The preceding statements are sufficient to display the absolute powers of the horse; let us now consider what can be done by horse and man. Wonderful things are related of the Tartar couriers, who used to ride from one end of the Turkish empire to the other in an incredibly short space of time, with a pacha’s head dangling at their saddle bow; but we have had European couriers whose feats were not less astonishing and better authenticated. In the days when as yet railroads were not, government expresses that required great dispatch used to be carried by men on horseback, though ordinary messengers usually travelled in carriages. Relays of horses were kept ready for the courier all along the road; a postilion accompanied him from station to station, and he continued his journey day and night without halting except to take a fresh horse. He ate and drank in the saddle, slept in the saddle, leaning forward on a cushion strapped to the high-peaked pummel, and was lifted, saddle and all, from the back of one horse to another’s; for the attempt to mount and dismount, after his heated limbs had been long fixed in one posture, would have speedily disabled him. The postilion who galloped beside him looked to his safety when he slept, and took charge of his horse. In this way couriers with despatches for London from Vienna, have ridden from the latter capital to Calais without stopping, the distance being about nine hundred miles. In 1763, a Mr. Shafto won a match which was to provide a person who should ride one hundred miles a day, on any one horse each day, for twenty-nine days together, and to have any number of horses not exceeding twenty-nine. The jockey accomplished the task with fourteen horses, and on one day rode one hundred and sixty miles on account of the tiring of his first horse. The celebrated Lafayette rode in August, 1778, from Rhode Island to Boston, a distance of nearly seventy miles in seven hours, and returned in six hours and half. One of the most extraordinary feats in the way of express riding performed in modern times was that of a boy of fifteen, Frederick Tyler, who conveyed, from Montgomery to Mobile, the news of the two days’ battle, fought between the armies of the United States and Mexico in the summer of 1846. The distance, one hundred and ninety miles, was accomplished in thirteen hours; and during the entire night the boy caught and saddled his horses, none of which were in readiness, as he was not looked for by those who had the horses in charge.