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Mongols soon relapsed
INHABITANTS THE MONGOLIANS. 107
into barbarism. Most of them have doubtless still the same
sense of right, the same kindly feeling for strangers and heartiness for their equals,
whom they always address as "comrades." But they have become extremely
indolent, while their filthy habits and disgusting gluttony baffle all description.
They have allowed slavery to take root in their social system, and many families
descended from prisoners of war are condemned to tend the flocks of the Khans,
who claim the power of life and death over them. However, the pasture lands
have not yet been divided, and still belong to all, like the air we breathe and the
water of the lakes and running streams. At the same time an abstract right to
the use of the land can be of little consequence to those who own no flocks or herds,
and the nobles and lamas, to whom the live stock belongs, are ipso facto the pro-
prietors of the soil. The high priest of Urga alone possesses a domain peopled by
one hundred and fifty thousand of his slaves.
Few of the Mongols have turned to the cultivation of the land, nearly all being
still exclusively occupied with their herds of camels, horses, and cattle, and their
flocks, mostly of fat-tailed sheep. When they meet the first question turns on
their live stock, more important in their eyes than the family itself. They cannot
understand that there can be any human beings so forsaken of heaven as not to
possess domestic animals, and receive with incredulity the assurances of the Rus-
sian travellers that they own neither sheep nor camels. All the work falls on the
women and children, who not only tend the herds, but also manufacture the house-
hold utensils, saddles, arms, embroidered robes, tent felts, camel-hair cordage, and
other articles of camp life. From the Chinese and Russians they procure all the
provisions and other supplies they require.
Tea especially is indispensable to them,
for they never drink cold water, to which they even attribute a malignant influ-
ence. Besides tea they also drink kumis, mare's milk, and too often the vile
brandies supplied to them by the Russians. Their diet consists almost exclusively
of mutton, camel, and horse flesh, varied with a sort of paste or dough ; but the
flesh of birds and fish is by most held in special abhorrence.
The Mongol speech, which belongs to the Ural-Altaic family, and which has a
large number of roots in common with the Turki branch of that family, is spoken
with considerable dialectic variety by the Khalkhas, Buriats, and Eliuts, who are
not always able to converse together. Many foreign elements have everywhere
crept in, and the pure national speech has been much corrupted by contact with
the Chinese, Manchus, Tibetans, and Turki tribes on the frontiers. Over two
thousand years ago it was reduced to writing, at that time employing the Chinese
ideographic characters, which were supplanted at the beginning of the tenth cen-
tury by an alphabetical system. This was again changed in the twelfth century
for another style, employed to translate the Chinese classical works. Unfortunately
all these works have perished, and the very characters in which they were written
have been completely forgotten. During the period of conquest the Mongols adopted
the alphalrct of the 1'igur Turks, but a national system invented in 1269 by a lama,
honoured by the title of "King of the Faith," finally prevailed. The Mongols
write with a pencil on wooden tablets painted black and powdered with sand or ashes.