Page:Horses and roads.djvu/131

 Rh of these countries is also such that hard, rough, stony ground very largely predominates outside these breeding grounds; although in some parts, where the stone is small and loose, the roads become excessively heavy and trying during the rainy season. In some parts of these countries it rains every day in the year, and in other parts they get dry roads during six months, and wet ones during the other six. The horses have to travel over either, and over naked sheets of rock, as they in turn present themselves; and, as Mr. Douglas says, ‘without difficulty, and to the evident advantage of their hoofs, they never suffer from contracted feet, or from corns, sandcracks, &c.’ Yet their work is of the hardest. Many of them bring down from the interior, many hundreds of miles, two bales of cotton, which weigh with pack-saddle, &c., over 3 cwt., and in fording rivers have to carry the driver across also. This is the way in which all the commerce of the country is carried on. There is not a horseshoe or a nail to be obtained over the whole route, and on some roads at crop times nearly a thousand horses will pass daily, descending, and a similar quantity returning, inland, loaded with imports, sometimes of the same cotton that they brought down the year before, but which has been to Europe or the States to get manufactured.

In these countries the natives, when they ‘corral’ or ‘pen’ their horses, always look out for a hard site for the purpose. Where stabling exists it is paved with stone if obtainable, and where timber