HORSES AND RIDERS

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 142, 18 June 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

HORSES AND RIDERS

by JAMES COWAN

Ib these days of tie motor car and the smooth, hard highway, the horse ifl a rare animal, at any rate in the main traffic roads and on highly mechanised farms. The principal racecourses are the places where most people of this generation gather their knowledge of horses and riders, and the know-edge has less to do with love of a good horse than a craving to ■win money by betting. This is called 6port, but though it has an exciting attraction for mo-.t of us it does not give the thousands who follow it any real acquaintance with the horse. The people whom you hear talk most learnedly about racing are those who liave never crossed a horse's back themselves. The Hunter Type. The beautiful thoroughbred, highly trained, is a kind of sprinting machine, for short, sharp bursts of speed. More natural, more closely linking horse and man, is the grand eport of hunting. Such gatherings as the Pakuranga Hunt and the meets of the hunt clubs in Waikato and other parts of the country, show us the horse at its best, an animal not only of beauty and speed but also of a useful breed. Young and old, the grey-headed Veteran of the saddle and the boy and girl just entering their teens, can join in this great game and enjoy the glorious thrill of following the bounds, racing across the open country, and taking the jumps. There are limits, of course; it is not a pleasure open to all because of lack of means and time. It is a sport for those who follow a country life, and who have a taste for little adventures of the field. It is essentially a British sport and the British, of course, includes Irish. The Irishmen and Irishwomen •re the greatest sports folk in the irorld. They hunt for the pure love of the game; it doesn't seem tc ■tatter whether they can afford it 01 •ot; everyone who sits a horse anc takes the "leps" is welcomed there. Young Riders. TTiev begin young in our parenl countries. The Governor-General ol New Zealand, Lord Galway, has losl no time in bringing up his childrer ill the good old tradition of th< saddle and the knack of sticking tc

The Pleasure of the Saddle

the pigskin through thick and thin. The four of them are out with their father in the hunting field whenever the opportunity offers, and they set their ponie3 at the fences like little Britons. But the New Zealand farmbred boy and girl take to this best of country sports with even greater keenness, given a willing horse and the freedom of the farmland or the run. On the Farms. New Zealand, fortunately, is a land where the horse will always be needed. Much of the country must remain a pastoral land; there are hill regions where motor cars cannot be used, or should not be used; there are the sheep runs and cattle stations where the horse cannot be done without. So the useful kind of horse which the hunt clubs encourage is needed on many hundreds, even thousands of farme, and the draught horse is often better than the tractor in the country. The town and the speedway for the motor car; the back country for the horse.

A great deal could be written about the need for encouraging horseraising in spite of this machinecrazy age. For one thing, there is military need for the horse. It can go' where machines cannot travel. There is, as I have read, a tendency to return to the horse in many countries, especially the United States, the land that flooded the world with its torrent of motor cars. People are beginning to discover that there is often more real pleasure in leisurely horseback travel on by-road* than in tearing along the speedways in a car as if everything depended on reaching the next town in the shortest possible time. As one who was brought up in the saddle, I have a liking for this way of travel that the swiftest and most comfortable of cars cannot displace. A good horse is good company on a long journey. I do not think any motorist has ever felt disposed to pat his shining radiator on the neck or bend over to address soothing words to the magneto or the carburetter or whatever makes the machine go.

To many country children the hors® is still a necessary friend. It is not only on the large stations and farms that the young horseman and horsewoman are bred. Children, both pakeha and Maori, need the horse to carry them to school, especially in places where the roads are rough and where there are still streams without bridges. Ponies from Marae-Kakaho. The late Sir Douglas Maclean, the owner of that noted stockbreeding station, Marae-kakaho, in Hawke's Bay, had a kindly thought for the children who lived on smaller farms and who were not always provided with horses. He had a way of asking them, when Christmas came round, what they would like for a present. "Would you like a pony?" Many a well-bred and useful little mount was given away to proud young Hawke's Bay folk. It was the chief of Marae-kakaho who told me how the wild horses on the Kaingaroa Piains originated. His father, the great Sir Donald Maclean, who owned the sheep station before him, over 70 years ago, sent up several sturdy animals of a stocky, useful type, to the East Taupo Plains, with the idea that they would increase and provide, in time, herds of horses from which both Maoris and , pakeha settlers could draw. From these came the thousands of horses that once roamed the great tussock prairis and then spread up to the King Country. Now their once wide range has been narrowed by fencing and tree-plant-ing; but there are still many wild horses roving the pumice and fern plains. We often started wild horses on a mad scatter over the plains of the King Country in my boyhood days, when riding about the fern lands south of the Puniu River. In some places the' Maoris had great wildhorse drives. They rounded them up in some blind gully and picked , out the best and lassooed them. The Maoris about Galatea, in the Rangitaiki Valley, often obtained some 1 stock in this way. Wild Horses for Travel and Meat. The strong and heavy "bush 1 pony" shown in the photograph on 1 this page w-as in part a descendant i of the old Donald Maclean's herds. I took this photograph of my friend, Captain Gilbert Main, near Galatea when we were starting on our ■ last ride through the Urewera count try exploring old battlefields. Such f sturdy little animals were exactly , the kind required in rough, often roadless, bridgeless country. In • Mair's campaigning days they somes times provided food for a temit starved fighting force. He and his r men, craving for meat, more than once patiently stalked young horses L> over the plains until they were near ■ enough to shoot one for a muchneeded meal in Hunger Camp.