Wives are purchased at various sums, from twenty to five hundred rubles, in money or flocks, according to beauty and other advantages. Among some of the pastoral tribes a good healthy girl may be obtained for two or three rubles. Their numbers are regulated by the same laws that prevail in other Mohammedan countries; and, as usual, the poorer classes seldom have more than one wife. But when the first grows old, or ceases to please, they take a second. Merchants who are obliged to travel a good deal, generally maintain houses at various places, with a wife at each. The wedding ceremonies bear a general resemblance to those already described. When the stipulated price has been paid, the priest, in the presence of assembled friends, asks the young people if they will wed one another, repeats a prayer, and bestows the nuptial blessing. Among the Tartars of the Casan, all the female friends of the bride meet at her father’s house the day previous to the marriage, and deplore with her the approaching change in her condition, while two men sing songs that treat of the happiness of married life. The Katschinzes, when they wish for a bride, send an agent to the girl’s father, to present him with brandy and a pipe of tobacco, and retire instantly without speaking. If, when he returns sometime afterward, the presents remain untouched, it is a refusal; but if one has been drank and the other smoked, it is acceptance. At the end of six months, the lover himself comes to repeat the same ceremony; the price is stipulated, and the wedding appointed. Sometimes several months elapse, before a day deemed sufficiently lucky arrives; but however long the probation may be, the young people must not indulge in any thing like courtship. A girl would be disgraced, if she were to give her intended husband the slightest reason to suppose she preferred him to any other man. When a young man is too poor to purchase a bride, he often agrees to serve her father four or five years. If a richer or more fortunate rival present himself before the term of service expires, the first suitor can merely demand wages for his work. If the girl dies in the mean time, the bargain is transferred to her sister; and if she had no sister, the lover loses his labor. If the intended bridegroom should die, his future bride becomes one of his father’s wives. But if none of these misfortunes occur, and the wedding takes place, the bride must never see her father-in-law after the day of the marriage; should she chance to meet him, she must fall on the ground and conceal her face till he has passed. Her other relatives visit her when they please. In case of any dissatisfaction, the husband sends his wife back to her parents, and retains the children as his property.