The Harvester World: Volume 1, number 5, February 1910

              THE    FOREIGN    FIELD
By Gkorue MEYEit, Wagon .Suit's Deiiartim'nl Formerly Foreitfn Expert
Perhaps our domestic experts are not aware of the fact that experting at home is a matter very different from experting abroad. The American farmer will always offer you a nice team of horses when you are ready to try your newly set up machine—not so abroad. In some countries the farmers will expect you to use a yoke of oxen, or
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sometimes one horse and one ox, but when you cross the Ural mountains you will be very much surprised when your Kirghiz farmer will lead out a camel or two with which you are to operate his binder. Still, when once hitched up, these Kirghiz camels make wonderful draft animals. They fairly outdo the horse with regard to gait and endurance.
When near Omsk, Siberia, in 1904, I was obliged to run a 12-foot push binder with a team of six extra large camels, and I warrant you we were going some, the sheaves fairly flying from the machine. The only drawback is their mournful shrieks which they give from time to time, and their habit of expectorating on strang-
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ers with whom they are not on friendly terms. If hit, the odor is something long to be remembered. The courtesy is similar to the one shown by our American friend, Mr. Skunk. At any rate, it certainly offered a unique spectacle to see a push binder operated by six camels and a couple of calves gamboling around the machine, yell¬ ing for their mother.
The Kirghiz farmer is very thrifty. He most always has a herd of camels and sometimes a large number of Siberian ponies, which very much resemble our western bronchos. From these two animals he gets an enormous amount of service. Camel and mare's milk is never missing in a Kirghiz jurta (tent). The horse furnishes him the covering for his home, and from mare's milk he produces the famous "koumiss" which is obtained by fermenta¬ tion and kept in goat skins. When suffi¬ ciently fermented it is slightly intoxicating. Like the Russian peasant of old, offering you bread and salt, or the Pole offering you his "snuff bottle" before he will transact any business or start into conversation with you, our Kirghiz friend will draw "one" from his goat skin of koumiss, and this "one" is very often a good sized "schooner." If you refuse, you are not his friend and cannot expect any further favors. But it is an awful procedure; it is like drinking thinned axle grease. However, doctors pro¬ nounce it a sure remedy for consumption and indigestion, the latter being a chronic ailment with most all American experts go¬ ing abroad—they eat too much.
Other Kirghiz delicacies are chicken soup of whole chickens, including the head and feet, fish pie, etc. These dishes, of course, are not served in the hotels and restaurants of the larger cities, but in the village taverns away from the great Siberian road.
Aside from his peculiar ways and habits, the Kirghiz is very hospitable and friendly. I have in my possession a beautiful dagger with rare carved handle and damascened blade which was given me by a chief, whom I befriended, and, would you guess it, spoke a most correct German, for the knowledge of which many Americans would have envied him.
In winter and summer they wear large fur caps or hoods with immense ear flaps reaching to the shoulders, and beautifully embroidered morocco leather top boots without heels. The sole of the boot is also embroidered, and in order to prevent these ornaments from becoming ruined they wear overshoes, which they leave in a hallway when entering a house or when going to the