great hoyars, whose serf and peasant troops attended the annual musters unwillingly and often at great inconvenience to themselves during the harvest season (a time therefore usually chosen by,the Tartars for their raids). As early as 1571 a 1 Russian hoyar. Prince Borotinsky, began to em-; Iploy a system of mixed Cossack and militia patrols (which appears to have differed but little from the 'rnilitary colonies or stanitzi of the later Cossack "armies." During the seasons less favorable to the Tartar raids a protective service alone was maintained. This was called the "Watch and Post Service" and consisted of Cossacks living in rude blockhouses linked together by small fortified camps. This first line of defense was intended, however, rather to impede the march of the Tartar raiders — and to give warning of their sudden coming — than to attempt any serious resistance.
Mobile outposts composed of squads of two, four or six horsemen, to each of which was assigned a regular "ride" of about a day's journey, joined together the Cossack encampments or settlements which were generally set upon high places from whence an outlook could be kept across the plains. In each of these encampments horses stood ready saddled, so that upon the appearance of suspicious signs — the distant black dots in the yellow waste, denoting the scouts of the enemy, or the inevitable clouds of dust raised by the hoofs of their horses —
F THE "FREE PEOPLE" 19
the news could be immediately communicated to the nearest fortified town.
The importance of the services thus rendered will be realized when we consider that according to a contemporary English writer — Fletcher — the Tartars of the Crimea were accustomed to attack the confines of the Muscovite empire in considerable force once or twice every year.
These raids were sometimes carried out at Trinity time, but more often during the harvest season. Now and again a winter raid was imdertaken, when the frozen surface of the swamps and rivers facilitated long marches, which only the endurance of the sturdy little Tartar ponies rendered possible. Through constant familiarity with the Russian borderland and the intervening steppes the Tartars learned to know the best trails and bridle tracks, and, most important of all, where the richest booty could most easily be obtained. "Avoiding all river crossings and picking their way along the trackless plateaus — at the same time carefully hiding their movements from the ^Muscovite steppe riders — they would suddenly penetrate in a solid mass into some populous district for a distance of about a hundred versts. Then turning in their track and, throwing out long wings to either side of the main body like a flock of wild geese — they would sweep away everything that lay in the path."
Kaffa, in the Crimea, was the principal slave market where the prisoners captured in these raids,
men, girls and children, (the latter carefully transported in panniers carried for the purpose) were sold to the Turkish markets.*
In protecting the Tsar's dominions against the intolerable suffering caused by these raids, the
Cossack became an invaluable adjunct to the armies of the empire. When the Tartars ceased to
; be a menace a new era of discovery opened to Cos-
} sack enterprise; when, after absorbing all neighi boring Russian states, the power of the Great
Princes of Moscow was turned towards the East in an irresistible movement of expansion which was
/ to extend across Asia to the continent of the New
World. Cossack troops played the principal part
! in these expeditions. Leaders — of whom the Don-
Iskoi hetman Yermak was the chief and prototype
' — crossed Siberia looking for a land passage. An obscure Cossack adventurer engaged in this quest was the first European to set eyes upon the
Western coast of the great Alaskan peninsula.
Had not the grey waters of the Straits of Behring rolled between — the matchless energy of these frontiersmen might have claimed the western coast of America for the Tsar.
♦ (See Fletcher's "Travels.")