had
previously crushed between two stones. We were thus enabled to keep pace
with the company, who, with a devouring appetite, were swallowing the
vast system of entrails.

When the whole had disappeared, the old woman brought up the second
service, by placing in the midst of us the large pot in which the
puddings had been cooked. Instantly all the members of the banquet
invited each other, and every one taking from his bosom his wooden
porringer, ladled out bumpers of a smoking, salt liquid, which they
dignified with the pompous name of sauce. As we did not wish to appear
eccentric, or as if we despised the Tartar cuisine, we did like the rest.
We plunged our porringer into the pot, but it was only by the most
laudable efforts that we could get down this green stuff, which gave us
the idea of half masticated grass. The Tartars, on the contrary, found
it delicious, and readily reached the bottom of the extempore tureen, not
stopping for a moment, till nothing was left--not a drop of sauce, not an
inch of pudding.

When the feast was finished, the little layman took leave, receiving as
his fee the four feet of the sheep. To this fee, fixed by the old custom
of the Mongols, we added, as a supplement, a handful of tea leaves, for
we desired that he should long remember and talk to his countrymen of the
generosity of the Lamas of the Western sky.

Every one having now thoroughly regaled, our neighbours took their
kitchen utensils and returned home, except the young Lama, who said he
would not leave us alone. After much talk about the east and the west,
he took down the skeleton, which was still hanging at the entrance of the
tent, and amused himself with reciting, or rather singing, the
nomenclature of all the bones, large and small, that compose the frame of
the sheep. He perceived that our knowledge on this subject was very
limited, and this extremely astonished him; and we had the greatest
trouble to make him understand, that in our country ecclesiastical
studies had for their object more serious and important matters than the
names and number of the bones of a sheep.

Every Mongol knows the number, the name, and the position of the bones
which compose the frame of animals; and thus they never break the bones
when they are cutting up an ox or a sheep. With the point of their large
knife they go straight and at once to the juncture of the bones and
separate them with astonishing skill and celerity. These freq