Training the Turcoman. 27 



"bolused," from time to time with balls of barley flour kneaded up with sheep-tail fat, which 

 the riders carry in their saddle-bags. At other times they are picketed (always heavily 

 clothed), and fed on barley and "samaun" or bruised straw (what is called " boosah " in the 

 Punjab), several handfuls of the former being mixed carefully up in an immense nosebag, 

 or " tobra," holding a bushel or so of the latter. In spring they are " soiled " for a fortnight 

 or three weeks on green corn or green herbage, like Persian and Turkish horses, which their 

 normal treatment resembles. 



" Before making their ' atamans,' or forays, they are galloped eighteen miles a day 

 for a fortnight, and the barley meal and mutton-fat boluses gradually substituted for the 

 barley and chopped straw. They have large, coarse-looking heads, and often ewe necks ; 

 their other points are good. Their ears are peculiar, small, pointed, and turning inwards — a 

 peculiarity noticeable in many Punjabee breeds, which I suspect they have inherited from the 

 Turcoman ; country-bred horses in India being, like the natives, often a mdange of different 

 races. 



" The Tartar or Kirghiz pony or horse is quite a different animal, being of a type 

 approaching the Chargoshee, the Yabboo, the Yarkand pony, or Bootia pony of Thibet ; 

 all the Tartar breeds are closely related. 



" Many of the Cossack animals are of this type. They have (excepting some of the 

 better bred ones, which are rare) a large head well set on, a big barrel well ribbed up, short 

 legs, and a dense mane and tail. They are weight-carriers, stand almost any roughing and 

 hardship, and may be seen in the depth of winter, with the thermometer several degrees 

 below zero, apparently enjoying the cold — rolling in the snow, or scraping it up with their 

 feet to get a bite at the withered grass or stubble beneath. 



"These are the animals that the Tartars of former times used to make their raids on 

 during the Turkish invasions of Austria and Russia, when the Tartar Khans of the Crimea, 

 feudatories of the Turks, had to supply a contingent of sixty or seventy thousand irregular 

 horse. These, acting as an immense advanced guard to the main army, ravaged the country 

 far and wide, burnt villages, carried off women and children, and performed the usual " atrocity " 

 business inseparable from Mahomedan campaigning, often penetrating leagues beyond Vienna. 



" In ordinary times they made raids on their own account into Poland, or campaigned 

 against the Cossacks, who were kept up by the Russians as a check upon them. Being 

 often pursued and hard pushed on these occasions, their animals were obliged to be " fit.'' 

 The training the best of them often underwent as a preparation for the business was some- 

 thing appalling, and to any one unacquainted with the strength of constitution and iron 

 hardness of the Tartar ponies would be completely incredible. Their method of training a 

 horse, or rather the ordeal they made him pass through before he was considered suitable 

 for the " war path " — which they admit used to kill two out of five who underwent it, and 

 was, of course, only compatible with the possession of an unlimited number of animals 

 costing nothing or next to nothing to keep, being grazed on the steppe all the summer, 

 and half starved on a little dry fodder during winter — was in this wise : — ■ 



" After picking out a likely one, rising seven or eight^before which age no horse was 

 allowed to be selected for raiding — they loaded him on the .saddle with a sack of earth or 

 sand, at first only the weight of the rider, but gradually increased for eight days, till the 

 horse carried 20 stone or 22 stone. As the weight was increased, the horse's ration of food 

 and water was diminished. He was trotted and walked six or seven miles daily. 



" After the first eight days they gradually, for other eight days, decreased the load, still, 



