Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 2, 1851).djvu/82

beyond measure, leaving nothing uneaten; and with, this kind of surfeit they make amends for their previous fasting. When thus overcome by food and labour they sleep continuously for three or four days, and while in this state of deep sleep the Lithuanians and Russians, into whose country they are accustomed to make sudden irruptions and carry away much booty, fall upon them, and, defenceless as they are, having no sentinels nor any order amongst them, by degrees overwhelm them. Moreover, if during a long ride they are troubled with hunger or thirst, it is a practice to lance the veins of the horses on which they sit, and relieve their craving by drawing their blood; and they think that this is an advantage to the animals. As they nearly all wander on uncertain tracks, they are accustomed to direct their course by the observation of the stars, especially the polar star, called in their language Selesnicoll, which means an iron nail.

They are particularly found of mare's milk, for they think that it makes men fat and strong: they use many herbs for food, especially those which grow near the river Don: very few use salt. Their kings, on occasions when they distribute food to their people, are accustomed to give one cow or one horse amongst forty men; and when these are killed, the chief men take only the intestines and divide them amongst themselves, warming them first at the fire to cleanse them before eating them: they not only complacently lick and suck their fingers, greasy with the fat, but also both the knife and its handle which have been used for the cleansing process. They consider horses' heads as great a luxury as we do boars' heads, and they are only served at the tables of men of rank. They have abundance of horses, low in the neck and small, but strong, alike able to endure labour and want of food, and to support themselves on the boughs and bark of trees, or on the roots of herbs, which they scratch out of the earth with their feet. These horses, thus inured to labour, are used with great effect by the Tartars; and the Russians say