Riding Tour in Spain--Pleasures of it--Pedestrian Tour--Choice of
Companions--Rules for a Riding Tour--Season of Year--Day’s
Journey--Management of Horse: his Feet; Shoes; General Hints.
[Sidenote: ROYAL ROADS.]
A man in a public carriage ceases to be a private individual: he is
merged into the fare, and becomes a number according to his place; he is
booked like a parcel, and is delivered by the guard. How free, how lord
and master of himself, does the same dependent gentleman mount his eager
barb, who by his neighing and pawing exhibits his joyful impatience to
be off too! How fresh and sweet the free breath of heaven, after the
frousty atmosphere of a full inside of foreigners, who, from the
narcotic effects of tobacco, forget the existence of soap, water, and
clean linen! Travelling on horseback, so unusual a gratification to
Englishmen, is the ancient, primitive, and once universal mode of
travelling in Europe, as it still is in the East; mankind, however, soon
gets accustomed to a changed state of locomotion, and forgets how recent
is its introduction. Fynes Moryson gave much the same advice two
centuries ago to travellers in England, as must be now suggested to
those who in Spain desert the coach-beaten highways for the delightful
bye-ways, and thus explore the rarely visited, but not the least
interesting portions of the Peninsula. It has been our good fortune to
perform many of these expeditions on horseback, both alone and in
company; and on one occasion to have made the pilgrimage from Seville to
Santiago, through Estremadura and Gallicia, returning by the Asturias,
Biscay, Leon, and the Castiles; thus riding nearly two thousand miles on
the same horse, and only accompanied by one Andalucian servant, who had
never before gone out of his native province. The same tour was
afterwards performed by two friends with two servants; nor did they or
ourselves ever meet with any real impediments or difficulties, scarcely
indeed sufficient of either to give the flavour of adventure, or the
dignity of danger, to the undertaking. It has also been our lot to make
an extended tour of many months, accompanied by an English lady, through
Granada, Murcia, Valencia, Catalonia, and Arragon, to say nothing of
repeated excursions through every nook and corner of Andalucia. The
result of all this experience, combined with that of many friends, who
have _ridden over_ the Peninsula, enables us to recommend this method to
the young, healthy, and adventurous, as by far the most agreeable plan
of proceeding; and, indeed, as we have said, as regards two-thirds of
the Peninsula, the only practicable course.
The leading royal roads which connect the capital with the principal
seaports are, indeed, excellent; but they are generally drawn in a
straight line, whereby many of the most ancient cities are thus left
out, and these, together with sites of battles and historical incident,
ruins and remains of antiquity, and scenes of the greatest natural
beauty, are accessible with difficulty, and in many cases only on
horseback. Spain abounds with wide tracts which are perfectly unknown to
the Geographical Society. Here, indeed, is fresh ground open to all who
aspire in these threadbare days to book something new; here is scenery
enough to fill a dozen portfolios, and subject enough for a score of
quartos. How many flowers pine unbotanised, how many rocks harden
ungeologised; what views are dying to be sketched; what bears and deer
to be stalked; what trout to be caught and eaten; what valleys expand
their bosoms, longing to embrace their visitor; what virgin beauties
hitherto unseen await the happy member of the Travellers’ Club, who in
ten days can exchange the bore of eternal Pall Mall for these untrodden
sites; and then what an accession of dignity in thus discovering a terra
incognita, and rivalling Mr. Mungo Park! Nor is a guide wanting, since
our good friend John Murray, the grand monarque of Handbooks, has
proclaimed from Albemarle Street, _Il n’y a plus de Pyrénées_.
[Sidenote: HINTS TO TRAVELLERS.]
As the wide extent of country which intervenes between the radii of the
great roads is most indifferently provided with public means of
inter-communication; as there is little traffic, and no demand for
modern conveyances--even mules and horses are not always to be procured,
and we have always found it best to set out on these distant excursions
with our own beasts: the comfort and certainty of this precaution have
been corroborated beyond any doubt by frequent comparisons with the
discomforts undergone by other persons, who trusted to chance
accommodations and means of locomotion in ill-provided districts and
out-of-the-way excursions: indeed, as a general rule, the traveller will
do well to carry with him everything with which from habit he feels that
he cannot dispense. The chief object will be to combine in as small a
space as possible the greatest quantity of portable comfort, taking care
to select the really essential; for there is no worse mistake than
lumbering oneself with things that are never wanted. This mode of
travelling has not been much detailed by the generality of authors, who
have rarely gone much out of the beaten track, or undertaken a
long-continued riding tour, and they have been rather inclined to
overstate the dangers and difficulties of a plan which they have never
tried. At the same time this plan is not to be recommended to fine
ladies nor to delicate gentlemen, nor to those who have had a touch of
rheumatism, or who tremble at the shadows which coming gout casts before
it.
[Sidenote: HEALTHFUL EXERCISE.]
Those who have endurance and curiosity enough to face a tour in Sicily,
may readily set out for Spain; rails and post-horses certainly get
quicker over the country; but the pleasure of the remembrance and the
benefits derived by travel are commonly in an inverse ratio to the ease
and rapidity with which the journey is performed. In addition to the
accurate knowledge which is thus acquired of the country (for there is
no map like this mode of surveying), and an acquaintance with a
considerable, and by no means the worst portion of its population, a
riding expedition to a civilian is almost equivalent to serving a
campaign. It imparts a new life, which is adopted on the spot, and which
soon appears quite natural, from being in perfect harmony and fitness
with everything around, however strange to all previous habits and
notions; it takes the conceit out of a man for the rest of his life--it
makes him bear and forbear. It is a capital practical school of moral
discipline, just as the hardiest mariners are nurtured in the roughest
seas. Then and there will be learnt golden rules of patience,
perseverance, good temper, and good fellowship: the individual man must
come out, for better or worse. On these occasions, where wealth and
rank are stripped of the aids and appurtenances of conventional
superiority, a man will draw more on his own resources, moral and
physical, than on any letter of credit; his wit will be sharpened by
invention-suggesting necessity.
Then and there, when up, about, and abroad, will be shaken off dull
sloth; action--Demosthenic action--will be the watch-word. The traveller
will blot out from his dictionary the fatal Spanish phrase of
procrastination _by-and-by_, a street which leads to the house of
_never_, for “_por la calle de despues, se va a la casa de nunca_.”
Reduced to shift for himself, he will see the evil of waste--the folly
of improvidence and want of order. He will whistle to the winds the
paltry excuse of idleness, the Spanish “_no se puede_,” “_it is
impossible_.” He will soon learn, by grappling with difficulties, how
surely they are overcome,--how soft as silk becomes the nettle when it
is sternly grasped, which would sting the tender-handed touch,--how
powerful a principle of realising the object proposed, is the moral
conviction that we can and will accomplish it. He will never be scared
by shadows thin as air, for when one door shuts another opens, and he
who pushes on arrives. And after all, a dash of hardship may be endured
by those accustomed to loll in easy britzskas, if only for the sake of
novelty; what a new relish is given to the palled appetite by a little
unknown privation!--hunger being, as Cervantes says, the best of sauces,
which, as it never is wanting to the poor, is the reason why eating is
their huge delight.
[Sidenote: DELIGHTS OF A TOUR.]
Again, these sorts of independent expeditions are equally conducive to
health of body: after the first few days of the new fatigue are got
over, the frame becomes of iron, “_hecho de bronze_,” and the rider, a
centaur not fabulous. The living in the pure air, the sustaining
excitement of novelty, exercise, and constant occupation, are all
sweetened by the willing heart, which renders even labour itself a
pleasure; a new and vigorous life is infused into every bone and muscle:
early to bed and early to rise, if it does not make all brains wise, at
least invigorates the gastric juices, makes a man forget that he has a
liver, that storehouse of mortal misery--bile, blue pill, and blue
devils. This health is one of the secrets of the amazing charm which
seems inherent to this mode of travelling, in spite of all the apparent
hardships with which it is surrounded in the abstract. Oh! the delight
of this gipsy, Bedouin, nomade life, seasoned with unfettered liberty!
We pitch our tent wherever we please, and there we make our home--far
from letters “requiring an immediate answer,” and distant dining-outs,
visits, ladies’ maids, band-boxes, butlers, bores, and button-holders.
Escaping from the meshes of the west end of London, we are transported
into a new world; every day the out-of-door panorama is varied; now the
heart is cheered and the countenance made glad by gazing on plains
overflowing with milk and honey, or laughing with oil and wine, where
the orange and citron bask in the glorious sunbeams, the palm without
the desert, the sugar-cane without the slave. Anon we are lost amid the
silence of cloud-capped glaciers, where rock and granite are tost about
like the fragments of a broken world, by the wild magnificence of
Nature, who, careless of mortal admiration, lavishes with proud
indifference her fairest charms where most unseen, her grandest forms
where most inaccessible. Every day and everywhere we are unconsciously
funding a stock of treasures and pleasures of memory, to be hived in our
bosoms like the honey of the bee, to cheer and sweeten our after-life,
when we settle down like wine-dregs in our cask, which, delightful even
as in the reality, wax stronger as we grow in years, and feel that these
feats of our youth, like sweet youth itself, can never be our portion
again. Of one thing the reader may be assured,--that dear will be to
him, as is now to us, the remembrance of those wild and weary rides
through tawny Spain, where hardship was forgotten ere undergone: those
sweet-aired hills--those rocky crags and torrents--those fresh valleys
which communicated their own freshness to the heart--that keen relish
for hard fare, gained and seasoned by hunger sauce, which Ude did not
invent--those sound slumbers on harder couch, earned by fatigue, the
downiest of pillows--the braced nerves--the spirits light, elastic, and
joyous--that freedom from care--that health of body and soul which ever
rewards a close communion with Nature--and the shuffling off of the
frets and factitious wants of the thick-pent artificial city.
[Sidenote: CHOICE OF COMPANIONS.]
Whatever be the number of the party, and however they travel, whether on
wheels or horseback, admitting even that a pleasant friend pro vehiculo
est, that is, is better than a post-chaise, yet no one should ever dream
of making a pedestrian tour in Spain. It seldom answers anywhere, as the
walker arrives at the object of his promenade tired and hungry, just at
the moment when he ought to be the freshest and most up to intellectual
pleasures. The deipnosophist Athenæus long ago discovered that there was
no love for the sublime and beautiful in an empty stomach, æsthetics
yield then to gastronomies, and there is no prospect in the world so
fine as that of a dinner and a nap, or _siesta_ afterwards. The
pedestrian in Spain, where fleshly comforts are rare, will soon
understand why, in the real journals of our Peninsular soldiers, so
little attention is paid to those objects which most attract the
well-provided traveller. In cases of bodily hardship, the employment of
the mental faculties is narrowed into the care of supplying mere
physical wants, rather than expanded into searching for those of a
contemplative or intellectual gratification; the footsore and way-worn
require, according to
“The unexempt condition
By which all mortal frailty must subsist,
Refreshment after toil, ease after pain.”
Walking is the manner by which beasts travel, who have therefore four
legs; those bipeds who follow the example of the brute animals will soon
find that they will be reduced to their level in more particulars than
they imagined or bargained for. Again, as no Spaniard ever walks for
pleasure, and none ever perform a journey on foot except trampers and
beggars, it is never supposed possible that any one else should do so
except from compulsion. Pedestrians therefore are either ill received,
or become objects of universal suspicion; for a Spanish authority,
judging of others by himself, always takes the worst view of the
stranger, whom he considers as guilty until he proves himself innocent.
Before the pleasures of a riding tour through Spain are mentioned, a few
observations on the choice of companions may be made.
[Sidenote: OCCASIONAL DEPRESSION.]
Those who travel in public conveyances or with muleteers are seldom
likely to be left alone. It is the horseman who strikes into
out-of-the-way, unfrequented districts, who will feel the want of that
important item--a travelling companion, on which, as in choosing a wife,
it is easy enough to give advice. The patient must, however, administer
to himself, and the selection will depend, of course, much on the taste
and idiosyncracy of each individual; those unfortunate persons who are
accustomed to have everything their own way, or those, happy ones, who
are never less alone than when alone, and who possess the alchymy of
finding resources and amusements in themselves, may perhaps find that
plan to be the best; at all events, no company is better than bad
company: “_mas vale ir solo, que mal acompañado_.” A solitary wanderer
is certainly the most unfettered as regards his notions and motions,
“_no tengo padre ni madre, ni perro que me ladre_.” He who has “neither
father, mother, nor dog to bark at him,” can read the book of Spain, as
it were, in his own room, dwelling on what he likes, and skipping what
he does not, as with a red Murray.
[Sidenote: SPANISH MANNERS.]
Every coin has, however, its reverse, and every rose its thorn.
Notwithstanding these and other obvious advantages, and the tendency
that occupation and even hardships have to drive away imaginary evils,
this freedom will be purchased by occasional moments of depression; a
dreary, forsaken feeling will steal over the most cheerful mind. It is
not good for man to be alone; and this social necessity never comes home
stronger to the warm heart than during a long-continued solitary ride
through the rarely visited districts of the Peninsula. The sentiment is
in perfect harmony with the abstract feeling which is inspired by the
present condition of unhappy Spain, fallen from her high estate, and
blotted almost from the map of Europe. Silent, sad, and lonely is her
face, on which the stranger will too often gaze; her hedgeless, treeless
tracts of corn-field, bounded only by the low horizon; her uninhabited,
uncultivated plains, abandoned to the wild flower and the bee, and which
are rendered still more melancholy by ruined castle, or village, which
stand out bleaching skeletons of a former vitality. The dreariness of
this abomination of desolation is increased by the singular absence of
singing birds, and the presence of the vulture, the eagle, and lonely
birds of prey. The wanderer, far from home and friends, feels doubly a
stranger in this strange land, where no smile greets his coming, no tear
is shed at his going,--where his memory passes away, like that of a
guest who tarrieth but a day,--where nothing of human life is seen,
where its existence only is inferred by the rude wooden cross or
stone-piled cairn, which marks the unconsecrated grave of some traveller
who has been waylaid there alone, murdered, and sent to his account with
all his imperfections on his head.
However confidently we have relied on past experience that such would
not be our fate, yet these sorts of Spanish milestones marked with
memento mori, are awkward evidences that the thing is not altogether
impossible. It makes a single gentleman, whose life is not insured, not
only trust to Santiago, but keep his powder dry, and look every now and
then if his percussion cap fits. On these occasions the falling in with
any of the nomade half-Bedouin natives is a sort of godsend; their
society is quite different from that of a regular companion, for better
or worse until death us do part, as it is casual, and may be taken up or
dropped at convenience. The habits of all Spaniards when on the road are
remarkably gregarious; a common fear acts as a cement, while the more
they are in number the merrier. It is hail! well met, fellow-traveller!
and the being glad to see each other is an excellent introduction. The
sight of passengers bound our way is like speaking a strange sail on the
Atlantic, _Hola Camara!_ ship a-hoy. This predisposition tends to make
all travellers write so much and so handsomely of the lower classes of
Spaniards, not indeed more than they deserve, for they are a fine, noble
race. Something of this arises, because on such occasions all parties
meet on an equality; and this levelling effect, perhaps unperceived,
induces many a foreigner, however proud and reserved at home, to unbend,
and that unaffectedly. He treats these accidental acquaintances quite
differently from the manner in which he would venture to treat the lower
orders of his own country, who, probably, if conciliated by the same
condescension of manner, would appear in a more amiable light, although
they are inferior to the Spaniard in his Oriental goodness of manner,
his perfect tact, his putting himself and others into their proper
place, without either self-degradation or vulgar assumption of social
equality or superior physical powers.
[Sidenote: FRIENDSHIPS.]
A long solitary ride is hardly to be recommended; it is not fair to
friends who have been left anxious behind, nor is it prudent to expose
oneself, without help, to the common accidents to which a horse and his
rider are always liable. Those who have a friend with whom they feel
they can venture to go in double harness, had better do so. It is a
severe test, and the trial becomes greater in proportion as hardships
abound and accommodations are scanty--causes which sour the milk of
human kindness, and prove indifferent restorers of stomach or temper. It
is on these occasions, on a large journey and in a small _venta_, that a
man finds out what his friend really is made of. While in the more
serious necessities of danger, sickness, and need--a friend is one
indeed, and the one thing wanting, with whom we share our last morsel
and cup gladly. The salt of good fellowship, if it cannot work miracles
as to quantity, converts the small loaf into a respectable abstract
feed, by the zest and satisfaction with which it flavours it.
Nothing, moreover, cements friendships for the future like having made
one of these conjoint rambles, provided it did not end in a quarrel. The
mere fact of having travelled _at all_ in Spain has a peculiarity which
is denied to the more hackneyed countries of Europe. When we are
introduced to a person who has visited these spell-casting sites, we
feel as if we knew him already. There is a sort of freemasonry in having
done something in common, which is not in common with the world at
large. Those who are about to qualify themselves for this exclusive
quality will do well not to let the party exceed five in number, three
masters and two servants; two masters with two servants are perhaps more
likely to be better accommodated; a third person, however, is often of
use in trying journeys, as an arbiter elegantiarum et rixarum, a referee
and arbitrator; for in the best regulated teams it must happen that some
one will occasionally start, gib, or bolt, when the majority being
against him brings the offender to his proper senses. Four eyes, again,
see better than two, “_mas ven cuatro ojos que dos_.”
[Sidenote: CHOICE OF HORSES.]
By attending to a few simple rules, a tour of some months’ duration, and
over thousands of miles, may be performed on one and the same horse, who
with his rider will at the end of the journey be neither sick nor sorry,
but in such capital condition as to be ready to start again. We presume
that the time will be chosen when the days are long and Nature has
thrown aside her wintry garb. Fine weather is the joy of the wayfarer’s
soul, and nothing can be more different than the aspect of Spanish
villages in good or in bad weather; as in the East, during wintry rains
they are the acmes of mud and misery, but let the sun shine out, and all
is gilded. It is the smile which lights up the habitually sad expression
of a Spanish woman’s face. The blessed beam cheers poverty itself, and
by its stimulating, exhilarating action on the system of man, enables
him to buffet against the moral evils to which countries the most
favoured by climate seem, as if it were from compensation, to be more
exposed than those where the skies are dull, and the winds bleak and
cold.
As in our cavalry regiments, where real service is required, a perfect
animal is preferred, a rider should choose a mare rather than a gelding;
the use of entire horses is, however, so general in Spain, that one of
such had better be selected than a mare. The day’s journey will vary
according to circumstances from twenty-five to forty miles. The start
should be made before daybreak, and the horse well fed at least an hour
before the journey is commenced, during which Spaniards, if they can, go
to church, for they say that no time is ever lost on a journey by
feeding horses and men and hearing masses, _misa y cebada no estorban
jornada_.
[Sidenote: TRAVELLING PACE.]
The hours of starting, of course, depend on the distance and the
district. The sooner the better, as all who wish to cheat the devil must
get up very early. “_Quien al demonio quiere engañar, muy temprano
levantarse ha._” It is a great thing for the traveller to reach his
night quarters as soon as he can, for the first comers are the best
served: borrow therefore an hour of the morning rather than from the
night; and that hour, if you lose it at starting, you will never
overtake in the day. Again, in the summer it is both agreeable and
profitable to be under weigh and off at least an hour or two before
sunrise, as the heat soon gets insupportable, and the stranger is
exposed to the _tabardillo_, the coup de soleil, which, even in a
smaller degree, occasions more ill health in Spain than is generally
imagined, and especially by the English, who brave it either from
ignorance or foolhardiness. The head should be well protected with a
silk handkerchief, tied after a turban fashion, which all the natives
do; in addition to which we always lined the inside of our hats with
thickly doubled brown paper. In Andalucia, during summer, the muleteers
travel by night, and rest during the day-heat, which, however, is not a
satisfactory method, except for those who wish to see nothing. We have
never adopted it. The early mornings and cool afternoons and evenings
are infinitely preferable; while to the artist the glorious sunrises and
sunsets, and the marking of mountains, and definition of forms from the
long shadows, are magnificent beyond all conception. In these almost
tropical countries, when the sun is high, the effect of shadow is lost,
and everything looks flat and unpicturesque.
The journey should be divided into two portions, and the longest should
be accomplished the first: the pace should average about five miles an
hour, it being an object not to keep the animal unnecessarily on his
legs: he may be trotted gently, and even up easy hills, but should
always be walked down them; nay, if led, so much the better, which
benefits both horse and rider. It is surprising how a steady, continued
slow pace gets over the ground: _Chi va piano, va sano, é lontano_, says
the Italian; _paso a paso va lejos_, step by step goes far, responds the
Castilian. The end of the journey each day is settled before starting,
and there the traveller is sure to arrive with the evening. Spaniards
never fidget themselves to get quickly to places where nobody is
expecting them: nor is there any good to be got in trying to hurry man
or beast in Spain; you might as well think of hurrying the Court of
Chancery. The animals should be rested, if possible, every fourth day,
and not used during halts in towns, unless they exceed three days’
sojourn.
[Sidenote: FEEDING YOUR HORSE.]
On arriving at every halting-place, look first at the feet, and pick out
any pebbles or dirt, and examine the nails and shoes carefully, to see
that nothing is loose; let this inspection become a habit; do not wash
the feet too soon, as the sudden chill sometimes produces fever in them:
when they are cool, clean them and grease the hoof well; after that you
may wash as much as you please. The best thing, however, is to feed your
horse at once, before thinking of his toilet; the march will have given
an appetite, while the fatigue requires immediate restoration. If a
horse is to be worried with cleaning, &c., he often loses heart and
gets off his feed: he may be rubbed down when he has done eating, and
his bed should be made up as for night, the stable darkened, and the
animal left quite quiet, and the longer the better: feed him well again
an hour before starting for the afternoon stage, and treat him on coming
in exactly as you did in the morning. The food must be regulated by the
work: when that is severe, give corn with both hands, and stint the hay
and other lumber: what you want is to concentrate support by quality,
not quantity. The Spaniard will tell you that one mouthful of beef is
worth ten of potatoes. If your horse is an English one, it must be
remembered that eight pounds’ weight of barley is equal to ten of oats,
as containing less husk and more mucilage or starch, which our
horse-dealers know when they want to _make up_ a horse; overfeeding a
horse in the hot climate of Spain, like overfeeding his rider, renders
both liable to fevers and sudden inflammatory attacks, which are much
more prevalent in Gibraltar than elsewhere in Spain, because our
countrymen will go on exactly as if they were at home.
At all events, feed your horse well with _something or other_, or your
Spanish squire will rain proverbs on you, like Sancho Panza; the belly
must be filled with hay or straw, for it in reality carries the feet, _O
paja o heno el vientre lleno--tripas llevan á pies_, and so forth. The
Spaniards when on a journey allow their horses to drink copiously at
every stream, saying that there is no juice like that of flints; and
indeed they set the example, for they are all down on their bellies at
every brook, swilling water, according to the proverb, like an ox, and
wine when they can get it, like a king. If therefore you are riding a
Spanish horse which has been accustomed to this continual tippling, let
him drink, otherwise he will be fevered. If the horse has been treated
in the English fashion, give him his water only after his meals,
otherwise he will break out into weakening sweats. Should the animal
ever arrive distressed, a tepid gruel, made with oatmeal or even flour,
will comfort him much. At nightfall stop the feet with wet tow, or with
horse dung, for that of cows will seldom be to be had in Spain, where
goats furnish milk, and Dutchmen butter.
[Sidenote: THE HORSE’S FOOT.]
Let the feet be constantly attended to; the horse having twice as many
as his rider, requires double attention, and of what use to a traveller
is a quadruped that has not a leg to go upon? This is well known to
those commercial gentlemen, who are the only persons now-a-days in
England who make riding journeys. It is the shoe that makes or mars the
horse, and no wise man, in Spain or out, who has got a four-footed
hobby, or three half-crowns, should delay sending to Longman’s for that
admirable “Miles on the Horse’s Foot.” “Every knight errant,” says Don
Quixote, “ought to be able to shoe his own _Rosinante_ himself.” _Rosin_
is pure Arabic for a hackney--at least he should know how this
calceolation ought to be done. As a general rule, always take your
quadruped to the forge, where the shoes can be fitted to his feet, not
the feet to ready-made shoes; and if you value the comfort, the
extension of life and service of your steed--_fasten the fore shoes with
five nails at most in the outside, and with two only in the inside, and
those near the toe_; do not in mercy fix by nails all round an
unyielding rim of dead iron, to an expanding living hoof; remember also
always to take with you a spare set of shoes, with nails and a
hammer--for the want of a nail the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe
the rider was tost. In many parts of Spain, where there are no fine
modern roads, you might almost do without any shoes at all, as the
ancients did, and is done in parts of Mexico; but no unprotected hoof
can stand the constant wear and tear, the filing of a macadamised
highway.
[Sidenote: THE MOSQUERO.]
The horse will probably be soon in such condition as to want no more
physic than his rider; a lump, however, of rock-salt, and a bit of chalk
put at night into his manger, answers the same purposes as Epsoms and
soda do to the master. You should wash out the long tail and mane, which
is the glory of a Spanish horse, as fine hair is to a woman, with soda
and water; the alkali combining with the animal grease forms a most
searching detergent. A grand remedy for most of the accidents to which
horses are liable on a journey, such as kicks, cuts, strains, &c., is a
constant fomentation with hot water, which should be done under the
immediate superintendence of the master, or it will be either done
insufficiently, or not done at all; hot water, according to the groom
genus, having been created principally as a recipient of something
stronger. A crupper and breastplate are almost indispensable, from the
steep ascents and descents in the mountains. The _mosquero_, the
fly-flapper, is a great comfort to the horse, as, being in perpetual
motion, and hanging between his eyes, it keeps off the flies; the
head-stall, or night halter, never should be removed from the bridle,
but be rolled up during the day, and fastened along the side of the
cheek. The long tail is also rolled up when the ways are miry, just as
those of our blue jackets and horse-guards used to be.
[Sidenote: THE RIDER’S COSTUME.]