MOSCOW. 
64 
chap and not unlike our English hornpipe. The 
i ; ambassador’s nephew obliged us by exhibiting 
a Persian dance ; which seemed to consist of 
keeping the feet close together, hardly evei 
lifting them from the ground, and moving 
slowly, to quick measure, round the room. 
They drink healths as we do; and eat with 
their fingers, like the Arabs, all out of one dish, 
which is generally of boiled rice. If they eat 
meat, it is rarely any other than mutton, stewed 
into soup. The young man drank of^ the Russian 
beverage called hydromel, a kind of mead ; and 
sometimes, but rarely, he smoked tobacco. 
The ambassador never used a pipe; which 
surprised us, as the custom is almost universal 
in the East. Their kindness to their slaves was 
that of parents to children : the old man ap- 
pearing, like another Abraham, the common 
father of all his attendants. The dress of their 
interpreter, a Cossack of the Volga, was very 
rich. It consisted of a jacket of purple cloth 
lined with silk, and a silk waistcoat, both with- 
out buttons; a rich shawl round his waist; 
large trowsers of scarlet cloth ; and a magni- 
ficent sabre. 
Ambassadors of other more Oriental hordes 
drove into the court-yard of the inn, from 
Petersburg. The Emperor had presented each 
