The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-11-28
AN EXOTIC BUCKJUMP2R.

There are spots on this planet specially fitted, it would seem, to produce buck. jumping horses. Everybody knows that there are regions in which the horse is the prominent otjeot of everyday life, and at the same time takes to this dia. bolic habit in early youth as naturally as the people of some countries take to chewing tobacco and others to telling lies. Most of us are aware that there are portions of Australia, Texas and other pastoral centers where the ability to cling to the back of buckjumper is the test that separates the sheep from the goats, that divides that portion of the population who are entitled to respect from those whose lot must be the outer darkness of contempt.
 It is of no such wild regions and of no such fiery spirits, ho vever, that my tale tells. The four-legged subject of whose career 1t treats might, for aught know, have appeared most indifferent perform CT in the Australian bush or upon the plains of New Mexico. This, however, is no consolation in recalling the havoc that was wrought in quiet country side by the unwitting introduction of an ami nal that think, even in the absence of any standard of comparison, may fairly put down as master of the art; or mis- tress should say rather, for this disturber of our rural peace was a mare.
 was living at the period to which this tale relates in an old fas nioned and rather remote portion of one of the earlier set- tied American states. The fact of the particular region now under consideta- tion having been named after Charles II. during that merry monarch's reign may help to sustain my statement that its in- habltants were most emphatically what the Americans call an "old timey" lot Eoglish people no doubt, ipd it difficul, to recc ncile such an epithet with their usually crude ideas of the New World Vague visions of clearings in the forest still bristling with horrid stumps, of vast prairies whlrring with the sound of mod ern machinery, of flimsy towns whose chief boast is their precocity-this is the side of American life that usually presents atself to the English traveller, and that consequently sinks into the mind of the perusers of travellers tales. But Ameri can life has another side to it. And of this side Charles county, Virginia, was an extreme example, for there are grave yards there that were filled up hundred years ago, where gray and crumbling itombs h.de their ilegible faces among the tangled weeds, and the wis tor may mark with the greatest of living American sbards-
 Where the turbid rain drops stand
 In many chiseed square,
 The knigntly crest, the shield, the brand
 Of honored names are there.
 From Wendell Holmes to buckjumping am aware is frightful "bathos," but in 'extennation l may go on to say that the present inhabitants of Charles county the older generation at any rate-are al- most as mellow as the tombs ot their an- cestors. There are no people, am sure, lett in England anything like so con ,erv- a'ive as they, and am coming more to tle point when l remark that this a:ute rePugnance to progression and to undig- nihed agitation of any sort in Charles county is fully shared by its domestic an . finals. No Charles county horse was ever known seriously to misbehave. The colt from its earliest inian. ran around the house like dog, and when the days of bit and bridle came, accepted them with stoicism that argued line of pa- cihc and domestic ancestors. No Charles county bull ever spread terror along the public tootpath. Indeed, it was no un. common sight to see some monarch of the herd with bit in his teeth and an old saddle on his back carrying a pious E hiopian to church. In these regions of peace the freshly calved heifer had no terror tor the dusky milkmaid, but with mute protestations or feeble shakes of the head watched the abstraction of its first born. It is with horses, however, and not with COWS or social customs, that 1 have to do
 Nov, the people of Charles county would be indignant if denied them the credit of being horsey race that qual. ity SO much esteemed by Anglo, Saxons Indeed, they were so, if the word signifies people who never walk ten yards if they can possibly rlde. If the habit, too, of spending all that portion of the day upon the back of horse which was not spent in the shade of the veranda, and if an inherent genius for trading in the fiesh of the noble animal is horseyness, the folks of Charles county were most certainly everything that the word im- plies
 A hundred and ffty years ago, "way back Into colonial days, Charles county and the neighboring districts had been the principal importers of English thor- oughbreds, and the Newmarket of Amer ica had there found its home. That the blood of these historic sires still flows in the veins of the quiet roadsters which to- day amble along its rough red lanes is probable but the spirit and the fire have ded. The glamour, howe yer, of their tradition still hangs over the land, and the dime novelist of Boston and New York still pictures the dashing youth of Charles county pursuing headloug course upon his fiery steed
 Nov, as a matter of fact, no well-con. ducted steed in tn region would think of breaking out of tunoing walk. Any individual who was seen pursuing a more rapid gait would be set down as either drunk or riding for the doctor. The uer.