borne in mind in the event of future complications 

 in the East." 



It is clear that Captain Burnaby was some- 

 what puzzled by the qualities displayed by a 

 steed which looked so unpromising ; he seeks 

 to explain its performance by the better food 

 it had enjoyed while on the march, and 

 begins to compare the staying power of 

 English horses with those of the Kirghiz 

 pony with doubts as to the superiority of 

 the former. At a later date he records 

 without surprise that his party travelled forty 

 miles in six hours, the horses having gone 

 all the time at a slow steady trot. On his 

 return journey, while staying at Petro- 

 Alexandrovsk, he was given a mount on a 

 little bay, hardly 14 hands high, for a day's 

 hunting; and records that it " danced about 

 beneath me as if he had been carrying a 

 feather-weight jockey for the Cambridge- 

 shire." The Kirghiz and Bokharans who 

 accompanied him evidently thought his 

 weight would prove too much for the pony, 

 and when there was a ditch to be jumped 

 looked round to see how the bay would 

 manage it. "Never a stumble . . . the 

 hardy little beast could have carried Daniel 

 Lambert if that worthy but obese gentleman 

 had been resuscitated for the occasion.' 5 



