3-077-970 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Lieutenant Dimitri Pechkoff, riding from Eastern Siberia to St. Petersburg on horseback, 1890. 'A young Russian officer of the Amour Regiment of Cossacks, is accomplishing a solitary ride on horseback, using one horse, from one of the easterly provinces of the vast Asiatic Empire of Russia to St. Petersburg, crossing Siberia in the middle of winter...he started on Nov. 19 from Blagovetschensk...on the Chinese frontier, and reached Omsk, on the Irtish, the capital of West Siberia, on March 11, having lost twenty-six day's by various detentions, including an attack of influenza, which laid him up during fourteen days at Irkutsk...M. Leon Boullenger, Professor of the Government College of Military Cadets at Omsk, furnishes us with several photographs of Lieutenant Dimitri Pechkoff, after a severe snowstorm...Eight stoppages...had been made in the distance which he had then traversed, which was 4905 versts, [5232 kilometres]...The pony is a small, hardy, wiry animal, and will eat snow for many days together, instead of drinking water, its taste being so delicate that it cannot endure any water not quite fresh and pure. Lieutenant Pechkoff never fails to attend himself to the comfort of his steed - rubbing it down, feeding it, and making its bed'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.