Before we departed the president paid us a very doubtful compliment in asking us to ride with him. We supposed it was well meant, but we still have secret misgivings that it was a plot to rid himself of us and of the vice-president at the same time. When his secretary came to tell us that Dr. Bonilla would be glad to have us ride with him at five that afternoon, I recalled the fact that all the horses I had seen in Honduras were but little larger than an ordinary donkey, and quite as depressed and spiritless. So I accepted with alacrity. The other two men, being cross-country riders, and entitled to wear the gold buttons of various hunt clubs on their waistcoats, accepted as a matter of course. But when we reached the palace we saw seven or eight horses in the patio, none under sixteen hands high, and each engaged in dragging two or three grooms about the yard, and swinging them clear of the brick tiles as easily as a sailor swings a lead. The president explained to us that these were a choice lot of six stallions which he had just imported from Chili, and that three of them had never worn a saddle before that morning. He gave one of these to Griscom and another one to the vice-president, for reasons best known to himself, and the third to Somerset. Griscom’s animal had an idea that it was better to go backward like a crab than to advance, so he backed in circles around the courtyard, while Somerset’s horse seemed best to enjoy rearing himself on his hind-legs, with the idea of rubbing Somerset off against the wall; and the vice-president’s horse did everything that a horse can do, and a great many things that I should not have supposed a horse could do, had I not seen it. I put my beast’s nose into a corner of the wall where he could not witness the circus performance going on behind him, and I watched the president’s brute turning round and round and round until it made me dizzy. We strangers confessed later that we were all thinking of exactly the same thing, which was that, no matter how many of our bones were shattered, we must not let these natives think they could ride any better than any chance American or Englishman, and it was only a matter of national pride that kept us in our saddles. The vice-president’s horse finally threw him into the doorway and rolled on him, and it required five of his officers to pull the horse away and set him on his feet again. The vice-president had not left his saddle for an instant, and if he handles his men in the field as he handled that horse, it is not surprising that he wins many battles.