Iron horse

“ Every now and then, when the beast tried to stand still, the giant would give him a blow on the ribs with his big iron club, which sounded as loud as the thundering of a great billow against the rough-headed rocks of the coast. When he gave him a pull forward by the halter, the wonder was that he did not drag the animal’s head away from his body; and, on the other hand, the horse often gave the halter such a tremendous tug backwards that it was equally wonderful how the arm of the giant was not torn away from his shoulder. ”

“ Aristátalís, and some other ingenious counsellors, were requested to consult together to contrive some means of counteracting the power of the war-elephants, and they suggested the construction of an iron horse, and the figure of a rider also of iron, to be placed upon wheels like a carriage, and drawn by a number of horses. ”

“ That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country’s champion, the Moore of Moore Hill, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest? ”

“ The pack-horse, a slow-moving beast, has a keeper who pulls him along by a cord, his extended head and reluctant gait making that seem the only motive power. Horse and leader wear straw shoes, and new pairs are strung around the high saddle for reshoeing the beast every few miles. Iron horseshoes are confined to the capital and the large ports, and the village blacksmith is unknown. ”

“ Profiting by the information thus vouchsafed, a daring adventurer cast his sword upon the land at the time indicated, thereby dissolving the spell, and Ireland has ever since remained above the water. On account of this tradition the finding of iron is always accounted lucky by the Irish; and when the treasure-trove has the form of a horse-shoe, it is nailed up over the house door. Thus iron is believed to have reclaimed Ireland from the sea, and the talismanic symbol of its reclamation is the iron horse-shoe. ”

“ One is a worn iron horseshoe, framed and set in gold, backed with velvet, and surrounding an oval miniature of a horse and rider; the horse is the lithe-limbed sorrel, Dandy; the rider, in the broad-brimmed hat, the blue scouting-shirt, and Indian leggings, is Ray. ”

“ Among their fallen riders, even in the ditch, as well as on the approach thereto, lay many noble horses, maddened by pain, kicking, plunging, snorting, and shrieking (for a horse, at times, can utter a frightful cry) , as they rolled over the helpless wounded, with their iron hoofs breaking legs and ribs, or beating out the brains of those whom the musket-shot had already maimed elsewhere. ”

“ Finding himself hampered on horseback, he retired a little back, and leaping from his horse, and summoning up his gigantic strength, he seized an iron mace, so ponderous, that even to have lifted it would have been a toil for almost any other individual in the field, and, swinging it round his head, he threw himself amidst the thickest of the foe, bearing ruin and death along with him. ”

“ The principal distinguishing point about these bits is the large iron ring, which passes over the horse’s jaw, and gives to the rider a leverage so powerful that he could break the jaw of any horse without making any very great exertion. ”

“ I feel sure that the novelty of the iron horse, with a woman riding it, played not a little on their superstitious fears; they suspected, no doubt, this was some ingenious new engine of war devised against them by the unaccountable white man ”

“ So we can easily understand, that in certain parts of the world, horses have been and can be made serviceable to a certain extent without employing an iron defence. If one may judge from the paintings of Ancient Egypt and the sculptures of Assyria, where we see the horse portrayed with great skill, and with that minute perception of his external form which seems to us even now very remarkable, no protection for the hoof was ever had recourse to, and no remains of anything bearing a resemblance to such an appliance have been found. ”

“ As the iron horse performs its work, it gradually wears out its pistons, its rods, its wheels, its boiler-tubes, all of which have to be made good from time to time. The founder and the smith repair it, supply it, so to speak, with 'plastic food,' the food that becomes embodied with the whole and forms part of it. ”

“ The iron grey is usually a larger horse; higher in the withers, deeper and thinner in the carcass, more angular in all his proportions, and in many cases a little too long in the legs. Some of these greys make good hackneys and hunters, and especially the Irish horses; but they are principally used for the carriage. They have more endurance than the flatness of the chest would promise; but their principal defect is their feet, which are liable to contraction, and yet that contraction is not so often accompanied by lameness as in many other horses. ”

“ When the iron was growing fluffy white, the smith caught it up in his tongs, lifted it from the fire, flung off a shower of hissing sparks and began to hammer, drawing it out and beating it around the horn of the anvil until presently it became a rough flat shoe.
The iron was cooling, and he put it back into the coals. When it was hot again, he turned the calks, punched the nail holes and carried it glowing to where the horse stood, held it an instant to the hoof, noted the changes to be made, and thrust it back into the fire. ”

“ The horse being safely secured by twitches and cords, according to the methods in general use, the OPERATOR having his irons in the fire properly heated, and his attendant ready to supply him with another, as often as the fire of the previous iron is exhausted, he proceeds with the edge of the red-hot iron to make longitudinal and transverse strokes in succession, over the whole part where injury has been sustained, and to such extent as circumstances may have rendered necessary ”

“ From time immemorial they have been skilful workers in metals; with the properties and many of the uses of iron they have for ages been familiar; and for centuries they have employed horses on a large scale, not only in their traffic, but in their feudal armies, of which a large proportion is cavalry. ”

“ The two riders galloped after the animal, attacking him from either side, barring his way as he tried to make for the river, till the Marquis, spurring his horse, gained on him, and, nearing the bull with his garrocha in front of him, drove the iron on to his croup, the combined impetus of the horse and the rider's arm causing him to lose his balance, and roll over on the ground belly upwards, his horns stuck in the ground and his four legs in the air. ”

“ It should be remarked that, in general, bits are not used for the horses, but a sharp iron band across the nose does duty instead; it is not nearly so good as a bit for picking up a stumbling horse, because it bends the head down instead of elevating it; but on the whole, it appears to punish less than the heavy torture iron usually forced into the mouths of Spanish horses. ”

“ But this was at length prevented by a very simple contrivance. A piece of iron was fixed in such a manner at the end of the bolt that you could not shove the bolt unless you raised the iron at the same time. Probably this puzzled the horse’s brain. Even if he understood it, he could not manage the two things together. I have heard about a horse that would take hold of a pump-handle with his teeth and pump water into a trough when he wanted to drink. ”

“ Among the Scotch fishermen also iron is invested with magical attributes. Thus if, when plying their vocation, one of their number chance to indulge in profanity, the others at once call out, “Cauld airn!” and each grasps a handy piece of the metal as a counter influence to the misfortune which would else pursue them throughout the day. [72] Even nowadays in England, in default of a horse-shoe, the iron plates of the heavy shoes worn by farm laborers are occasionally to be seen fastened at the doors of their cottages. ”

“ The main question is, whether mankind after all has not been forestalled in this invention; and it is absolutely certain that those who have labored most conscientiously to improve the shoeing of horses have striven especially to secure for them the power of moving safely over materials of many kinds. These men have been convinced that the traditional methods overload the foot of the horse with iron, and that the modes of fastening on this iron interfere with, if not altogether obstruct, the processes of nature. ”

“ The burn of a branding iron is supposed to heal almost immediately. Cowboys will tell you that a horse is always more frightened than hurt during the operation, and that the day after he feels none the worse. ”

“ Roper went to his horse and from somewhere about the saddle produced an iron resembling a poker. It was a tool of the range long outlawed in the United States because of the service it performed for brand-blotting rustlers of both horse and cattle stock. On most ranches the punchers whose duty it is to brand the strays which have escaped the round-up carry an iron that plants the entire brand at one pressure, embosses it, as it were, in the hair with the least possible pain and disfigurement to the animal. ”

“ They are sometimes made with a little pocket into which the ends of the fingers can be thrust; it is a good arrangement, for finger-ends have to be so near the iron that they sometimes get scorched.
An iron stand.—A stand is necessary to rest the iron on when the laundress needs both hands to arrange the article she is ironing. If one is hard put to it for a substitute, a horse-shoe, or a piece of fire-brick will serve, the latter is especially good because it holds heat.
A clothes horse.—The more closely it folds up and the more rungs it has when unfolded, the better the clothes horse. ”

“ I roared, as I came dripping wet out of the brook. "Stop my horse!" But I earnestly hoped that no one would stop him, for this last contretemps had considerably damped my ardour and cooled my courage; and I thought that if nobody did "stop my horse," he would eventually find his way to the pound; and his absence would afford me a decent pretext for going home. To my horror, though, Iron Duke was brought back by the wretched lad of the spindle legs. "Be the saddle greased, sir?" ”

“ This is made of rough iron, having a ring through which the animal’s tongue is thrust, and a cruel spike so fashioned as to stab the roof of the horse’s mouth each time the reins are pulled; the inevitable consequence being that a horse’s mouth is almost always spoilt when he is young, and is usually in a lacerated condition. ”

“ To mount, a man should place his left shoulder to his horse’s left shoulder, so as to look to the horse’s rear; take your whip, reins, and the mane in the left hand, with the right hand take the lower part of the stirrup-leather between the fore-finger and thumb, the little finger on the upper part of the stirrup-iron; take a hop forward facing the saddle and turning your toe to the horse’s front without touching his side, take the cantle with the right hand and up. ”

“ But something in the steadfast interest of that silent horseman roused my curiosity even before I was near enough to see the color of his armor or the device upon his shield. Up we scrambled up that sandy, heathery scar, the strong sinews of my war-horse playing like steel cordage under my thighs as he lifted me and my armor up the gravelly path, and then, as we topped the rise and came into the evening breeze, that strange warrior advanced and held out a hand. ”

“ With a tiger-skin for a saddle, a thong loop with only the rider’s great toe thrust in it for a stirrup, a string in the horse’s lower jaw for a bridle, armed with spear and cimeter, these conquerors who despised walls went forth to level cities and slaughter all who resisted. In their raids they found food ever ready in the beasts they rode, for a reeking haunch of horse-meat, cut from the steed whose saddle had been emptied by arrow or accident, was usually found slung to their pommels. ”

“ Just as all believed the horse would be gored to death, the skilful rider wheeled him out of harm’s way, spurred him alongside of the bull, and, leaning from his saddle, drove his sword to the hilt into the great brute’s side. ”

“ Confident in the qualities of his steed, he knows he will not long ride in the rear.
And the blood-bay answers his expectations. As if joyed at being relieved from his inert load—to him an incubus inexplicable—and inspired by the pressure of his master’s knees, the noble horse springs off over the prairie turf—in long sinewy strides, showing that his body still retains its strength, and his limbs their elasticity. ”

“ The approaching warrior seemed at first to crawl along at a snail’s pace. But when he drew nearer, we could hear the heavy tramp of his horse’s hoofs, and see that his speed was furious.
He plied the lash, and kept at full stretch, until within a few paces of us. Then by a powerful effort, the horse was drawn almost erect in the air, and stopped in his mad career, as suddenly as if converted into stone. His rider sprang from him, and advanced to the Interpreter. He bore a request from the chief, that the party would descend into the plain, where his warriors could receive them in better style. ”

“ They are strikingly pretty in the singular costume which sets off their fine persons to the greatest advantage. They are moreover shy as roes, and chaste as vestals. Every thing shows the mountain character; my horse among the rest:—unwearied as a machine of steel, he gallops over the stones, up hill and down; leaps with undisturbed composure over the gates which continually intercept my way across the fields, and tires me long before he feels the least fatigue himself. ”