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When the 'Ysech', the feast of spring, is over, the animated mood of the population does not abate in the least. The 'strengthening kumis', the ambrosia of the Yakut gods, does not run dry in the wooden vessels, for luxuriant grass covers the ground, and cows and mares give abundant milk. The sight of the lovely plain and the joyful human beings delighting in the summer had revived me also.
This uproar, repeated on three successive nights, is thought to be very effective in driving away the cholera demons. When smallpox first appeared amongst the Kumis of South-Eastern India, they thought it was a devil come from Aracan. The villages were placed in a state of siege, no one being allowed to leave or enter them.
Owing to this consideration I was always offered the best milk and kumis, and when the old woman handed me a jug she carefully wiped it with her fingers first, or removed every trace of dirt with her tongue. One day when I called in passing to drink my kumis, I found the 'ohonior' unusually excited; he was not only talkative, but also in very great spirits.
On leaving this town he crossed for eight days the great plains to Tonokan, the capital of the province of Kumis, probably Damaghan. At this point of his narrative Marco Polo gives an account of the "Old Man of the Mountain," the chief of the Mahometan sect called the Hashishins, who were noted for their religious fanaticism and terrible cruelty.
Cold milk and kumis can be had in all these yurtas. It is true both have the nasty smell which the stranger in this part of the world calls 'Yakut odour'; but during the long winter when milk other than from Yakut yurtas was hard to procure, I had got used to this specific smell, so that now it only produced a mild nausea.
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