The ceremonies prescribed for funerals are not less singular. When a member of a Turkoman family dies, the mourners come every day for an entire year, at the hour when the deceased expired, to utter sobs and cries, in which the relations are bound to join. This custom seems to prove that the Tartars, superior in this respect to civilized people, consecrate to their dead a remembrance more profound and more durable; but, in fact, one must abate a little of this praise; the tears and prolonged mourning are only a matter of form, and Vambéry often could hardly suppress a smile when he saw the head of the family tranquilly smoking his pipe or enjoying his repast, interrupting himself now and then to join the noisy lamentations of the choir. It is the same with the ladies; they cry, they weep in the most lugubrious fashion, without ceasing to turn the wheel or rock the cradle. But what then? is not human nature the same everywhere, and do the Turkoman ladies differ so much from our inconsolable widows, to whom, as La Fontaine says with good-natured malice, "mourning very soon becomes an ornament." Vambéry, venerated as one of the elect of the prophet, often passed his evenings among these Tartar families. Then, surrounded by a large audience, the troubadour, accompanying himself upon the guitar, chanted the poetry of Koroghi, of Aman Mollah, or more frequency of Makhdumkuli, the Ossian of the desert, whom his compatriots regard as a demigod. This holy personage, who had never studied in the colleges of Bokhara, received the gift of all science by a divine inspiration. He was one day transported in a dream to Mecca, in presence of the Prophet and of the first caliphs. Seized with respect and fear at the sight of this august assembly, he prostrated himself, and, throwing around him a timid look, perceived Omar, the patron of the Turkomen, who, with a benevolent air, signed him to approach. He received then the benediction of the Prophet, a light blow on the forehead, which awakened him. From this moment a celestial poesy flowed from his lips; he composed heroic hymns which the Tartars regard to-day as the most beautiful productions of the human mind. {205} About this time, a mollah having undertaken a trip to Atabeg and the Göklen, our traveller seized the occasion to examine the Greek ruins which perpetuate among these savage people the remembrance of the conquests of Alexander. He recognized the wall built by the Macedonian hero to oppose a barrier to the menacing stream of the desert tribes. The legend of the Turkomen shows how the oriental imagination clothes the events of history with poetic and religious fiction. Alexander, they say, was a profoundly religious Mussulman; and as the saints exercise all power over the invisible world, he commanded the spirits of darkness, and it was by his order that the genii built the sacred wall.