The women wear a shift, a cloth caftan, belted above the hips with a broad girdle adorned with large metal buckles, Turkish trousers and slippers. Their head-dress is a white veil fastened to the crown of the head, with the two ends hanging gracefully on the shoulders. They wear little silver finger and nose rings, and heavy earrings often connected by a chain passing under the chin. Young girls part their hair into a multitude of tresses, and instead of the veil wear a little red skull-cap bedizened with bits of metal and all sorts of gewgaws.
The Nogais eat mutton, beef, mares' flesh, &c., fish, and dairy produce. They prepare koumiss from mares' milk, and esteem it above all other liquors. They also kill sick horses for food, and very often do not disdain the flesh of one that has died a natural death. Mares' flesh, minced, forms the chief part of a national dish called tarama, which the men eat with their friends in token of sincerity and brotherhood. The women are not allowed to partake of these repasts. Their favourite dish is millet boiled in water, with a little sour milk called tchourtzch. Kalmuck tea is also much esteemed, and since the improvement of agriculture, the use of bread, which was formerly unknown, is gradually spreading among them.
Their most common diseases are fever, small-pox, ulcers, itch, and syphilis. No one takes any means either to avoid or cure them. Charms are the only medicine known to the Nogais, and they are even quite indifferent to certain maladies which they attribute to fatality. They attribute great medicinal virtues to pepper, alum, sugar, and honey. The mortality of infants is frightful among them, and accounts for the stationary condition in which the population has long remained.
No system of education as yet exists among the Nogais; their children grow up like the young of animals. Every village, indeed, possesses a cabin decorated with the name of school, in which the clergy give some imperfect lessons in the Tatar language and writing; but the rest of their teaching, which is exclusively religious, consists in the reading of Arabic books, which the teachers understand no better than the pupils.
The rearing of cattle, particularly horses, forms the chief occupation of the Nogais. Their horses are of the Kalmuck Khirghis race, nimble and robust, though of moderate size, and usually fetch from 100 to 120 rubles: they pass the whole year in the steppe, and have to find their food under the snow in winter. The horned cattle is small. The cows sell for twenty or thirty rubles; they give little milk, and are generally unprofitable. Camels are little used and seldom seen.
In Count Maison's time the Nogais were required to sow, at least, two tchetverts of corn per head, which made a total of about 40,000 tchetverts for the whole population. A year after the count's retirement, the seed sown in the whole territory did not exceed 19,000 tchetverts, and the quantity went on diminishing from year to year. But since the disastrous winters, for cattle, of 1836 and 1837, the Nogais have been induced, by M. Cornies, to apply themselves again to agriculture, and the women have taken a part with the men in field labours.
Their mode of cultivating the ground is extremely defective; they have bad ploughs drawn by four or five pair of oxen, whilst their neighbours, the Germans, do infinitely more work with but two. The harvest generally takes place in July, and is a season of great jollity. Gipsy musicians stroll over the country at that period, and collect an ample store of wheat and millet. The corn is trodden out by horses in the open air: the best, which is called arnaout, sells at from seven to twelve rubles the tchetvert. The territory of the Nogais is still common property, and the want of finite boundaries occasions many quarrels, especially at harvest time.
As usual, among eastern nations, the Nogai women do all the household drudgery, for the men think it beneath them to take part in it. The poor mother of the family is therefore obliged to prepare the victuals with her own hands, to wash the linen, milk the cows and mares, keep the house in repair, churn butter, &c., and take care of the children. She must also gather the firewood, prepare all the drinkables, make candles and soap, and dress the sheep-skins to make pelisses for all the family. This is hard drudgery, and a few years of such married life suffice to make her old. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that the Nogai cannot content himself with one wife, and that the purchase of young girls is so important and costly an affair among them.