The Welsh Pony Part 2

I have not spoken of his adaptiveness to other climates, but he is little affected by transplantation. A breed formed of the two oldest races known, and having in its own type a genealogical history of a thousand years, is apt to persist under any sky, and this is probably why he thrives so well apart from his native heath. I am told that even in Canada he does not object to wintering out; but I should like to interview a pony that has tried it before proffering the information as fact. However, if any ill reports have come back from the numbers s.h.i.+pped to Australia and America, they have been successfully concealed from me. I want you to know that the mountain pony's hocks are a feature not to be pa.s.sed lightly by. They never fail to bring him commendation from the horseman who _knows_. The curby hocks sometimes found in the larger type of South Wales are unknown to him. His own are always of the right shape, having plenty of compact bone showing every curve and denture under thin, s.h.i.+ning skin, and with clean-cut, powerful back sinews at an unhampered distance from the suspensory tendons. "His hocks do send him along," as one admirer said.

The limbs themselves, whether fore or hind, are handsomely dropped and clear of all blemish--no bubbly knees, soufflets about the ankles, puffy fetlocks, or contracted heels. The pasterns are of the approved gentle obliquity--neither short and upright, betraying stubborn flexors, nor long enough to weaken the elasticity of the support that must here guard the whole body from concussion. The pastern is a debatable point, but I refer all advocates of the "long" and "short" schools to the golden mean which the Welsh pony has evolved for himself in those much-mentioned disciplinary years on his problematic hills.

The hoof is always round, never the suspicious bell shape, and blue, deep and dense. One need not look there for symptoms of sand-crack, seedy-toe, pumice-foot, or any of the pedal ills that too often beset the lowland horse. The centuries of unshod freedom among his crags have given the hoof a resisting density coupled with the diminutive form that agility demands; and this happy union the smithies of man have not yet been able to sever or vitiate. Even the thoroughbred must sometimes find a downward gaze as fatal to vanity as did the peac.o.c.k of our venerated spelling-book; but not the Welsh pony. He may look to earth as to Heaven with unchastened pride.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MY LORD PEMBROKE IN HARNESS]

And now that the hoof has brought me to the ground I will not mount again. If I have ridden my pony too hard, bethink you who it was that set me upon him. You remember Isaac Walton's caution when instructing an angler how to bait a hook with a live frog:--"And handle the frog as if you loved him." However infelicitously I may have impaled the pony on my pen, I hope you will own that I have done it as if I loved him.

Though I am not ready to say that the "earth sings when he touches it,"

be a.s.sured that he will gallantly carry more praise than I have laid upon him.

I have no quarrel with the motor, though it has made me eat dust more than once. As a means of transporting the body when the object is _to arrive_, I grant it superlative place. But as a medium between man and Nature it is a failure. It will never bring them together. The motor is restricted to the highway, and from the highway one can never get more from Nature than a nod of half recognition. She remains a stranger undivined.

But on a ramble with a pony, adaptive, un.o.btrusive, all the leisurely ways are open--the deepwood path, or the trail up the exhilarating steep. As self-effacing as you wish, he saves you from weariness and frees the mind for its own adventure. There will be pause for question, and if Nature ever answers at all, you will hear her. There will be the placid hour that is healing-time with her woods, her skies and waters; and that communion with her divinity which means rest and--haply--peace.

O. T. D.

[Ill.u.s.tration]