The horse; with a treatise of draught / [William Youatt].

  • William Youatt
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The horse; with a treatise of draught / [William Youatt]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    47/600 page 35
    Some of the Tartar and Kalmuck women ride fully as well as the men. When a courtship is taking place between two of the young ones, the answer of the lady is thus obtained. She is mounted on one of the best horses, and off she gallops at full speed. Her lover pursues, and if he overtake her, she becomes his wife; but it is seldom or never that a Kalmuck girl once on horseback is caught, unless she has a partiality for her pursuer*. The domesticated horses belonging to the Tartars that wander over the immense plains of Central Asia are little removed from a wild state. They are small and badly made, but capable of supporting the longest and most rapid journeys on the scantiest fare. One well-known circumstance will go far to account for their general hardi¬ ness. The Tartars live much on the flesh of horses; and the animals that are unable to support the labour of their frequent and rapid emigrations are first destroyed ; the most vigorous are alone preserved. Berenger gives the following account of the Tartar horses :—“ Although but of a moderate size, they are strong, nervous, proud, full of spirit, bold, and active. They have good feet, but somewhat narrow; their heads are well¬ shaped and lean, but too small ; the forehead long and stiff; and the legs over long: yet with all these imperfections they are good and serviceable horses, being unconquerable by labour, and endowed with considerable speed. The Tartars live with them almost in the same manner that the Arabs do with their horses. When they are six or eight months old, they make their children ride them, who exercise them in small excursions, dressing and forming them by degrees, and bringing them into gentle and early discipline, and, after a while, making them undergo hunger and thirst, and many other hardships. The men, however, do not ride them until they are five or six years old, when they exact from them the severest service, and enure them to almost incredible fatigue, travelling two or three days almost without resting, and passing four or five days with no more or better nourishment than a handful of grass, and with nothing to quench their thirstf.” This discipline as much exceeds that of the Arabs in severity and horrible barbarity, as the Arabs excel the Tartars in civilisation. The horses of the Nogais Tartars are some of the best of the roving tribes. They are stronger and taller than the others ; and some of them are trained to draw carriages. It is from them that the Khan of Tartary derives the principal part of his supplies. It is said that in case of necessity they could furnish a hundred thousand men. Each of the Nogais commonly has with him four horses; one is for his own riding; a second to mount if the first should be tired ; and the other two to carry his provisions, his slaves and his booty. THE TOORKOMAN HORSE. Turkistan is that part of South Tartary, north-east of the Caspian sea, and has been celebrated from very early times for producing a pure and valuable given to the spirit manufactured in the East Indies. Dr. Clarke saw the process of the manufac¬ ture : — “ The still was composed of mud, or very close clay. For the neck of the retort a cane was used ; and the receiver was entirely covered by a coating of wet clay. The brandy had just passed over. The women who had the rna- nagementof the distillery,wishing to give us a taste of the spirit, thrust a stick with a small tuft of camel’s hair into the receiver, dropped a portion of it on the retort, and waving the instrument above her head, scattered the re- D maining liquor in the air. I asked the mean¬ ing of this ceremony, and was answered~that it was a religious custom to give always the first of the brandy which they drew from the receiver to their god. The stick was then plunged into the liquor a second time,when more brandy adhering to the camel’s hair, she squeezed it into the palm of her dirty hand, and having tasted the liquor, presented it to our lips. —Clarke's Travels in Russia, p. 239. * Clarke’s Travels in Russia, p. 333. f Berenger on Horsemanship, vol. i. p. 135. o
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