So one senses the radiant perfumed land and sees how it shaped and coloured its native horses. It was from that raw material the breeder wrought just as a sculptor models clay into his statuary. Under his hands the wild traits disappeared, the short-sighted pony grew into a long-sighted hunter, sound hoofs and limbs were softened to unsoundness, the language of signs gave place to understanding of human speech, while discipline of the harem and the herd became obedience in the fields of sport, of labour, or soldier service. [Sidenote: The dapple sign] I would not have my reading take the place of thinking, but rather use books to inspire {53} thought and be thankful to them for correcting blunders. Thus, aiming at the truth, no matter what I hit, I see in Western Europe a horse-currency which is of striped extraction, and, like a coinage in bronze, silver and gold, has evolved its moorland ponies, its lowland draught stock, and its upland running breeds. The measure of Bay blood stamps out its values; and, where one can decipher a device, it is to read the dapple sign for one of the sun's own kingdoms. {54} CHAPTER III. HABITS OF OUTDOOR HORSES. I. THE RANGE. The North American range of the run-wild herds enlarges northward out of Mexico and covers the region between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean up to the edge of the Northern Forest in Canada. This gives an area of three million square miles, a range much the same size as Europe, the United States, Australia, Brazil, or Canada. The eastern half is a prairie, the western a desert shaped like a swell of the sea about eight thousand feet high at the top, and laced all over with a skein of mountain ranges thrown like fisherman's net and broken all to pieces. Moreover, the southern or higher half of this desert is cleft to the roots by sheer abysmal chasms known as the Cañons. It has been my good fortune to ride from the edge of the Canadian forest along the general line of the Rocky Mountains to a place just {55} twenty miles south of Zacatecas in Mexico, which is the southern boundary of the Stock Range, on the Tropic of Cancer. I have also ridden from Regina in Saskatchewan to Red Bluff in California. These two routes cross the grass from north to south, and nearly from east to west, making a rough total of seven thousand miles. [Sidenote: The wilderness] The land as I knew it first had just been stripped naked by the hunters who swept away almost the whole of its native stock of bison, deer, and antelope, wild sheep and goats, together with the hunting animals, such as wolves and panthers who earned a living there. The land as I saw it next was overstocked with ponies, cattle and sheep, so that the grass was poor. The land as I saw it last was being fenced, watered and ploughed by pioneer settlers. In thirty years I witnessed the passing of the wilderness and its frontiersmen.