racteristics
peculiar to the several animals employed. The most accomplished driver
of spirited horses would probably be in difficulties if called upon to
drive sixteen or twenty dogs in an arctic sledge, or a team of oxen or
mules drawing the guns of a mountain battery; and the adept in either of
these branches of the art might provoke the compassion of a farmer from
Lincolnshire or Texas by his attempts to manage a pair of Clydesdale
horses in the plough or the reaping machine.

Under all these different conditions driving is a work of utility, of
economic value to civilized society. But from very early times driving,
especially of horses, has also been regarded as a sport or pastime. This
probably arose in the first instance from its association with battle.
In the earliest historical records, such as the Old Testament and the
Homeric poems, the driver of the chariot fills a place of importance in
the economy of war; and on his skill and efficiency the fate of kings,
and even of kingdoms, must often have depended. The statement in the
Book of Kings that Jehu the son of Nimshi was recognized from a distance
by his style of driving appears to indicate that the warrior himself on
occasion took the place of the professional charioteer; and although it
would be unsafe to infer from the story that the pleasure derived from
the occupation was his motive for doing so, the name of this king of
Israel has become the eponym of drivers. Among the Greeks at an equally
early period driving was a recognized form of sport, to the popularity
of which Horace afterwards made allusion. Racing between teams of horses
harnessed to war-chariots took the place occupied by saddle-horse
racing and American trotting races (see HORSE-RACING) in the sport of
modern times. The element of danger doubtless gave pleasurable
excitement to chariot racing and kept alive its association with
incidents familiar in war; just as at a later period, when the
institution of chivalry had given the armed knight on horseback a
conspicuous place in medieval warfare, the tournament became the most
popular sport of the aristocracy throughout Europe.

This element of danger cannot be said to enter usually into the
enjoyment of driving at the present day. Though accidents occasionally
happen, the pastime is practically unattended by serious risk; and the
source of the pleasure it affords the driver must be sought in the skill
it requires, combined with the love of t