In administering justice, judgments were given by an assembly of elders. He who was found guilty of murder first suffered the penalties pronounced by the tribunal, and was then delivered over to the relatives of his victim, who were at liberty either to kill him, or to keep him as a slave. In the latter event, the assassin had to furnish to his masters one hundred horses and two camels, with liberty to substitute five sheep for every horse.
If the victim of an assassination were a woman or child, the relatives of these had no right to demand the life of the murderer, and the fine was reduced to one half. The crime of rape was punished in the same manner as the murder of women or children.
The Kirghiz still have among them a great number of diviners,[9] in whose revelations they have more or less faith according to the method these magicians employ in predicting.
[9] Pallas.
Some divine with books without having recourse to the stars. Others employ the shoulder blade of a sheep. It is absolutely necessary that this bone be denuded of flesh with a knife, and that human teeth have not gnawed it, otherwise it would have no virtue. When one of these magicians is consulted, he puts the shoulder blade on the fire, and makes his predictions according to the fissures produced by the heat. These diviners pretend with their science to determine how far distant an absent person may be.
The Kirghiz call the third class of magicians bukscha. To obtain a prediction from them, they exact a horse, a sheep, or a goat. The magician begins the ceremony by chanting and beating on a drum furnished with rings; and whilst thus occupied, he goes through a succession of leaps and contortions of the body for half an hour. When this part of the ceremony has ended, he has a sheep brought to him, and killing it, receives the blood in a vessel, expressly made for this purpose; he then keeps the skin for himself, and distributes the flesh among the spectators, who eat it. He afterwards takes the bones, and, dyeing them red or blue, throws them towards the west. Then he scatters the blood in the same direction, begins again his contortions, and, after an interval, gives his response to the question proposed to him. A fourth class of diviners are called kamtscha. They augur from the colour of the flame that rises from butter or fat thrown into the fire. The latter class of diviners is not much esteemed.
I had been about two hours on our excursion in conversation with M. Kroupinikoff, when I perceived three tents made of pointed stakes, pitched side by side, and covered with felt. As we had been some time announced, the head of the family received us before his encampment. This man was tall, and of a haughty look, and his dress, composed mostly of trophies of the chase, was really very picturesque. His head was covered with a hood of red wool, surmounted with a wolf’s head stuffed, the ears of which, being turned forwards, seemed as if they were his own. His shoulders were covered with a red shirt and a wolf’s skin. From his waist hung a pouch, similar to a Highlander’s, but made of the skin of the white deer of the desert. His legs were swathed in skins of different colours; his sandals were of plaited straw, his feet disappearing under leather gaiters, that expanded below like Mexican trousers. In imitation of the ancient savages, this man bore at the same time his weapon of war and of the chase. He had a bow over his shoulder, arrows suspended from a shoulder belt, an enormous club hanging from his waist, and a falcon perched on his hand. This club served him to strike down the wolves as soon as he ran them down with his fleet courser. Near him stood a hare-hound of a breed, it appears, found only among these people. They are hairless all over the body, excepting on the ears, where the hair is of unusual length. On seeing this one, I fancied it had been shaved by the Kirghiz, who are very much attached to these dogs, but M. Kroupinikoff assured me that this was their natural state. These animals, they say, are swifter and more intelligent than Scotch or Syrian hounds. Excepting the peculiarity of the long hair on the ears, which detracts from their beauty, they are extremely graceful animals.
The Kirghiz being Mohammedans, the women of this tribe hid themselves from our eyes in their tents. M. Kroupinikoff being unwilling to displease the chief by asking to be admitted into the tent, preferred asking him to show me how he hunted the wolf with the club.
He was in his saddle in an instant, and executed before us a manœuvre with a dexterity that would have been envied by Arabs if they could have seen him. Off he went, cutting through the air like a dart, hiding himself from view by leaning down close beside the shoulder of his courser, and low enough to strike the snow with his tomahawk. And the next moment, hanging on by some part of the harness, he appeared completely close under his steed.
This wild, wolf-eared figure, arrayed in red; this sinewy, sinuous hunter of the desert, guiding his courser, like the bound of a tiger on some imaginary prey, was altogether a striking spectacle, and one quite as interesting as it was startling and fantastic. We bid adieu to this son of Genghis Khan, and returned to Omsk, with this vision ever present to my imagination, like a vivid dream.