In June 1891, at Wodonga, on the Murray River, in the colony of Victoria—on the opposite bank to Albury, a town of New South Wales—was arranged an exhibition for testing the horsemanship of all comers, which I venture to assert had but few parallels.
Prizes were to be allotted, by the award of three judges of acknowledged experience, amounting in all to about ￡20. Much interested in matters equine, \'nihil equitatum alienum me puto,\' I traversed the three miles which separate the border towns in a cab of the period, and arrived in time for the excitement.
The manner of the entertainment was after this wise. An area of several acres of level greensward was enclosed within a fence, perhaps eight or ten feet high, formed of sawn battens, on which was stretched the coarse sacking known to drapers as \'osnaberg.\' This answered the double purpose of keeping the non-paying public out and the performing horses in.
I had heard of the way in which the selected horses were saddled and mounted; I was therefore partly prepared. But, tolerably versed in the lore of the wilderness, I had never before seen such primitive equitation.
About thirty unbroken horses were moving uneasily within a high, well-constructed stock-yard—the regulation \'four rails\' and a \'cap\'—amounting to a solid unyielding fence, over seven feet in height.
That the steeds were really unbroken, \'by spur and snaffle undefiled,\' might be gathered from their long manes, tails sweeping the ground, and general air of terror or defiance. As each animal was wanted, it was driven or cajoled by means 175of a quiet horse into a close yard ending in a \'crush\' or lane so narrow that turning round was impossible. A strong, high gate in front was well fastened. Before the captive could decide upon a retrograde movement, long, strong saplings were thrust between his quarters and the posts of the crush. He was therefore trapped, unable to advance or retire. If he threatened to lie down, a sapling underneath prevented that refuge of sullenness.
Mostly the imprisoned animal preserved an expression of stupid amazement or harmless terror, occasionally of fierce wrath or reckless despair. Then he kicked, plunged, reared—in every way known to the wild steed of the desert expressed his untameable defiance of man, occasionally even neighing loudly and fiercely. \'Twas all in vain. The prison was too high, too strong, too narrow, too everything; nothing but submission remained—\'not even suicide,\' as Mr. Stevenson declares concerning matrimony, \'nothing but to be good.\'
This, of course, with variations, as happens perchance in the married state irreverently referred to.
Before the colt has done thinking what unprincipled wretches these bush bipeds are, a \'blind\' (ingeniously improvised from a gentleman\'s waistcoat) is placed over his eyes, a snaffle bridle is put on, a bit is forced into his mouth; at the same time two active young men are thrusting a crupper under his reluctant tail, have put a saddle on his back, and are buckling leather girths and surcingle (this latter run through slits in the lower portion of the saddle flaps) as if they meant to cut him in two.
This preparatory process being completed in marvellous short time, the manager calls out \'First horse, Mr. St. Aure,\' and a well-proportioned young man from the Upper Murray ascends the fence, standing with either leg on the rails, immediately over the angry, terrified animal.
What would you or I take, O grey-besprinkled reader, to undertake the mount Mr. St. Aure surveys with calmest confidence? (We are not so young as we were, let us say in confidence.)
Deftly he drops into the saddle, his legs just grazing the sides of the crush. \'Open the gate!\' roars the manager. \'Look out, you boys!\' and, with a mad rush, out flies the colt through the open gate like a shell from a howitzer.
176For ten yards he races at full speed, then \'propping\' as if galvanised, shoots upwards with the true deer\'s leap, all four feet in the air at once (from which the vice takes its name), to come down with his head between his forelegs and his nose (this I narrowly watched) touching the girths.
The horseman has swayed back with instinctive ease, and is quite prepared for a succession of lightning bounds, sideways, upwards, downwards, backwards, as he appears to turn in the air occasionally and to come down with his head in the place where his tail was when he rose.
For an instant he stops: perhaps the long-necked spurs are sent in, to accentuate the next performance. The crowd meanwhile of 600 or 700 people, mostly young or in the prime of life, follow, cheering and clapping with every fresh attempt on the part of the frenzied steed to dispose of his matchless rider. Five minutes of this exercise commences to exhaust and steady the wildest colt. It is a variation of \'monkeying,\' a device of the bush-breaker, who ties a bag on to the saddle of a timid colt, and he, frightened out of his life, as by a monkey perched there, tires himself out, permitting the breaker to mount and ride away with but little resistance.
Sometimes indeed the colt turns in his tracks, and being unmanageable as to guiding in his paroxysms, charges the crowd, whom he scatters with great screaming and laughing as they fall over each other or climb the stock-yard fence. But shortly, with lowered head and trembling frame, he allows himself to be ridden to the gate of egress. There he is halted, and the rider, taking hold of his left ear with his bridle-hand, swings lightly to the ground, closely alongside of the shoulder. Did he not so alight, the agile mustang was capable of a lightning wheel and a dangerous kick. Indeed, one rider, dismounting carelessly, discovered this to his cost after riding a most unconscionable performer.
A middle-aged, wiry, old-time-looking stock-rider from Gippsland next came flying out on a frantic steed without a bridle, from choice. For some time it seemed a drawn battle between horse and man, but towards the end of the fight the horse managed to \'get from under.\'
One horse slipped on the short greensward and came over backwards, his rider permitting himself to slide off. The next animal was described as an \'outlaw,\' a bush term for a horse 177which has been backed but never successfully ridden. She, a powerful half-bred, fully sustained it by a persevering exhibition of every kind of contortion calculated to dissolve partnership. At one time it looked as if the betting was in favour of the man, but the mare had evidently resolved on a last appeal. Setting to with redoubled fury, she smashed the crupper, tore out one of the girth straps, and then performed the rare, well-nigh incredible feat of sending the saddle over her head without breaking the surcingle. This is the second time, during a longish acquaintance with every kind of horse accomplishment, that I have witnessed this performance. It is not always believed, but can be vouched for by the writer and about five or six hundred people on the ground. I felt the girth, and saw that the buckle was still unslacked.
The rider, Mortimer, came over the mare\'s head, sitting square with the saddle between his legs, and received an ovation in consequence.
The last colt had been driven into the crush \'fiercely snorting, but in vain, and struggling with erected mane,\' and enlarged \'in the full foam of wrath and dread,\' when another form of excitement was announced. A dangerous-looking four-year-old bullock was now yarded in the outer enclosure, light of flesh but exceeding fierce, which he proceeded to demonstrate by clearing the place of all spectators in the shortest time on record.
Climbing hurriedly to the \'cap\' of the stock-yard fence, they looked on in secure elevation, while the toreadors cunningly edged him into the crush, and there confined him like the colts. Here he began to paw the ground and bellow in ungovernable rage. At this stage the manager thus delivered himself: \'It\'s Mr. Smith\'s turn, by the list, to ride this bullock, but he says he ............