room, the
first comer is entitled to it. These attendants are as obliging as
the stable people, and it is often difficult to procure with money a
few eggs, milk, or anything of the kind.

The journey through Persia was dangerous; that through Asiatic
Russia, however, was so troublesome, that I would prefer the former
under any circumstances.

From Pipis the country again diminishes in beauty: the valleys
expand, the mountains become lower, and both are frequently without
trees, and barren.

I met, today, several nomadic parties of Tartars. The people sat
upon oxen and horses, and others were loaded with their tents and
household utensils; the cows and sheep, of which there were always a
great number, were driven by the side. The Tartar women were mostly
richly clothed, and also very ragged. Their dress consisted almost
entirely of deep red silk, which was often even embroidered with
gold. They wore wide trousers, a long kaftan, and a shorter one
over that; on the head a kind of bee-hive, called schaube, made of
the bark of trees, painted red and ornamented with tinsel, coral,
and small coins. From the breast to the girdle their clothes were
also covered with similar things, over the shoulders hung a cord
with an amulet in the nose, they wore small rings. They had large
wrappers thrown round them; but left their faces uncovered.

Their household goods consisted of tents, handsome rugs, iron pots,
copper coins, etc. The Tartars are mostly of the Mahomedan
religion.

The permanent Tartars have very peculiar dwellings, which may be
called enormous mole-hills. Their villages are chiefly situated on
declivities, and hills, in which they dig holes of the size of
spacious rooms. The light falls only through the entrance, or
outlet. This is broader than it is high, and is protected by a long
and broad portico of planks, resting either upon beams or the stems
of trees. Nothing is more comical than to see such a village,
consisting of nothing but these porticoes, and neither windows,
doors, nor walls.

Those who dwell in the plains make artificial mounds of earth, and
build their huts of stone or wood. They then throw earth over them,
which they stamp down tightly, so that the huts themselves cannot be
seen at all. Until within the last sixty years, it is said that
many such dwellings were to be seen in the town of Tiflis.

29th August. This morning I had still one stage of twenty-four
wersti ere I reach