From the fierce dry heat of the Gobi Desert to the utmost rigors of Siberian cold, the Dun will thrive wherever there is grass. His coat is warm and cool for any climate, greasy enough to shed rain, and proof against every weather except wet driving snow or a strong gale. Through the longest winters he keeps alive by grubbing through the snow to get at grass. The droughts of summer may so increase the journey between food and water that he gets very little time for rest, but somehow he manages to pull through, the last of all horses to yield to difficulties. Lacking the speed and beauty of the Bay, he lives where the Bay will die. In danger or difficulty the Bay is a fool in a panic, while the Dun keeps cool, reasons, and uses common sense with a strong, hearty valour. One would select the Bay for pleasure, but the Dun for serious work under the saddle, for road endurance, for long and rapid marches, and all that makes mounted troops of value in campaigns. Just as the working man may be rendered irritable and even vicious by unfair treatment in our social life, the working horse is made {33} ill-tempered and dangerous to handle by bad horse-mastership. So the Dun has a terrible reputation, and in his defence I am a sort of Devil's advocate. He is the typical range horse whose manners and customs will be the theme of the next chapter. PART VI. CLOUDLAND. [Sidenote: Cloudland] We have seen the close resemblance of warm winds and seas between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific; but it was only in the North Atlantic region that the great Ice Age, in long pulsations, widened and shrank its Icefields. Ten thousand years ago (Wright) in the Niagara District, and seven thousand years ago (de Geer) in Finland, the edges of the Icefield were withdrawn for the last time, and the climate began to get warm and comfortable. In America and in Europe, as the ice retreated, a belt of tundra crept closely in its wake, and in the rear of that a belt of green turfed grasses. In Eastern Canada, and North-western Europe these green turfed pastures are varied with woodlands of such trees as cast their leaves in winter. Amid these changes the horse had vanished from North America, but survived in Asia, and slowly extended his range as the ice retreated from Europe. In Europe {34} as in America, man also widened his hunting grounds in the wake of the melting Icefield. In the big region of the south-west wind the lands which surround the North Sea and the Baltic are different from all others, being under a low sun, cloudy, with only one day's sunshine out of seven. And Cloudland breeds a special type of man with blue eyes, a ruddy skin, and hair of chestnut, bay, brown, or dun, colours like those of horses. Under the grey skies of Cloudland, man lacks the protective colour which in all other regions of the world defends the body from actinic light. I think we shall find this true of the horse also.