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.