hysiognomy and language. Their
features approach much nearer the pure Mongol type, and their language
is a distinct dialect, which a Bashkir or a Tartar of Kazan has some
difficulty in understanding. They are professedly Mahometans, but their
Mahometanism is not of a rigid kind, as may be seen by the fact that
their women do not veil their faces even in the presence of Ghiaours--a
laxness of which the Ghiaour will certainly not approve if he happen to
be sensitive to female beauty and ugliness. Their mode of life differs
from that of the Bashkirs, but they have proportionately more land and
are consequently still able to lead a purely pastoral life. Near their
western frontier, it is true, they annually let patches of land to
the Russian peasants for the purpose of raising crops; but these
encroachments can never advance very far, for the greater part of their
territory is unsuited to agriculture, on account of a large admixture
of salt in the soil. This fact will have an important influence on
their future. Unlike the Bashkirs, who possess good arable land, and
are consequently on the road to become agriculturists, they will in all
probability continue to live exclusively by their flocks and herds.

To the southwest of the Lower Volga, in the flat region lying to the
north of the Caucasus, we find another pastoral tribe, the Kalmyks,
differing widely from the two former in language, in physiognomy, and
in religion. Their language, a dialect of the Mongolian, has no close
affinity with any other language in this part of the world. In respect
of religion they are likewise isolated, for they are Buddhists, and have
consequently no co-religionists nearer than Mongolia or Thibet. But it
is their physiognomy that most strikingly distinguishes them from the
surrounding peoples, and stamps them as Mongols of the purest water.
There is something almost infra-human in their ugliness. They show in
an exaggerated degree all those repulsive traits which we see toned down
and refined in the face of an average Chinaman; and it is difficult,
when we meet them for the first time, to believe that a human soul lurks
behind their expressionless, flattened faces and small, dull, obliquely
set eyes. If the Tartar and Turkish races are really descended from
ancestors of that type, then we must assume that they have received in
the course of time a large admixture of Aryan or Semitic blood.

But we must not be too hard on the poor Kalmyks, or