The Kalmuks live in tents covered with coarse felt; they transport these dwellings on camels from one place to another when their herds of sheep or horses have consumed the scanty pasture grass around the camp. There is no attempt at cultivation, and the steppes become more and more barren as the pastures become exhausted. In order to remedy this evil, the Russian administration has begun various experimental plantations. In some places the steppes are covered with small tamarisk bushes or with silky grass, but, as a rule, the chief growth is of silver wormwood. The monotony is not so great as one might think, for the steppes, like a mirror, reflect all the divers light-changes, and wonderful natural phenomena take place there. During the great heat, mirages are to be seen in the distance--a river, lakes, reed-grown shores; sometimes a sand-storm supervenes, more infernal than fairy-like, called here "smertch." The wind raises the sand in tongues of flames or in funnels running up to the sky with giddy rapidity. Gradually, all the separate turmoils join in a gigantic wall of sand, advancing in an orgy of movement; the heavy clouds fall towards the ground, the sand rushes upwards, everything becomes confounded in darkness and chaos.
One feels so entirely in the power of natural forces that the fatalism of the poor inhabitants of the land is easily understood. The Kalmuks, primitive and nomadic, produce the impression of ghosts from distant centuries.
Metchnikoff noticed that since his last visit in 1874, fatal influences had worked havoc on the population. Four scourges, all of them coming from outside, are destroying the Kalmuks: syphilis, alcoholism, tuberculosis, and the Russians who are constantly pushing them back. Those poor people realise the fate which is awaiting them, and resign themselves like a sick man who knows his sickness to be incurable.
The spiritual life of the Kalmuks reduces itself to their religious cult. There are many Buddhist convents where children are being brought up for a monastic life. Religious rites are performed by priests dressed in purple and brilliant yellow; for the uninitiated, their part consists in unrolling interminable bands on which prayers are inscribed, and in executing a religious music which seemed a mixture of a camel's grunt, a dog's howling, and an infinitely sad plaint. Of the pure cult of Buddha, nothing seems to remain but an empty form. However, there is a convent in the steppes--Tshori--a sort of religious academy, where an effort is being made to restore the cult to the original level of Buddhist doctrines.