This cosmos was made thus: The milk was poured into a large skin bag, and the bag beaten with a wooden club until the milk began to ferment and turn sour. The bag was then shaken and cudgelled again until most of it turned to butter; after which the liquid was supposed to be fit for drinking. Rubruquis evidently liked it; says it was exhilarating to the spirits, and even intoxicating to weak heads; pungent to the taste, “like raspberry wine,” but left a flavor on the palate “like almond-milk.” Cara-cosmos, a rarer quality of the same, and reserved for the chiefs only, was produced by prolonging the beating of the bag until the coagulated portions subsided to the bottom. These drinks were received as tribute or taxes. Baatu, a chief with sixteen wives, received the produce of three thousand mares daily, besides a quantity of common cosmos, a bowl of which almost always stood on the threshold of every rich man’s house. The Tartars often drank of it to excess, and their banquets were relieved by music. At these feasts, in which both sexes participated, the guests clapped their hands and danced to the music, the men before their host, the women before his principal wife. The host always drank first. The moment he put his lips to the bowl of cosmos, his cup-bearer cried aloud “Ha!” and the musicians struck up. This almost sounds like a mediæval Twelfth-night banquet, when all the guests rose and shouted, “The king drinks!” and then drained their goblets in imitation of the monarch of the night. The Tartars respectfully waited till the lord of the feast had finished his draught, when the cup-bearer again cried “Ha!” and the music ceased. After a pause, the guests, male and female, drank round in turns, each one to the sound of music, with a pause and silence before the next person took up the cup. This fashion of drinking continued unchanged for many centuries, and later travellers, amid the increased pomp of the court of the Tartar emperors of China, found it still in force--music, cries, pauses, and all. We have also seen, not many years ago, on the occasion of the marriage of the late young emperor of China, illustrations of the wedding procession, representing immensely wide carts, drawn by eleven oxen abreast, laden with costly state furniture; and if we take away the pomp and gilding, the picture is not unlike that of the Tartar camp-carts seen by our traveller. Rubruquis hints that the Tartars were not a temperate people; they drank much and not cleanly, and the way of “inviting” a person to drink was to seize his ears and pull them forcibly. The sweet wine, of which the monk had a small supply, pleased them very well, but they thought him not lavish enough in his hospitality; for once, on his offering the master of the house one flagon of this wine, the man gravely drained it and asked for another, saying that “a man does not go into a house with one foot.” In return, however,