“But what was our amazement when we saw a boy of ten years come forward to undertake the same exploit! They selected for him a young white stallion of great size, whose fiery bounds and desperate efforts to break his bonds, indicated a most violent temper.
“I will not attempt to depict our intense emotions during this new conflict. This child, who, like the other riders, had only the horse’s mane to cling to, afforded an example of the power of reasoning over instinct and brute force. For some minutes he maintained his difficult position with heroic intrepidity. At last, to our great relief, a horseman rode up to him, caught him up in his outstretched arm, and threw him on the croup behind him.”
We will now lay before our readers the economy of a Russian taboon, as described by Kohl, the German traveller. A small number of stallions and mares, placed under the care of a herdsman, are sent into the Steppe as the nucleus of the herd. The foals are kept, and the herd is allowed to go on increasing, until the number of horses is thought to be about as large as the estate can conveniently maintain. A taboon seldom consists of more than a thousand horses; but there are landowners in the Steppe, who are supposed to possess eight or ten such taboons in different parts of the country. It is only when the taboon is said to be full, that the owner begins to derive revenue from it, partly by using the young horses on the estate itself, and partly by selling them at the fairs, or to the travelling horse-dealers in the employ of the government contractors.
The tabunshick, to whose care the taboon is intrusted, must be a man of indefatigable activity, and of an iron constitution; proof alike against the severest cold, and the most burning heat, and capable of living in a constant exposure to every kind of weather, without the shelter even of a bush.
It must be a matter of indifference to him whether he makes his bed at night among the wet grass, or upon the naked earth, baked for twelve hours by an almost vertical sun. In the coldest weather he can seldom hope for the shelter of a roof; and though the hot winds blow upon him like the blast of a furnace, and his skin cracks with very dryness, yet he must pass the greater part of his day in the saddle, ready at every instant to gallop off in pursuit of a stray steed, or to fly to the rescue of a young foal attacked by a ravenous wolf. The shepherd and the herdsman carry their houses with them. Their large wagons, that always accompany them on their wanderings, afford shelter from the weather, and a warm nest at night; but these are luxuries the tabunshick must not even dream of. His charges are much too lively to be left to their own guidance. His thousand horses are not kept together in as orderly and disciplined a fashion as those of a regiment of dragoons; and it may be doubted, whether an adjutant of cavalry has to ride about as much, and to give as many orders, on a day of battle, as a tabunshick on the quietest day that he spends in the Steppe. When on duty, a tabunshick, scarcely ever quits the back of his steed. He eats there, and even sleeps there: but he must beware of sleeping at the hours when other men sleep; for while grazing at night, the horses are most apt to wander away from the herd, and at no time is it more necessary for him to be on his guard against wolves, and against those adventurous dealers in horseflesh, who usually contrive that the money which they receive at a fair, shall consist exclusively of profit. During a snow-storm, the poor tabunshick must not think of turning his back to the tempest; this his horses are too apt to do, and it is his business to see that they do not take flight, and run scouring before the wind.
The dress of a tabunshick is chiefly composed of leather, fastened together by a leathern girdle, to which the whole veterinary apparatus, and a variety of little fanciful ornaments, are usually appended. His head is protected by a high cylindrical Tartar cap, of black lambskin; and over the whole he throws his sreeta, a large, brown, woollen cloak, with a hood to cover his head. This hood, in fine weather, hangs behind, and often serves its master at once for pocket and larder.
The tabunshick has a variety of other trappings, of which he never divests himself. Among these, his harabnick holds not the least important place. This is a whip, with a thick short stem, but with a thong often fifteen or eighteen feet in length. It is to him a sceptre that rarely quits his hand, and without which it would be difficult for him to retain his riotous subjects in anything like proper order. Next comes his sling, which he uses like the South American lasso, and with which he rarely misses the neck of the horse whose course he is desirous of arresting. The wolf club is another indispensable part of his equipment. This club which mostly hangs at the saddle, ready for immediate use, is three or four feet long, with a thick iron knob at the end. The tabunshicks acquire such astonishing dexterity in the use of this formidable weapon, that, at full gallop they will hurl it at a wolf, and rarely fail to strike the iron end into the prowling bandit’s head. The club, skilfully wielded, carries almost as sudden death with it as the rifle of an American back-woodsman. A cask of water must also accompany the tabunshick on every ride, for he can never know whether he may not be for days without coming to a well. A bag of bread, and a bottle of brandy are likewise his constant companions, besides a multitude of other little conveniences and necessaries, which are fastened either to himself, or his horse. Thus accoutred, the tabunshick sallies forth on a mission that keeps his dexterity and his power of endurance in constant exercise. His thousand untamed steeds have to be kept in order with no other weapon than his harabnick; and this, it may easily be supposed, is no easy task. His greatest trouble is with the stallions, who, after spending their ten or twelve years on the Steppe, without having once smelt the air of a stable, or felt the curb of a rein, become so ungovernable, that the tabunshick will sometimes threaten to throw up his office, unless such or such a stallion be expelled from the taboon.
Such constant exposures to fatigue and hardship, make the average life of a tabunshick extremely short. At the end of ten or fifteen years he is generally worn out, and unfit for such arduous duty. His pay therefore is proportionably high; for every tabunshick is a hired servant, as no serf could be impelled by any dread of punishment to exert that constant vigilance, without which the whole taboon would be broken up in a few days. What the fear of the whip, however, cannot effect in a slave, the hope of gain may insure from a freeman. The wages of a tabunshick are regulated by the number of horses committed to his care. For each horse he usually receives five or six rubles a year; so that the guardian of a full taboon may earn his six thousand rubles annually (£275), if he can keep the wolf and thief at bay; but every horse that is lost the tabunshick must pay for; and horse stealing is carried on so largely and dextrously on the Steppe, that he may sometimes lose half a year’s wages in a single night. He must also pay his assistants out of his own wages, and three assistants at least will be required to look after a taboon of a thousand horses. Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, however, the tabunshick, if he were vigilant and careful, might always save money; but few of them do so, and it rarely happens, that when invalided, they have hoarded together a little capital to enable them to embark in any more quiet occupation.
The hardships to which they are constantly exposed, and the high wages which they receive, make the tabunshicks the wildest dare-devils that can be imagined; so much so, that it is considered a settled point, that a man who has had the care of horses for two or three years, is unfit for any quiet, or settled kind of life. No one, of course, that can gain a tolerable livelihood in any other way, will embrace a calling that subjects him to so severe a life; and the consequence is, that it is generally from among the scamps of a village that servants are raised for this service. They are seldom without money, and when they do visit the brandy-shop, they are not deterred from abandoning themselves to a carouse by the financial considerations likely to restrain most men in the same rank of life. They ought, it is true, never to quit the taboon for a moment, but they will often spend whole nights in the little brandy-houses of the Steppe, drinking and gambling, and drowning in their fiery potations all recollections of the last day’s endurance. When their senses return with the returning day, they gallop after their herds, and display no little ingenuity in repairing the mischief that may have accrued from the carelessness of the preceding night.
The tabunshick lives in constant dread of the horse-stealer, and yet there is hardly a tabunshick on the Steppe that will not steal a horse if occasion presents itself. The traveller, who has left his horses to graze during the night, or the villager, who has allowed his cattle to wander away from his house, will do well to ascertain that there be no taboon in the vicinity, or in the morning he will look for them in vain. The tabunshick, meanwhile, takes care to rid himself, as soon as possible, of his stolen goods, by exchanging them away to the first brother herdsman that he meets, who again barters them away to another; so that in a few days, a horse that was stolen on the banks of the Dniepr, passes from hand to hand till it reaches the Bug or the Dniestr; and the rightful owner may still be inquiring after a steed, which has already quitted the empire of the Czar, to enter the service of a Moslem, or to figure in the stud of a Hungarian magnate. The tabunshicks have constantly little affairs of this kind to transact with one another, for which the Mongolian tumuli, scattered over the Steppe, afford convenient places of rendezvous.