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Historical Long Riders
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Leonard Clark was a lifelong enemy of fear, common sense, and all the other elements that usually define “normal” people. During The Second World War he headed the United States espionage system in China. When that global conflict came to a peaceful conclusion, Clark turned his relentless energy towards exploring the most dangerous and inaccessible places on the globe. Case in point was his decision to lead a mounted expedition of Torgut tribesmen into Tibet! The official reason for Clark’s decision to “invade” this mountainous kingdom on horseback in 1949 was his decision to prepare an impregnable base for General Ma Pa-fang, a violently anti-communist Moslem general. Yet romantic adventure ran deep in Clark, which helps to explain why he was journeying through one of the world's least known and most forbidding regions in the centr e of Asia. He was also eager to find and measure a mysterious mountain in the Amne Machin range rumoured to be higher than Mount Everest. The only problem was that the sacred mountain was guarded by the fearsome Ngolok tribesmen. The Marching Wind is thus the panoramic story of Clark’s mounted exploration in the remote and savage heart of Asia, a place where adventure, danger, and intrigue were the daily backdrop to wild tribesman and equestrian exploits.Click here to read a story about "Long Riders on the Roof of the World: Two Centuries of Tibetan Equestrian Travel." Clark had been travelling in wild places long before this journey. By 1934, although only 26 years old, he was already armed with a keen eye, a sense of humour, no regrets and his trusty Colt 45 pistol. Clark delights in telling his readers how he outsmarts warlords, avoids executioners, gambles with renegades and hangs out with an up and coming Communist leader named Mao Tse Tung. As he relates in his earlier book, A Wanderer Till I Die, the young man from San Francisco floats effortlessly from one adventure to the next. Yet The Marching Wind was originally published shortly before the author’s death from injuries he received while exploring the Amazon rainforest. |
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Starting in 1787, Thomas Clarkson spent seven years in the saddle, riding an estimated 35,000 miles throughout Great Britain, all the while lecturing on the evils of slavery, an institution which he helped bring to an end in England. |
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Hugh
Clapperton –
(1788 – 1827) Set out from Tripoli in 1822, crossing the sandy wasteland,
and reaching the frontier town of Sokoto, the capital of the Fula Empire.
Click here to read "Riding Across the Sahara," an exciting Story from the Road by Jamie Bruce-Lockhart, who has edited and published Clapperton's journals, "Difficult and Dangerous Roads." |
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Joseph Clements - Rode from Kharkov, in the Ukraine, to Novorossisk on the Black Sea in 1919. |
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William Cobbett (1762-1835) was an essayist, politician, agriculturalist, journalist, and equestrian traveller. The son of a labourer, Cobbett was self taught. He enlisted in the British Army, then fled to Philadelphia to avoid prosecution for demanding a decent wage for his fellow soldiers. After several years in exile, Cobbett returned to England where he became politically active, eventually winning a seat in Parliament. In the early 1820s the new MP set out on horseback to make a series of personal tours through the English countryside. These observations were collected and make up the two volumes of Rural Rides. The two books are written in some of the finest prose to grace the English language. Considered one of the best accounts of rural England ever written – they are detailed, factual, filled with shrewd observation and remain enduring classics. |
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John Codman was a sea captain by trade, but spent his leisure hours in old age on land riding his mare, Fanny. A self-confessed "septuagenarian,” Codman was never shy about sharing his horse-based opinions. Walking, Codman said, was a “solitary entertainment” and the bicycle he dismissed as being “unnatural.” Thus it was from the back of his horse that the old sea captain sailed over the land of his birth. His once-famous book, Winter Sketches from the Saddle was first published in 1888. It recommends riding for your health and describes Codman’s many equestrian journeys through New England during the winter of 1887. “There is no greater pleasure than to find myself on a horse,” Codman wrote. |
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Henry J. Coke enjoys the
reputation for being the most remarkable, if overlooked, early 19th
century Long Rider known to The Long Riders’ Guild. Having heard of the
California gold strike, Coke journeyed to St. Louis in 1849 and then set out to ride
to the Pacific ocean in the company of several so-called ‘mountain men.’
Though the Americans were reduced to starving wrecks, many of whom
eventually died en route, Coke eventually reached Oregon alone. No sooner had he
arrived than he took ship to the Sandwich Islands, now known as Hawaii.
After having ridden the Mexican horses imported into this island kingdom by
the local king, Coke finally sailed to California. But having seen the hard-scramble
gold fields, Coke lost interest. He returned to England, where he joined a
friend from Eton, George Cayley. The two Long Riders then explored the
majority of Spain on horseback, encountering many adventures and locating the cell in
which Cervantes had been imprisoned and wrote “Don Quixote.”
Click here to read "Death on the River," a hair-raising and deadly story from Coke's book. |
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Hermann Constan - made extensive equestrian journeys in Outer Mongolia between 1907 and 1913. |
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Though he is most often remembered today as being the creator of the original film, “King Kong,” Merian C. Cooper led a life so filled with adventure that his story would have amazed anyone. In the early 1920s, Cooper volunteered to fly in the Polish air force against the invading Soviet army. Shot down, the young aviator was imprisoned and nearly starved to death, before escaping his tormentors and fleeing back to Poland, where he was awarded that country’s most distinguished military medal. He next turned his attention to film making, joining up with camera man Ernest Schoedsack and American socialite, turned military spy, Margurerite Harrison. The trio journeyed to Persia, where they met the Bakhtiari nomads. During the course of making his first feature film, “Grass,” Cooper swam raging rivers, climbed ice covered peaks and rode alongside the nomads from the Persian Gulf to the pastures on the far side of the Zagros Mountains. Though Cooper went on to enjoy a successful film career, he fondly recalled his time as a Long Rider and often lamented not being able to return to Persia. |
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Charles Cottu - rode from Paris, France to Vienna, Austria and back in 1899. |
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Lady Elizabeth Craven was the youngest daughter of an English earl. A talented poet and playwright, she was married at seventeen to Lord Craven. The loveless marriage caused her to seek adventure. Separating from her husband in 1783, Lady Craven alternately rode sidesaddle, and made use of her coach, as she made a perilous journey across Europe. She visited Austria, Poland, Russia and Greece before making her way to the Ottoman court at Constantinople. In her later life she journeyed across France to Italy, under the personal protection of Napoleon, where she remained until her death in 1828. |
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Wilbur Cummings - In the company of fellow American, F. Bailey “Billy” Vanderhoef Jr., Wilbur L. Cummings set off in 1938 to ride from the Indian town of Kalimpong, over the Himalayan mountains, to the Tibetan city of Gyantse. Their mission was to observe the sacred Buddhist ceremonies held there during a sacred festival.During their time together as students at Harvard University, both young men had expressed a mutual desire to visit Tibet, so when a museum offered them a chance to photograph the famous Saga Dawa religious ceremony they jumped at the chance. The highlight of this ceremony was the unveiling of a famous massive religious painting which was only shown for two hours each year. Yet religious values couldn’t save the young travellers from noxious daily remainders. Their journey took them through the town of Phari, which had the unpleasant reputation as being the filthiest place in the world. Because of its bitterly cold climate, Phari lived in a nearly frozen state for nine months every year. As result, the residents simply threw their refuse out the window into the frozen street. Over the years the street would raise to the point that the first floor of the buildings were buried under the decay, prompting the Tibetans to simply build another floor atop the building. When Cummings and Vanderhoef rode through Phari, their horses were almost up to their knees in slime and they were forced to hold their breath as they passed through the toxic miasma. Their efforts were rewarded however. Upon reaching the Tibetan city of Gyantse, they not only observed the special religious festival, they also procured some of the first colour photographs of Tibet. In 2008, the many paintings, sculptures, photographs and journals they had collected were donated to Tibetan Collection at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The image shows a traditional Tibetan bridle. |
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Robert Cunninghame Graham (1852-1936) author, traveller explorer, politician and adventurer, was a man of extraordinary talents, tireless energy and considerable courage. His friend and contemporary Joseph Conrad remarked, “When I think of Cunninghame Graham, I feel as though I have lived all my life in a dark hole without seeing or knowing anything.” In a crowded life — Cunninghame Graham was variously a Member of Parliament, a gaucho in South America, a fencing master, a founder member of both the Independent Labour Party and the Scottish National Party, a rancher, horse-trainer, buffalo hunter and Long Rider through North and South America — he wrote prolifically. Known as "Don Roberto," he was the author of travel books, a biography, eleven histories of Latin America and fourteen volumes of short stories and sketches. This special collection entitled The Cunninghame Graham Collection been made possible by the enthusiastic support of the Cunninghame Graham family. The highlight of the collection is the newly-published biography of the Scottish patriot by his great-niece, Jean Cunninghame Graham. |
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George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, is usually remembered for having been the late 19th century Viceroy of India who helped rescue the Taj Mahal from neglect. However, in addition to his political career, this talented leader was also a lifelong horseman whose early riding career nearly ended his life. Having suffered a spinal injury, incurred while riding as a teenager, Curzon was left in lifelong pain. Though his injury required him to wear a metal corset under his clothes, and contributed to an unfortunate impression of stiffness and arrogance, Curzon’s longing for equestrian adventure would not be denied. Despite his injury and the resultant pain, Curzon set off in 1894 to ride 3,200 kilometres across Afghanistan and into the unexplored Pamir mountains. There he established the source of the fabled Oxus river. Yet it was the legendary Pamir mountain range, which sits between today’s Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which was to provide the future Viceroy with the equestrian exploration experience necessary to equip him to ride later in Persia, India, Turkistan, the Middle East and Japan. |
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