ORIGIN OF THE WILD HORSE OF AUSTRALIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8222, 5 April 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

ORIGIN OF THE WILD HORSE OF AUSTRALIA.

It may be some twenty years or so ago that a settler lost two valuable mares. The sandflies were bail, and driven by them, now walking and now trotting, these mares, oim followed by a noble colt foal, never touched by man's hand, and with blood in him that could tell of Epsom and the Grand National, journeyed on towards the west. Fifty miles from their owner's homo is reached. But the country is rugged and not to their taste, and on they go. Another fifty miles, and a pleasant valley affords good water and plentiful grass. sudden panic —caused, perhaps, by a party of blacks chasing native game —starts them afresh, and still westward they go, till finally they rest in peace far from the dwellings of men — far from the sound of clanging hobble chain or tinkling horse-boll. .Month after month rolls on, Each mare foals again, and two strangers, straying from some other part, join themselves to the little herd of five, and raise their number to seven. Then another summer begins, and four additional little foals bring up the total to eleven. The next recruits arrive with hobbles on their legs, and, could they but speak, would tell the others a strange, sad tragedy. Not thirty miles from here, while they, thus hobbled, fed quietly on the green grass within sight of their owner's camp, they had seen their master at sunrise advancing slowly, bridle ami halter in hand, towards them. Then from tho ground, as it. were, a black stump suddenly grew into a black man; then another appeared, and another, then a short dialogue between the one white man and the fifty black devils, followed by a death-cry and thy yells of many demons. Fear lent them wings, and, manacled as they were, they flew many a weary mile, till now. with a joyous neigh and the sense of safety in numbers, they throw themselves into the little group who stand shaded by the leafy curragong. These trot round in some alarm, and snort at the jangling hobble-chain : but the older mares are soon reconciled, and the young stallion, the sire of countless future brumbies, adds these two last-comers to his increasing harem. Such, then, was the origin of the brumbies. Daily they grew wilder and more on the alert for danger; constant gallops from imaginary enemies strengthened their sinews and improved their wind. Recruits began to pour in as civilisation invaded the wild 'Vest, and when finally they were first really determinedly hunted by the white man, lie succeeded in taking but a few of the quieter ones, while those who escaped became sharper than the sharpest, wilder than the wildest, and fleeter than the tlectest roebuck. —From Cassell's Picturesque Australasia for February.