On the Yamud and Gokldn Tribes of Turkomania. 2 13 



latter have sharp-marked features, with a wild piercing eye 

 sunk in a hollow socket ; the face of the former, on the con- 

 trary, is nearly flat, with hardly any appearance of a nose, and 

 shrivelled all over. 



What presses the nose of the Turkoman women towards the 

 top lip, is their custom of hiding their mouths under a hand- 

 kerchief, which reaches to the tip of the nose, pressing it 

 down. The same custom prevails among all the Armenian 

 women in the East, and is reckoned as an indispensable con- 

 dition of female decency. This part of the dress is somewhat 

 similar to the Fenom worn by the ancient Gebber priests 

 whenever they approached the sacred fire, for fear their breath 

 should pollute the pure essence and symbolic manifestation of 

 the Deity ; for, according to the doctrines of the Zend-Avesta^ 

 the same as in Gospel truths, it is that which cometh out of 

 man which defiles him ; with that difference, that Zoroaster 

 understood it in a more literal sense. 



We have seen that the Yamuds are addicted both to a pas- 

 toral and an agricultural mode of life — although more espe- 

 cially to the former. Their neighbours, the Goklans, are more 

 settled. Their tents are spread in beautiful valleys, others in 

 the plain along the banks of the Gurgan and its tributaries. 

 Their chief occupation is agriculture ; the land is reckoned 

 very productive, although at present much neglected. The 

 soil between the mountains and the Gurgan, consisting in black 

 earth and clay, is used under wheat and barley fields, — the 

 crop of which, in proportion to the seed, in good years, is 100 

 to 1. Beyond, but close to, the river Gurgan, the fields yield 

 the sixtieth grain, and less as one advances towards the north." 

 We might feel somewhat reluctant to admit this great dis- 

 proportion between the seed and the harvest, were we not 

 informed by Herodotus, on whose veracity we may safely 

 rely, that the fields near Babylon produced corn in the pro- 

 portion of 200 bushels to one bushel committed to the earth. 



Independent of field work, the Goklans have plantations of 

 the mulberry-tree for their silk-worms. If China be the father- 

 land, as it is supposed, of the silk-worm, then in travelling 

 towards the west, this insect was probably reared in the val- 

 leys of Gurgan, before it spread and flourished in the pro- 



