Rachel Harriette Busk

“ Seeing him yet afar, his wife came out to meet him, carrying brandy. She opened her eyes when she saw the two elephants laden with butter and meal; but knowing that he loved to be left at ease, forbore to question him that night. The next morning she made him tell her the whole story before they got up; but when she heard what little demands he had made after rendering the Khan so great a service as restoring his talisman, she exclaimed,—
"If a man would be called a man, he ought to know better how to use his opportunities." ”

“ I know what he will do; in a day or two, when he has cured the Khan by not letting us approach him to devour his life, he will assemble together all the men of the place with their arms, and all the women, telling them to bring each a faggot of wood for burning. When all are assembled he will say, 'Let that he-goat be brought to me,' so they will bind thee and take thee before him. ”

“ The women look after the calves, make tea in the open air, or prepare milk in various ways; the men, mounted on fiery horses, armed with a long pole, gallop about, guiding to the best pastures the great herds of cattle which undulate over the surrounding country like waves of the sea. ”

“ When the ministers saw that all the brothers were dead, and only the Khan left, they held a council, and they said, "Behold, all the other Khans are dead, notwithstanding all the means we have at our command, and despite the arts of all the physicians of this country." Now there remains no other means for us but to send for the Pig's head soothsayer who found the Khan's talisman, and get him to restore the Khan to health." This counsel was found good, and they all said, "Let us send for the Pig's head soothsayer." ”

“ The occupations of the men are of very limited range; they consist wholly in conducting flocks and herds to pasture. This to men accustomed from infancy to the saddle is a mere amusement. The nearest approach to fatigue they ever incur is in pursuing cattle which escape. They sometimes hunt; when they go after roebucks, deer, or pheasants, as presents for their chiefs, they take their bow and matchlock. Foxes they always course. They squat all day in their tents, drinking tea and smoking. ”

“ The two Manggus spoke thus:—
"The Pig's head soothsayer is a soothsayer indeed," said the he-goat; "he divined that I was in the stable, and he came there after me, and sprang upon my back, giving me three mighty blows, by which I know the weight of his arm. The best thing we can do is to make good our escape." ”

“ Mongol women are perfect mistresses of the needle; it is quite unintelligible how, with implements so rude, they can manufacture articles so durable; they excel, too, in embroidery, which for taste and variety of design and excellence of manipulation excited our astonishment. ”

“ But a devil who presumes to visit an eminent personage must be a potent devil and cannot be expected to travel away like a mere sprite; the family are accordingly directed to prepare for him a handsomes suit of clothes, a pair of rich boots, a fine horse, sometimes also a number of attendants. ”

“ All this the man heard as he lay under the straw, but yet he bestirred him not. Early in the morning, however, men came to litter the place for the kine with fresh straw; and these men, finding him, bid him turn out. Now that it became a necessity to stir himself, he bethought him of the talisman; and when the men asked him whence he was, he answered "I am a soothsayer come to divine the place where lies the Khan's talisman." ”

“ As he wandered about, he came to a spot on which a tribe of cattle-herds had lately been encamped [1] , and a fox, a dog, and a bird were there fighting about something. Approaching to see for what they contended, they all escaped in fear, and he was left in possession of their booty, which was a sheep's paunch full of butter [2] . This he brought home and laid up in store. When his wife came home and asked him whence it was, he told her he had found it left on the camping-place of a family of herdsmen who had passed that way seeking pasturage.
"Well it is to be a man!" exclaimed his wife. ”

“ Compare with it the following sketch from personal observation in Mongolia, given in Abbé Huc's "Travels:"—"You sometimes come upon a plain covered with animation; tents and herds dotted all over it. . . . It is a place whither the greater supply of water and the choicer pastures have attracted for a time a number of nomadic families; you see rising in all directions tents of various dimensions, looking like balloons newly inflated and just about to take flight ”

“ The probability is that the Lamas having ascertained the time at which the fever-fit would recur meet it by a counter excitement."
10.↑ The respective occupations of men and women seem to remain at the present pretty much the same in Mongolia as here introduced by the tale-repeater. Abbé Huc writes: "Household and family cares rest entirely upon the women; it is she who milks the cows and prepares the butter, cheese, &c.; who goes no matter how far to draw water ”