But the same Zaporozhye (Niz), as was already said earlier, at times and at other times of the year had the opposite character, showing extreme deficiency in everything; It therefore becomes clear why the locality where the Cossacks were oppressed did not belong to any of the neighboring peoples and was called tea of the Wild Field: but the Poles mistakenly called all of Zaporozhye the Wild Field.
The wild field, now a clear or empty field, began to the ‘west of the river. Sinyukha, a tributary of the Bug, and stretched east to the right bank of the Dnipro, extending further to the poop.
It was a barren space, often devastated by locusts, so far from settlements that people risked starving to death along the way; Only those places near the water abounded in fish and game and had pasture for them. horses.
From half a century ago, the steppes of the left bank differed little from the Liky Field: from the heat, rivers and streams dried up, the grass dried up and became unsuitable for grazing horses and livestock; The dryness of the grass provided abundant food for steppe fires, sometimes covering a distance of several tens of miles. In the summer, around noon, flies the size of an inch appeared and bit the horses until they bled, and in the evening, from all the damp and low-lying areas, swarms of mosquitoes rose with a dull buzzing, greedily attacking all living things, and only in the smoke of the fires could one find salvation from them.
Obtaining the salt necessary to preserve the caught fish was fraught with such dangers and pain that the Cossacks preferred to dry the fish in the sun, rubbing it with wood ash and salt.
In general, moving across the steppe alone or in small parties was dangerous because of the Tatars wandering here, and the movement of large parties, for example, troops, and everything else was almost impossible; to feed him, he would have to hunt and fish.
Only the Cossacks and the Tatars on wonderful horses, in small detachments, fearlessly crossed the steppe in all directions, familiar to them in every detail.
To the number of other misfortunes that plague Zaporozhye, we must add locusts and contagious diseases.
The locust was a real scourge of Zaporozhye; Whenever she sat down, the whole earth was covered with a thick layer of it, and the only noise that could be heard was the noise she made while eating the growth. Having cleared the field at some hour, she rose and flew further into the wind, obscuring, like clouds, the light of the sun; Not only grass, soil and tree leaves were destroyed by locusts, but even clothing, especially red and green flowers.
The dampness of the floodplains contributed to the rooting of various contagious fevers in Zaporozhye, and sometimes they were supplemented by a painful illness, known under the name of pestilence or arrogant death; Quite a few Cossacks died from it.
“In winter, it was no better at Niza: severe cold, snowstorms and packs of wolves embittered from hunger made the situation of a traveler in the steppe terrible, where for several dozen miles it was sometimes impossible to find a bush or a tree so that one could build a fire and bury one’s stiff arms and legs around it; in the steppe, except for the wolves, nothing living was visible, and the silence was broken only by the after, with the roar of driving snowdrifts from one place to another.
If we add to all this that the Cossacks were usually either searching or hunting in the floodplains, in proximity to irreconcilable enemies - tata -. rami, then it becomes clear that the life of a Cossack in Niza was harsh and full of hardships.
In general, to retire beyond the rapids to the Bottom meant exposing oneself to many deprivations that only a person with a short nature could withstand.
Cossack - “Siromakha” was a long-standing folk saying in Ukraine, where a wolf was usually called “siromakha” in the sense of a homeless wanderer.
yy PI PI II: RTI
And Kiya I and u Shchi and Shchi Iri o
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
“It’s nice to live on, I mow, I don’t plow the land,
I don't cut grass
And I wear all the brocade, I sprinkle it with gold...
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
And I’m stabbing to death, Without war I’m a bunch,
Yes, a bunch, as I want
On your own head!“