CHAPTER LXI.
[(1.)]“after which, he can take another wife, and she another husband.”—The obscene and demoralising customs attributed to the Jassen or Yasses are fully and minutely described by the Abbé Chappe d’Auteroche, who witnessed precisely like ceremonies at Tobolsk, where marriages amongst the natives were thus celebrated (Voyage en Sibérie en 1761, etc., Paris, 1768, i, 163, et seq.). Olearius notices somewhat similar, but certainly milder, doings at Moscow in his time (Voyages, etc., 243); and Pitt (A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mahommetans, etc., Exon., 1704) recounts something of the sort as occurring among the Algerines.
It would appear, from a report recently made by the Ethnological Section of the Imperial Geographical Society of St. Petersburg, that similar practices, but in a greatly modified form, are in vogue amongst the peasantry in some parts of Little Russia.—Ed.