These barbarians, however, respect the life of their domestic animals, or sacrifice them only in cases of pressing need. They treat them also with a gentleness unknown to our European grooms and horse-dealers. With them, as with the Arabs, the horse is a friend rather than a slave; he is, in truth, one of the family; and it is with great difficulty that his master consents to part with him. Our travellers describe the Tartar, Mongol, and Kirghiz horsemen as realizing the celebrated fable of the Centaurs,—as becoming, so to speak, one with their horses. The exigencies of their wandering life require that they should be constantly on horseback; it is almost their home, their abode, their dwelling-place; there they are mounted day and night; there they sleep, prepare their food, and take their repasts. True that their cooking is of the rudest and simplest, and their taste not so fastidious as that of an European epicure! If, for example, they would make ready a piece of meat, they insert it between the saddle and the horse’s skin, and in this impromptu oven leave it for a few hours, while it undergoes the processes of heat, pressure, and frequent friction, serving in some degree to cook it; then a pinch of salt for seasoning; and lo! a dainty titbit which our cavalier devours with the best appetite in the world.
But it is to the inhabitants of the Steppes of the Black and Caspian Seas that the horse renders the most estimable services. To make use of a phrase of Buffon’s, “He shares with them the fatigue of war and the glory of battle;” he provides them with the best and swiftest means of transit; he nourishes them with his flesh, and the mare quenches their thirst with her milk. In their dairies mares take the place of our European milch-cows, and are regularly milked once or twice a-day. The milk, warm, is employed as a medicine. It is thicker and more saccharine than that of ruminating animals, and this, undoubtedly, is the reason that the Cossacks, Tartars, and Kalmucks have succeeded, by fermentation, in distilling alcohol from it, and procuring vinegar by acetifying it. They prepare with it an intoxicating liquor (koumis), to which they are very partial, and with which the wealthiest among them consider it an honour to be largely provided.
By the side of the horse, we naturally place his humble congener and compatriot, the Ass.
Nor need we be ashamed to devote a few lines to this useful animal, though civilization has appointed to it a very different lot from that of the horse.
While man has devoted his utmost efforts to ennoble, as it were, and aggrandize the latter, to perfect his capabilities, develop his qualities, embellish and vary his form, for the former he has had nothing but contempt and harsh treatment. He has made the horse the companion of his campaigns, the minister to his sumptuous pleasures, the instrument of his grandest labours. He has dismissed the poor ass to the fields to carry the heaviest burdens, to share in the toil and privation of the peasant. In these different conditions, who will wonder that while the horse has become a strong, graceful, and proud-spirited animal, the ass, on the other hand, remains bowed and bent, with a rough coarse hide, lanky limbs, a heavy head,—always drooping, as if under the weight of continual lassitude and unconquerable melancholy,—and long ungraceful ears, which give his physiognomy an air of ridicule. Everything in him bears the impress of degradation. How has he merited so obscure a destiny? Alas, he is the victim of an iniquitous caprice of man. For see him in his natural condition; contrast with the well-worn servant of civilization the Onagra,[23] the free wild ass of the Steppes, with the Tarpan, and the parallel will be wholly to the advantage of the former. The onagra is at least of the same size; his ears are short; he carries aloft a well-proportioned head; his skin, of a handsome gray or yellowish-brown, is sleek and shining; his limbs are long, delicate, and nervous. He lives in very numerous troops, and migrates from north to south, and south to north, according to the season. The Tartars employ him as a beast of transport and the saddle rather than as a beast of burden. They eat his flesh, preferring it to that of the wild horse. Even the domestic ass of the East differs notably from the slow, dogged, ill-used animal of European notoriety. Under a more favourable climate, and in the free life of the desert, he has preserved his tall stature, his vigour, and the haughtiness of his bearing. The wealthiest and most distinguished personages do not disdain to mount him or harness him to their carriage. He has a keen eye, a quick scent, a sure foot, a mild and resolute aspect. He accomplishes with ease from six to eight miles an hour; and, lastly—a fact worthy of notice—his life, which with us seldom exceeds fifteen years, in Asia is frequently prolonged to thirty or thirty-five. He is less subject to sickness than the horse, and he almost equals the camel in sobriety, docility, and endurance of hunger and fatigue.
Whether the Tartars and Kalmucks, who use mares’ milk as a medicine, attribute, as we do, certain therapeutical virtues to the milk of the ass, we are unable to say; but it is certain that this milk forms a portion of their daily food. On account of the strong proportion of saccharine serum which it contains, it is well adapted for the preparation of the fermented drink already spoken of, known to the Tartars under the name of Koumis or Kamuis. Mr. Atkinson speaks of the large leathern koumis sack or bottle, as an important piece of Mongolian furniture. One which he saw was five feet eight inches long, and four feet five inches wide, with a leathern tube at the corner about four inches in diameter, through which the milk is poured into the bag, and the koumis drawn out. A wooden instrument is introduced into this bag, its handle passing through the tube, not unlike a churning staff; with this the koumis is frequently agitated. The Kirghiz begin making it in April, and its due agitation and fermentation occupy about fourteen days.[24]
The horse, and a few flocks of sheep and herds of horned cattle, amply suffice for the wants of the warlike tribes in the south of Asiatic Russia. These tribes have almost entirely abandoned the use of the camel. But as we advance eastward, we find these gigantic and mis-shapen ruminants in great numbers, the faithful companions and indispensable auxiliaries of the nomades of the East. They wander freely about the Steppes, in troops of several hundreds, browzing indifferently on the grass of the wide pastures or the foliage of the bushes. They are without fierceness, and the traveller who intrudes upon their immense domains seems only to inspire in them a benevolent curiosity. “It is impossible to describe,” says Madame Hommaire de Hell, “the astonishment they exhibited as we passed them. As soon as they caught sight of us, they ran with all speed towards us, and then stood motionless, with heads turned towards our cavalcade, until we had got to such a distance as to be no longer distinguishable.”