It is long now since I had to dispense with a fire for fear of advertising my camp to hostile savages, and the old glorious range in North America is woefully shrinking before the advance of settlement. The rancher who made the traveller welcome as a guest is replaced by a surly farmer who takes money for rental of his barn-yard. The range horseman who used to own the town when he rolled in from the plains is now considered, as Europe views the gypsy, with suspicion. One trait of the range rider recalls the past. No man lays a hand on our horses unless he wants a fight. It is a rule that the horseman tends his own stock so long as he is able to stand. He must be very ill or badly hurt before he surrenders that. {201} At range stables where there is a dust bath one unsaddles on arrival to let the horses roll. At town stables where there is no dust bath one slacks the girths, removes the bitts, gives half a drink, and some hay. An hour later when the rider is fed he comes back to cool horses who can be unsaddled without fear of any blisters which might turn into sores. Then comes full watering, and grain. While the horse is busy eating, pick out his feet, dry out wet heels, scrape off mud, and wisp down. After the stall is cleaned, and bedded, and the manger filled with hay for the night, the horseman is off duty; but a range man prefers to sleep in the barn loft in order to save his horses in the event of fire, and be up early with the morning grain. IV. RECORDS. [Sidenote: Records] Writing without notes or books, it is difficult to recall the records of long distance riding which form the best tests of endurance, and so give one a standard of value for man, equipment and horse. Driven to rely on memory I note first that the historic records are vague, giving but scanty data. Everybody knows for example that Bucephalus (Ox-head) the Thessalian charger of Alexander the Great was a horse of notable endurance, but the question {202} is--what could he do on continuous journeys? Charles XII. of Sweden rode in a hurry from Constantinople to Dantzic, but what was the time for that distance, and was it done by one horse or by reliefs? Dick King, a despatch rider, made good time on one horse from Port Elizabeth to Port Natal, but I do not remember his gait for the six hundred miles. Somebody who was not Dick Turpin, but possibly another rogue of the same name, made a single march from London to York on a mare called Black Bess, but that was a horse-killing feat, as much disqualified by decent men as the Inter-Army horse-killing rides which disgusted the horsemen of Europe not many years ago. [Sidenote: Records in civilization]