[585] Ibid. p. 300.
[586] Moser, p. 247.
[587] Ibid. p. 320.
[588] Ibid.; also O’Donovan, p. 298.
[589] O’Donovan, p. 297. The training consisted in a gradual reduction of the rations of food and water. Dry lucern gave place to chopped straw; barley and juwārī (sorghum), to a mixture of flour and matter-fat.
[590] Moser, p. 322. It is remarkable that the Tekke seat is precisely the same as that in use among the nomads of the Mongolian plateau north of the Great Wall, who, according to Mr. E. H. Parker in a letter addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette, “always ride with very short stirrups, the knee bent forward almost to the withers, the reins grasped short, and (when there is any speed) the body well over the horse’s neck. Possibly this is the reason why the Mongol saddle always has a high peak, for it prevents the rider being chucked over the horse’s neck.” This method is also identical with that adopted by the jockey Tod Sloan.
[591] The felt blankets were worked by the cavaliers’ women-folk. “The finer the courser’s felt,” ran a Turkoman proverb, “the greater the love of the maker for the horseman” (Moser, p. 331).
[592] Moser, p. 274.
[593] Ibid. p. 319.
[594] See chapter iv. of Marvin’s Merv, which is a translation of Petrusevitch’s account of the Turkomans.