THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 115 



hardly be matter of surprise to any one, to learn that 

 the winter is a season of sickness and death to the 

 horses of the Steppe. After the mildest winter, the 

 poor creatures come forth, a troop of sickly looking 

 skeletons ; but when the season has been severe, or 

 unusually long, more than half of them, perhaps, have 

 sunk under their sufferings, or have been so reduced 

 in strength that the ensuing six months are hardly suf- 

 ficient to restore them to their wonted spirits. The 

 year 1833 was remarkably destructive to the taboons, 

 and they had not recovered from its effects five years 

 afterwards, when I last visited the Steppe. In such 

 years of famine, the most enormous prices are some- 

 times paid for hay ; yet every careful agriculturist may 

 secure his cattle against such sufferings, by a little in- 

 dustry and forethought. In the proper season he may 

 have as much hay as he pleases, for the mere trouble 

 of cutting it ; and such is the dryness of the climate 

 during summer, that the hay may always be carried 

 home, and stacked within a few hours after it has been 

 mown. 



From the hardships of an ordinary winter, the horses 

 quickly recover amid the abundance of spring. A pro- 

 fusion 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 



