for the other? And was the face wedge-shaped? Wide at the forehead, tapering to a muzzle so fine the creature might lip water from a tea cup? And did the profile hollow out between forehead and muzzle like the surface of a saucer? If all the answers were yes, the animal was of royal blood.

  Color was of no great concern. Chestnut or bay, nutmeg brown or iron gray, all were good. But, under the hair, the skin had to be jet black for protection against the rays of the sun. This underlying blackness is still found in Arabians today and it gives to the bodycoat a lively luster.

  As for size, even the smallest Arabians are big enough. Warriors of all eras rode them to battle. George Washington’s Arabian charger, Magnolia, was delicately made, but she was big enough to carry him through his fiercest campaigns. And Napoleon’s desert stallion, Marengo, bore him on his long retreat from Moscow.

  What were the beginnings of these little warriors? Where did they come from? Did the Creator actually take a handful of south wind and say, “I create thee, O Arabian; I give thee flight without wings”?

  Storytellers of Arabia explain it this way. “Since time’s beginning,” they say, “the root or spring of the horse was in the land of the Arab. Our sheiks found them running wild. They caught the foals and gentled them.” History can discover no better answer. The Arab horse is the oldest domesticated species in the world. Early rock drawings depict slender horses with arched necks and the typical high-flung tails, for all the world like today’s Arabs.

  The storytellers relate that the Prophet Mohammed would tolerate only the most obedient mares for his campaigns. To test them he penned a hundred thirst-maddened horses within sight and smell of a clear stream. Turned loose at last, they stampeded for water but, almost there, they heard the notes of the war bugle. Only five mares halted. These were chosen by the Prophet to mother the race.

  One of the five was named “Of-the-Cloak” because of a curious incident. A rider, escaping from an enemy, threw off his cloak for greater freedom. Picture his surprise when he arrived in camp to find that the arched tail of his mare had caught and held the cloak. Ever afterward this mare’s descendants were called Abeyan or “Of-the-Cloak.” Today the up-flung tail of the Arab is one of the chief characteristics of the species.

  When recent wars threatened the Arabian horse with extinction, Sir Wilfred Blunt and his wife, Lady Anne, imported the finest Arab mares and stallions into England. They knew that Arab blood is a white flame in its purity and, if it were snuffed out, there would be no way to refresh the blood of modern breeds. Today America is helping in the crusade which the Blunts began. There are now more Arabian horses in the United States than in all Arabia! They are used for pleasure and for work on ranches. But these uses are of small importance. Wise horsemen are carrying on the strain, breeding Arabian stallions to Arabian mares to preserve the blood in its purity. Then it w
ill always be available for future generations. Arabian blood is like the rare elements added to steel which give it the superior qualities of fineness and strength.

  And so the blood of the “Daughters of the Wind” has streamed west, its strength undiluted, its character unchanged. In the wide-set eyes of these Arabian horses there is still the fire of sun and stars, and in their motion the flow of small winds and the tide of great ones. War horses. Builders of other breeds. Yet holders of their own purity.

  THE THOROUGHBRED

  A MAN NEEDS SOMEONE TO believe in him. A horse has this big need, too. Whether he is bred to race or show-jump or draw a plow, he needs someone who believes in his power to run or jump or pull.

  Outward signs of the special qualities of the Thoroughbred may not be visible in colthood. Sometimes the colt is a playboy who resents having to grow up. He skitters around his pasture, full of wild notions, and when he is put into training he either throws a tantrum or bobbles along the track from side to side as if he were catching butterflies.

  It is then a colt needs championing, needs someone who senses strong fiber and spirit underneath the giddiness. This friend is not always the trainer or owner; sometimes it is the man who rubs, feeds, and waters him—his groom. How that groom tries to get his thoughts through to owner and to trainer! Persistently he corners them and so dead earnest is his talk that the men laugh at the big sounding words and then walk off, pondering the seeds in them. So the colt gets another chance, and another. Then one day he pushes against the wind and opens his nostrils to suck it in. Suddenly he wants to run and he does, and he wins! And there at his side, ready with soft warm blanket, ready with words of praise, ready with rub cloths, stands his groom, feeling big in the chest and good.

  Everyone whose life touches a Thoroughbred has his own definition of the breed. Man o’ War’s groom called him “the mostest horse that ever was.” Assault’s trainer says the Thoroughbred is a creature of bone and blood and bottom. By “bottom” he means stamina and the wind of a fox.

  Jockey clubs throughout the world define the Thoroughbred as a running horse whose ancestry may be traced in unbroken line to one of three Oriental sires.

  Before these sires were known, there were in England two types of horse—the big lusty steeds used in war, and the small, plain-looking creatures used for the race and the chase. The racers were pony size and pacers mostly. That is, they did not gallop, they paced—the two legs of one side going forward in unison, then the other two.

  But when the blood of desert stallions, the blood of the vital little Arabians, began to trickle into England, a curious thing happened. The plain-looking pacers gave way to gallopers, their coarseness was fined down, and the fastest running horse in the world was born.

  The three founding fathers of the new breed were the Byerly Turk, the Darley Arabian, and the Godolphin Arabian. The first of the three to appear on the English scene was a tough Turkish charger. Where he came from is mystery. Some say he was one of the spoils of war, and some say his forebears were Arab, not Turk. But no matter. What is known is that he was ridden by a Captain Byerly in King William’s War; that he and the captain survived the one big battle in Ireland and returned in fine fettle to England. There, as the Byerly Turk, he sired some famous race horses.

  The second of the three was a magnificent bay with a white blaze down his face and three white feet. A traveling merchant named Thomas Darley discovered him in the Syrian desert. By some power of persuasion he did the impossible; he convinced an Arab tribe to sell the stallion. And before the Arabs could change their mind, the handsome bay was bound for Buttercramp in England. Descendants of the Darley Arabian are renowned for their swiftness. One of his great-great-grandsons, well named Eclipse, dimmed the brightness of every other racing horse. He was never beaten, “never had a whip flourished over him or felt the rubbing of a spur—outfooting, outstriding, outlasting every horse that started against him.”

  In all fairness, however, Darley’s Arabian cannot be given full credit for the speed of Eclipse. On his mother’s side he was closer to the Godolphin Arabian, the third of the Oriental trio.

  The Godolphin Arabian was a little stallion who sired big. His clear bay coat was ticked with gold, and the only white marking was a spot on his off-hind heel, the emblem of swiftness. He was a royal gift from the Sultan of Morocco to the boy king of France, but his deerlike smallness made him the laughingstock of the noblemen. They shunted him out of sight, not caring at all when he was sold to a brutal wood carter. Horse-whipped through the streets of Paris, he was finally bought by a Quaker who shipped him to England, and there he became the favorite stallion of the Earl of Godolphin. Although the fiery little Arabian never started in a race, his name is found today in the pedigree of nearly all race horses.

  In Windsor Castle there is a painting of the Godolphin Arabian, and lettered around the frame are these words: “Esteemed one of the best foreign horses ever brought into England. He is allowed to have refreshed the English blood more than any foreign horse ever yet imported.”

  These then are the three Oriental stallions, the foundation sires of the Thoroughbred. Their blood ran like a fine vein deep through the English stock, strengthening it, fortifying it. And the new breed surpassed both the Arab and the English horses in size and in running speed. Today even the fleetest Arab could not stay with the Thoroughbred on the track.

  Has America contributed nothing to the speed of the Thoroughbred? On the contrary, she began early to breed champions. In 1775, Daniel Boone presented to the first Kentucky legislature a bill for improving the breed of horses. Perhaps Squire Boone knew the value of Kentucky’s blue grass in building strong bone. Knowingly or unknowingly, he planted the seed that started Kentucky on its way to becoming the land of fine horses.

  In style of riding, too, America has contributed to the speed of the Thoroughbred. About 1900, Jockey Tod Sloan made a daring experiment. He shortened his stirrups, moved up from his horse’s back, and crouched like a lightning bug on his neck. Here he was so close to the horse’s ears he could whisper him home, without whip or spur. Soon all of America’s jockeys were riding high, like monkeys on a stick, and their horses were making better time.

  This bug-boy crouch not only means more speed but it saves a horse’s back, his weak spot. This is important, as many race horses are ridden before they are two years old. Maybe they are not even two, for all Thoroughbreds are given the same birthday, January first. Thus a foal born in April has his first birthday the following New Year’s Day, when he is really only eight months old.

  Samuel Riddle, owner of Man o’ War, used to say that Thoroughbreds have an extra quality greater than speed. He called it heart. “Thoroughbreds don’t cry,” he would say, and he would tick off on his fingers the ones who showed this courage. There was War Admiral who often limped painfully in his stall. But let the bugle sound and he would walk square and strong to the post and then fight like a gamecock to win.

  And Assault, the horse that stepped on a sharp stake, injuring his foot so badly it was malformed the rest of his life. A horse with less heart would have favored it, but he kept testing it, using it, and he became a triple-crown winner, known as the horse that ran on three legs and a heart.

  And Black Gold, the middle-aged horse trying for a comeback, who broke his leg in the final furlong but drove on to finish his race just the same.

  And there was also the gallant Dark Secret. A sixteenth of a mile from the finish in the Gold Cup Race he ruptured a tendon. Forcing his weight onto his good front foot, he shattered it, too, a step before the line. But he crossed it to win!

  No, Thoroughbreds don’t cry. Big in heart, high in courage, they go on to finish the race.

  THE HUNTER

  WHEN THE AIR IS CLEAN and sharp with autumn, then fox hunting swings into action, color, and sound. Consider first the fox, Monsieur Reynard himself. He is a wily, bushy-tailed fellow with traits both good and bad. He kills the farmer’s chickens and sneaks h
is fruit, but on the other hand he also gobbles bugs and grubs and mice. At one time in old England he threatened to become a pest, and the whole countryside was aroused. Rosy-cheeked squires, black-cloaked parsons, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers—all called their hounds, leaped aboard their nags, and galloped uphill and downdale, trying to catch Reynard before he whiffed out of sight into the deep blackness of his den.

  As the fox population dwindled, did the Englishmen call off their hunts? No, indeed! The fun grew. They hunted more often. The little red fox was a grand excuse for galloping across country, taking ditches and fences in stride. And whether the sly one got away or there was a kill at the end seemed unimportant. Everyone—horses, hounds, riders—had had such a glowing good time! As for the fox himself, if he escaped he had had the best time of all; he had outfoxed everyone.

  In town halls, at coffeehouses, everywhere the talk edged more and more toward fox hunting. It went like this:

  “I say, ’tis the hounds that make the chase.”

  “To my mind ’tis the horses—the Irish Thoroughbred Hunters.”

  “Aye! The beast that can stay the distance and leap like a cat is what makes the hunt, be he all Thoroughbred, all cart horse, or betwixt and between.”

  Men even talked about dress. Sober homespun coats were well enough, but scarlet coats could liven the landscape. Riders fallen behind would have bright targets to guide them. A clever tailor by the name of Pink tried his hand at cutting and seaming bolts of scarlet cloth, and he did so well in fitting frames both spare and stout that his coats became proper attire and were called “pinks” in his honor.