“With wheel-horses that will hold back at all, I will be bound,” says
a clever writer and experienced coachman, “to take a loaded coach
down most of the hills now met with on our great roads, without a
drag-chain, provided I am allowed to pull up my horses at the top, and
let them take it quietly the first hundred yards. This, it may be said,
would be losing time, but, on the contrary, time would be gained by it;
for, as soon as I perceived I was master of my coach, I should let her
go, and by letting my horses loose at the bottom, I could spring them
into a gallop, and cheat them out of half the hill, if there were one
(as frequently happens) on the next portion of road. This advantage, it
must be recollected, cannot be taken if the chain be to be put on; and
I have therefore in my favour all the time required to put the chain
on, and to take it off again.”
There are, however, some horses which no man can make to hold a loaded
coach down hill. Of this description are, first, the stiff-necked
one, as he is called, who turns his head away from his partner, and
shoulders the pole; and, secondly, one who, when he feels the weight
pressing upon him, begins to canter and jump, as coachmen term it; with
these holding back properly is out of the question. With such cattle,
the drag-chain must be had recourse to; as well as when there is the
least reason to suspect the soundness of the harness. All this confirms
the necessity of checking the force of a coach before descending a
steep hill, and indeed in some cases--as with bad holders--before
coming upon a slight descent. The term which coachmen have for this
species of road, is “pushing ground;” and if the fall be long, it is
astonishing how the pressure of a loaded coach upon wheel horses is
increased before getting to the bottom of it, and how difficult it
would be, with wheelers not of the very best stamp, to pull up short,
if any accident should happen.
Young coachmen, in descending a hill, should take care that their
leaders do not draw on the end of the pole, which many free ones do
when they find the coach coming quickly after them; for this not only
increases the pressure of the coach on the wheelers, but, should either
of them stumble, it must assist in bringing him down. The following
good and characteristic directions were given by a very experienced
coachman, to a gentleman who undertook to take his coach a journey for
him, but who, although he knew the road well, had never driven on it
before. “That middle twelve miles of ground,” said he, “is a punisher,
and you must mind what you are at with this load. You have two hills
to go down, and three to go up, in the first seven miles. Don’t stop
to put the chain on, as they’ll hold well, and the tackle is good; and
don’t let them walk up the hills, for they are bad hands at that--you
will lose a horse’s draught by it, and perhaps get hung up on one of
them. You must take fifty minutes to do the first seven miles, and good
work too. When you get at the top of the last hill, get down and put
your near leader to the cheek, and they’ll toddle you over the last
five miles in half an hour, with all the pleasure alive.”
The following observations on this subject from the number of the
_Quarterly Review_ already quoted, are too interesting to be omitted
here.
“Many years have elapsed,” he says, “since I first observed that,
somehow or other, the horses on the continent manage to pull a heavy
carriage up a steep hill, or even along a dead level, with greater
ease to themselves than our English horses. If any unprejudiced person
would only attentively remark with what little apparent fatigue three
small ill-conditioned horses will draw, not only his own carriage,
but very often that huge over-grown vehicle the French diligence, or
the German eilwagen, I think he would agree with me; but the whole
equipment is so unsightly--the rope harness is so rude--the horses
without blinkers look so wild--there is so much bluster with the
postilion--that, far from paying any compliment to the turn-out, one is
very much disposed at once to condemn the whole thing, and, not caring
a straw whether such horses be fatigued or not, to make no other remark
than that in England one would have travelled at nearly twice the rate
with one-tenth of the noise. But neither the rate nor the noise is
the point--our superiority in the former, and our inferiority in the
latter, cannot be doubted. The thing to account for is, how such small,
weak horses do actually manage to draw a heavy carriage up hill with so
much ease to themselves. Now, in English, French, and German harness,
there exists, as it were, three degrees of comparison as to the manner
in which the head of the horse is treated; for, in England, it is
elevated, or borne up, by what we call the bearing-rein,--in France it
is left as Nature placed it (there being to common French harness no
bearing-rein),--and, in Germany, the head is tied down to the lower
extremity of the collar, or else the collar is so made that the animal
is by it deprived of the power of raising his head. Now, passing over
for a moment the French method, which is, in fact, the state of nature,
let us for a moment consider which is better--to bear a horse’s head
up, as in England, or to pull it downwards, as in Germany.”
Evidently fired with a favourite theme, he thus proceeds:--“In a
state of nature, the wild horse, as every body knows (?), has two
distinct gaits or attitudes. If man, or any still wilder beast, come
suddenly upon him, up goes his head; and as he first stalks and then
trots gently away--with ears erect, snorting with his nose, and
proudly snuffing up the air, as if exulting in his freedom--as one
fore-leg darts before the other, we have before us a picture of doubt,
astonishment, and hesitation, all of which feelings seem to rein him,
like a troop-horse, on his haunches; but, attempt to pursue him, and
the moment he defies you--the moment, determining to escape, he shakes
his head, and lays himself to his work--how completely does he alter
his attitude! That instant down goes his head, and from his ears to the
tip of his tail there is in his vertebræ an undulating action which
seems to propel him, which works him along, and which, it is evident,
you could not deprive him of without materially diminishing his
speed. Now, in harness, the horse has naturally the same two gaits or
attitudes, and it is quite true that he can start away with a carriage
either in the one or the other; but the means by which he succeeds
in this effort--the physical powers which he calls into action, are
essentially different:--in the one case he works by his muscles, and in
the other by his own dead, or rather living, weight. In order to grind
corn, if any man were to erect a steam-engine over a fine, strong,
running stream, we should all say to him, ‘Why do you not allow your
wheel to be turned by cold water instead of hot? Why do you not avail
yourself of the weight of the water, instead of expending your capital
in converting it into the power of steam? In short, why do you not
use the simple resource which Nature has presented ready-made to your
hand?’ In the same way, the German might say to us, ‘We acknowledge a
horse can drag a carriage by the power of his muscles, but why do you
not allow him to drag it by his weight?’
“Let any one observe a pair of English post-horses dragging a heavy
weight up a hill, and he will at once see that the poor creatures are
working by their muscles, and that it is by sheer strength that the
resistance is overcome: but how can it be otherwise; their heads are
higher than nature intended them to be, even in walking in a state
of liberty, carrying no weight but themselves: the balance of their
bodies is therefore absolutely turned against, instead of leaning in
favour of their draught; and if my reader will but pass his hands down
the back sinews of our stage-coach or post-chaise horses, he will soon
feel (though not so keenly as they do), what is the cruel and fatal
consequence. It is true, that in ascending a very steep hill an English
postilion will occasionally unhook his bearing-reins; but the jaded
creatures, trained for years to work in a false attitude, cannot in
one moment get themselves into the scientific position which the German
horses are habitually encouraged to adopt. Besides this, we are so
sharp with our horses,--we keep them so constantly on the _qui vive_,
or, as we term it, in hand, that we are always driving them from the
use of their weight to the application of their sinews. That the figure
and attitude of a horse working by his sinews are infinitely prouder
than when he is working by his weight, (there may exist, however,
false pride among horses as well as men), I most readily admit; and
therefore, for carriages of luxury, where the weight bears little
proportion to the powers of the noble animals employed, I acknowledge
that the sinews are more than sufficient; but, to bear up the head of
a poor horse at plough, or at any slow, heavy work, is, I conceive, a
barbarous error, which ought not to be persisted in.
“Whether there is most of the horse in a German, or of the German in
a horse, is a nice point, on which people might argue a great deal:
but the broad fact really is, that Germans live on more amicable
terms with their horses, and understand their dispositions infinitely
better, than the English; in short, they treat them as horses, while
we act towards them and drill them as if they were men; and, in case
any reader should doubt that Germans are better horse-masters than we
are, I beg to remind him of what is perfectly well known to the British
army,--namely, that in the Peninsular war the cavalry horses of the
German Legion were absolutely fat, while those of our regiments were
skin, and bone.”