Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

KIRGUIS IIORSES.199

qualities, both physical and moral; but their make does not recommend them. They are, nevertheless, excellent for the saddle; and their character causes them to be valued. Poor creatures ! they have better hearts than many men : they love each other with a tenderness and a passion that prevents them from ever voluntarily separating. So long as they remain together they forget exile and slavery, and seem to believe themselves in their own country. "When one is sold, he has to be cast, and forcibly dragged with cords out of the enclosure where his brethren are confined, who, during this violence, never cease attempting to escape or rebel, and to neigh piteously. Never have I seen the horses of our own country show so many proofs of sensibility. I have seldom been more affected than I was yesterday, by the sight of these unhappy creatures, torn from the freedom of the desert, and violently separated from those they love. I may be answered by the line of Gilbert:

Un papillon souffrant lui fait verser des larmes.

but I shall not care for being laughed at, feeling sure that if the reader had seeu the carrying-out of these cruel bargains he would have shared my feeling. Crime, when recognised as such by the laws, has its judges in this world; but permitted cruelty is only punished by the pity of kindly-disposed people for the victims, and, I hope also, by Divine equity. It is this tolerated barbarity which makes me regret the narrow limits of my eloquence: a Rousseau or a Sterne would know how to make the reader weep over the fate of these poor Kirguis horses, destined to carry, in Europe, men as much slaves as themselves, but whose condition к 4