Across Siberia on A Pony.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 21 August 1911, Page 4

Across Siberia on A Pony.

WOMAN'S , fiGCG MILE RIDE. SOME STRANGE ADVENTURES. In her effort to prove the endurance of which Russian women, and particularly Cossacks, are capable, Madame Kudasheff, a Cossack lady and widow of a Cossack officer, has accomplished a remarkable- feat. The- lady has arrived at Moscow after riding GGtib' miles of the journey from Harbin to St. Petersburg. She is 3(5, tall and spare, and has her hair cut short. >Sho wears a Cossock tunic, corduroy breeches, ihigh top boots, and a large Cossock I'm- cap. Her mount is an eight-year-old thoroughbred Mongolian pony, and has carried 1 his mistress splendidly without 'undergoing any special training for the journey. Madame Kud'asheff relates -that she started from Harbin in the .middle of May last year. Under average conditions her pony covered 12 miles an hour trotting and five miles «milling. The greatest distance traversed by her in a single day was 53 miles, and the shortest ten miles. She took with her a cavalryman's pack, containing a change of clothes a.nd linen, a brush and currycomb, and she also carried a. dagger and a revolver. Despite the bitter cold in Siberia she never wore gloves or woollen hood, and only once had ;hor bands and face frost-bitten. "1 always look after my pony myself." said Madame Kiukishoff.' "I groom him and feed him. The Moscow officers who have examined the pony have testified that the-re is not the slightest sign of a sore on his back. Aβ was only to be expected, ,1 had my adventures tuning my long ride. The common people seemed.- bewildered by my s'uJden and solitary appearance.'and the most diverse explanations of it \w:o given and credited. I ,, mm Irkutk to Tobolsk the- peasants wore convinced that L was a gendarme in d-is-giii.se, and no one would holievp that T was a woman. The Old Believers in the Tobolsk Government wevo firmly persuaded that I was antiChrist. Tn my masculine capacity I was more than once obliged to resort to fisticuffs. The last occasion was on the Hodinsky Plain,,, close to Moscow. For some reason or other the peasants in the Orenburg village, of Kartamysha got it into their superstitious heads that T was in the habit of conversing with my pony in German. Crowds came to the hut where T was staying and off prod me any amount of money for an exhibition of the pony's linguistic prowness. T experience:! one disagreeable inciident after the other. At Taiga the pr'oplp. ca.mo to my stopping place, banged at the door, and demanded my immediate departure. T was not left in peace until I had fired several shots in the air. At Gorokhovtza T was delayed 12 days, owing to the friendly welcome 'of the members of the local bicycle club, who came 'out to meet me. The machines' frightened my pony, and lie hacked and Ml into <a ditch, straining some tendons. He was not quite sound for noarly a fortnight. On the whole T caMuiot sav that I was a popular figure. The peasants almost everywhere treated me with distrust, and even to the Moscow Government, at the village of Kusnetzv, I tc'ok three ■hours to find a shelter, and this wa.s in the most primitive of publichouses." Miadame Kudasheff was received in Moscow by the Grand [ Duchess Elizabeth mid entertained bv the colonel and officers of tbe First Don Cossack Regiment pnior to her .departure for St. Petersburg.