ares for them when
they are sick, preparing special food for his patients, and sometimes
giving them small doses of medicine. So, you see, the cat's-meat man is
a real benefactor, and it is no wonder that all the cats and dogs in the
lower part of the city watch for his coming, and are glad when they see
him.

MY TARTAR.

BY DAVID KER.

Most of us have read descriptions and seen pictures of those sallow,
flat-faced, narrow-eyed, round-headed hobgoblins who, under the name of
Tartars (a wrong one, too, for it should be Tatare), used to amuse
themselves by conquering Eastern Europe every now and then some hundreds
of years ago. But it is not every one who has had the pleasure of
travelling alone with one of these fellows over nearly a thousand miles
of Asiatic desert in time of war--a pleasure which I enjoyed to the full
in 1873.

And a very queer journey it was. First came a range of steep rocky hills
(marked on the map as the Ural Mountains), where we had to get out and
walk whenever we went up hill, and to hold tight to the sides of our
wagon, for fear of being thrown out and smashed, whenever we went down
hill. Then we got out on the great plains, where we came upon a
post-house of dried mud (the only house there was) once in three or four
hours; and here we used to change horses by sending out a Cossack with
his lasso to see if he could catch any running loose on the prairie; for
there are no stables in that country.

Next came a sand desert, where we harnessed three camels to our wagon
instead of horses. Here the people lived in tents instead of mud houses,
while a hot wind blew all day, and a cold wind all night. One fine
evening we had a sand-storm, which almost buried us, wagon and all; and
the sand stuck so to my Tartar's yellow face that he looked just like a
peppered omelet.

After this came a "rolling prairie," where the people lived in holes
under the ground, popping up like rabbits every now and then as we
passed. Beyond it was a large fresh-water lake (called by the Russians
"Aralskoe More," or Sea of Aral), where the mosquitoes fell upon us in
good earnest. Here we were both boxed up in a mud fort for seven weeks
by a Cossack captain, on suspicion of being spies, like Joseph's
brethren. When we got out again, we had to go up a great river (called
the Syr-Daria, or _Clear_ Stream, though it was the dirtiest I ever
saw), fringed with thickets, and huge reeds taller than a man, where the
mos