The ordinary drink of the Kalmucks, and which forms an essential part of their food, consists of various preparations of the milk supplied by their cattle.  The mares yield milk as well as the cows; and, for several reasons, they prefer the former.  When fresh, this milk has a taste of onions, which is very repulsive; but, in proportion as it sours, if the operation is performed with cleanliness, it becomes more liquid than the other, acquires an agreeable vinous taste, and neither forms cream nor coagulates.  In this state, it furnishes a wholesome and refreshing drink, and which, when in sufficient quantity, froths in a remarkable degree.  The cow’s milk, on the contrary, both on account of the cheesy matter which it contains and its disagreeable taste, becomes unpleasant to drink when it sours; and, in persons not accustomed to it, induces colics and diarrhoeas, although the Kalmucks themselves experience no inconvenience from it, unless they have neglected to boil it.  This they do, in the first place, and never use it until it has undergone this operation, without which they would be exposed to the inconveniences with which sour milk affects Europeans.  In like manner, the Kalmucks do not relish water that has not been boiled.  Poor persons, to prevent their being reduced to the necessity of drinking it pure, mix it with their milk, in the proportion of a third part or half, in order to make the most of the latter as a drink.

The milk is therefore heated as soon as it is withdrawn from the animal; and, when warm, it is poured into a large skin bottle, with which the poorest hut is furnished, and in which there is always a remnant of sour milk sufficient to sour the new milk, after it has been stirred with a stick kept for the purpose.  Those bottles are never washed or cleaned:  they are therefore always incrusted with cheese and dirt, and the smell admitted by them is sufficient to show what they contain.  But it is precisely in this that the secret for making the milk undergo the vinous fermentation consists.  If it be intended to sour milk in empty or new bottles, all that is necessary is to put into them the least drop of the milk-brandy to be presently described, or a little of the curdled milk that is found in the stomach of young lambs.

All the preparations of milk are comprehended under the name of Tchigan.  The drinks prepared from pure mare’s milk (the Koumys of the Tartars), are named Gunna Tchigan, or Horse Tchigan; those into which mares’ milk and cow’s milk enter are called Besrek;—­sour cows’ milk is named Airek; and all kinds of fresh milk, Ussoun.

In summer, and in general whenever their flocks yield them much milk, the Kalmucks do not fail to inebriate themselves with the strong drink which they derive from it.  Mares’ milk affords most spirit, and the milk of the cow affords much less, especially in winter, when the fodder is dry.  Sheep’s milk is never employed, as it does not contain spirit.