Accustomed to a life of roguery and hardship, and indulging constantly in every kind of excess, the tabunshick comes naturally to be looked upon, by the more orderly class, as rather a suspicious character; but his friendship is generally worth having, and his ill-will is always dreaded. His very master stands a little in awe of him, for a tabunshick is not a servant that can be dismissed at a day’s notice. When the taboon has once become accustomed to him, the animals are not easily brought to submit to the control of a stranger. The tabunshick, moreover, has learned to know his horses; can tell the worth of each, can advise which to sell and which to keep, and knows where the best pasture ground may be looked for. Such a fellow, therefore, if intelligent and experienced, whatever his moral character may be, becomes necessary to his master, and, feeling this, is not long without presuming upon his conscious importance. He plays his wild pranks with impunity, and looks down with sovereign contempt upon the more decent members of society, particularly upon the more honest shepherds and cowherds, whom he considers, in every point of view, as an inferior race.
At the horse-fairs, the tabunshick is always a man of great importance; and it is amusing and interesting to see him, with his wild taboon, at Balta and Berditsheff, where are held the greatest fairs between the Dniepr and the Dniestr. The horses are driven into the market in the same free condition in which they range over the Steppe, for if tied together they would become entirely ungovernable. When driven through towns and villages, the creatures are often frightened; but that occasions no trouble to their drivers, for the herd is never more certain to keep together than when made timid by the appearance of a strange place. In the market-place the taboon is driven into an enclosure, near which the owner seats himself, and the tabunshick enters along with his horses. The buyers walk round to make their selection. They must not expect the horses to be trotted out for their inspection, as at Tattersall’s, but must judge for themselves as well as they can, with the comfortable reflection, that, after they have bought the animals, they will have ample time to become acquainted with them. “I have none but wild horses to sell,” the owner will say. “Look at them as long as you please. That horse I will warrant five years old, having bred him on my own Steppe. Further than that I know nothing of him. The price is a hundred rubles. Will you take him? If you say yes, I’ll order him to be caught; but I’d advise you to make the tabunshick a present, that he may take care not to injure the animal in catching it.” This last caution is by no means to be neglected, for a horse, carelessly caught, may be lamed for several weeks; and as the horse is never caught till the bargain has been concluded, any injury done to the animal is the buyer’s business, not the seller’s. If, on the other hand, the tabunshick be satisfied with the fee given him, he goes about his task in a much more methodical manner. The sling is thrown gently over the neck of the designated steed, but the latter is not thrown with the jerk to the ground. He is allowed for a little while to prance about at the full length of his tether, till his first fright be over. Gradually the wild animal becomes reconciled to the unwonted restraint, and the buyer leads him away quietly to his stable, where it will often take a year’s tuition to cure him of the vicious habits acquired on the Steppe.
After saying so much of the tabunshick, it will be but fair to give some account of the life led by the riotous animals committed to his charge. During what is called the fine season, from Easter to October, the taboon remains grazing day and night in the Steppe.
During the other six months of the year, the horses remain under shelter at night, and are driven out only in the day, when they must scrape away the snow for themselves, to get at the scanty grass underneath. When we say the horses remain under shelter, it must not be supposed that the shelter in question resembles in any way an English stable. The shelter alluded to consists of a space of ground enclosed by an earthen mound, with now and then something like a roof towards the north, to keep off the cold wind. There the poor creatures must defend themselves, as well as they can against the merciless Boreas, who comes to them unchecked in his course all the way from the pole. To a stranger it is quite harrowing to see the noble animals, in severe weather, in one of these unprotected enclosures. The stallions and the stronger beasts, take possession of the shed; the timid and feeble stand in groups about the wall, and creep closely together, in order to impart a little warmth to each other. Nor is it from cold that they have most to suffer on these occasions. Early in winter they still find a little autumnal grass under the snow, and the tabunshick scatters a little hay about the stable to help them to amuse the tedious hours of night. The customary improvidence of a Russian establishment, however, seldom allows a sufficient stock of hay, to be laid in for the winter. As the season advances, hay grows scarce, and must be reserved for the more valuable coach and saddle horses, and the tabunshick is obliged to content himself with a portion of the dry reeds and straw stored up for fuel. For these he has soon to battle it with the cook and the stove heaters, whose interest never fails to outweigh that of the poor taboon horses. These, if the winter last beyond the average term, are often reduced to the thatch of the roofs, and sometimes even eat away one another’s tails and manes; and that in a country where every year more grass is burnt during the summer, than would suffice to provide a profusion of hay, for a century of winters!—It will hardly be matter of surprise to any one, to learn that the winter is a season of sickness and death to the horses of the Steppe. After the mildest winter, the poor creatures come forth, a troop of sickly looking skeletons; but when the season has been severe, or unusually long, more than half of them, perhaps, have sunk under their sufferings, or have been so reduced in strength that the ensuing six months are hardly sufficient to restore them to their wonted spirits. The year 1833 was remarkably destructive to the taboons, and they had not recovered from its effects five years afterwards, when I last visited the Steppe. In such years of famine, the most enormous prices are sometimes paid for hay; yet every careful agriculturist may secure his cattle against such sufferings, by a little industry and forethought. In the proper season he may have as much hay as he pleases, for the mere trouble of cutting it; and such is the dryness of the climate during summer, that the hay may always be carried home, and stacked within a few hours after it has been mown.
From the hardships of an ordinary winter, the horses quickly recover amid the abundance of spring. A profusion of young grass covers the ground as soon as the snow has melted away. The crippled spectres that stalked about a few weeks before, with wasted limbs, and drooping heads, are as wild and mischievous at the end of the first month, as though they had never experienced the inconvenience of a six months’ fast. The stallions have already begun to form their separate factions in the taboon, and the neighing, bounding, prancing, gallopping, and fighting, goes on merrily from the banks of the Danube to the very heart of Mongolia.
In a taboon of a thousand horses, there are generally fifteen or twenty stallions, and four or five hundred brood mares. The stallions, and particularly the old ones, consider themselves the rightful lords of the community. They exercise their authority with very little moderation, and desperate battles are often fought among them, apparently for the mere honour of the championship. In almost every taboon there is one stallion who, by the rule of his hoof, has established a sort of supremacy, to which his comrades tacitly submit. Factions, cabals, and intrigues are not wanting. Sometimes there will be a general coalition against some particular stallion, who, if he get into a quarrel, is immediately set upon by ten or a dozen at once, and has no chance but to run for it. There is seldom a taboon without two or three of these objects of public animosity, who may be seen with a small troop of mares grazing apart from the main body of the herd.
The most tremendous battles are fought when two taboons happen to meet. In general, the tabunshicks are careful to keep at a respectful distance from each other; but sometimes they are away from their duty, and sometimes, when a right of pasturage is disputed, they bring their herds together out of sheer malice. The mares and foals on such occasions keep aloof, but their furious lords rush to battle with an impetuosity, of which those who are accustomed to see the horse only in a domesticated state, can form but a poor conception. Tho enraged animals lash their tails, and erect their manes like angry lions; their hoofs rattle against each other with such violence, that the noise can be heard at a considerable distance; they fasten on one another with their teeth like tigers; and their screamings and howlings are more like those of the wild beasts of the forests, than like any sounds ever heard from a tame horse. The victorious party is always sure to carry away a number of captive mares in triumph; and the exchange of prisoners is an affair certain to bring the tabunshicks and their men by the ears, if they have been able to keep themselves out of the battle till then.
The spring, though in so many respects a season of enjoyment, is not without its drawbacks. The wolves, also, have to indemnify themselves for the severe fast of the winter, and are just as desirous as the horses to get themselves into good condition again. The foals, too, are just then most delicate, and a wolf will any day prefer a young foal, to a sheep, or a calf. The wolf accordingly is constantly prowling about the taboon during the spring, and the horses are bound to be always prepared to do battle, in defence of the younger members of the community. The wolf, as the weaker party, trusts more to cunning than strength. For a party of wolves openly to attack a taboon at noon-day, would be to rush upon certain destruction; and, however severely the wolf may be pressed by hunger, he knows his own weakness too well, to venture on so absurd an act of temerity. At night, indeed, if the taboon happen to be a little scattered, and the wolves in tolerable numbers, they will sometimes attempt a rush, and a general battle ensues. An admirable spirit of coalition then displays itself among the horses. On the first alarm, stallions and mares come charging up to the threatened point, and attack the wolves with an impetuosity, that often puts the prowlers to instant flight. Soon, however, if they feel themselves sufficiently numerous, they return, and hover about the taboon, till some poor foal straggle a few yards from the main body, when it is seized by the enemy, while the mother, springing to its rescue, is nearly certain to share the same fate. Then it is that the battle begins in real earnest. The mares form a circle, within which the foals take shelter. We have seen pictures in which the horses are represented in a circle, presenting their hind hoofs to the wolves, who thus appear to have the free choice to fight, or to let it alone. Such pictures are the mere result of imagination, and bear very little resemblance to the reality; for the wolf has, in general, to pay much more dearly for his partiality to horseflesh. The horses, when they attack wolves, do not turn their tails towards them, but charge upon them in a solid phalanx, tearing them with their teeth, and trampling on them with their feet. The stallions do not fall into the phalanx, but gallop about with streaming tails, and curled manes, and seem to act, at once, as generals, trumpeters, and standard bearers. When they see a wolf, they rush upon him with reckless fury, mouth to mouth, or if they use their feet as weapons of defence, it is always with the front, and not the hinder hoof, that the attack is made. With one blow the stallion often kills his enemy, or stuns him. If so, he snatches the body up with his teeth, and flings it to the mares, who trample upon it till it becomes hard to say what kind of animal the skin belonged to. If the stallion, however, fail to strike a home blow at the first onset, he is likely to fight a losing battle, for eight or ten hungry wolves fasten on his throat, and never quit him till they have torn him to the ground: and if the horse be prompt and skilful in attack, the wolf is not deficient in sagacity, but watches for every little advantage, and is quick to avail himself of it; but let him not hope, even if he succeed in killing a horse, that he will be allowed leisure to pick the bones: the taboon never fails to take ample vengeance, and the battle almost invariably terminates in the complete discomfiture of the wolves, though not, perhaps, till more than one stallion has had a leg permanently disabled, or has had his side marked for life with the impress of his enemy’s teeth.
These grand battles happen but seldom, and when they do occur, it is probably always against the wolf’s wish. His system of warfare is a predatory one, and his policy is rather to surprise outposts, than to meditate a general attack. He trusts more to his cunning than his strength. He will creep cautiously through the grass, taking special care to keep to leeward of the taboon, and will remain concealed in ambush, till he perceive a mare and her foal grazing a little apart from the rest. Even then he makes no attempt to spring upon his prey, but keeps creeping nearer and nearer, with his head leaning on his fore feet, and wagging his tail in a friendly manner, to imitate, as much as possible, the movements and gestures of a watchdog. If the mare, deceived by the treacherous pantomime, venture near enough to the enemy, he will spring at her throat, and despatch her before she have time to raise an alarm; then, seizing on the foal, he will make off with his booty, and be out of sight perhaps before either herd or herdsman suspect his presence. It is not often, however, that the wolf succeeds in obtaining so easy a victory. If the mare detect him, an instant alarm is raised, and should the tabunshick be near, the wolf seldom fails to enrich him with a skin, for which the fur merchant is at all times willing to pay his ten or twelve rubles. The wolf’s only chance, on such occasions, is to make for the first ravine, down which he rolls head foremost, a gymnastic feat that the tabunshick on his horse cannot venture to imitate.
As the summer draws on, the wolf becomes less troublesome to the taboon; but a season now begins of severe suffering for the poor horses, who have more perhaps to endure from the thirst of summer, than from the hunger of winter. The heat becomes intolerable, and shade is nowhere to be found, save what the animals can themselves create, by gathering together in little groups, each seeking to place the body of his neighbour between himself and the burning rays of a merciless sun. The tabunshick often lays himself in the centre of the group, for he also has nowhere else a shady couch to hope for.