146

MEETING A TRAVELLER.

gin of the name given by the Greeks to the Don: and the transition from Donetz, or Danaetz, to Tanais does not seem a very violent one.

Numerous vineyards line the banks of the Don the whole way to Tcherkask, which produce a great quantity of sparkling wines, somewhat similar to those of the Crimea. According to the last official reports, the exportations from these vineyards alone amount to three hundred and seventy-five thousand rubles. As we approached the capital of the province, we were startled by the unexpected vision of a traveller, the first we had met for more than three hundred miles. With curiosity something akin to that which is experienced on inspecting an unknown sail at sea, I gazed through the cloud of dust at the dirty vehicle and its still dirtier occupant as they rattled past, and was enabled to form some idea of the appearance we must ourselves have presented, though in no respect enlightened as to the rank or station of the individual. Indeed, there is nothing to guide one in estimating the condition of a Russian on a journey; horses, carriage, driver, traveller-all look equally ragged and unkempt, and are covered with one uniform coat of dust. The traveller and the carriage are neither of them washed until the end of the journey. This might therefore be a prince going to assume the government of a province, or the nineteenth clerk in a police-office, for any outward indications to the contrary.

The night was far advanced when we at last distin

guished the picturesque outline of Novo Tcherkask by the clear light of a full moon. Crossing a small tributary of the Don, we toiled slowly up the base of the hill on which the town is situated, and passed under a grand triumphal arch erected in honour of Alexander, which looked all the more imposing and mysterious at that hour, from our being totally unprepared for any such architectural display. This being the first town we had seen since leaving the banks of the Volga, there was an excitement in the change from the dreary lifeless steppe; and although the tramp of the sentinel was the only sound that rung through the now deserted streets, it was a pleasure to rattle over them, and feel we were at length in the capital of the country of the Don Cossacks.

CHAPTER XI.

DON COSSACKS: THEIR ORIGIN

DON COSSACKS

AS SOLDIERS, AS AGRICULTURISTS EXTENT OF ARABLE LAND- DON COSSACK STATISTICS-A BAD ROAD-DELAYS-AN AIDE-DE-CAMP FROM THE

CAUCASUS THE POSTING SYSTEM, AND A RUSSIAN'S NOTIONS

OF IT.

THE town of Novo Tcherkask was founded by the Hetman Platoff in 1806, the inundations to which the former capital was exposed having rendered it necessary to remove the seat of government to a more elevated position. In his anxiety to avoid the floods of the Don, the Hetman has fallen into the opposite extreme, and perched the new capital on a most unfavourable site. Eight miles distant from the river, it is unable to benefit by the increasing traffic which passes along its stream, and the approaches are steep and inaccessible in almost every direction.

The only advantage which is afforded by its lofty situation is an extensive view to the southward, and in clear weather the snowy peaks of the Caucasus are said to be distinctly visible. The population amounts to about ten thousand. The streets are broad, but the houses mean; and it is remarkable that the practice of raising

them, as it were, upon stilts, like corn-stacks in a farmer's haggard, which was no doubt necessary in the old inundated town, has been continued by the working classes in the new altogether it is a straggling, ill-laid-out place, in no degree calculated to realise the expectation raised by its approach through an ostentatious archway.

The creation of the last few years, Novo Tcherkask is in a great measure devoid of that national character which rendered the old capital so interesting, and which is so graphically described by Clarke. Since the Don has ceased to be the boundary of Europe and Asia, the inhabitants of this district have become to some extent occidentalised, and I saw none of those striking costumes described by earlier travellers. With the manners and customs by which they were once distinguished, the Cossacks are losing all traces of their former independence, and, as they become gradually absorbed into the Russian empire, their identity as a race must soon cease.

Nothing can be more convenient for Russia than the position of this province, and the martial character of its inhabitants. Situated in the remote corner of an empire whose extensive frontiers are continually threatened by neighbouring tribes, the Cossacks are regarded as its natural protectors, and, as such, are posted in one continuous line from Siberia to the Black Sea. They also compose a great proportion of the army engaged in the Caucasus, and which is being constantly reinforced by levies from

the adjoining province. The ceremony of raising a regiment consists in the simple process of ordering a certain number of men to meet at a given point, whence they are marched incontinently to the scene of action; so that every Cossack may be looked upon as destined to become a soldier from his birth; indeed, Russians seem to consider that they are brought into the world for the express purpose of fighting their battles.

Don Cossacks are the most compound beings in the universe. According to Clarke they are a mixture of Circassians, Malo-Russians, Russians, Tartars, Poles, Greeks, Turks, Calmucks, and Armenians; others contend that they are almost of a purely Sclavonic origin, and this seems to me the probable conjecture, as I could trace nothing whatever in their physiognomy to warrant the supposition of a Mongolian descent;-they are, moreover, bigoted adherents of the Greek Church, and have been Christians from the date of the first records we have of their existence. But if ethnologists have been at variance in accounting for their origin, etymologists have been no less at a loss in deciding on the derivation of their name, and have ended by leaving it an open question whether Cossacks are so called from the resemblance of that word to those in other languages, which signify respectively, an armed man, a sabre, a rover, a goat, a promontory, a coat, a cassock, and a district in Circassia.

The subjects of all this speculation can of course