“There is yet another kind of sport, which the young people take great delight in, and that is the hunting of wild horses; which they pursue, sometimes with dogs and sometimes without. You must know they have many horses foaled in the woods of the uplands, that never were in hand and are as shy as any savage creature. These having no mark upon them belong to him that first takes him. However, the captor commonly purchases these horses very dear, by spoiling better in the pursuit, in which case he has little to make himself amends, besides the pleasure of the chase. And very often this is all he has for it, for the wild horses are so swift that ’tis difficult to catch them; and when they are taken ’tis odds but their grease is melted, or else being old they are so sullen that they can’t be tamed.” In the number of _Wallace’s Monthly_ for September, 1877, p. 684, will be found a very interesting article from the pen of the late Dr. Elwood Harvey, on “The Chincoteague Ponies,” that have from time immemorial occupied, in a wild state, the islands of Chincoteague and Assoteague off the eastern shore of Virginia and Maryland. The traditions relating to their origin are very hazy and improbable, and the most reasonable one, because it is within the range of possibilities, is that a Spanish ship was wrecked off this part of the coast and the original ponies were on board and swam ashore. It is well established that they have occupied the islands for more than a hundred years. They are about thirteen hands high, uniform in shape and resemble each other except in color, for all colors prevail. Some of them pace a little, and they have rather light manes and tails, and no superabundance of hair on the fetlocks. Now, the horses of Virginia, at the period of which Mr. Beverley writes, and of which I will have something further to say as we progress, were but little if any larger than these semi-wild inhabitants of the islands; they were of all colors and many of them paced. As it is well known that the action of the ocean, so unaccountable to all human ken, one year builds up a dike connecting islands with the mainland, and the next year, perhaps, washes it out again, we can thus easily understand how a herd of these semi-wild animals may have been caught and kept there. In this way, it seems to me, the origin of the Chincoteague ponies may be easily and rationally accounted for, without any shadow of violence to the clearest reasoning. Mr. Hugh Jones, who, in many directions, seems to have been a closer observer of the life of the colonists than any of the other tourists whose writings we have examined, wrote a little work entitled “The Present State of Virginia,” which was published in London, 1724, expressing himself as follows, on page 48: