JOUENEY FKOM HEKAT TO ORENBURG. 255 



here in such wretched condition that I wished to 

 keep him for a fortnight ; but on the second day 

 I was requested to send him to the palace. I urged 

 the miserable state of the nag, but they told me 

 that a Turkoman liked to judge of a horse when he 

 had little flesh ; and on my sending the horse, all 

 the spectators were loud in praise of his form and 

 strength. The head of the Turkoman horse is long, 

 his neck is light and long, and he has seldom any 

 crest; his shoulder is heavy, his pasterns are short 

 and straight, hoofs good, hind-quarters and loins very 

 broad and strong, but his hocks not sufficiently 

 curved, and his fore-legs covered with splints, which 

 are occasioned by the peculiar mode of shoeing; in 

 short, he is exactly adapted to the work required of 

 him to march twenty or thirty days, at the rate of 

 fifty or sixty miles per diem, with his nose straight 

 before him, never once turning round, and never 

 breaking out of a walk or amble. So much for their 

 horses ; now for their horsemanship. Any man who 

 has crossed a Turkoman saddle must feel that though 

 it is difficult for him to tumble off, still it is morally 

 and physically impossible for him to govern his horse. 

 In one of our saddles a man is part and parcel of his 

 horse, and the animal must obey the rational being ; 

 but seated on one of these affairs called saddles here, 

 a man feels that he is at the horse's mercy. He has 

 the consolation of knowing that the beast is perfectly 

 quiet, and will walk straight along the road; but 



