Ch. 23: Horse and Man

There is no mode of progression so delightful as riding on horseback.
Walking, rowing, bicycling are pleasant exercises in their way, but the
muscular exertion and constant exercise of judgment they call for occupy
the mind partly to the exclusion of other things; so that a long walk
may sometimes be only a long walk and nothing more. In riding
we are not conscious of exertion, and as for that close observation and
accurate discernment necessary in traversing the ground with speed and
safety, it is left to the faithful servant that carries us. Pitfalls,
hillocks, slippery places, the thousand little inequalities of the
surface that have to be measured with infallible eye, these disturb us
little. To fly or go slowly at will, to pass unshaken over rough and
smooth alike, fording rivers without being wet, and mounting hills
without climbing, this is indeed unmixed delight. It is the nearest
approach to bird-life we seem capable of, since all the monster bubbles
and flying fabrics that have been the sport of winds from the days of
Montgolfier downwards have brought us no nearer to it. The aeronaut
gasping for breath above the clouds offers only a sad spectacle of the
imbecility of science and man's shattered hopes. To the free inhabitants
of air we can only liken the mounted Arab, vanishing, hawklike, over the
boundless desert.

In riding there is always exhilarating motion; yet, if the scenery
encountered be charming, you are apparently sitting still, while,
river-like, it flows toward and past you, ever giving place to fresh
visions of beauty. Above all, the mind is free, as when one lies idly on
the grass gazing up into the sky. And, speaking of myself, there is even
more than this immunity from any tax on the understanding such as we
require in walking; the rhythmic motion, the sensation as of night,
acting on the brain like a stimulus. That anyone should be able to think
better lying, sitting, or standing, than when speeding along on
horseback, is to me incomprehensible. This is doubtless due to early
training and long use; for on those great pampas where I first saw the
light and was taught at a tender age to ride, we come to look on man as
a parasitical creature, fitted by nature to occupy the back of a horse,
in which position only he has full and free use of all his faculties.
Possibly the gaucho--the horseman of the pampas--is born with this idea
in his brain; if so, it would only be reasonable to suppose that its
correlative exists in a modification of structure. Certain it is that an
intoxicated gaucho lifted on to the back of his horse is perfectly safe
in his seat. The horse may do his best to rid himself of his burden; the
rider's legs--or posterior arms as they might appropriately be