224 



THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



who again fill smaller 

 copper vessels with it; and 

 when a Lama eats, he first 

 dips a wood pencil into 

 his little copper bottle and 

 passes it across his tongue. 

 At the present day 

 the Kalmuks number 

 about 20,000. In personal 

 appearance they are ugly, 

 and those who have deal- 

 ings with them consider 

 them cunning, dishonest, 

 and drunken. The men 

 are excellent horsemen, 

 and breed camels for the 

 Tiflis market. 



By i>efnti#tio/t of the lloyal (rettffrapMcul Xociefy. 



A GROUP OF SARTS AND DUNCANS, WITH CART (OR " ARIiA.S "). 



The Mongolian race 

 in Siberia is best repre- 

 sented by the Buriats, who possess its typical features and characteristics in a more marked 

 degree than the Kalmuks. Their physiognomy undeniably proclaims their origin. They have 

 very large skulls, square faces, and low, flat foreheads; the cheek-bones are high and wide 

 apart, the eyes elongated, the nose is flat, the skin swarthy and yellowish, and the hair jet 

 black. With the men the hair is allowed to grow upon the crown of the head, and is plaited 

 into a queue that hangs down at the back. The hair around the crown is cut as closely 

 as possible, but not shaved off. The women wear their hair in two thick braids, which fall 

 from the temples to below the shoulders; and the unmarried girls interweave their hair with 

 strings of coral. 



The Buriats have been long settled on both sides of Lake Baikal. The two great 

 branches of the Buriats, distinguished as the east branch and the west branch, according to 

 the side of the lake they occupy, number 250,000, the highest number assigned to any of 

 the natives races of Siberia. They are divided into eleven principal tribes, each of which is 

 again divided into clans or families. Previously to their subjugation by the Russians all were 

 addicted to the old Shamanist religion of Siberia; but towards the close of the seventeenth 

 century those dwelling east of Lake Baikal adopted Buddhism, while most of the others 

 conformed to the Orthodox Greek Church and became Christian, in name at least though, it 

 is said, both branches are still, at heart, genuine Shamanists. 



The Buriats are of a decidedly phlegmatic temperament. They lack the active enterprise 

 from which greatness is usually developed, and they have such an inborn disinclination for 

 work of any kind that sometimes only the stimulus of hunger will move them to exertion. 

 Through the Russians, with whom they have long had considerable intercourse, they have, 

 unhappily, acquired a passionate .love of strong drink and tobacco, and now one may often 

 come across children eight or nine years old with pipes in their mouths. 



The ordinary occupation of the Buriats is that of tending cattle. Mr. Lansdell mentions 

 some rich Buriats who possessed 6,000 or 7,000 sheep, 2,000 head of horned cattle, and 200 

 horses; while Captain Cochrane tells of the mother of a Buriat chief who owned 40,000 sheep, 

 10,000 horses, and 3,000 horned cattle, beside a large property in furs. Though they are 

 commonly unsociable and phlegmatic, there is no ground for assuming that the Buriats lack 

 intellectual power. The English missionaries taught some of them Latin, and prepared in 

 the Buriat language an elementary work on geometry, which is still much appreciated. One 

 class of the Lamas among the Buddhistic Buriats study and practise medicine, in which they 

 acquire a reputation for skill. Those of the Buriats who are Buddhists and they are by far 



