HERE is nothing straggling about a Terek Cossack stanitza. The houses run as a line, east and west, north and south. A paling defines the line. Without the pale is the steppe and the forest, within is the village. There are no scattering houses to mark that the village is near. The fence surrounding the village like a kraal is broken at either end of the village by a huge double gate.
A sentry stood by the right gate-post as we entered the village of Terek, in the Province of Terek.
Over under the arch the wood seemed lost in a stretch of bog. Mud, black and oozy, tempted heavy pigs from the house yards, where they are wont to wallow. Pigs are not confined to pens in Russia: they run loose like dogs and chickens. But this is Russian and not characteristically Cossack. Narrow paths edged the house fences and people passing on foot worked slowly along this less muddy marge, sometimes clinging to the fence lest a misstep land them in muck, ankle deep, or, not improbably, knee deep.
A Cossack house
Interior of the above