164 THE WILD HORS-Ei 



lignant, the chin and muzzle beset with bristles, the 

 neck rather thin, crested with a thick rugged mane, 

 which, like the tail, is black, as also the pasterns, 

 which are long : the hoofs are narrow, high, and 

 rather pointed; the tail, descending only to the 

 hocks, is furnished with coarse and rather curly 

 or wavy hairs close up to the crupper; the croup 

 as high as the withers : the voice of the Tarpan is 

 loud, and shriller than that of a domestic horse ; and 

 their action, standing, and general appearance, re- 

 sembles somewhat that of vicious mules/' * 



The feral horses, we were told, form likewise in 

 herds, but have no regular order of proceeding : 

 they take to flight more indiscriminately, and were 

 simply called Muzin. They may be known by 

 their disorderly mode of feeding, their desire to en- 

 tice domestic mares to join them, by their colours 

 being browner, sometimes having white legs, and 

 being often silvery grey : their heads are larger and 

 the neck shorter ; but their winter coat is nearly as 

 heavy as that of the wild, and there is always a 

 certain number of expelled Tarpan stallions among 

 them ; but they are more in search of cover and of 



* Such is the general evidence, chiefly obtained from the 

 orderly before mentioned ; a man who was a perfect model of 

 an independent trooper of the desert ; who had spent ten or 

 twelve years on the frontier of China, and, I understand, \vas 

 often seen at Paris attending his Tahtar chief at the theatres, 

 in 1814. My interpreter was an officer in the Don Cossack 

 regiment of Colonel Bigaloff, whose French was not super- 

 abundant. From the Mongolic troopers I obtained little in- 

 formation ; they were stupid or unwilling. 



