" JACOB'S HORSE."
WHEN a huntsman requires a horse, he goes to some well-known stable, and selects one of those beasts, all muscle, sinew, and bone, with which we are familiar in sporting prints ; not a large black horse, with very arched outline, flowing hair, and majestic tread —such as we see in the funeral-hearse on grand occasions. It is true that if a portly gentleman were mounted on the great black horse, he would look more majestic, standing as sentinel-command- ant on the lawn of his own estate ; but be would never expect to
keep up with the hounds. When a man is clothed to ride as
hockey in a race, where he requires every faculty of eye, head, and and, he places upon his head a close cap which will not catch the wind, having in front a close shade to keep the sun out of his eyes : he does not balance on one corner of his forehead a leathern coffeepot with several ornaments of brass and worsted. If he were to think of doing so, his "owner," knowing that much of his attention, and perhaps his hands, would be occupied in maintaining the balance of that head-dress, would protest against such a certain means of losing the race. When a surgeonputs away his scalpel, he lays it in a case which prevents the edge from being touched, or which approaches it only with a soft shield : he does not put it into an iron tube dangling from a rough rider's left thigh, where its edge may be flattened, in order that the rattling may astonish the bystanders. The "Light Cavalry" soldier, however, reverses all these rules. A huntsman, a jockey, and something more than a surgeon, in one, he mounts a stately horse, puts the gewgaw leathern coffeepot upon the corner of his forehead, and places his sword in an iron tube, where its rattling may astonish the bystanders. To complete his efficiency, he clothes his limbs in garments that bind them like those of the Italian baby, and loads his horse with a weight of ornament and provident stores, as if resolved to render it imposssible that he should obtain an advan- tage over the enemy in the race. "Jacob Omnium" picks out of Lord Cardigan's evidence before the Sebastopol Committee an ex- ample of the manner in which our Light Cavalry, thus horsed and equipped, is able to perform its services- " Towards the end of last summer, while the brigade which he commanded was encamped at Devna, he received orders to proceed with 200 Light Ca- valry as far as Trajan's Wall, to try and discover whether any portion of the Russian army had entered the Dobrudseha after having raised the siege of Silistria. His Lordship further stated, that at that time his brigade was in excellent plight. Trojan's Wall is about a hundred miles from Devna. This service lasted seventeen days. During the whole march they saw no ene- my ; indeed, they fell in with but six human beings of any kind : they were accompanied the whole way by commissaries, whose duty it was to feed them, and who, according to Lord Cardigan's evidence, fed them well." It was a promenade militaire, without any -harassing duties of pursuit.] " Yet we learnt by the subsequent evidence of the Earl of Lucan, that of those 200 Light Cavalry horses two died on the march, two strayed, about 140 re- turned to Devna ruined by sore backs, a few more by fever in the feet, and that scarcely a single horse out of the entire number recovered sufficiently ever to join the ranks again." The horses had to go thirty-four milesin the first day's march, under light" hussars, weighing, with arms and ac- coutrements, eighteen or nineteen stone, and three stone of forage and pro- visions.
Now, "Light Cavalry " is not only a Horse-Guards expression, and the duties required of Lord Cardigan were duties that are performed by other corps in other places. Jacob's, Christie's, and the Nizam's Horse, in India—the Cape Mounted Rifles in our South African colony—the Turkish horse almost on the very ground where Lord Cardigan destroyed his troop by the easy per- formance of its express duty—have it may be said, kept up a life of constant action exactly in such work as this which knocked up Lord Cardigan in a few days. But then, they are "light horse." The Indian horseman rides a beast from fourteen-and-a- half to fifteen hands high—not a pony, butjust above it, with the full type of the horse. The rider himself is not more than of thirteen-and-a-half stone weight A pony to carry forage is allowed for every two troopers. These are light horse ; and they do light- horse work,—the kind of hunting jockeyship, sword-in-hand, which is required of the particular species of cavalry during a campaign, particularly in the enemy's country. We altogether lack that arm. Jacob Omnium has been pressing this subject upon the Government and the public in letters to the Times, with all his ability and force of style and illustration. Our Jacob proposes that Indian officers should be allowed to raise a similar force, and give us for the first time a light cavalry.
"If they were empowered to raise a brigade of really Light British Cavalry on the Indian system, modified, of course, where it seemed necessary to them to modify it—if they were directed to enlist no men above five feet three inches in height, and to buy no horses above fifteen hands, and to dress and arm them for service, and not for show—they would not interfere in any degree with the officers now employed in recruiting taller, heavier men, and in buying taller and heavier homes, for our heavy cavalry ; and I am confi- dent they would soon be at the head of a body of horse fair more efficient for actual service than any we are likely to send, under the present system, to the Crimea. Such troops, too, could be mounted and remounted on horses collected in Spain and on the shores of the Mediterranean, none of which are available for our Heavies as they are."
Among the numerous suggestions pressed upon Government at this momentous time, there is none more practical or more deserv- ing of attention than this creation of a new arm, the want of which is so bitterly felt in the British service ; and it would be doubly just that the first regiment should be called "Jacob's Horse."
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