Lectures on Horsemanship Wherein Is Explained Every Necessary Instruction for Both Ladies and Gentlemen, in the Useful and Polite Art of Riding, with Ease, Elegance, and Safety

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LADIES and GENTLEMEN.

PERMIT me to observe that the Horse is an animal, which, from the earliest ages of the world, has been destined to the pleasure and services of Man; the various and noble qualities with which nature has endowed him sufficiently speaking the ends for which he was designed.

Mankind were not long before they were acquainted with them, and found the means of applying them to the purposes for which they were given: this is apparent from the Histories and traditions of almost all nations, even from times the most remote; insomuch that many nations and tribes, or colonies of people, who were entirely ignorant, or had but very imperfect notions, of other improvements and arts of life; and even at this day

are unacquainted with them, yet saw and understood the generous properties of this creature in so strong a light as to treat him with fondness and the greatest attention, sufficiently to declare the high opinion they entertained of hismerit and excellence; nay in various regions, and in the most distant ages, were so far from being strangers to the many services of which the Horse was capable, as to have left rules and precepts concerning them, which are so true and just, that they have been adopted by their successors; and as all art is progressive, and receives additions and improvements in its course, as the sagacity of man at different times, or chance and other causes happen and concur: so that having the Ancient’s foundation to erect our building, it is natural to suppose that the structure has received many beauties and improvements from the experience and refinement of latter times.

It is generally supposed that the first service in which the Horse was employed, was to assist mankind in making war, or in the pleasures and occupations of the chase. Xenophon, who wrote three hundred years before the Birth of Christ, says, in an express treatise which he wrote on Horsemanship, that Cyrus hunted on Horseback, when he had a mind to exercise himself and horses.

Herodotus speaks of hunting on Horseback as an exercise used in the time of Darius, and it is probably of much earlier date. He mentions a fall which Darius had from his horse in hunting, by which he dislocated his heel: these and thousands of quotations more, which might be produced as proofs of the utility of the Horse, in remote ages, are truths so indisputably attested that to enlarge farther upon it would be a superfluous labour, and foreign to my present undertaking.

On Mounting Your Horse.

FIRST we will suppose your horse properly saddled and bridled. Take your Bridoun-rein (if you have Bit and Bridoun) your right-hand, shifting it till you have found the center of the rein; then with your switch or whip in your left-hand, place your little finger between the reins, so that the right rein lies flat in your hand upon three fingers, and your thumb pressing your left rein flat upon the right, keeping your thumb both upon right and left rein, firm upon your fore-finger; and in this position you ease your hand a little and slide it firmly down the reins upon your horse’s neck, taking a firm hold of a lock of his mane, which will assist you in springing to mount: remember that when you attempt to mount, that your reins are not so tight as to check your horse, or to offend his mouth, so as to cause him to rear, or rein back, but that your action is smooth and light as possible....