A road runs from stanitza to stanitza, through the forest, as a cannon-shot would fly. Along the road are the military stations or cordons, guarded by Cossacks. Between the cordons are watchaccompanied by his weeping relations and the tribesmen who refused to abandon their feudal chief, even in death. These had become voluntary captives upon hearing the news of his untimely end.
towers with sentinels. Only a narrow strip of fertile forest land — say twenty-one hundred feet wide — constitutes the Cossacks' domain. On the north begin the sandy dunes of the Xogai, or IMozdok steppe, stretching far away, and commingling, God knows where, with the Trukhmensky, Astrakhan, and Kirgiz-Kaisak steppes. On the south, beyond the Terek, is the Great Chechnya, the ridge of the Kotchkalosof range, the Black Mountains, then still another sierra, and finally the Snowy Mountains, which are visible, indeed, but which have never yet been trodden by the foot of man. On the fertile strip of forest land, rich in all kinds of vegetation, have lived, since immemorial times, 3, warlike, handsome, and wealthy Russian population, professing the "Old Faith," and called the Grebensky Kazaki or Border Cossacks.
Very, very long ago, their ancestors, the Starovyemi, or "Old Believers," fled from Russia and settled beyond the Terek amon^ the Chechens on the ridge — "Greben" — or first spur of the wooded range of the Great Chechnya. These Cossacks intermarried with their new neighbours, the Chechens, and adopted the habits, mode of life, and manners of the mountaineers; but they succeeded in maintaining even there the Russian language and the old belief in their pristine purity. A tradition, still preserved among these Cossacks, declares that the Tsar Ivan the Terrible came to the Terek, invited the elders of the Cossacks from the Ridge to meet him, gave them the land on that side of the river, charged them to live in peace, and promised not to compel them either to subjection or to a change of belief.
From that time to this the Cossack famihes have kept up their relations with the mountaineers, and the chief traits of their character are love of liberty, laziness, brigandage, and war. The influence of Russia has been exerted only in a detrimental way, by forced conscriptions, the removal of their bells, and the presence of troops quartered among them. The Cossack is inclined to have less detestation for the mountaineeT-jigit who has killed his brother than for the soldier who is quartered on him for the sake of protecting his village, but who scents up his hut with tobacco-smoke. He respects his mountain enemy; but he disdains the soldier, whom he regards as an alien oppressor.
In the eyes of the Cossack the Russian peasant is a nondescript creature, uncouth and beneath contempt, the type of which he finds in the peripatetic Little Russian peddler or emigrant, called by the Cossacks shapoval, or tile-wearer.
The height of style there is to dress like the Tcherkess. His best weapons are procured from the mountaineers; from them also his best horses are bought or stolen. The young Cossack brave prides himself on his knowledge of the Tartar language, and, when he is on a drunken spree, he speaks Tartar even with his brother.
In fact this petty population of Christians, barricaded in a little corner of the world, surrounded by semi-civilized Mohammedan tribes and by soldiers, regards itself as having attained the highest degree of culture, looks on the Cossack as alone worthy of the name of man, and affects to despise every one else. The Cossack spends the most of his time at the cordons, in expeditions, hunting and fishing. He almost never works at home. His presence in his stanitza is an exception to the rule,
but when he is there he lounges. Wine is a common commodity among all the Cossacks, and drunkenness is not so much a universal propensity as it is a rite, the non-fulfilment of which would be regarded as apostasy.