"Everybody has heard of koumiss, and the brandy which the Kalmucks are said to distil from the milk of mares. The manner of preparing these 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 spirit, thrust a stick, with a small tuft of camel's hair at its end, through the external covering of clay, and thus collecting a small quantity of the brandy, she drew out the stick, dropped a portion on the retort, and, waving the instrument above her head, scattered the remaining liquor in the air. I asked the meaning of this ceremony, and was answered that it is a religious custom to give