Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1891-08-15
THE BRONCO.
The Good and Bad Things That Can b
Said of Him

There is no horse superior to the bronco
for endurance; few are his equals. He
came by it naturally from the Spanish
stock of Moorish descent, the individ-
uals of which race, abandoned in the
sixteenth century, were his immediate
ancestors; and his hardy life has, by sur
vival of the fittest, increased this endur-
ance tenfold. He is not handsome. His
middle piece is distended by grass food !;
it is loosely joined to his quarters, and
his hip is very short.
He has a hammer head and the pro-
nounced eve neck which all plains or
steppes horses seem to- acquire. His legs
are naturally perfect, but they finally
give way at the knees from short stop
ping with a gag bit, for an Indian will
turn on 10 cent piece. One form OF
racing is to place two long parallel strips
of buffalo hide on the ground at an in
terval of but a few feet, and starting
from distance, to ride up to these strips,
cross the first turn between the two and
galIop back to the starting point.
Another is to ride up to a log hung hori-
zontally and just high enough to allow
the pony to get under, but not the rider,
touch it, and return. If the pony is
stopped too soon the Indian loses time in
touching the log; if too late, he gets
scraped off. The sudden jerking of the
pony on his launches is apt both to start
curbs and break his knees.
The toughness and strength of the
pony can scarcely be exaggerated. He
will live through a winter that will kill
the hardest cattle. He worries through
the long months when the snow has COW
cred up the bunch grass on a diet of cot
tonwood boughs which the Indian cuts
down for him, and in the spring it takes
but few weeks for him to scour out into
splendid condition.
He can go unheard of distances. Col.
ouel R. |. Dodge records an instance COM
ing under his observation where a pony
carried the mails 800 miles in three con-
secutive nights, and back over the same
road the next week, and kept this up foI
six months without loss of condition.
He can carry any weight. Mr.. Parkman
speaks of chief, known as LIE Cochon,
on account of his 800 pounds avoirdu-
pois, who nevertheless rode his ponies as
bravely as man of half the bulk.
He as often carries two people as one.
There is simply no end to this wonderful
product of the prairies. He works many
years. So long as he will fat up in the
spring his age is immaterial.
The absence of crest in the pony sug-
gests the curious query of what has be-
come of the proud arching neck of his
ancestor, the Barb. There are two ways of
accounting for this. The Indians gag
bit, invariably applied with jerk, throws
up the pony's head instead of bringing it
down as the slow and light application of
the school curb will do, and this tends to
develop the eve neck.
Or more sufficient reason may be
found in the fact that the starvation
which the pony annually undergoes in
the winter months tends to deplete him
Of every superfious ounce of flesh. The
crest in the horse is mostly meat, and its
annual depletion has finally brought
down the pony's neck nearer to the out
line of the skeleton Harper's Maya
zine