AN EVENING PARTY AMONG THE COSSACKS OF THE DON.
Sunset on the Lower Don; a dim waste of gray, unending steppe, looking vaster and drearier than ever under the fast falling shadows of night; a red gleam far away to the west, falling luridly across the darkening sky and the ghostly prairie; a dead, grim silence, broken only by the plash and welter of our laboring steamer, or the shrill cry of some passing bird; an immense, crushing loneliness—the solitude not of a region whence life has died out, but of one where it has never existed. Even my three comrades, hardened as they are to all such influences, appear somewhat impressed by the scene.
"Cheerful place, ain't it?" says Sinbad, the traveller; "and the whole of southern Russia is just the same style—multiply a billiard board by five million, and subtract the cushions!"
"I wonder what the population of this district can be," muses Allfact, the statistician, looking disconsolately at his unfilled note-book. "It's almost impossible to get any reliable information in these parts. But I should think one man to three square miles must be about the proportion."
"And not a feather of game in the whole shop!" growls Smoothbore, the sportsman, with an indignant glance at his pet double barrel. "It's as bad as that desert where the old sportsman committed suicide, leaving a letter beside him to the effect that he must be firing at something, and there being nothing else to shoot, he had shot himself!"
"I'll give you one entry for your note-book, Allfact, my boy," interrupted I; "there are thirty-nine sand banks between this and Rostoff, at the head of the estuary; and the upper stream is all banks together—no navigation at all!"
"I should think not, by Jove, with that kind of thing going on!" says Smoothbore, pointing to a solitary horseman who is coolly riding across our bows with an aggravating grin, his dog following. Our outraged captain has barely time to hurl at him some pithy suggestions respecting his portion in a future life, which had better not be quoted, when there comes a tremendous bump, and we are aground once more!
Just at this moment two wild figures come dashing along the bank at full gallop, sitting so far forward as to be almost on the horse's neck—their hair tossing in the wind like a mane, their small black eyes gleaming savagely under the high sheepskin cap, their dark lean faces thrust forward like vultures scenting prey—shooting a sharp, hungry glance at us as they swoop by, in mute protest against the iron age which compels them to pass a party in distress without robbing it. These are the famous Cossacks of the Don, the best guerillas and the worst soldiers in the world; at once the laziest and most active of men—strangest of all the waifs stranded on the shore of modern civilization by the ebb of the middle ages—a nation of grown-up children, with all the virtues and all the vices of barbarism—simple, good-natured, thievish, pugnacious, hospitable, drunken savages.[K]
It takes us fully ten minutes to "poll off" again, and we have hardly done so when there comes a sound through the still air, like the moan of a distant sea; and athwart the last gleam of the sinking sun flits a cloud of wide-winged living things, shadowy, silent, unearthly, as a legion of ghosts. The wild fowl of the steppes are upon their annual migration, and for many minutes the living mass sweeps over us unbroken, orderly, and even as an army in battle array—a resemblance increased by the exertions of an active leader, who keeps darting back from his post at the head of the column, and trimming the ranks like an officer on parade.
"I wonder how many birds there are in that column," says Allfact, instinctively feeling for his note-book, as if expecting some leading bird to volunteer the desired information.
"Just like their mean tricks," mutters Smoothbore savagely. "First the game won't show at all, and then they come so thick that no fellow would be such a cad as to fire at 'em."
Night comes on, and the foul-creeping mist begins to steam up from the low banks of greasy black mud, driving us perforce into the cabin, where we speedily fall asleep on the benches along the walls—for bed-places there are none. About midnight I begin to dream that I am a Christian martyr in the reign of Diocletian, "in the act" (as Paddy would, say) of being burned alive; and I awake to find it all but true. The fact is, the steward, with a thoroughly Russian love of overheating, has put wood enough into the stove to roast an ox; and there is nothing for it but to bolt on deck again, where we remain for the rest of the night.
The panorama of the deck in the early morning forms an ethnological study hard to match, except perchance by the Yokohama packet steaming out of 'Frisco, or a "coolie boat" coming over from Demerara to Trinidad. Gaunt, aquiline Cossacks, and portly Germans, and bumfaced Tartars; red-capped, broad-visaged, phlegmatic Turks; slim, graceful Circassians, beautiful with all the sleek tiger-like beauty of their gladiator race; sallow, beetle-browed Russians, and black-robed, dark-eyed, melancholy Jews. We have one Persian on board—a lanky, hatchet-faced rogue, half buried under a huge black sheepskin cap not unlike a tarred beehive. He smokes one half the day and sleeps the other half, and is only once betrayed into any show of emotion. This occurs at one of our halting places on the second day, when he comes on board again grinning and whooping like a madman, having succeeded (as I learn when his excitement subsides) in cheating a Cossack out of a halfpenny.
But the appearance of the Russian mujiks (peasants), and the manner in which they curl themselves up anywhere and anyhow, and sleep the sleep of the just with their heads in baskets and their feet in pools of dirty water, baffles all description. A painter would revel in the third-class deck about sunrise, when the miscellaneous hash of heads and limbs begins to animate itself, like a coil of snakes at the approach of spring—when mothers of families look anxiously about for the little waddling bundles of clothes that are already thrusting their round faces and beady black eyes into every place where they ought not to go; and when brawny peasants, taking their neighbor's elbow out of their mouth, and their knee out of their neighbor's stomach, make three or four rapid dips, like a drinking duck, to any village church that may be in sight, and then fall to with unfailing zest to the huge black loaf which seems to be their only baggage. The whole thing is like a scene in a fairy tale:
There was an old captain that lived in a "screw." He had so many passengers he didn't know what to do; They'd got nary baggage but one loaf of bread. They squatted round the funnel, and that was their bed.
As we move southward, our surroundings alter very perceptibly. A genial warmth and a rich summer blue replace the cold gray sky of the north; the banks begin to rise higher, and to clothe themselves with thick patches of bush, and even trees, instead of the coarse prairie grass; while at every halting place the little wooden jetty is heaped with perfect mounds of splendid grapes, sold at three cents per pound, by men in shirtsleeves—phenomena which, to us who are fresh from the furred wrappings and snow-blocked streets of Moscow, have a rather bewildering effect. But the most striking sight is (to our friend Allfact at least) the huge masses of coal which now fuel the steamer instead of the split logs of the Volga.
"You see Russia's richer than her neighbors think," remark I. "On the Don alone there are 16,000 square miles of the finest anthracite, which leaves only two per cent. of ashes in burning."
"Sixteen thousand square miles!" cries the statistician, whipping out his note-book. "Why on earth doesn't she use it, then, instead of destroying all that valuable timber?"
"Well, you see, the railways are not completed yet; but when they are I can promise you that Russia will cut out England altogether in supplying Constantinople and the Levant."
One by one the little villages slip by us: Alexandrosk, the first sign of which is the glitter of its gilded church-tower; Nikolaievo, with its black marble monument to the late Crown Prince; Konstantirovskoë, the birthplace of Prince Potemkin, brightest and most worthless of Russian favorites, who "lived like an emperor and died like a dog." They are all vary much of one pattern: substantial log-cabins, curiously painted, with little palisaded gardens in front, and red-shirted men sitting smoking at their doors, alternating with little wickerwork hovels daubed with mud, which look very much like hampers left behind by a monster picnic. Gangs of lean dogs (the pest of every Cossack village) are sniffing hungrily about, while scores of sturdy wenches, with berry-brown arms and feet, and sunburnt children clothed only in short pinafores lined with dirt, run to stare at the wonderful fire-breathing vessel as she comes gliding in.
The sun is just dipping below the horizon as we reach Semi-Karakorskaya, and anchor for the night as usual; for to navigate the Lower Don in the dark is beyond the power of any pilot afloat. Here a Cossack official,[L] whose acquaintance we have made on board, proposes to us to land and be presented to the "Ataman," or chief of the tribe, with the certainty of seeing something worth looking at. The offer is joyfully accepted, and five minutes later we are scrambling up the steep, crumbling bank—in the course of which feat Allfact slips and rolls bodily down into the river.
"There's something for the notebook at last, old boy!" cries Smoothbore spitefully. "Write down that you notice a great falling off in this part of the country!"
To find one's way into a Cossack village at night is almost as hopeless as the proverbial hunt for a needle in a haystack. The whole country seems to consist of a series of carefully dug pitfalls, into which we tumble one over the other, like fish out of a net; and our final approach to the village is only to be guessed by the yells of the dogs, which come about us with such zeal as to necessitate some vigorous cudgelling, and a shower of trenchant Russian oaths, in which our leader, thanks to his official character, seems to be quite a proficient. At length a few lights, which appear to start from the very ground under our feet, announce that we are among houses—underground ones, it is true, but houses still. Then the first glimmer of the rising moon lights up a row of log-cabins on either side, and the abyss of half-dried mud between them; and at last, following our leader, we enter one of those immeasurable courtyards in which the Cossack heart delights, pass through a low doorway, ascend a creaking, ladder-like stair, and, entering a small room at the head of it, find ourselves in the presence of two men—one old and decrepit, the other in the prime of life. The younger is the Ataman himself; the elder is his father, an old soldier of the first campaigns of Nicholas.
Seen by the dim light of the lamp that stands on the rough-hewn table, the "interior" is sufficiently picturesque: the heavy crossbeams of the roof, the skins that cover the walls, intermingled with weapons of every kind, from the long Cossack lance to the light carabine which is fast superseding it; the fresh complexions and Western costume of the English party, contrasting strangely enough with the commanding figure and dark, handsome face of our host, in his picturesque native dress and high boots; the long white beard and vacant, wondering eyes of the ancient soldier; the picture of the Ataman's patron saint in the corner, with its little oil light burning before it, and a pious cockroach making a laborious pilgrimage around its gilt frame; and, through the narrow, loophole-like window, a glimpse of the great waste outside, lit by fitful gleams of moonlight.
Hospitality has been a Cossack virtue since the day that Bogdan Khmelnitski gave meat from his own dish to the prisoners whom he was about to slaughter; and we have hardly time to exchange greetings with our new friends when we are set down to a plentiful meal of rye bread, the splendid grapes of the Don, and "nardek"—a rich syrup strained from the rind of the watermelon, not unlike molasses both in appearance and flavor.
The "bread and salt" (as the Russians technically call it) being despatched, my three comrades, with the native official as interpreter, fasten upon the Ataman, while I devote myself to the old soldier, and begin to question him on the Danubian campaign of 1826. It is a sight to see how the worn old face lights up, and how the sunken eyes flash at the sound of the familiar name; and he plunges at once into his story. Seldom is it given to any man to hear such a tale as that to which I listen for the next half hour, told by one of its chief actors. Weary struggles through miles of hideous morass—men dropping from sheer exhaustion, with the wheels of the heavy artillery ploughing through their living flesh; vultures haunting the long march of death to tear the still quivering limbs of the fallen; soldiers, in the rage of hunger, feeding upon the corpses of their comrades—all the hideous details of that terrible campaign, told in a quiet, matter-of-course way, which makes them doubly horrible. My impromptu Xenophon is still in full swing when high above the clamor of tongues rises a sound from without, which nothing on earth can match save the war whoop of the Western Indian—the shrill, long-drawn "Hourra!" of the Cossack, which made many a veteran grenadier's stout heart grow chill within, as it came pealing over the endless snows of 1812. We rush headlong to the outer door, and this is what we see:
In the centre of the courtyard, under the full splendor of the moonlight, stand some twenty tall, sinewy figures, in the high sheepskin cap, wide trousers, and huge knee-high boots of the Cossack irregular. They salute the Ataman as he appears by drawing their long knives and waving them in the air, again uttering their shrill war cry; and then begin to move in a kind of measured dance, advancing and retreating by turns, to the sound of a low, dirge-like chant. Presently the music grows quicker, the motion faster and fiercer; the dancers dart to and fro through each other's ranks, brandishing their weapons, turning, leaping, striking right and left—acting in terribly lifelike pantomime the fury of a deadly battle. Seen in the heart of this great solitude, with the cold moon looking silently down upon it, this whirl of wild figures, and gleaming weapons, and dark, fierce faces, all eyes and teeth, has a very grim effect; and even Sinbad's seasoned nerves quiver slightly as the dancers at length join hands, and, whirling round like madmen, burst forth with the deep, stern chorus with which their ancestors swept the coasts of the Black Sea five hundred years ago:
Our horses have trodden the steep Kavkaz (Caucasus); Of the Krim (Crimea) we have taken our share; And the way that we went is dabbled with blood, To show that we have been there!
The volume of sound (stern and savage to the last degree, but yet full of a weird, unearthly melody) fills the whole air like the rush of a storm; and now, the Cossack blood being thoroughly heated, the play suddenly turns to earnest. The nearest dancer, a tall, handsome lad with a heavy black moustache, suddenly fells his next neighbor with a tremendous blow between the eyes, which Heenan himself might have applauded. The next moment the conqueror falls in his turn before a crushing right-hander from his vis-à-vis; and in an instant the whole band are at it hammer and tongs—apparently without "sides," order, or object of any kind, except the mere pleasure of thrashing and being thrashed. There is little science among the combatants, who deliver their blows in a slashing, round-hand style that would agonize a professional "bruiser"; but every blow dealt by those brawny arms leaves its mark, and the whole company speedily look as if they had been taking part in an election.
"By Jove!" says Smoothbore, with considerable feeling; "it does one good to see a real good fight so far away from home!"
"You'd see plenty such in Central Russia," answer I. "Two villages often turn out to fight, just as we'd turn out to play cricket.[M] They call it 'Koolatchni boi.'"
But Sinbad, being a man of humane temper, thinks that the sport has gone far enough, and appeals to the Ataman to stop it. One word from the all-powerful chief suffices to part the combatants; and, a messenger being despatched for some corn-whiskey, they are speedily chinking glasses as merrily as if nothing had happened. I am standing unsuspectingly in their midst when suddenly the whole company rush upon me as one man, and I find myself lifted in their arms and tossed bodily into the air six times in succession, amid yells of applause, to which all the previous uproar is as nothing.[N] Next they pounce upon Allfact, who, in his thirst for new ideas, submits readily enough; but Sinbad and Smoothbore take to their heels at once, and are with difficulty pacified by our host and his venerable father, who are looking on from the doorway.
This closes the entertainment, for it is now nearly midnight, and we are to start again at sunrise. We take a cordial leave of our new friends, and depart, laden with bunches of grapes which are somewhat difficult to carry conveniently.
"I wonder why they tossed me up like that?" muses Allfact, as we grope our way down to the shore.
"Why!" answers Smoothbore. "Why, to take a rise out of you, to be sure."
David Ker.
[ [K]The Cossack is often erroneously classed by untravelled writers with the native Russian, from whom he is as distinct as the Circassian or the Tartar.
[ [L]The "Army of the Don," though now an integral part of Russia, is still officered to a great extent by its own people.
[ [M]I remember one such battle near Moscow, in October, 1809, in which more than a thousand men took part.
[ [N]This singular compliment (a universal one among the Cossacks) is probably a relic of the old custom of raising their "Kosbevoi," or head chief, on a shield when elected.