The Long Riders' Guild - Historical Long Riders

The Long Riders' Guild

Historical Long Riders

	Every age witnesses the birth of some great soul. Sometimes events bring these people to the attention of the world. More often than not, they alter the lives around them, then pass on quietly. Such a soul belonged to the author of this cherished book. There was nothing in Louisa Jebb’s comfortable Victorian youth to indicate she would one day take to the saddle and pen one of the most eloquent equestrian travel books ever written. Yet in the early years of the 20^th century, Jebb set out with a female companion to cross the Turkish Empire on horseback. To say they were unprepared to become Long Riders would be an understatement. Neither of them could speak the local language. Furthermore, both wore cumbersome full-length skirts and rode side-saddles. They were, in a word, enthusiastic amateurs who believed courage and common sense would see them through. Remarkably, it did. Having hired a picturesque guide and reliable horses, they set out to explore the secret corners of the Sultan’s empire. What they discovered were guarded harems and regal Pashas, fabled rivers and a desert world of intense beauty. If Jebb rode into Turkey expecting to find adventure, she found it. Yet she discovered something else – nomadic freedom. It is her personal observations about this subject that set By Desert Ways to Baghdad and Damascus apart from other equestrian travel books. “In the untravelled parts of the East you reign supreme, there is no need to go about securely chained to a gold watch. Ignore Time, and he is your servant,” she observed wisely. Sadly, revolution and death soon swept across this fabled land, wiping away the kingdom of the Turkish Caliphs and laying the foundations for the grief which enshrouds this unhappy part of the world today.
	Mountenay Jephson - rode through feudal Japan in 1869.
	Lewis Jones (Llwyd Ap Iwan) was a Welsh colonist who settled in the Chubut Valley of Patagonia. He made extensive equestrian journeys across the area in the 1890s, before he was murdered by two American bandits named William Wilson and Robert Evans, who were mistakenly identified as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. According to the Jones family legend, Llwyd "ran a general store in Esquel, Patagonia, selling all sorts of sundries. The story goes that Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid tried to rob the store, however Llewellyn (who was renowned as an excellent shot) was armed and refused to give up the takings. That night, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid set light to the curtains of Llewellyn's home, trying to kill or injure him. Although the fire was put out, he badly burned his hands. The next day they returned to the store, shot him (he was unable to reach for his gun because of his burns) and ran off with the takings. There is a gravestone in Esquel inscribed in English, Spanish and Welsh marking the place where he was killed and saying he was 'shot by bandits'." Now we know it was not Butch and Sundance, but Wilson and Evans. Click here to read about the Long Riders who uncovered the truth.
	Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh - No one in the history of equestrian exploration has accomplished a more amazing ride than that of Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh, the man born with no limbs who rode to India. Though descended from the ancient kings of Leinster, Arthur’s birth in 1831 was initially thought by many to be a tragedy when it was discovered that the infant had been born with only tiny stumps, instead of fully formed arms and legs. Yet aided by a merciful doctor, and understanding parents, the child was reared so as to be so independent that it almost defies belief. Trained to have an indomitable sense of perseverance and an extraordinary sense of personal courage, Arthur, whose alert mental capacities far exceeded many so-called “normal” people, attended school where he studied art and the classics. Though he was sometimes carried across his father’s vast estate on the back of a servant, Arthur also learned to move about the family mansion though the use of a mechanical chair. Yet it was his love of riding that unlocked the world to this adventurous young lad. Though he lacked limbs, Arthur’s chest was muscular and his courage was supreme. After long practice, he learned to use the stumps of his arms as if they were fingers. In this way, after having been strapped into a specially constructed chair saddle, Arthur could not only manage the reins, but could carry his whip as he rode to hounds and boldly jumped over the legendary and hazardous fences of his native Ireland. While Arthur’s life would be extraordinary by any reckoning, his status as an equestrian explorer is considered by The Long Riders’ Guild to be the most astonishing account of the 19^th century. In 1846, at the age of fifteen, he accompanied his mother and older brother to Egypt, where they explored Cairo, ascended the Nile by boat, then journeyed on horseback overland across the deserts to Lebanon. It was during this journey that Arthur purchased, rode, and fell in love with his Arab horse. “Poor beast, I cried the day I left him – he knew me so well. He used to lick my face when I came out of the tent in the morning to see him and at luncheon-time in the heat of the day, when I used to sit under him for shade, he would put his head between his front legs to take a bit of bread without moving for fear of hurting me,” Arthur later wrote. This desert sojourn was to prove to be of lasting importance, for in 1849 Arthur, and older brother Tom, set off for India. They went via Denmark, Norway and Sweden, before reaching Moscow, Russia. They then sailed down the Volga into Circassia. Here they mounted local horses and, carrying nothing but their guns, the daring brothers rode towards Persia. In a remarkable entry in his diary, Arthur recalled, “The scenery is beautiful but the road villainous. In some places it is absolutely impassable to any but native beasts, as the path, about a foot broad and very slippery from the rain and mud, ran along the side of the mountain. Twice my horse slipped one of his hind feet over the side. If he had not recovered himself in a miraculous manner, he and I would have been dashed into a thousand pieces.” After avoiding bandits and surviving fevers, the intrepid brothers reached India. In an amazing demonstration of his self-confidence, Arthur agreed with his brother Tom’s decision to temporarily leave him in India. During the subsequent voyage, the elder Kavanagh died aboard ship, leaving Arthur stranded in India without funds. In what must count as the most remarkable act of equestrian confidence ever recorded, the unemployed, and limbless, Arthur Kavanagh obtained employment as an official government dispatch rider !!! In his spare time Arthur, always a keen huntsmen, bagged four tigers. When notified of his financial situation, his family arranged for funds allowing Arthur to sail home to Ireland. Upon his return, the now only surviving son became the heir to the ancient family estate. Soon afterwards, Arthur wed, went on to father four children, became a Member of Parliament and never lost his sense of humour. “It’s extraordinary,” he once remarked to his hostess on arrival, “I haven’t been here for five years but the station master recognized me!” After spending a full life hunting, fishing, drawing, sailing his yacht and authoring a best-selling travel book, this inspiring man, and the most unique Long Rider in history, died of pneumonia in 1889.
	Lieutenant A. H. Kenike – According to an eyewitness account written in 1897 by the American traveller W. H. Jackson, Kenike rode this horse 4,300 miles from Chita, Siberia to St. Petersburg, Russia.
	Alexander William Kinglake rode from Serbia to Egypt in 1835. In his book, “Eothen - Traces of Travel” he provided this sterling insight into equestrian travel. "Day after day, week after week, and month after month, your foot is in the stirrup. To taste the cold breath of the earliest morn, and to lead or follow your bright cavalcade till sunset through forests and mountain passes, through valleys and desolate plains - all this becomes your mode of life. If you are wise, you do not look upon the long period of time thus occupied by your journey as the mere gulfs which divide you from place to place to which you are going; but rather, as most rare and beautiful portions of life, from which may come thought, temper, and strength. Once feel this, and you will grow happy and contented in your saddle-home."
	He had a chance, a rare chance, to leave behind the smoky, crowded streets of New England and journey out to the still unspoiled American West. He had a chance, a rare chance, to forget that he was born to ride a desk, not a New Mexican bronco. He had a chance, a rare chance, to turn his back on convention and schedules, wrist-watches and bills, misspent romance and a thousand other heart-aches. He opted instead to climb up on the back of a untried horse and ride off in search of equestrian adventure. He had that chance, and he took it! His name sounds ungainly today. “Clyde Kluckhohn”. Yet he was no cartoon character. This was a young man in search of adventure and a dream, to ride through the stony wastes of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico in search of a geographic legend, “The Rainbow Bridge.” Native American myth stated that somewhere in the rocky wastelands of Navajo-land stood a gigantic, unbelievable arch of pure red stone. No white man had ever seen it. No white man had ever ridden near it. Young Clyde Kluckhohn, the Yankee horseman, determined to do just that! His book, To the Foot of the Rainbow, is an exciting true tale of equestrian adventure and a moving account of a young man’s search for physical perfection in a desert world still untouched by the recently-born twentieth century.
	Cliff and Ruth Kopas - rode through the Canadian Rockies in 1933.
	Tadeusz Kotwicki completed several remarkable rides. In 1992 he rode an Akhal Teke 4,000 kilometres from Jambyl, Kazakhstan to Moscow, Russia. Beginning in 1995 he began a journey in Patagonia, planning to continue all the way to the Bering Straits. During his passage through Peru, Kotwicki was savagely attacked by Indians. He was saved thanks to the chance passing of a public official. Ironically, this attack matches one made a few years earlier, when Indians in this same area nearly killed Russian Long Rider Vladimir Fissenko. Both men were believed to be mounted demons intent on eating the natives. The Polish Long Riders’ trip concluded in 1998 when he reached Kansas. Here is an article about him (in Polish).
	Karl Krebs was a Danish diplomat whose work for the International Red Cross took him into Siberia in 1918. When the Bolsheviks reached Irkutsk, Krebs learned he was to be arrested. He bought a horse and set out on an amazing solo ride, travelling all the way to Peking. By day he rode across steppes and desert, guided only by the compass, and at night he slept in a sleeping bag, with no tent, in minus fifteen degree weather.
	Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, rode across Siberia from Irkutsk to Kyakhta in 1864. Though he became one of the forefathers of the Russian revolution, Kropotkin never forgot this great equestrian journey he made as a young man. It was a "long, circuitous route, across mountains 7000 to 8000 feet high. I once travelled along this track, greatly enjoying the scenery of the mountains, which were snow-glad in May, but otherwise the journey was really awful. To climb eight miles only, to the top of the main pass, Khamar-daban, it took me the whole day from three in the morning till eight at night. Our horses continually fell through the thawing snow, plunging with their riders many times a day into the icy water which flowed underneath the snow crust," wrote Kropotkin.
	One of the geographic legends of the early twentieth century was the Abyssinian kingdom of Emperor Haile Selassie. Existing in self-imposed isolation, this medieval world was an adventurer’s paradise when Thomas Lambie arrived in 1919. A missionary and physician, Lambie was in addition a first class horseman with a hunger for excitement. Eventually Lambie was called to ride through the mountainous countryside to visit one of the local kings, His Majesty Ras Tafari (afterwards to be crowned Emperor Haile Selassie). Thus began one of the strangest friendships in Ethiopian history, the hard riding doctor and the mysterious ruler of a kingdom dating back 2,000 years. Boots and Saddles in Africa is Lambie’s story of his equestrian journeys, told with the grit and realism that marks a true classic. Twelve journeys are laid out, all taken for a definite medical purpose or on orders of the Emperor, in which Lambie rode through the hidden hills and roadless green valleys of a country that has become a legend among travellers. The rediscovered classic, full of practical knowledge and lost wisdom, is a spirited read for students of either horses or history.
	Valdemar Langlet was a Swedish Long Rider who made two equestrian journeys in the early 20th century. He first rode across Russia, concluding his journey by staying with the famous author and enthusiastic horseman, Count Leo Tolstoy. The two men were both advocates of Esperanto, the international language which many believed would help usher in an age of peace in Europe. Then in the early 1930s Langlet made an extended journey across Hungary. This journey concluded with becoming ill. Luckily, after falling in love with a beautiful Hungarian aristocrat who nursed him back to health, Langlet settled in his wife's country. When the Nazis invaded Hungary Langlet risked his life to save a large number of endangered Jews by helping them to escape via the Red Cross.
	Sir Austen Henry Layard was one of the archaeological pioneers of the Victorian age. In addition to riding from Montenegro to Persia, he lived with the Bakhtiari nomads and discovered the ancient Assyrian city of Ninevah.
	Margaret Leigh - rode from Cornwall, England, to Strathascaig, Scotland, in 1938. Author of My Kingdom for a Horse.
	Few Englishmen, and still fewer women, had ridden from the Pacific port of Ampala, over the mountains of Honduras, to the Atlantic in the late nineteenth century. Yet that is what the refined Mary Lester set out to do. The intrepid traveller was laboring under a handicap as reliable maps were rare and what verbal advice was on offer turned out to be dubious and out of date. Yet such inconveniences did nothing to dampen the adventurous spirit of the lady who preferred to ride under the pseudonym “Maria Soltera.” Regardless of what they called her, the people in Honduras soon leaned to respect the courage and determination of the foreign Long Rider. “I do not fear hardship,” she told them, “as I am the daughter of an English soldier and circumstances have compelled me to depend on myself.” Lester wasn’t making an idle boast. In excellent Spanish, she haggled over saddles, hired mules, deflated bullies and outwitted nefarious guides. She was, in a word, a fire-cracker whose combustible ride across the verdant mountains is still a tale to remember. Thus A Lady’s Ride Across Spanish Honduras is a gem of a book, with its entertaining account of Mary’s vivid, day to day life in the saddle. Yet the hardy amateur author was a keen observer who noted the exotic animal life, social customs, and political conditions of a jungle-trail-world that belonged to that simpler age. Complete with drawings from her journey, Lester’s colourful writing brings the “lost” civilization of Spanish Honduras back to life more than a century later.
	At first glance he didn’t look like a biological pioneer or an extraordinary Long Rider but that’s what Carl Linnaeus was. Of course part of the reason no one recognized his importance back in 1732 was because young Carl was still thought of as being merely the eldest son of a small-town curate in Sweden. All that changed on the day before his twenty-fifth birthday. That’s when he saddled his horse, and armed with a plant press and a crazy notion, Linnaeus rode away from his family’s home in Uppsala, Sweden and into scientific history. His mission was to journey north into “Lapland,” an area inhabited by the ethnic Sami tribes people who lived on the frozen tundra with their reindeer. Linnaeus was convinced that this glacier-carved Arctic region had plants which were of scientific importance. Yet when he began to discover, and wished to classify these rare and useful plants, Linnaeus realized that the current system of studying and naming plants and animals was a linguistic shambles, with various complex names being given to the same species based on a wide body of multiple criteria. Linnaeus the Long Rider changed all that. During his equestrian journey Linnaeus devised a system of classifying living things based on a single specific epithet unique to that item. For example, the human species is uniquely identified by the binomial Homo sapiens. No other species of animal can have this binomial. Prior to the system now known as Linnaean taxonomy, animals were classified according to their mode of movement. During his productive and pleasant stay with the Sami, Linnaeus adopted the local clothes and lifestyle of his resourceful hosts. Though he was learning to relish meals of reindeer meat, the fledgling scientist was also busy discovering more than 100 new plant species. In fact Linnaeus is credited with having classified and named more than 4,000 animals and nearly 8,000 plants during his career. Thus it is often said that Lapland was for Linnaeus what the Galapagos Islands were for Charles Darwin, the other famous Long Rider scientist who was to follow. Yet while the scientific discoveries of both men are now well-known, few recall that they shared a common love of equestrian travel.
	William MacCann - rode across the Pampas of Argentina in 1851.
	J. A. MacGahan - rode from Fort Perovsky, Russia, across the Kyzil-Kum Desert to Adam-Kurulgan ("Fatal to Men"), Kyrgyzstan in 1873. He said, "It was with a feeling of lazy satisfaction, only known by those who have ridden a journey of two thousand miles, that I at last drew up before the door."
	Colonel Joseph McCracken rode 800 miles from Pennsylvania to Kentucky in 1963 at the age of 75. “There’s no better way to see the country,” he recalled. “The whole experience was a joy.”

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