WAPITI STAGS TRYING FOR THE MASTERY.
Yet one more feature of the domain remains to be noticed, namely its magnificent range of stabling, which faces the main front of the palace, and can have but few rivals, either in size or in fittings. The stables and stud are under the control of a “master of the horse.” The mention of stabling naturally suggests a few words concerning the famous Arab stud, which is kept half a mile or so away from the palace, and has no rival in Europe except in Mr. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’s well-known Arab stud in England. The greater number of Count Potocki’s Arabs have been bred on the estate; and there is indeed at the present time only a single mare imported direct from Arabia. With the bare mention that there is an equally large stud of Anglo-Arabs and thoroughbreds, as well as a pack of stag-hounds and another of harriers, the other splendours of Antoniny must be left to the imagination of the reader.
Antoniny is, to a great extent, a self-supporting colony, having a large range of outbuildings and workshops, where almost everything required on the establishment is manufactured. All other supplies have to be carted by road, either from Schepetowka or from a station on the Lemberg line, on the Austrian side.
AMERICAN BISON IN THE SNOW.
To reach Antoniny from the railway at Schepetowka our route lay nearly due south. Pilawin, on the other hand, lies about eighty kilometres north of the railway, and we had therefore to return to Schepetowka; this journey being accomplished on the Saturday in about three and a half hours, the road being in much better condition than on the previous Thursday. Saturday night was spent in a small single-storeyed house belonging to our host at Schepetowka; and by nine o’clock on the Sunday morning we were ready to start for Pilawin.
WAPITI IN THE SNOW.
Here a few lines may be devoted to the nature of the country between Antoniny and Schepetowka. Throughout the whole district the soil consists of black alluvial mould, apparently extending to a great depth. The contour of the country takes the form of a series of low undulating and more or less nearly parallel ridges or hills, separated by wide valleys, and running to a considerable extent at right angles to the main direction of the road. In each valley is a river or a series of ponds, near to which a village is almost invariably situated. The rich soil yields luxuriant crops of wheat, oats, maize, millet, buckwheat, hemp, and sugar-beet; the latter being a crop yielding a large revenue to the owner. Although the country as a whole is open—reminding one, were it not for the undulations, strongly of Argentina—oak-forests are to be met with here and there. From the ponds and rivers are obtained abundance of carp and pike, which afford the fish-supply to the inhabitants of the district on fast days as well as on other occasions.
At Schepetowka occurs a deposit of thin-bedded sandy limestone mixed with sand, containing numbers of marine shells of Tertiary age; this sand being employed at Antoniny and elsewhere as gravel. I collected some of these shells on the garden-paths at Antoniny, and when I returned home took them to the British Museum, where they were identified as Trochus podolicus, a species characteristic of the Sarmatian stage of the Miocene division of the Tertiary period.[1] As the species was unrepresented in the collection, the specimens were a welcome addition to the Museum. Later on, when visiting one of the Count’s sugar-factories at Koretz (a large town on the Kieff road near Pilawin), I was shown specimens of a white limestone containing marine fossils. At the British Museum these were identified as Trochus podolicus and Mactra podolica; the latter species also belonging to the Sarmatian stage, and likewise unrepresented in the collection. The Mactra, it may be added, is a bivalve, and the Trochus a spiral univalve shell.