Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 2, 1851).djvu/85

serious character, they place their wives, children, and old men, in the safest spots they can find.

They have no justice among them. When a man stands in need of anything, he can with impunity plunder another of it; and if any one is complained of before a judge for an act of violence, or for having inflicted any injury, the accused does not deny the fact, but simply says that he could not dispense with the article in question; upon which the judge usually gives his judgment [by addressing the plaintiff] in the following manner: — "If you in your turn stand in need of anything, seize it from other people." There are some who say that they are not plunderers: I leave it to others to decide whether they are plunderers or not. For a certainty, the men are most rapacious, because very poor, and are always coveting what is not their own, — taking away other men's cattle, plundering, and even kidnapping men, whom they sell to the Turks and others; or else surrendering them upon ransom, reserving the maidens only for their own use. They seldom besiege cities and fortified places; but take great pleasure in burning and plundering small towns and villages, thinking that the greater number of provinces they thus desolate, the larger is the dominion that they have gained to themselves. If in any quarrel among themselves a man be killed, and the perpetrators of the crime be taken, they are simply deprived of their horses, arms, and clothing, and are then set free. Even a murderer, after giving up his horse and his bow, is dismissed by the judge, merely with the charge to go and mind his own business.

Gold and silver is scarcely ever used amongst them, except by merchants, and that only in the way of commerce. Once, when a fat Tartar was taken by the Russians, a Russian asked him: "How, you dog, did you, who have nothing to eat, become so fat?" To which, the Tartar replied: "Why should not I have something to eat who own so vast a terri-