e
liquids has been differently related, and perhaps is not always the
same. They assured us that the brandy was merely distilled from
buttermilk. The milk which they collect overnight is churned in the
morning into butter; and the buttermilk is distilled over a fire made
with the dung of their cattle, particularly the dromedary, which makes a
steady and clear fire like peat. But other accounts have been given both
of the koumiss and the brandy. It has been usual to confound them, and
to consider the koumiss as their appellation for the brandy so obtained.
By other information I could gain, not only here, but in many other
camps which we afterwards visited, they are different modifications of
the same thing although different liquors; the koumiss being a kind of
sour milk, like that so much used by the Laplanders called _pina_, and
which has undergone, in a certain degree, the vinous fermentation; and
the brandy an ardent spirit obtained from koumiss by distillation. In
making koumiss they sometimes employ the milk of cows, but never if
mares' milk can be had, as the koumiss from the latter yields three
times as much brandy as that made from cows' milk.

"The manner of preparing the koumiss is, by combining one sixth part of
warm water with any given quantity of warm mares' milk. To these they
add, as a leaven, a little old koumiss, and agitate the mass till
fermentation ensues. To produce the vinous fermentation, artificial heat
and more agitation is sometimes necessary. This affords what is called
koumiss. The subsequent process of distillation afterwards obtains an
ardent spirit from the koumiss. They call it _vina_. In their own
language it bears the very remarkable appellation of _rack_ and _racky_,
doubtless nearly allied to the names of our East India spirit _rack_
and _arrack_. We brought away a quart bottle of it, and considered it
very weak bad brandy, not unlike the common spirit distilled by the
Swedes and other northern nations. Some of their women were busy making
it in an adjoining tent. The simplicity of the operation and their
machinery was very characteristic of the antiquity of this chemical
process. Their still was constructed of mud, or very coarse clay; and
for the neck of the retort they employed a cane. The receiver of the
still was entirely covered by a coating of wet clay. The brandy had
already passed over. The woman who had the management of the distillery,
wishing to give us a taste of the sp