Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

A writer in the New York Dispatch, who professed to speak from “a degree of experience,” says: It takes a prairie horse a long time to appreciate the merits of grain-they snuff their noses at it in disdain, at first, and wonder what you mean by offering them white pebbles to eat. Having never been introduced to it in the whole course of their lives, and being accustomed to regard the prairie grass as sufficient for all sublunary wants, their teeth are necessarily astonished at such flinty pabulum. I have often laughed heartily to observe the awkward attempts of my horse to get at the merits of a ear of corn. He invariably gave it up in despair until I shelled it for him. The wonder is, that they will endure more hard riding, on the simple food they pick from the first spot you chance to halt at, than your corn fed American horses. But for this fact, it would be impossible to traverse these great plains. The Indian gets an amount of service out of his horse that is almost incredible; and the idea of raising grain for him never enters cranium. He will run a horse eighty miles a day, and turn the animal to shift for himself until morning-then find him fresh as a lark, and ready for the same or greater work again. He will keep him going at this rate for three months, and then turn him free to rejuvenate, and at the end of nine weeks has to lasso him and break him over again.
These mustangs are magnificent race of animals; their descent is from the highest royal lineage of Barbary; and it is ridiculous for us to be making such wonderment over the Arab and his steed, and endeavoring to bribe the ragged wretch at enormous prices to part with his better life-that we may transport it across wide seas to improve our stock at home. We have the very same animal-equal in every possible sense-wandering in herds of countless thousands over our own plains.