ON THE CRIMEAN STEPPES. 243 



The Russians and Tartars sat carousing around rude 

 wooden tables, their feast consisting of the above- 

 mentioned epicurean ingredients. Now and then the 

 purple-nosed proprietor would pass out through the 

 bars a refilled bottle of vodka, a handful of squashy 

 cucumbers, with the brine streaming through his fingers, 

 or a piece of bread. These Tartar shepherds have 

 yielded to the influence of their Russian surround- 

 ings, and, though still nominally Mohammedans, drink 

 vodka as freely as the moujiks. While I was there, an 

 ancient Tartar dame drove up in a ramshackle one- 

 horse telega, bringing a sack of newly threshed wheat 

 to swap for vodka. She was as shriveled as a mummy, 

 and must have been eighty years old. 



In the eyes of the Tartars it was a recommendation 

 to their good will that I had been to Stamboul and 

 knew a few words of Turkish. 



Even here, in this rude company, the difference in 

 the two races was oddly conspicuous to the casual 

 looker-on. The vodka was paid for chiefly by the Tar- 

 tars and consumed chiefly by the Russians. A boozer 

 of the latter nationality, be he never so fuddled, 

 always took care to pour down his throat about two 

 glasses to his Tartar comrade's one, out of the bottle 

 that had been ordered through the bars by the Tartar. 

 These Crim Tartars, indeed, seemed to be a particularly 

 generous-souled set of people so far as my passing ex- 

 perience of them enabled me to judge. 



Another hot, dreary day across the level steppe, on 

 which, however, was seen at one point the agreeable 

 oasis of a German colonist settlement, — a village of neat 

 white houses, with red tiles, and an avenue of trees 



