Usbeks as an expensive food

And so of horseflesh; I believe it is still put out for sale in the Chinese markets; Lieutenant Wood, in his travels to the source of the Oxus, speaks of it among the Usbeks as an expensive food. Pinkerton tells us that it is made into dried hams; but this seems to be a refinement, for we hear a great deal from various authors of its being eaten more than half raw. After all, horseflesh was the most delicate of the Tartar viands in the times we are now considering. We are told that, in spite of their gold and silver and jewels, they were content to eat dogs, foxes, and wolves; and, as I have observed before, the flesh of animals which died of disease.

But again we have lost sight of the ambassador of Spain. After this banquet, he was taken about by Timour to other palaces, each more magnificent than the one preceding it. He speaks of the magnificent halls, painted with various colours, of the hangings of silk, of gold and silver embroidery, of tables of solid gold, and of the rubies and other precious stones. The most magnificent of these entertainments was on a plain; 20,000 pavilions being pitched around Timour’s, which displayed the most gorgeous variety of colours. Two entertainments were given by the ladies of the court, in which the state queens of Timour, nine in number, sat in a row, and here pages handed round wine, not koumiss, in golden cups, which they were not slow in emptying.

The good Friar, who went from St. Louis to the princes of the house of Zingis, several centuries earlier, gives us a similar account. When he was presented to the Khan, he went with a Bible and Psalter in his hand; on entering the royal apartment, he found a curtain of felt spread across the room; it was lifted up, and discovered the great man at table with his wives about him, and prepared for drinking koumiss. The court knew something of Christianity from the Nestorians, who were about it, and the Friar was asked to say a blessing on the meal; so he entered singing the Salve Regina. On another occasion he was present at the baptism of a wife of the Khan by a Nestorian priest.