could force from them a cry of pain.

Yet these people, so ferocious, are described as remarkably amiable
among themselves, seldom quarreling, honest and truthful, and
practicing hospitality with truly patriarchal grace. Whenever they
left home, the door was unfastened and food was left for any chance
wayfarer. A guest was treated as a heavenly messenger, and was guided
on his way with the kindest expressions for his welfare.

The females, as in all barbaric countries, were exposed to every
indignity. All the hard labor of life was thrown upon them. When the
husband died, the widow was compelled to cast herself upon the funeral
pile which consumed his remains. It is said that this barbarous
custom, which Christianity abolished, was introduced to prevent the
wife from secretly killing her husband. The wife was also regarded as
the slave of the husband, and they imagined that if she died at the
same time with her husband, she would serve him in another world. The
wives often followed their husbands to the wars. From infancy the boys
were trained to fight, and were taught that nothing was more
disgraceful than to forgive an injury.

A mother was permitted, if she wished, to destroy her female children;
but the boys were all preserved to add to the military strength of the
nation. It was lawful, also, for the children to put their parents to
death when they had become infirm and useless. "Behold," exclaims a
Russian historian, "how a people naturally kind, when deprived of the
light of revelation can remorselessly outrage nature, and surpass in
cruelty the most ferocious animals."

In different sections of this vast region there were different degrees