The women’s dress was distinguished from the men’s simply by its greater length, and they often rode, like the men, astride their horses, their faces protected by a white veil, crossing the nose just below the eyes and descending to the breast. Immense size and flat noses were the great desiderata among them. Marriage was a mere bargain, and daughters were generally sold to the highest bidder. Though expert hunters, the Tartars were scarcely what we should call sportsmen. They hunted on the _battue_ system, spreading themselves in a wide circle, and gradually contracting this as they drove the game before them, until the unfortunate animals being penned in in a small space, they were easily shot down by wholesale. Hawking was also in vogue among the Tartars, and was reduced as much to a science as in Europe. They strenuously punished great crimes with death, as, for instance, murder, theft, adultery, and even minor offences against chastity. This, however, was less the consequence of a regard for virtue _per se_ than of a vivid perception of the rights of property. No code but the Jewish and the Christian ever protected the honor of women for its own sake. In mourning for the dead it is strange that violent howling and lamentation, even on the part of those not personally concerned, should be a form common to almost all nations, not only of different religions, but of various and widely-separated races. The Tartars, as well as the Celts, practised it. Rubruquis mentions that they made various monuments over the graves of their dead, sometimes mere mounds or barrows of earth, or towers of brick and even of stone--though no stone was to be found near the spot--and sometimes large open spaces, paved with stone, with four large stones placed upright at the corners, always facing the four cardinal points.