TO THE HUNTING GROUNDS 95 



cave-dwellers, dating back to an unknown era in 

 primeval times. 



The grim scenery gave place to verdant pasture 

 lands, where Tatar shepherds, accompanied by their 

 sisters, their cousins, and their aunts, passed the 

 summer in big gipsy-like encampments, tending flocks 

 of sheep, goats, and a few unkempt ponies. Here and 

 there the herdsmen, in spare hours, had contrived 

 curious half-underground abiding-places, round which 

 the feminine part of the community gossiped and made 

 Kalmuck tea from black brick-like slabs reminiscent 

 of the compressed coal-dust hawked about London 

 suburbs, and supposed by economical housewives to 

 make for domestic economy. 



Kalmuck tea, so-called because this cheap variety 

 of the beverage of the country is a sort of patent 

 evolved by the tribes in Astrakhan, is sometimes con- 

 verted into a most unholy soup, and drunk with a 

 flavouring of pepper and salt. 



A grim-looking old man was busily painting the 

 shoulders of a sickly bullock with a smelling concoction 

 which Ali Ghirik said was castor oil. The artist used 

 a switch of grass adroitly fashioned into a brush, 

 laying on his colour lavishly. The patient creature 

 was thus anointed because his skin had cracked in 

 the heat, and the cure is very general throughout the 

 country. Castor oil plants are a great feature in some 

 of the agricultural districts. 



The old painter's face was riven in terrific slashes, 

 healed into ugly cicatrices, grim reHcs, Ali explained, 

 in his very best personally-conducted-tour fashion, of 



