The food of the
_Circassians_ consists of a little meat, millet-paste, and a kind of
beer fermented from millet. The _Tartars_ are not fond of beef and
veal, but admire horse-flesh; they prefer to drink, before any thing
else, mare's milk, and produce from it, by keeping it in sour skins, a
strong spirit termed _koumiss_. The _Jakutians_ (a Tartar tribe)
esteem horse-flesh as the greatest possible dainty; they eat raw the
fat of horses and oxen, and drink melted butter with avidity; but
bread is rare. The favourite food of the _Kalmuc Tartars_ is
horse-flesh, eaten raw sometimes, but commonly dried in the sun; dogs,
cats, rats, marmots, and other small animals and vermin are also eaten
by them; but neither vegetables, bread nor fruits; and they drink
koumiss; than which, scarcely any thing can be more disgusting,
except, perhaps, that beverage of the South Sea islanders, prepared by
means of leaves being masticated by a large company, and spit into a
bowl of water. The diet of the _Kamtschatdales_, is chiefly fish,
variously prepared; _huigal_, which is neither more nor less than fish
laid in a pit until _putrid_, is a _luxury_ with this people! They are
fond of caviar, made of roes of fish, and scarcely less disgusting
than huigal. A pound of dry caviar will last a Kamtschatdale on a
journey for a considerable time, since he finds bread to eat with it
in the bark of every birch and elder he meets with.
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