tamed.—Subscription list of 500 opened.—Stafford tamed.—Description of.—Teaching commenced with Lords Palmerston, Granville, &c.—Cruiser tamed.—History of.—Enthusiastic crowd at Cruiser exhibition.—System approved by the Earl of Jersey and Sir Tatton Sykes.—Close of first subscription list.—Anecdote of Mr. Gurney’s colt.—Personal sketch of Mr. Rarey.

Mr. Rarey is a farmer from Ohio, in the United States. Five years ago he wrote the little book which forms the text of the following complete account of his system, with pictorial illustrations, which are essential for explaining the means he now employs for subduing the most refractory animals. Without these explanations, it would be extremely difficult for any one who had not enjoyed the advantage of hearing Mr. Rarey’s explanations, to practise his system successfully, or even safely. The original work contains a mere outline of the art, since perfected by five years’ further study and practice. The author did not revise his first sketch, for very obvious reasons.

He was living in obscurity, teaching his system for a few dollars in Ohio and Texas. He never taught in the great cities or seabord states of the United States. When he had imparted his art to a pupil, he bound him to secrecy, and presented him with a copy of his pamphlet. He did not dream, then, of becoming the great Lion of the London Season, and realising from English subscribers nearly 20,000l. It will be observed, that in the original American edition, the operation of tying up the foot is described in one chapter, and, at an interval of some pages, that of laying a horse down, in another; and that neither the difficulties nor the necessary precautions, nor the extraordinary results, are described with the clearness their importance requires.

Mr. Rarey has now very properly released his subscribers from the contract which bound them to secrecy; and it is now in every point of view important that this valuable system of rendering horses docile and affectionate, fit for hacks or chargers, ladies’ pads or harness, or the safe conveyance of the aged, crippled, and sick, should be placed within the reach of the thousands whose business it is to deal with horses, as well as of that large class of gentlemen who are obliged to observe economy while keeping up their equestrian tastes. After all, it is to the horse-breeding farmers and grooms to whom Mr. Rarey’s art will be of the most practical use.

As it is, enough of the system has oozed out to suggest to the ignorant new means of cruelty. A horse’s leg is strapped up, and then the unlearned proceed to bully the crippled animal, instead of—to borrow an expressive Americanism—“to gentle him.”

Before entering into the details for practising the Rarey system, it may be interesting to give a sketch of the “facts” that have placed Mr. Rarey in his present well-deserved position, as an invincible Horse-Tamer, as well as a Reformer of the whole modern system of training horses—a position unanimously assigned to him by all the first horsemen of the day.

Mr. Rarey has been a horse-breaker in the United States from his earliest youth, and had frequently to break in horses five or six years old, that had run wild until that mature undocile age.

At first he employed the old English rough-rider method, and in the course of his adventures broke almost every bone in his body, for his pluck was greater than his science. But he was not satisfied with following old routine; he inquired from the wandering horsemen and circus trainers into their methods (it may be that he was at one time attached to a circus himself), and read every book he could lay his hands on. By inquiry and by study—as he says in one of his advertisements—“he thought out” the plan and the principles of his present system.

The methods he uses for placing a colt or horse completely in his power are not absolutely new, although it is possible that he has re-invented and has certainly much improved them. The Russian (i. e. Courland) Circus Riders have long known how, single-handed, to make a horse lie down by fastening up one fore-leg, and then with a rope suddenly pulling the other leg from under him. The trick was practised in England more than forty years ago, and forgotten. That no importance was attached to this method of throwing a horse is proved by the fact, that in the works on horsemanship, published during the last twenty years, no reference is made to it. When Mr. Starkey, of Wiltshire, a breeder and runner of race-horses,4-* saw Mr. Rarey operate for the first time, he said, “Why I knew how to throw a horse in that way years ago, but I did not know the use of it, and was always in too great a hurry!” Lord Berners made nearly the same remark to me. Nimrod, Cecil, Harry Hieover, Scrutator—do not appear to have ever heard of it. The best modern authority on such subjects (British Rural Sports), describes a number of difficulties in breaking colts which altogether disappear under the Rarey system—especially the difficulty of shoeing.

Captain Nolan, who was killed at Balaklava, served in an Hungarian regiment, in the Austrian service, afterwards in our own service in India, and visited Russia, France, Denmark, and South Germany, to collect materials for his work on the “History of Cavalry and on the Training of Horses,” although he set out with the golden rule laid down by the great Greek horseman, Xenophon, more than a thousand years ago—“Horses are taught, not by Harshness, but by Gentleness,” only refers incidentally to a plan for throwing a horse down, in an extract from Baucher’s great work, which will presently be quoted, but attaches no importance to it, and was evidently totally ignorant of the foundation of the Rarey system.

The accomplished Colonel Greenwood, who was equally learned in the manége of the Haute Ecole, and skilled in the style of the English hunting-fields, gives no hint of a method which reduces the time for taming colts from months to hours, and makes the docility of five horses out of six merely a matter of a few weeks’ patience.

The sporting newspapers of England and America were so completely off the true scent when guessing at the Rarey method, that they put faith in recipes of oils and scents for taming horses.

Dick Christian—a genius in his way—when on horseback unmatched for patience and pluck, but with no taste for reading and no talent for generalizing, used to conquer savages for temporary use by tying up one fore-foot, and made good water-jumpers of horses afraid of water by making them smell it and wade through it; so that he came very near the Rarey methods, but missed the chain of reasoning that would have led him to go further with these expedients.5-*

Mons. Baucher, of Paris (misprinted Faucher in the American edition), the great modern authority in horse-training and elaborate school equitation, under whom our principal English cavalry generals have studied—amongst others, two enthusiastic disciples of Mr. Rarey, Lord Vivian and General Laurenson, commanding the cavalry at Aldershott—admitted Mr. Rarey’s system was not only “most valuable,” but “quite new to him.”

After Mr. Rarey had taught five or six hundred subscribers, some of whom of course had wives, Mr. Cooke,