74 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



vigor. Pallas tells us that the Russian boors make 

 use of the dried flesh of the Hamster reduced to pow- 

 der, and mixed with oats ; and that this occasions 

 their horses to acquire a sudden and extraordinary 

 degree of embonpoint. Anderson relates, in his 

 ' History of Iceland,' that the inhabitants feed their 

 horses with dried fishes when the cold is very intense, 

 and that these animals are extremely vigorous, though 

 small. We also know that in the Feroe Islands, the 

 Orkneys, the Western Islands, and in Norway, where 

 the climate is very cold, this practice is also adopted ; 

 and it is not uncommon in some very warm countries 

 as in the kingdom of Muskat, in Arabia Felix, near 

 the straits of Ormuz, one of the most fertile parts of 

 Arabia, fish and other animal substances are there 

 given to the horses in the cold season, as well as in 

 times of scarcity." 



From horses eating to horses eaten, the transition 

 is easy and natural. Wherever the animal exists in 

 an unreclaimed state, its flesh is a staple article of 

 food. The Kirghis Kassaks pursue it with hawks, 

 and shoot it with arrows, or drive it into the Caspian 

 Sea to be drowned. The Calmucks, Mongols, and 

 other Tartars, make use of horse meat, and manufac- 

 ture a weak spirit, called koumiss, from mare's milk. 

 The mounted Indians of South America have no other 

 food than the flesh, milk, and blood of their mares, 

 which they never ride ; and the only luxury in which 



