The Tartars are mostly of the Mahomedan
religion.
The permanent Tartars have very peculiar dwellings, which may be
called enormous mole-hills. Their villages are chiefly situated on
declivities, and hills, in which they dig holes of the size of
spacious rooms. The light falls only through the entrance, or
outlet. This is broader than it is high, and is protected by a long
and broad portico of planks, resting either upon beams or the stems
of trees. Nothing is more comical than to see such a village,
consisting of nothing but these porticoes, and neither windows,
doors, nor walls.
Those who dwell in the plains make artificial mounds of earth, and
build their huts of stone or wood. They then throw earth over them,
which they stamp down tightly, so that the huts themselves cannot be
seen at all. Until within the last sixty years, it is said that
many such dwellings were to be seen in the town of Tiflis.
29th August. This morning I had still one stage of twenty-four
wersti ere I reached Tiflis. The road was, as everywhere else, full
of holes, ruts and stones. I was obliged always to tie a
handkerchief tightly round my head, to ease the jolting; and still,
I was every day attacked with headache. Today, however, I learnt
the full nuisance of these carriages.
