Mr St John on the Mongols. 269 



birth of a son, was a remnant of the nomadic habits of the 

 people. Muskets and rifles are only used by hunters, who 

 obtain their powder, shot, and balls, from China. 



Milk forms the staple article of food in Mongolia, being 

 used as a beverage in its original state, and afterwards eaten 

 when transformed to butter and cheese. This light food may 

 account for the activity, as well as the lack of muscular vi- 

 gour of the people. A Cossack is more than a match for a 

 Mongol; but the latter, even when arrived at the age of 

 sixty, will ride, it is asserted, two hundred wersts in a day 

 without being fatigued. In summer they drink a kind of 

 brandy, which is extracted from milk. 1 may here remark, 

 by the way, that smoking is extremely common. Meat is 

 rarely eaten ; and then mutton is preferred. No game is 

 touched, except on pressing occasions, but the wild goat and 

 the wild boar. Fish are protected by superstition. In ex- 

 treme cases they will eat the flesh of camels, horses, and 

 even of animals that have died of disease ; in which, I sup- 

 pose, they would be imitated by every European under simi- 

 lar circumstances, though our fastidiousness might perhaps 

 lead us so form a different opinion of what constituted 

 urgency. Water is rarely tasted, brick tea being the favour- 

 ite drink. This, indeed, is almost invariably the contents of 

 the cast-iron kettle which swings over the fire of dried dung ; 

 and any traveller who passes by, provided he be furnished 

 with his own wooden cup, sometimes lined with silver, may 

 enter and quench his thirst. This beverage, called satoiiran^ 

 is generally rendered palateable with milk, butter, and salt. 

 A little flour fried in oil is sometimes added. What is usually 

 denominated brick-tea consists of the dry, dirty, and damaged 

 leaves and stalks of tea thrown aside in the Chinese manu- 

 factories, pressed in moulds, and dried in ovens. The Chinese 

 will never drink it themselves. But the Mongols, the Buriats, 

 the Kalmucks, and the Siberians, use it to excess. The lat- 

 ter, indeed, are said to weaken their constitutions by this 

 means. 



The small, fat, buffaloes of Mongolia are generally black, 

 and their tufted hair gives them an extraordinary appear- 

 ance. The sheep, which furnish abundance of milk, and 



