t as figured in Banduri, have any really Scythian
character.

It is a curious fact that the practice of carrying these _yurts_ or felt
tents upon waggons appears to be entirely obsolete in Mongolia. Mr. Ney
Elias writes: "I frequently showed your picture [that opposite] to
Mongols, Chinese, and Russian border-traders, but none had ever seen
anything of the kind. The only cart I have ever seen used by Mongols is a
little low, light, roughly-made bullock-dray, _certainly_ of Chinese
importation." The old system would, however, appear to have been kept up
to our own times by the Nogai Tartars, near the Sea of Azof. (See note
from Heber, in _Clark's Travels_, 8vo ed. I. 440, and Dr. Clark's vignette
at p. 394 in the same volume.)

[Illustration: Mediaeval Tartar Huts and Waggons.]

NOTE 3.--_Pharaoh's Rat_ was properly the Gerboa of Arabia and North
Africa, which the Arabs also regard as a dainty. There is a kindred animal
in Siberia, called _Alactaga_, and a kind of Kangaroo-rat (probably the
same) is mentioned as very abundant on the Mongolian Steppe. There is also
the _Zieselmaus_ of Pallas, a Dormouse, I believe, which he says the
Kalmaks, even of distinction, count a delicacy, especially cooked in sour
milk. "They eat not only the flesh of all their different kinds of cattle,
including horses and camels, but also that of many wild animals which
other nations eschew, e.g. marmots and _zieselmice_, beavers, badgers,
otters, and lynxes, leaving none untouched except the dog and weasel kind,
and also (unless _very_ hard pressed) the flesh of the fox and the wolf."
(_Pallas, Samml._ I. 128; also _Rubr._ 229-230.)

["In the Mongol biography of Chinghiz Khan (Mongol text of the _Yuan ch'ao
pi shi_), mention is made of two kinds of animals (mice) used for food;
the tarbagat (_Aritomys Bobac_) and _kuchugur_." (_Palladius_, l.c. p.
14.) Regarding the marmots called _Sogur_ by Rubruquis, Mr. Rockhill
writes (p. 69): "Probably the _Mus citillus_, the _Suslik_ of the
Russians.... M. Grenard tells me that _Soghur_, more usually written
_sour_ in Turki, is the ordinary name of the marmot."--H. C.]

NOTE 4.--"Their wives are chaste; nor does one ever hear any talk of their
immodesty," says Carpini;--no Boccaccian and Chaucerian stories.

NOTE 5.--"The Mongols are not prohibited from having a plurality of wives;
the first manages the domestic concerns, and is the most respected."
(_Timk._ II. 310.) Naturally Polygamy is not so ge