I have seen men who were reckoned good riders in England, get the most ignominious tumbles from a disregard of this advice.

An up-country horse knows perfectly well the only sound spots in a swamp; or the only sound part of a creek's banks.

If his rider persists in taking him over the latter, where he himself thinks it narrowest and safest, he is pretty sure to find the earth rotten and crumbling, and to pay for his obstinacy by a wetting; whilst in the case of a swamp the consequences are even more serious, and the horse often gets badly strained in floundering out of a quagmire.
But it was not all danger and difficulty, and the many varieties of scene in the course of a long ride constituted some of its chief charms.
At first, perhaps, after we had left our own fair valley behind, the track would wind through the gorge of a river, with lofty mountains rising sheer up from the water side.

All here was sad and grey, and very solemn in its eternal silence, only made more intense by the ceaseless monotonous roar of the ever-rushing water.

Then we would emerge on acres and acres of softly rolling downs, higher than the hillocks we call by that name at home, but still marvellously beautiful in their swelling curves all folding so softly into each other, and dotted with mobs of sheep, making pastoral music to a flock-owner's ear.