To Carry The
Smaller Tents On A Waggon One Ox May Serve; For The Larger Ones Three Oxen
Or Four, Or Even More, According To The Size." The Carts That Were Used To
Transport The Tartar Valuables Were Covered With Felt Soaked In Tallow Or
Ewe's Milk, To Make Them Waterproof.
The tilts of these were rectangular,
in the form of a large trunk.
The carts used in Kashgar, as described by
Mr. Shaw, seem to resemble these latter. (I. B. II. 381-382; Rub. 221;
Carp. 6, 16.)
The words of Herodotus, speaking generally of the Scyths, apply perfectly
to the Mongol hordes under Chinghiz: "Having neither cities nor forts, and
carrying their dwellings with them wherever they go; accustomed, moreover,
one and all, to shoot from horseback; and living not by husbandry but on
their cattle, their waggons the only houses that they possess, how can
they fail of being unconquerable?" (Bk. IV. ch. 46, p. 41, Rawlins.)
Scythian prisoners in their waggons are represented on the Column of
Theodosius at Constantinople; but it is difficult to believe that these
waggons, at least as figured in Banduri, have any really Scythian
character.
It is a curious fact that the practice of carrying these yurts or felt
tents upon waggons appears to be entirely obsolete in Mongolia. Mr. Ney
Elias writes: "I frequently showed your picture [that opposite] to
Mongols, Chinese, and Russian border-traders, but none had ever seen
anything of the kind. The only cart I have ever seen used by Mongols is a
little low, light, roughly-made bullock-dray, certainly of Chinese
importation." The old system would, however, appear to have been kept up
to our own times by the Nogai Tartars, near the Sea of Azof. (See note
from Heber, in Clark's Travels, 8vo ed. I. 440, and Dr. Clark's vignette
at p. 394 in the same volume.)
[Illustration: Mediaeval Tartar Huts and Waggons.]
NOTE 3. - Pharaoh's Rat was properly the Gerboa of Arabia and North
Africa, which the Arabs also regard as a dainty. There is a kindred animal
in Siberia, called Alactaga, and a kind of Kangaroo-rat (probably the
same) is mentioned as very abundant on the Mongolian Steppe. There is also
the Zieselmaus of Pallas, a Dormouse, I believe, which he says the
Kalmaks, even of distinction, count a delicacy, especially cooked in sour
milk. "They eat not only the flesh of all their different kinds of cattle,
including horses and camels, but also that of many wild animals which
other nations eschew, e.g. marmots and zieselmice, beavers, badgers,
otters, and lynxes, leaving none untouched except the dog and weasel kind,
and also (unless very hard pressed) the flesh of the fox and the wolf."
(Pallas, Samml. I. 128; also Rubr. 229-230.)
["In the Mongol biography of Chinghiz Khan (Mongol text of the Yuan ch'ao
pi shi), mention is made of two kinds of animals (mice) used for food;
the tarbagat (Aritomys Bobac) and kuchugur." (Palladius, l.c. p.
14.) Regarding the marmots called Sogur by Rubruquis, Mr. Rockhill
writes (p. 69): "Probably the Mus citillus, the Suslik of the
Russians.... M. Grenard tells me that Soghur, more usually written
sour in Turki, is the ordinary name of the marmot." - H. C.]
NOTE 4.
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