40 FIRST TRIP TO RUSSIA 



Races Chcvalines that in Russia there are on an average 

 about twenty-six horses to every hundred inhabitants, which is 

 a Tar higher equine percentage than that of any other nation in 

 Europe or Asia. We cannot obtain an exact percentage for 

 England, because the official returns include only animals 

 that are owned by occupiers of land. The number of these 

 horses in the United Kingdom was 2,069,852 in 1898; the 

 human population being 38,104,895. This works out to a 

 trifle over 5 per cent. With all allowances, we would not be 

 justified in putting the percentage at more than 13, which 

 would be half that of Russia. Most of the peasants, from 

 whom the army is almost entirely recruited, have been 

 accustomed to ride from their youth upwards, and often 

 barebacked, which is the best of all means for shaking a 

 boy or man into his seat. Russian cavalry soldiers are 

 honourably distinguished by their great fondness for the 

 horses of which they are in charge. They caress and pet 

 them and give them dainties of the carrot and bread type 

 as often as they can. In. Russia, the infamous practice of 

 standing-in with the corn merchant, which grooms in almost 

 every other country carry on, is happily unknown. I have 

 never seen ordinary working horses so well fed and so quiet 

 as in Russia. The condition of the horses belonging to even 

 the poorest owners contrasts very favourably with that of 

 horses in London, and still more so with the state of those in 

 Berlin. 



Each Russian soldier gets daily 2\ Ibs. of rye bread, and 

 6 oz. of meat without bone, which is made up with vegetables 

 into soup for his midday meal. Along with the soup he is 

 given a quantity of boiled kasha (buckwheat) to fill up the 

 interstices of his appetite. For his other meals he has to 

 depend on his loaf of rye bread. In the Cavalry Reserves, 

 the men get a second helping of kasha and soup at eight 

 o'clock in the morning, but without any increase in the 



