The Russian word Kasah — of which "Cossack" is the English equivalent — still signifies in several Tartar dialects a "Horseman" or "Rover." By a not unnatui'al association of ideas this term has been adopted at different times and in widely separated localities as a tribal name by nomad peoples of the steppes. But the attempt not infrequently made to trace a du'ect connection between these tribes and the famous KasaJd of modern Russia is generally based upon far-fetched historical analogies.*
In Clarke's famous "Travels in the Ukraine" the ingenious theory is advanced that the country of "Kasachia" mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenetes was the original homeland of the modem "tribes" of Russia which have taken the general name of Kasak or Cossack. But the relative unimportance of this people lost among powerful
* A modern example exists of the facility with which errors may be made in tracing tribal relationships through nomenclature alone. Not far from Tiflis, near the frontiers of old Armenia, the author recently visited the territory occupied by a tribe of Tartar origin stUl callec" "Kasaks." The skill of these nomads as rug-weavers Jias^ filled the bazaars with a coarse but well-woven carpet bearing their tribal name. It is certain, however, that neither ethnographically nor historically does any connection exist between these nomad tribesmen and the Cossacks of modern Russia.
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neighbours whose history has survived to the present day is the strongest argument against such a supposition. Moreover, as we have already pointed out, other tribes of this name have more than once risen to temporary importance in the anhals of the steppes.
It was not until the latter half of the fifteenth century that the ebbing tide of Tartar invasion, which for nearly two centuries had submerged the richest lands of the great Russian plain, once more opened to settlement from the North the rich steppes of the "Black Earth" district, and the scarcely less fertile lands to the South and East. During this long period of subjection the Russian nation had been held back from its richest heritage.
Scattered among the Finnish aborigines of the great northern forests — in that fabulous land of "Cimmerian darkness" where, as Herodotus states, the inhabitants "spend half their time in slumber" — the men of "Rus" had kept alive the faith of their ancestors while learning their long lesson of patience and endurance. Thus it came about that so many of the old centres and cities of Holy Russia are found today in the most barren and unattractive parts of the great Russian plain.
\^en the prairies of the Ukraine — the "border land" — had ceased to b£-tli£ hunting grounds _of rm^ing nomads, and the Asiatic hordes had with- ^]ym with their flnrks^and herds to the oases of their native deserts, the peasant population of
Northern Russia became_filled with a restless fever [or eraJgratiorLi Out of the dark fir wilderness came bands of pioneers, — dazzled by the bright sunlight of the steppes, — pressing ever southward.'^Thus settlers of true Russian blood began once more to populate the war-worn plains of Sc^^ihia where free land and, dearer still, personal freedom rewarded the daring of the adventurer.
While fear and hunger had kept them submissively huddled about the wooden fortresses of the hoyars, no laws had been necessary to chain the peasants to the glebe. Serfdom now began in Russia at the time when the feudal system of Europe was sinking into decay. For when the princes and nobles of these northern principalities found their apanages and broad grants of forest land fast reverting to wilderness through the flight of the agricultural laborers, legal steps were taken to preserve their "rights." In edicts of Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godounov, we find the legislative traces of this great southern movement. Yet, in spite of terrible punishments and laws enacted to keep the peasants from roving, the moujiki continued to join themselves to the remnants of the wild Asiatic tribes and the no less barbarous "Cossacks" of their own race, who had established themselves in vagabond communities following close upon the receding frontier of Tartar invasion. J^ It would appear that about this time the term Cossack or Kasak was first used to describe a
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