So when the natives bring in their horses for your selection blind your eyes to the question of looks and points until you have divided the offering into two parts--those that are sure-footed, courageous, gentle, tractable, easy to catch, good grub rustlers, and if pack horses, those that will follow and will take care of their packs, and those that lack one or more of these qualifications. Discard the second group. Then if the first group contains nothing but blemished or homely horses, make the best of it, perfectly sure that the others might as well not exist.
In general, a horse just from pasture should have a big belly. A small-bellied horse will prove to be a poor feeder, and will probably weaken down on a long hike. The best horse stands from fourteen hands to fourteen two, and is chunkily built. There are exceptions, both ways, to this rule. A pack horse is better with low withers on account of the possibility of sore backs. Avoid a horse whose ears hang sidewise from his head; he is apt to be stubborn. As for the rest, horse sense is the same everywhere.
A pack horse can carry two hundred pounds--not more. Of course more can be piled on him, and he will stand up under it, but on a long trip he will deteriorate. Greater weights are carried only in text books, in camp-fire lies, and where a regular pack route permits of grain feeding. A good animal, with care, will take two hundred successfully enough, but I personally always pack much lighter. Feed costs nothing, so it is every bit as cheap to take three horses as two. The only expense is the slight bother of packing an extra animal. In return you can travel farther and more steadily, the chances of sore backs are minimized, your animals keep fat and strong, and in case one meets with an accident, you can still save all your effects on the other. For the last three years I have made it a practice to pack only about a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five pounds when off for a very long trip. My animals have always come out fat and hearty, sometimes in marked contrast to those of my companions, and I have not had a single case of sore back.
The latter are best treated by Bickmore's Gall Cure. Its use does not interfere in the least with packing; and I have never seen a case it did not cure inside ten days or two weeks if applied at the beginning of the trouble.