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Petrop. tome II., that these bizarre excesses are still devoutly believed in among the Persians and the Nogais as a sovereign remedy for lumbago and sciatic gout. We poor Parisians scarcely believe that. The Museum has no example of the onager. "What a magnificent animal!" he continued.
From this circumstance it evidently appears that the journey from Kiow had hitherto been on the right or west of the Dnieper or Boristhenes, through the country of the Nogais Tartars, now forming the western portion of the Russian province of Catharinoslau; and we may suppose the wide part of that river they had now to cross to have been somewhere about Cherson.
The Golden Horde was formed not only of Tartar-Mongols or Nogais, who even now survive in the Northern Crimea, but particularly of the remains of ancient nomads, such as the Patzinaks and Polovtsi, whose descendants seem to be the present Kalmucks and Bashkirs; of Turkish tribes tending to become sedentary, like the Tartars of Astrakhan in the present day; and of the Finnish populations already established in the country, and which mixed with the invaders.
Of a higher race than the Kirghizes, being Tartars, it is from them that come the learned men and professors who have made illustrious the opulent cities of Bokhara and Samarkand. But science and its teaching do not yield much of a livelihood, even when reduced to the mere necessaries of life, in these provinces of Central Asia. And so these Nogais take employment as interpreters.
The population of Tachkend does not differ very much from that met with in other parts of Turkestan. It comprises Sarthes, Usbegs, Tadjiks, Khirgizes, Nogais, Israelites, a few Afghans and Hindoos and as may be naturally supposed a fair supply of Russians. It is perhaps at Tachkend that the Jews are gathered in the greatest numbers.
A second-class car, or even a third-class car, is a palace for these people, accustomed to the encampments on the Steppes, to the miserable "iourts" of villages. Neither their beds nor their seats are as good as the stuffed benches on which they have seated themselves with true Asiatic gravity. With them are two or three Nogais going to Eastern Turkestan.
When they had sufficiently tested the courage and fidelity of these warriors, and had learned the talent and boldness of Iermak Timofeif, their principal leader of obscure origin, the annals say, but illustrious by his greatness of soul they formed a troop especially composed of Tartars subject to Russia, of Lithuanians and of Germans, ransomed from captivity among the Nogais, for the latter brought, as a matter of custom in their encampments, the prisoners whom they made in war, as mercenaries of the Czar.
The return of the Tartars was arrested midway by a hetman of the Cossacks and the mirza of the Nogais, who, falling upon the confused and disorderly ranks, on their ill-conducted flight homeward, cut them in pieces, and left scarcely a living vestige on the field of the ancient and implacable enemies of the country. The extinction of the Tartars was final.
Know, then, that the verst is two-thirds of a mile, that the different nomadic people of the governments of Transcaucasia are composed of Kalmucks, descendants of the Eleuthes, fifteen thousand, Kirghizes of Mussulman origin eight thousand, Koundrof Tartars eleven hundred, Sartof Tartars a hundred and twelve, Nogais eight thousand five hundred, Turkomans nearly four thousand.
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