Europe - The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques And Discoveries Of The English Nation - Volume 4 - Collected By Richard Hakluyt
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Of The Priuate Behauiour, Or Qualitie Of The Russe People.
The priuate behauiour and qualitie of the Russe people, may partly be
vnderslood by that which hath beene sayd concerning the publique state and
vsage of the Countrey.
[Sidenote: Constitution of their bodies.] As
touching the naturall habite of their bodies, they are for the most part of
a large size, and of very fleshly bodies: accounting it a grace to be
somewhat grosse and burley, and therefore they nourish and spread their
beards, to haue them long and broad. But for the most part, they are very
vnwieldy and vnactiue withall. Which may be thought to come partly of the
climate, and the numbnesse which they get by the cold in winter, and partly
of their diet that standeth most of routes, onions, garlike, cabbage, and
such like things that breede grosse humors, which they vse to eate alone,
and with their other meates.
[Sidenote: Their diet.] Their diet is rather much then curious. At their
meales they beginne commonly with a Charke or small cuppe of Aqua vitae,
(which they call Russe wine) and then drinke not till towardes the end of
their meales, taking it in largely, and all together, with kissing one
another at euery pledge. And therefore after dinner there is no talking
with them, but euery man goeth to his bench to take his afternoones sleepe,
which is as ordinary with them as their nights rest. When they exceede, and
haue varietie of dishes, the first are their baked meates (for roste meates
they vse little) and then their broathes or pottage. Their common drinke is
Mead, the poorer sort vse water and a third drinke called Quasse, which is
nothing else (as we say) but water turned out of his wits, with a litle
branne meashed with it.
This diet would breed in them many diseases, but that they vse bathstoues
or hote houses in steade of all Phisicke, commonly twise or thrise euery
weeke. All the winter time, and almost the whole Semmer, they heat their
Peaches, which are made like the Germane bathstoues, and their Poclads like
ouens, that so warme the house that a stranger at the first shall hardly
like of it. These two extremities, specially in the winter of heat within
their houses, and of extreame cold without, together with their diet, make
them of a darke, and sallow complexion, their skinnes being tanned and
parched both with cold and with heate: specially the women, that for the
greater part are of farre worse complexions, then the men. Whereof the
cause I take to be their keeping within the hote houses, and busying
themselues about the heating, and vsing of their bathstoues, and peaches.
The Russe because that he is vsed to both these extremities of heat and of
cold, can beare them both a great deale more patiently, then strangers can
doe. [Sidenote: An admirable induring of extreme heat and colde at one and
the same time.] You shall see them sometimes (to season their bodies) come
out of their bathstoues all on a froth, and fuming as hoat almost as a
pigge at a spit, and presently to leape into the riuer starke naked, or to
powre colde water all ouer their bodies and that in the coldest of all the
winter time.
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