CHAPTER V

PRIMITIVE STOCK OF WILD HOUSES—THE STEPPES.

ARE there any genuine wild horses in existence—that is to say, any that are not descended, like those of South America, from a domesticated stock? Naturalists have all concurred until very recently in answering this question negatively. They were of opinion that, as in the case of the sheep, the goat, and some other domestic animals, not a singular indication remains by which we can judge of the form, the colour, or the habits, by which the horse was characterized before it became the servant of man, or how far it may have differed from the present domesticated races. But this opinion is entirely gratuitous, and unsupported by a single fact. They choose to assume, in defiance of probability and of testimony, that the herds of horses that roam over the vast unexplored regions of Central Asia are not wild but feral (that is, sprung from a tame stock), for no other reason than because they are not very unlike our ordinary domestic breeds. Colonel Hamilton Smith, a writer of great authority, has combated these notions with great force.

“Whatever,” he says, “may be the lucubrations of naturalists in their cabinets, it does not appear that the Tahtar or even the Cossack nations have any doubt upon the subject; for they assert that they can distinguish a feral breed from the wild by many tokens, and naming the former takja and muzin, they denominate the real wild horse tarpan and tarpani. We have had some opportunity of making personal inquiries on wild horses among a considerable number of Cossacks of different parts of Russia, and among Bashkirs, Kirguise, and Kalmucs, and with a sufficient recollection of the statements of Pallas and Buffon’s information obtained from M. Sanchez, to direct the questions to most of the points at issue. From the answers of Russian officers of this irregular cavalry, who spoke French or German, we drew the general conclusion of their general belief in a true wild and untamable species of horse, and in herds that were of mixed origin. Those most acquainted with a nomadic life, and in particular an orderly Cossack attached to a Tahtar chief as Russian interpreter, furnished us with the substance of the following notice. The tarpani form herds of several hundreds, subdivided into smaller troops, each headed by a stallion; they are not found unmixed excepting towards the borders of China; they prefer wide, open, elevated steppes, and always proceed in lines or files, usually with the head to windward, moving slowly forward while grazing, the stallions leading, and occasionally going round their own troop. Young stallions are often at some distance, and single, because they are expelled by the older, until they can form a troop of mares of their own; their heads are seldom observed to be down for any length of time; they utter now and then a kind of snort, with a low neigh somewhat like a horse expecting its oats, but yet are distinguishable by the voice from any domestic species, excepting the woolly Kalmuc breed. They have a remarkably piercing sight, the point of a Cossack spear at a great distance on the horizon, seen behind a bush, being sufficient to make a whole troop halt; but this is not a token of alarm; it soon resumes its march, till some young stallion on the skirts begins to blow with his nostrils, moves his ears in all directions with rapidity, and trots or scampers forward to reconnoitre, the head being very high, and the tail out; if his curiosity is satisfied, he stops and begins to graze; but if he takes alarm, he flings up his croup, turns round, and with peculiarly shrill neighing warns the herd, which immediately turns round, and gallops off at an amazing rate, with the stallions in the rear, stopping and looking back repeatedly, while the mares and foals disappear as if by enchantment, because, with unerring tact, they select the first swell of ground, or ravine, to conceal them, until they re-appear at a great distance, generally in a direction to preserve the lee-side of the apprehended danger. Although bears and wolves occasionally prowl after a herd, they will not venture to attack it, for the sultan-stallion will instantly meet the enemy, and, rising on his haunches, strike him down with his fore-feet; and should he be worsted, which is seldom the case, another stallion becomes the champion; and in the case of a troop of wolves, the herd forms a close mass, with the foals within, and the stallions charge in a body, which no troop of wolves will venture to encounter. Carnivora, therefore, must be contented with aged or injured stragglers.

“The sultan-stallion is not, however, suffered to retain the chief authority for more than one season without opposition from others, rising, in the confidence of youthful strength, to try by battle whether the leadership should not be confided to them, and the defeated party driven from the herd in exile. These animals are found in the greatest purity in the Kara Koom, south of the lake Aral, and the Syrdaria, near Kusneh, on the hanks of the river Tom, in the territory of the Kalkas, the Mongolian deserts, and the solitudes of the Gobi. Within the Russian frontier there are, however, some adulterated herds, in the vicinity of the fixed settlements, distinguishable by the variety of their colours, and a selection of residence less remote from human habitations. Real tarpans are not larger than ordinary mules; their colour is invariably tan, Isabella, or mouse, being all shades of the same livery, and only varying in depth by the growth or decrease of a whitish surcoat, longer than the hair, increasing from Midsummer, and shedding in May; during the cold season it is long, heavy, and soft, lying so close as to feel like a bear’s fur, and then is entirely grizzled; in summer much falls away, leaving only a certain quantity on the back and loins: the head is small; the forehead greatly arched; and the ears far back, either long or short; the eyes small and malignant; the chin and muzzle beset with bristles; the neck rather thin, and crested with a thick rugged mane, which, like the tail, is black, as are also the pasterns, which are long; the hoofs are narrow, high, and rather pointed; the tail, descending only to the hocks, is furnished with coarse and rather curly or wavy hairs, close up to the crupper; the croup is as high as the withers. The voice of the tarpan is loud, and shriller than that of a domestic horse; and their action, standing, and general appearance resembles somewhat those of vicious mules. Such is the general evidence obtained from the orderly before mentioned; a man who was a perfect model of an independent trooper of the desert, and who had spent ten or twelve years on the frontier of China.”

Leo Africanus states that there are wild horses in Northern Africa, and that they are sometimes taken by means of snares, and their flesh is eaten by the Arabs. This is probably the animal first described by Colonel H. Smith, under the name of Koomrah. It differs remarkably from all other known breeds in not being gregarious. It inhabits the mountain forests, whence it comes down singly or in small groups, to the wells, where only it is liable to be captured, by men or by beasts of prey; but its wariness, its keen sense of smell, its fleetness, and the courage and fierceness with which it defends itself when brought to bay, render it very difficult to be taken. Colonel H. Smith says, “of the real koomrah we have seen a living specimen in England, and the skin of another. The first came from Barbary; the second died on board of a slave-ship, on the passage from the coast of Guinea to the West Indies in 1798, the skin, legs, and head having been carefully preserved by the master, who kindly permitted a sketch and notes to be made of it at Dominica.

“The koomrah of the mountains is about ten, or ten and a half hands, high; the head is broad across the forehead, and deep measured to the jowl; it is small, short, and pointed at the muzzle, making the profile almost triangular; instead of a forelock between the ears, down to the eyes the hair is long and woolly; the eyes are small, of a light hazel colour; and the ears large and wide; the neck thin, forming an angle with the head, and clad with a scanty but long black mane; the shoulder rather vertical and meagre, with withers low, but the croup high and broad; the barrel large; thighs cat-hammed, and the limbs clean but asinine, with the hoofs elongated; short pastern, small callosities on the hind legs; and the tail clothed with short fur for several inches before the long black hair begins. The animal is entirely of a reddish bay colour, without streak or mark on the spine, or any white about the limbs. We made our sketch at Portsmouth, and believe it refers to the same animal which lived for many years, if we are rightly informed, in a paddock of the late Lord Grenville’s. There was in the British Museum a stuffed specimen exactly corresponding in size and colour, but with a head (possibly in consequence of the taxidermist wanting the real skull) much longer and less in depth. The other specimen, which came from the mountains north of Accra in Guinea, was again entirely similar. We were told that in voice it differed from both horse and ass; and in temper, that which died on shipboard, though very wild and shy at first, was by no means vicious, and it fed on sea-biscuit with willingness.”

The Steppes, as the great table land of Central Asia is called, extend from the borders of Hungary to those of China. They constitute an almost uninterrupted plain, of considerable elevation, covered in spring and autumn by a luxuriant herbage; in winter by drifting snows, heaped up in some places, and leaving the ground bare in others; and in summer by clouds of dust so excessively fine, that even on the calmest day they hang suspended in the air, having the appearance rather of a vapour exhaled from the ground, than of earthly particles raised by the agitation of the atmosphere. The slight undulations that occur assume but rarely the character of hills; but artificial hillocks or tumuli are frequently met with, the origin of which it is impossible to trace through the darkness of bygone ages. The most singular characteristic, however, of the Steppe is, the total absence of trees, on a soil remarkable for its richness, and the luxuriance of its herbage. For hundreds of miles a traveller may proceed in a straight line without encountering even a bush, unless he happens to be acquainted with the few spots known to the Tartar sportsmen, to whom they answer the purpose of game preserves. Countless herds of horned cattle, and wild or half-wild horses roam over these noble pasture grounds, on which a calf, born at the foot of the great Chinese wall, might eat his way along until he arrived a well fattened ox, on the banks of the Dniestr, prepared to figure with advantage at the Odessa market. The poor animals suffer much during the hot and dry summers, when every blade of grass is parched up; but the careful herdsman who has provided himself with an abundant stock of hay, is able to keep his beasts alive until autumn returns to gladden them with fresh abundance.

The most pleasing aspect of the Steppe is that presented in spring. In the first week of that season, while as yet the snow has scarcely disappeared from the earth, a luxuriant vegetation springs up, converting the waste into a fairy scene. On this carpet of rich green grass, variegated by the hyacinth, the tulip, the crocus, and the wild mignionette, besides a thousand other flowers, a traveller mounted on the fleetest steed, and riding without intermission night and day, if such a thing were possible, would find the spring elapse before he could reach the end of this vast plain, so large a portion of the earth’s surface does it cover; and so little would he find it differing from the frontiers of the Ukraine to those of Chinese Tartary, that at his journey’s end he might still fancy the same scene surrounded him as when he began it; the Steppe almost everywhere resembling the Steppe on its eastern, the same as on its western frontier.

With the first summer months the soil which is badly watered becomes dry and arid in the burning sun; the grass withers and turns brown, and then more dusky still, as it gets covered with the black dust which the wind disturbs, until at last the whole Steppe becomes covered with the same sombre hue; life seems for ever destroyed in all the withered vegetation, except wormwood and prickly weeds, which cover whole tracts, still thriving in the rankness of the nitrous soil, wherein they have grown to such gigantic size, that the thistles rise like little woods, capable of concealing a whole encampment, and in which a mounted rider is perfectly hidden when sitting on the tallest horse.

Towards the end of summer one parched and arid wilderness extends around on every side, in which the cattle grow thin and languid, and often perish in great numbers for want of water. The Russian herdsman can no longer extract a draft of milk from his cows; the Tartar finds that the dugs of his mares refuse him the needful refreshment. Towards autumn the Steppe is constantly set fire to; sometimes through carelessness or wilfulness, sometimes for sake of the young crop of grass that shoots up through the ashes, when the mists and dewy nights of autumn give a fresh and ephemeral life to the productions of the earth. The fires sometimes extend for hundreds of miles, and give rise to frequent accidents.

The method of escaping from the flames, which come on roaring and crackling over an extent many miles in width, is not by flight; because though the steed may carry his rider faster than the fire can travel, it is sure to overtake the fugitive in the long run. The inhabitants of the Steppe resort to the same means as those of the American prairies to save themselves; they combat fire by fire, and kindling the grass to leeward, they advance in the rear of the flames, which clears the way for them, and leaves no food for the burning sea that is rushing towards them.

In the autumn water is less scarce; a partial verdure springs through the withered stems of grass and plants, and the herds recover. The winter is intensely cold. The piercing winds which have swept across the North American continent and the Arctic regions of Siberia, howl over these now desolate and cheerless regions, where nothing breaks the monotony of thousands and thousands of miles of level ground, except the tumuli of the ancient Mongol warriors, the tents of the Kalmuck and the Tartar, and the huts of the Cossack or the herdsman, and where nothing intervenes to arrest the violence or to modify the rigour of the freezing blast. No language can give an adequate idea of these _metels_ as they are called in Southern Russia. They come down on the land with such whirling and driving gusts, such furious and continuous tempests, such whistlings and roarings of the wind, and a sky so murky and threatening, that no hurricane at sea can be more terrific. The snow is now piled up mountains high, now hollowed into deep valleys, now spread out into rushing and heaving billows; or it is driven through the air, fluttering like a long white veil, until the wind has scattered the last shreds before it. Whole flocks of sheep, surprised by the tempest close to their folds, and even herds of horses, have been driven into the Black Sea or the Caspian, and drowned. When beset by such dangers their instinct usually prompts them to cluster together in a circle and form a compact mass, so as to present a less surface to the _metel_. But the force of the wind gradually compels them onwards;—they reach the shore, their footing fails, and finally they are all engulphed in the waves.

In the European Steppes the cold often reaches 30° Reaumur, or far below the point at which boiling water cast up in the air falls to the earth in a shower of frozen hailbeads. Even where some of the most southern Asiatic Steppes assume the character of the African Sahara, and where the camel in the summer sinks up to his knees in the burning sand, in winter the icicles gather as thickly on the few straggling hairs of the Tartar’s chin, as they do on the bushy beard of the Muscovite on the banks of the Neva. Perovski, the governor of Orenburg, on his expedition to Khiva, six winters since, was arrested by the impassable snow, on the very route which he dared not undertake in the summer months for fear of being buried under the hot and drifting sand, as it has not unfrequently happened to the caravans which ventured to invade the solitude of this desert.

The region of the Steppes is the home of the Cossacks, of a portion of the Mongol race, and of more than a score of Tartar tribes. It is the home of the camel and of the fat-tailed Kirghis sheep; of the wild steed and of the Taboon horse, scarcely tame; of the grey oxen, which furnish nearly all our tallow; of the antelope and the bustard. The wolf, driven to change his habits, burrows in these immense plains like a fox; the jackal infests portions of them; and the destroying locust falls like a blight and a curse on the young green grass of the free space, or on the rising harvest of the agricultural pioneer. On some parts of these wide Steppes dwell the most hideous of the human race, the Calmucks and Baskirs; and on other parts the Circassians, the most beautiful of their species, still sometimes descend in their predatory excursions.[1]

Footnote 1:

Revelations of Russia. Hommaire de Hell’s Steppes of the Caucasus.