North America without horses when Columbus landed—Scarcity of horses at the Conquest of Mexico—Francisco Pizarro; his cavaliers terrify the Indians—Emperor Charles V. sends horses to King Edward VI.—David Hume, “a man remarkable for piety, probity, candour and integrity”; his practices in connection with horse racing—Queen Elizabeth fond of racing; condition of the Turf during her reign—Stallions fed on eggs and oysters—Lord Herbert of Cherbury's antagonistic attitude towards the Turf—Some horses in Shakespeare's plays—Performing horse and its owner publicly burnt to death—Horses trained by cruelty The continent whose history and progress have been the least influenced by horses probably is Northern America, for it seems beyond doubt that when Columbus discovered it horses were unknown there. How then did they come to be there in such immense herds in later years? This question has been asked many times, and the reply generally is that the horses subsequently introduced there by the Spaniards must have bred with great rapidity. Other solutions to the problem that have been put forward are hardly worth considering seriously. So enormous did these herds become, however, that down to half-a-century or so ago horses in their thousands ran wild over the vast prairies of the western states. At the present day such herds are practically extinct. We read that when, in 1519, the renowned Hernando Cortes set out from Cuba to conquer the empire of Montezuma, he took with him “sixteen strong and picked horses.” Bernal Diaz, who was Cortes' comrade, apparently was greatly devoted to horses, and in his famous account of the Conquest of Mexico he describes in detail each of these sixteen animals, and mentions in rather a quaint way the principal characteristic that each possessed. Seeing that Cortes' force consisted of some 660 trained men and about 200 Indians, the sixteen horses of course in no way approached the number he would have liked to take, and the reason he took so few is made clear by Diaz when he tells us that owing to the smallness of the ships of that period and the limited amount of accommodation that could be found on board them, even in proportion to their size, the difficulty of transport was very great. It was, indeed, owing chiefly to the difficulty of transporting horses to Cuba and Hispaniola from Spain that the prices demanded even for horses of inconsiderable value were so exorbitant. Even it seems possible that this scarcity of horses directly led to a campaign that was expected to last for only a few months being prolonged to approximately two years; for though Cortes set sail with his little army in February, 1519, the subjugation of Mexico was not completed until nearly two years had elapsed.