Of all the inhabitants of the Russian empire, the Calmucks are the most distinguished by peculiarity of feature and manners. In their personal appearance they are athletic, and very forbidding. Their hair is coarse and black, their language harsh and guttural. The Cossacks alone esteem them, and intermarry with them; and these unions sometimes produce women of very great beauty, although nothing is more hideous than a Calmuck. High, prominent, broad cheek bones, widely separated from each other; a flat and broad nose; coarse, greasy, jet black hair; scarcely any eyebrows; and enormous prominent ears, constitute no very inviting portrait. Their persons are indescribably filthy, and their habits loathsome. They eat raw horseflesh, and may be seen tearing it like wild beasts from large bones which they hold in their hands. Sometimes they cook their meat, but not in a manner that would make it much more inviting to an English stomach. They cut the muscular parts into steaks which they place under their saddles, and after they have galloped thirty or forty miles, they find the meat tender and palatable. This is a common practice with them on their journeys. The author of Hudibras alludes to this culinary process in terms more pointed than decorous. Every body has heard of the fermented liquor called _koumiss_, which the Calmucks, the Tartars, &c., manufacture from the milk of the mare. It is produced by combining with six of warm milk, one part of warm water, and a little very sour milk or old koumiss. The vessel is then covered with a thick cloth and left in a moderately warm place for twenty-four hours, until the whole mass becomes sour. After this it is twice beaten with a stick in the shape of a churn staff, so as perfectly to mix together the thick parts and the thin. This being done the process is complete, and the liquor is ready for drinking. A subsequent process of distillation obtains from this koumiss an ardent spirit called _rack_ or _racky_, a name identical with that given to the spirit manufactured in the East Indies. Dr. Clarke found some women in the act of making it. “The still,” he says, “was composed of mud, or very close clay. For the neck of the retort a cane was used; and the receiver was entirely covered by a coating of wet clay. The brandy had just passed over. The woman who had the management of the distillery, wishing to give us a small taste of the spirit, thrust a stick with a small tuft of camel’s hair into the receiver, dropped a portion of it 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 told it was a religious custom to give always the first of the brandy which they drew from the receiver to their god. The stick was then plunged into the liquor a second time, when more brandy adhering to the camel’s hair, she squeezed it into the palm of her dirty hand, and having tasted the liquor, presented it to our lips.”