From North Pole to Equator: Studies of Wild Life and Scenes in Many Lands

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

Fig 68.—Kirghiz with Camels.

The dog, which is the least valued animal owned by the Kirghiz, is always large but not always beautiful, though the difference between it and the hideous curs to be met with elsewhere in Siberia and Turkestan is very marked and greatly in its favour. The head is long but rather heavy, the limbs more like those of a greyhound than a sheep-dog, the hair long and woolly, the colouring very varied.

Watchful and courageous in the highest degree, he is a worthy adversary of the wolf, an efficient and careful protector of the weaker herds, a suspicious sentinel towards strangers, the faithful slave of his master, an unsociable recluse as far as grown-up people are concerned, but the willing playmate of the children. He has many of the virtues of his race, and is therefore to be found in every yurt or at least in every aul.

The whole life of the Kirghiz centres in his herds,—making use of them and their products, and to that end tending them carefully. The former is the chief occupation of the women, the latter the most important work of the men. With the exception of the bones, which are thrown away unheeded, every portion of the body of every one of their animals is used, just as every female among the live stock is milked as long as possible. The quantity of vegetable food used by the Kirghiz is extremely small; milk and meat form his chief diet in all circumstances, and vegetable products are merely accessory. Bread, in the real sense of the word, he scarcely uses at all, and even the little lumps of dough which may be reckoned as such, are sodden in fat, not baked. Flour and rice,—the latter a frequent dish only among the rich,—also serve to give variety to the everlasting monotony of milk and meat dishes. Little wonder then that death from starvation threatens the Kirghiz, indeed too often overtakes him, when general murrain breaks out among his beasts in the midst of the steppe.

The wealthier people keep the milk of sheep and goats separate from that of cows, and of mares and camels; poor people mix all the milk in one vessel, and thus get only the effect of sheep’s milk, while the rich secure some differentiation of palatal pleasure. From the milk of sheep and goats, which is invariably milked into the same vessel and collected in the same leathern bottle, they prepare not only various dishes, which are eaten at once with or without flour, but also butter, small, sour or bitter, gritty cheeses, most distasteful to a European palate, and a yellow curd very agreeable even to our taste, which, like the cheese, is stored up for use in winter, when it is dissolved in water to make a sort of soup. Cow’s milk, on the other hand, they use chiefly as sour milk, and only rarely make into curds, cheese, or butter, while that of mares and camels is used for making the koumiss so often described. This is a milk-wine made by allowing milk to ferment for four days, and by constantly shaking and beating it. It is much appreciated, and indeed justly prized among the Kirghiz, and the well-to-do among them often drink it to intoxication on festive occasions.

During summer even the wealthier Kirghiz live almost entirely on milk in various forms, for they only kill a member of their herd for a festival or on some specially important occasion. When winter sets in, however, sheep and goats, horses and cattle, even camels are killed. The flesh of the horse, especially of the mare, is looked on as the noblest, that of cattle as the worst and poorest food. The flesh of sheep ranks next to horse flesh; camel flesh is good for the soul’s health; goat flesh is a mark of poverty, or is set before a guest in expression of contempt. Of the slaughtered horse the loins are most highly prized, and the breast of the sheep. A dainty of the first order is the belly fat of a young horse; this is therefore salted, made into smoked sausages, and set before the honoured guest with as much ceremony as the koumiss itself.

The Kirghiz turns to profit not only the edible portions but every usable part of the animals he rears. From the wool of the sheep he prepares the indispensable felt; he weaves and spins the hair of the camel, and the mother lays her new-born babe in its soft down-like under wool. The long hair of the goat is made into fringes for rugs and cloths, or into tassels or cords; the short woolly hair is spun and woven into bands for the yurt, and the hair of the horse’s mane and tail is plaited into much-prized leading-reins or cords for the yurt. Sheep-skin furnishes the ordinary winter fur coat; the skins of lambs and kids make valuable fur-trimmings; the flocks of wool rubbed off make good wadding for lining other garments, and the skins of all the animals supply leather of different kinds. The Kirghiz barters the superfluous or little-prized fat of his beasts, and some of his sheep, cattle, and horses for various other commodities of the general market; with the proceeds of the sale of his herds he pays his taxes and tributes, buys the uncoined silver with which he loves to make a display, the iron which he works, the rugs, garments, and silk stuffs with which he decks his person and his yurt. The herds are and must remain the sole support and source of wealth of the nomadic herdsman; the little land which he occasionally ploughs, sows, waters, and reaps is hardly worth taking into account.

It is not their own humour, but the necessity of satisfying the requirements of their stock, that regulates the roamings and sojournings of the Kirghiz, that compels them to wander this way to-day and that to-morrow, to rest for a little in one place, and shortly afterwards to leave it for another. The journeyings of these people are therefore by no means aimless wanderings about the vast steppe, but carefully-considered changes of residence determined by the season, and by the species of animal requiring fresh pasture. The steppe allows no planless roaming either in summer or winter, autumn or spring; aimless roving would expose the herds in winter to the most terrible storms, in summer to the danger of drought; in spring there would probably be an embarrassing superfluity of fodder, and by autumn the supply would have unpleasantly diminished. So the Kirghiz begins his journey from the low-lying plains, ascends slowly to the higher ground and even to the mountains, then moves slowly back to the low grounds again. But the various herds have different needs: sheep and goats like hard, fragrant plants such as are to be found on the salt steppe; horses prefer the mountain plants, especially those growing among masses of rock, while the favourite grazing-ground of cattle is soft meadow-land, and camels, besides eating the hard salt steppe plants, appear to look upon thorns and thistles as an indispensable part of their food. The well-to-do, who can group the different animals in separate herds, let each herd wander and feed by itself, and only the poorer people move from one place to another with all their stock together. Finally, the movements of one party are influenced by those of another. There are, indeed, no landmarks nor boundary stones, but even in the open steppe rights of possession and definite boundaries are recognized by ancient agreement; every horde, every branch of a horde, every community, the members of every aul, claim a right to the land traversed by their forefathers, and suffer no strange herd or herdsman to encroach on it, but take to arms and wage bloody warfare with every intruder, even with other members of the same tribe. This explains the fact that the nomad herdsman not only travels along definite routes, but restricts himself to a strictly limited range. His path may occasionally cross that of another herdsman, but it is never the same, for each respects the rights of the other, and is prevented by the rest of his tribe from encroaching upon them.