Note 1132 — Chapter XIV · —Plains, Steppes And Deserts

If a scant water supply places sedentary agriculture in arid lands upon an insecure basis, it makes the nomad's sources of subsistence even more precarious. It keeps him persistently on low rations, while the drought that burns his pastures and dries up well and wadi brings him face to face with famine. The daily food of the Bedouin is meal cooked in sour camel's milk, to which bread and meat are added only when guests arrive. His moderation in eating is so great that one meal of a European would suffice for six Arabs.1132 The daily food of the shepherd agriculturists on the Kuen Lun margin of the Takla Makan Desert is bread and milk; meat is indulged in only three or four times a month.1133 The Tartars, even in their days of widest conquest, showed the same habitual frugality. "Their victuals are all things that may be eaten, for we saw some of them eat lice." The flesh of all animals dying a natural death is used as food; in summer it is sun-dried for winter use, because at that time the Tartars live exclusively on mare's milk which is then abundant. A cup or two of milk in the morning suffices till evening, when each man has a little meat. One ram serves as a meal for fifty or a hundred men. Bones are gnawed till they are burnished, "so that no whit of their food may come to naught." Genghis Khan enacted that neither blood nor entrails nor any other part of a beast which might be eaten should be thrown away.1134 Scarcity of food among the Tibetan and Mongolian nomads is reflected in their habit of removing every particle of meat from the bone when eating.1135 A thin decoction of hot tea, butter and flour is their staple food. Many Turkoman nomads, despite outward appearance of wealth, eat only dried fish, and get bread only once a month, while for the poor wheat is prohibited on account of its cost.1136 The Saharan Tibbus, usually on a starvation diet, eat the skin and powdered bones of their dead animals.1137