A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 01: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present TimeKerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 01: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time
Kerr, Robert
Voyages and travels
The married women get most beautiful carts made for themselves, which I am
unable to describe without the aid of painting, and which I would have
drawn for your majesty, if I had possessed sufficient talents. One rich
Moal, or Tartar, will have from a hundred to two hundred such carts with
chests. Baatu has sixteen wives, each of whom has one large house, besides
several small ones, serving as chambers for her female attendants, and
which are placed behind the large house; and to the large house of each
wife there belong two hundred chest-carts. When the camp is formed, the
house of the first wife is placed on the west, and all the rest extend in
one line eastwards, so that the last wife is on the east, or left of all.
And between the station of each wife there is the distance of a stone's
throw, so that the court of a rich Moal appears like a large city, but in
which there are very few men. One girl is able to lead twenty or thirty
carts; for the ground being quite plain, they fasten the carts, whether
drawn by camels or oxen, behind each other, and the girl sits on the front
of the foremost cart of the string, directing the cattle, while all the
rest follow with an equable motion. If they come to any difficult passage,
the carts are untied from each other, and conducted across singly; and they
travel at a very slow pace, only so fast as an ox or a lamb can easily
walk.
[1] The butter from ewe-milk is probably here meant.--E.
SECTION III.
_Of their Beds and Drinking-cups_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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