Kalmucks

“ All have enormous ears, projecting strongly from the head, and their hair is invariably black. The Kalmucks are generally small, but with figures well rounded, and an easy carriage. Very few deformed persons are seen among them, for with more good sense than ourselves, they leave the development of their children's frames entirely to nature, and never put any kind of garment on them until the age of nine or ten. No sooner are they able to walk, than they mount on horseback, and apply themselves with all their hearts to wrestling and riding, the chief amusements of the tribes. ”

“ Oubacha, the khan of the Kalmucks, was a brave but weak man. The conspirator controlled him, and through him the people. On a fixed day, through a false alarm that the Kirghises and Bashkirs had made an inroad upon the Kalmuck lands, he succeeded in gathering a great Kalmuck horde, eighty thousand in all, at a point out of reach of Russian ears. ”

“ A ludicrous misadventure that befel our dragoman, Anthony, amused us a good deal. Curiosity prompting him to ride a camel, he asked one of the Kalmucks to lend him his beast, and the request being complied with, he bestrode the saddle, pleased with the novelty of the experiment, and quite at a loss to know why the Cossacks and camel-drivers laughed among themselves as he mounted. But as soon as the beast began to move, a change came over his face, and he speedily began to bawl out for help. The fact is, one must be almost a Kalmuck to be able to endure the trotting of a camel ”

“ Every day the Bashkirs fell upon them; every day the same unprofitable battle was renewed; as a matter of course, the Kalmucks recalled part of their advanced guard to fight them; every day the battle raged for hours, and uniformly with the same result. For, no sooner did the Bashkirs find themselves too heavily pressed, and that the Kalmuck march had been retarded by some hours, than they retired into the boundless deserts where all pursuit was hopeless. ”

“ The weather was cold, but bracing; and, at a more moderate pace, this part of the journey might have been accomplished without much distress by a people as hardy as the Kalmucks: as it was, the cattle suffered greatly from overdriving: milk began to fail even for the children: the sheep perished by wholesale: and the children themselves were saved only by the innumerable camels.
The Cossacks, who dwelt upon the banks of the Jaik, were the first among the subjects of Russia to come into collision with the Kalmucks. ”

“ In other respects industry has made no progress among the Kalmucks, whose wants are so limited, that none of them has ever felt the need of applying himself to any distinct trade. Every man can supply his own wants, and we never found an artisan of any kind among the hordes. At Astrakhan, there are some Kalmuck journeymen engaged in the fisheries, and many of them are in high repute as boatmen. On the whole, it is not for want of intelligence they are without arts, but because they have no need of them. ”

“ It is a belief of the Kalmucks that this gloomy spot is inhabited by Shaitan, and they regard it with superstitious dread. Certainly, it is eery enough to be haunted by many a ghostly legend.
Next day, taking a different track, Mr. Atkinson descended the valley of the Tourgau, listening to the music of the stream as it raced over its rocky bed with p. 205the speed of a “swift Camilla.” At a point where it suddenly swept round the base of some cliffs of slate, the Kalmuck guide said that it might be forded, though the passage was very difficult. ”

“ The Kalmucks, all of them nomades, are exclusively engaged in rearing cattle, and know nothing whatever of agriculture. They breed camels, oxen, sheep, and above all, horses, of which they have an excellent description, small, but strong, agile, and of great endurance. I have ridden a Kalmuck horse often eighteen and even twenty-five leagues without once dismounting. The Russian cavalry is mounted chiefly on horses from the Caspian steppes: the average price of a good horse is from 80 to 100 rubles. ”

“ We frequently questioned the Kalmucks respecting their wintering under a tent, and they always assured us that their kabitkas perfectly protected them from the cold. By day they keep up a fire with reeds and dried dung; and at night, when there remains only clear coal, they stop up all the openings to confine the heat. ”

“ The news obliged my husband to suspend his scientific operations, and proceed to Selenoi Sastava, from which we were distant only thirty-five versts. I cannot express the delight with which the Kalmucks and Cossacks again took possession of their camels. We need not wonder at any eccentricity of taste when we see men preferring the dislocating torture of riding those detestable trotters to the fatigue of walking fifteen or twenty versts a day. Hommaire, too, did not seem at all dissatisfied at taking his place again in the britchka. ”

“ The main population of the Kalmucks live, or rather drag out, their existence after the usual fashion of nomad tribes in Dzungaria, in the eastern part of the Tian-shan, on the south border of the Gobi, on Koko-nor, and in the province of Kan-suh. ”

“ The Kalmucks, reduced by this time from about six hundred thousand souls to two hundred thousand, and after enduring for two months and a half the miseries we have previously described—outrageous heat, famine, and the destroying scimitar of the Kirghises and the Bashkirs, had for the last ten days been traversing a hideous desert, where no vestiges were seen of vegetation, and no drop of water could be found. Camels and men were already so overladen, that it was a mere impossibility that they should carry a tolerable sufficiency for the passage of this frightful wilderness. ”

“ Before the Christian era they had extended north beyond the mountains and occupied the land around Lake Baikal, whence they proceeded easterly, and under the name of Kalmucks have settled quite to the 209 river Volga. Few of them are agriculturists, it being their preference to wander over the pastures with their flocks. ”

“ The aerial spirits are next in importance to the bourkhans; some of them are beneficent, others malignant. The Kalmucks worship these rather than the others, because they alone can do harm to mortals, whilst nothing but good offices are to be expected from the beneficent spirits. These genii are not immortal, and their power is much less than that of the bourkhans. The manner in which their race is propagated is very simple, but singular: an embrace, an exchange of smiles, or of gracious looks is sufficient with them to produce conception. ”

“ The utmost speed was now necessary, for a sufficient reason. The next safe halting-place of the Kalmucks was on the east bank of the Toorgaï [Pg 208] River. Between it and them rose a hilly country, a narrow defile through which offered the nearest and best route. This lost, the need of pasturage would require a further sweep of five hundred miles. The Cossack light horsemen were only about fifty miles more distant from the pass. If it were to be won, the most rapid march possible must be made.
For a day and a night the flight went on, with renewed suffering and loss of animals. ”

“ A sudden and secret raid is the breath of life to a Pathan. He selected a dozen men to accompany him. Gur Buksh, without attracting attention, supplied them with arms, better than their own, from the mine armoury; and before nine o'clock they left their camp stealthily, making their way in single file up the hill path that skirted the Kalmuck quarters.
Bob and the havildar returned to their own side of the gorge and waited anxiously to assure themselves that the movement was not detected by the Kalmucks. ”

“ The Cossacks were marching upon an oblique line not above fifty miles longer than that which led to the same point from the Kalmuck head-quarters before Koulagina: and therefore without the most furious haste on the part of the Kalmucks, there was not a chance for them, burdened and 'trashed' [Footnote: 'Trashed'—This is an expressive word used by Beaumont and Fletcher in their Bonduca, etc., to describe the case of a person retarded and embarrassed in flight, or in pursuit, by some encumbrance, whether thing or person, too valuable to be left behind.] ”

“ An abundant vegetation, and undulations of the ground that became more and more decided as we proceeded, gladdened the sight, and accounted for the numerous encampments we discovered in all directions. Herds of horses, camels, and oxen spotted all the surface of the steppe, and bespoke the wealth of the hordes to which they belonged. We were not in the least molested by the latter. These good Kalmucks were delighted to receive us in their tents, and never attempted to steal the least thing from us. Their desires and their wants are so very limited! ”

“ Being exclusively occupied in raising cattle, the life of the Calmuck is nomad. A khoton, which is a commune, more or less numerous, composed of many families united by bonds of relationship, never remains more than two or three weeks in the same place. Transmigration from one place to another is a real feast to the Calmucks. All their goods, including their tent, are loaded upon the back of a camel, and covered over with a piece of drapery if the family is in easy circumstances. The women and girls, in holiday dress, as well as the young boys, drive the flocks. ”

“ The ugliest of them are the Calmucks, in whose appearance there seems to be something frightful. They are all wanderers and vagabonds; and their only shelter is that of tents, made of hair or skins. Their food is horse-flesh, and flesh of other animals, either raw or a little softened by being between the horse and the saddle. They eat also fish dried in the sun. Their most common drink is mare’s milk, fermented, with millet ground into meal. They all have the head shaved, except a tuft of hair on the top, which they let grow sufficiently long to form into tresses on each side of the face. ”

“ The Calmucks, who are situated in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, between the Muscovites and the great Tartars, are, according to Tavernier, robust, but the most ugly and the most deformed of all human [203] beings. Their faces are so flat and so broad that their eyes, which are uncommonly small, are from five to six inches asunder; and their noses so flat that two holes are barely perceivable instead of nostrils. Next to the Calmucks, the natives of Daghestan rank in the class of deformity. ”

“ If she dislikes him she rides, in English sporting phrase, neck or nothing, until she has completely escaped, or until the pursuer’s horse is tired out, leaving her at liberty to return, to be afterwards chased by some more favoured admirer.
Of all the inhabitants of the Russian empire, the Calmucks are the most distinguished by peculiarity of feature and manners. In their personal appearance they are athletic, and very forbidding. Their hair is coarse and black, their language harsh and guttural. ”

“ Chambers describes the Calmuck as short in stature, with broad shoulders, a large head, small black eyes, always appearing to be half shut, and slanting downward toward the nose, which is flat with wide nostrils, hair black, coarse, and straight, complexion deeply swarthy, while his ugliness is the index of the purity of his descent. ”

“ Like all pastoral people, the Kalmuks live frugally, because their wants are few, and their nomadic life is unfavourable to the growth of a liking for luxuries. They live chiefly upon milk and butter, with tea for their favourite beverage. ”

“ The idea of a migration en masse did not frighten them. They were nomads and the descendants of nomads, who for ages had been used to fold their tents and flit away.
The Kalmuck villages extended on both sides of the Volga. A large section of the horde would have to cross that great stream, and this could be done with sufficient speed only when its surface was bridged with ice. For this reason midwinter was chosen for the flight, despite the sufferings which must arise from the bitter Russian cold, and the 5th of January was appointed for religious reasons by the leading Lama of the tribe. ”

“ The khan had, indeed, expressly notified his intention to pass the summer heats on the banks of the Torgau, and to recommence his retreat about the beginning of September. The subsequent change of plan being unknown to Kien Long, left him for some time in doubt as to the true interpretation to be put upon this mighty apparition in the desert; but at length the savage clamors of hostile fury and the clangor of weapons unveiled to the emperor the true nature of those unexpected calamities which had so prematurely precipitated the Kalmuck measure. ”

“ When the ram p. 199had been flayed, the skin was hoisted on a pole above the framework of the bulayan, and placed with its head to the east. The tambourine was loudly beaten, and the wild chant continued. Then the flesh was cooked in the large caldron, and all the tribe partook of the dainty—“there was a sound of revelry by night.”
The Kalmuck priest wears a leather coat, over the laps of which impend hundreds of strips, with leather tassels on the breast. He fastens a girdle round his waist ”

“ When, on a journey, a Calmuck perceives a certain bird which he esteems to be a good augury, he rejoices in this conjuncture, does not fail to manifest his satisfaction, and bows himself three times. As soon as he perceives a hare, on the contrary, he utters a cry, pursues it, and strikes a blow in the air with his stick, in order to exorcise the misfortune which might happen. ”

“ It has been mentioned already that the motive for selecting the depth of winter as the season of flight (which otherwise was obviously the very worst possible) had been the impossibility of effecting a junction sufficiently rapid with the tribes on the west of the Wolga, in the absence of bridges, unless by a natural bridge of ice. For this one advantage the Kalmuck leaders had consented to aggravate by a thousand-fold the calamities inevitable to a rapid flight over boundless tracts of country with women, children, and herds of cattle,—for this one single advantage ”