THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 123 



A profusion of young grass covers the ground as soon 

 as the snow has melted away. The crippled spectres 

 that stalked about a few weeks before, with wasted 

 limbs, and drooping heads, are as wild and mischievous 

 at the end of the first month, as though they had never 

 experienced the inconvenience of a six months' fast. 

 The stallions have already begun to form their separate 

 factions in the taboon, and the neighing, bounding, 

 prancing, gallopping, and fighting, goes'on merrily frojta 

 the banks of the Danube to the very heart of Mongolia. 

 In a taboon of a thousand' horses, there ai$ 

 generally fifteen or twenty stallions, and four or fiv 

 hundred brood mares. The stallions, and particularly 

 the old ones, consider themselves the rightful lords off 

 the community. They exercise their authority with 

 very little moderation, and desperate battles are often, 

 fought among them, apparently for the mere honour 

 of the championship. In almost every taboon there 

 is one stallion who, by the rule of his hoof, has estab- 

 lished a sort of supremacy,, to which his comrades 

 tacitly submit. Factions, cabals, and intrigues axe 

 not wanting. Sometimes there will be a general 

 coalition against some particular stallion, who, if he 

 get into a quarrel, is immediately set upon by ten ox 

 a dozen at once, and has no chance but to run for it. 

 There is seldom a taboon without two or three of 



