470 NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF HORSE-SHOEING. 
had not yet been rifled; and among others, they discovered one of 
three stone vaults, containing the skeleton of a man with costly 
arms by his side, resting on a plate of pure gold, several pounds in 
weight; and another of a woman similarly laid on a gold plate, 
having bracelets and jewels of value on the arms, while the third 
held the remains of a war-horse richly caparisoned, with horse¬ 
shoes on the feet, and metal stirrups for the rider. This tumulus, 
no doubt, contained the remains of some mighty Khan, though not 
of great antiquity, since the stirrups attached to the horse’s saddle 
prove a comparatively late date; notwithstanding the very ancient 
usage for the Sultan to date his public acts from the Rikiab, or 
stirrup. The horseshoes, by the form they displayed, may have 
been of European workmanship, and the whole deposit of the time 
of the great Tartar invasion of Russia and Poland, between 1237 
and 1241. It is probable that, with the exception of the nobles, 
some Mongolic nations did not invariably shoe their horses until a 
later period, because they usually travelled with two each, and 
shifted the saddle from one to the other, to relieve the fatigued. 
Moreover, the nature of the soil was not hard nor stony; though 
the rivers they had to swim across were numerous, broad, and ex¬ 
panding, during the summer freshes, from eight to twenty miles, 
like the Don, which was actually traversed by the Tartars, float¬ 
ing their wagons and plank wheels, all of wood, with the baggage 
upon them, while a party of horses, attached to the vehicles by the 
tails, swam onwards, and the riders hanging on by their manes. A 
relay of other animals rested with their heads attached above water, 
floating gently, till they were, in turn, brought forward to exertion. 
Departing from some headland, they crossed, in this manner, to 
one on the opposite shore, whither the current must carry them, 
and accomplished the task in comparative security*. Thus no 
barrier could stop half a million fierce barbarians, who devoured 
all that was consumable, slew or enslaved the whole population, 
and burnt and sacked all they could not carry away. To such a 
degree were these expeditions destructive, that the Crim Tartars 
used a proverb, still repeated in the last Austrian Turkish war, 
that “ grass would not grow for seven years where a Tartar’s 
horde had passed in its thrice-sweeping foray.” The Poles reckon 
ninety-one invasions from the East, almost all Turkish or Mongolic; 
and the early use of horseshoes among the riding nations may in 
some sort be assumed from the exceeding frequency of that object 
in the arms of the nobles of all the nations of eastern Europe. 
Although horseshoes may not have been known in Africa before 
* In these very long traverses they had also inflated horse-skins, to render 
the vehicles more buoyant. This plan was practised, it is asserted, by the 
ancient Celtae, in Scotland, and is done in Indo-China and India. 
