164 BORISOGLEBSK 



for a train at Kozlof if I remember rightly, I had the pleasure 

 of meeting General Palitzyne who belongs to the Remount 

 Department, not the chief of the cavalry staff. Alluding 

 to my engagement, he said that the Grand Duke had done 

 well by getting Fillis to teach the young officers school 

 riding and me to teach them breaking ; but with all his power 

 and desire for advancement, he would be unable to find 

 young officers who would learn. 



The officers of whom I saw most at Borisoglebsk were 

 General Akhwerdof, Colonel Globa, Colonel Rambach, Baron 

 von Tisenhausen, Captain Drouve, A.D.C., Captain Beck- 

 Marmarschef, Captain Medvedof, and Veterinary-Surgeon 

 Piotr Boczkowsky. As Captain Beck-Marmarschef, who was 

 an Armenian, did not know French or German, we managed 

 to exchange ideas fairly well in Arabic and Persian, neither 

 of which languages I can really speak; although I have an 

 intimate knowledge of Urdu, which is an Indian patois of 

 these two tongues. Urdu, the language of the Muham- 

 madans in India, has nearly the same grammar as Hindi, 

 which is spoken by the Hindus of the North-West Provinces 

 and is a patois of Sanscrit. When I was in the Bengal Staff 

 Corps, I passed the high proficiency examinations in Urdu 

 and Hindi at Calcutta, and obtained the Government prize 

 of Rs. 1500 for each of them. 



My Polish friend, Boczkowsky (Fig. 38), is an ardent 

 student of animal pathology. I was particularly glad to meet 

 him, as we had many subjects of mutual interest, chiefly about 

 horses, to discuss together. I trust that he will be given a 

 larger sphere than Borisoglebsk for the exercise of his great 

 talent for scientific research. 



Borisoglebsk is in the middle of the black soil country, 

 which is immensely rich from an agricultural point of view, as 

 it is covered with a deep layer of vegetable mould (humus), 

 similar to that of the black cotton soil of the Central Provinces 



