We generally find that great feats of endurance, involving capacity to thrive on poor and scanty food, have generally been performed by ponies.[9] In the Nile Campaign of 1885 the 19th Hussars were mounted on Syrian Arabs, averaging 14 hands, which had been purchased in Syria and Lower Egypt at an average price of £18. The weight carried was reduced as much as possible in view of the hard work required of the ponies, but each of the 350 on which the Hussars were mounted carried about 14 stone. Their march from Korti to Metammeh as part of a flying column showed what these little horses could do; between the 8th and 20th of January, both days included, they travelled 336 miles; halting on the 13th. On the return March from Dongola to Wady Halfa, 250 miles, after nearly nine months’ hard work on poor food they averaged 16 miles a day, with one halt of two days. Colonel Burrow, in reviewing the work performed by these ponies, says: “Food was often very limited, and during the desert march, water was very scarce. Under these conditions I venture to think that the performances of the regiment on the Arab ponies will compare with the performance of any horsemen on record.”[10] [9] See _Small Horses in Warfare_. By Sir Walter Gilbey, Bart. Vinton & Co., Ltd., 1900. [10] _The XIXth and Their Times_, Colonel John Biddulph. Murray, 1899. Captain Fred Burnaby, in his well-known work “A Ride to Khiva,” bears witness to the wonderful endurance of a fourteen-hand Tartar pony which he purchased with misgivings for £5, in default of any better mount. This pony, he tell us, was in such miserable condition, his men complained among themselves that it would not be worth _eating_, they looked upon the little beast as fore-doomed from the moment Captain Burnaby mounted it. Yet this pony, its ordinary diet supplemented by a few pounds of barley daily, carried its rider, who weighed twenty stone in his heavy sheepskin clothes, safely and well over 900 miles of bad roads, often through deep snow, and always in bitterly cold weather, the thermometer being frequently many degrees below zero. On the concluding day of the return journey this pony galloped the last 17 miles in 1 hour and 25 minutes. It would be easy to multiply examples of pony endurance; but we forbear. The greater stamina of the pony is evidenced in another direction, namely, length of life. Instances in which ponies have attained to a great age are more numerous than those recorded of horses, and further the pony lives longer. Mr. Edmund F. Dease, of Gaulstown, Co. Westmeath, lost a pony in December, 1894, which had reached the age of 39 years; in 1896, Mrs. Pratt, of Low Pond House, Bedale, Yorks, lost a pony mare aged 45 years; on Christmas Day, 1863, there died at Silworthy, near Clovelly in North Devon, a pony which had arrived within a few weeks of his sixtieth year. Accounts of ponies which lived, and in some cases worked, until they reached 40, 38, 37, and 35 years also recur to mind.