Our wagon clung to the narrow pathway also. A wheel once sunk in the soft, black depths of the road would be difficult to free. Turning to the right near the center of the village we approached the great square, which, so I soon learned, is invariably the heart of the villages of the Mountain Cossacks. The distance from side to side was fully two hundred yards. In the square, somewhat to one side, the church. A large, white church with domes and turrets painted green, and these surmounted by crosses of gold which caught the glint of the sun and seemed to crackle with flashes of golden light, like some heliograph left exposed, but uncontrolled. The largeness of the square in so small a village amazed me. And I wondered why so large a free space was left. There was no paving here, but the earth was hard and trampled as by the hoofs of many horses. As we drew nearer, a neat iron railing, painted green, set upon a brick foundation and encircling the church, caught my eye. A furious clanging of bells, wild, loud, disordered, proved distracting. Then the church doors seemed to belch forth people—women and girls mostly, with a few old men. The girls were bedecked with color, as bright and varied as girls in an Italian village. Gaudy yellows and deep oranges, startling reds and soft blues. Kerchiefs, scarfs, and aprons. The horses were stopped that I might watch the procession. It was a pretty sight. Twenty or more came in a party toward the street where we were halted, and I hastily made ready my camera. They passed us within a few yards and I stepped to the ground, that I might gain a better focus. As I looked into the finder, a piercing shriek from one of the girls startled me, and looking up I saw the entire group start madly down the road. Whether they mistook my camera for an infernal machine, I do not know, but their alarm was genuine. Some young Cossacks who were standing near laughed boisterously and pursued the girls and brought them back. When they had been made to understand what it all meant, they were highly pleased, and they stood round in all kinds of groups to be photographed. When I secured as many pictures as I wanted we continued across the square, and passed two high, heavy, wooden doors that barred the entrance of a yard. This was the home of my guide. A comely buxom girl of about seventeen, with red cheeks and eyes as blue as my guide’s, threw open the great doors, and we drove into a confusion of sledges and carts, broken hayricks, horses, cattle, pigs, and dogs. A more untidy yard I never saw. Cows and pigs adjusted themselves according to inclination. Mud, filth, straw, littered the whole place.
The yard was a small enclosure. A paling ten feet high on the side where we entered. On the right a house of stone and mud, whitewashed, with a thatched roof, an ornamented ridge pole and elaborate gables. A singular place to look upon. On the left a similar house. Immediately ahead, opposite the entrance, a crude shed with simple plank and railing stalls for horses and cattle. Two strong housewifely women stood on the porch of the house in the light, watching our entrance. Their sleeves were rolled up above the elbows, and their arms were folded—heavy, muscular arms, developed by constant toil. They greeted us kindly, even warmly, and bade us enter. Within I started in veritable surprise. The little kitchen with its Russian oven and sleeping box above for the young and the aged in one corner, a home-fashioned bed in another, was as clean as a drawing-room. Scrubbed, dusted, polished. The big brass samovar on the table shone like a door plate. Three icons were secured to the wall in one corner, next to the ceiling. Before them the perpetual light was burning, the oil cup suspended from a nail driven into the ceiling. After the filth and mud of everything in the yard, and the village, the cleanliness of the three simple rooms which made up the house was marvelous. They were models of household industry.
If it had developed that this condition was due to any special reason, or was in any way exceptional, it would not merit this notice. But our coming was not announced. In the afternoon I visited many houses in the village with my guide, who was now my host, and in nearly every one I found a similar degree of cleanliness. During the following days I visited homes in other stanitzas and cleanliness within the house, if not universal, was at least the rule. Since then I have been in so many Cossack homes that I know a typical one. Of the Terek and Kuban Cossacks my host’s house was fairly representative. In design and arrangement, in cleanliness, in the food we ate, it was neither better nor worse than the average. It was typical. Hence the minute details of my visit here may be taken as a description of an average household. In nearly every Cossack house in the Don country, as well as the Caucasus, one room is set apart as a sitting-room, or living-room. This room is left spotless. Flowers brighten the windows through the winter, and often tidy muslin draperies screen, or partially screen, the beds. Icons, elaborate according to the riches of the household, adorn the walls, one invariably across one of the corners and close to the ceiling, and others on the walls on either side of the center-piece. The ever present samovar with its cheery companionableness is always in evidence.
An hour after our arrival my host and all his family were transformed by a change of costume. The rough, home-made coat and worn shirt and the ancient cartridge-belt all disappeared, and instead he donned a cream-white tcherkaska, trimmed with blue. It was a very long garment, and hung to his ankles. This was evidently reserved for very special occasions. Indeed it could not be worn many times without becoming hopelessly soiled. He also brought out a special dagger and attached it to his belt. It bore an elaborate ornamentation in hand-worked silver of Circassian design and workmanship. Most of the arms worn by the Mountain Cossacks are obtained from their Circassian neighbors.
In the afternoon my curiosity regarding the great square was appeased. My host sent for his friend, the riding-master of the Cossack recruits, and he, desirous of doing what he could for the stranger, proposed a “jigitoffka,” or exhibition of horsemanship. At this I expressed my interest, and a messenger was sent to summon the young Cossacks left in the stanitza. They are famous horsemen, the Cossacks, and from their very cradles are trained to the saddle. The dexterity of some of the riders was quite remarkable. The first exhibition was a so-called “attack.” The riders divided into two ranks and charged each other at full gallop, separating just before they met, barely enough for the ranks to go through each other. Once two of the horsemen miscalculated and the horses came fairly together, one of them going over like a horse of wood. The riders remounted and continued their sport. After the men had got well limbered they went on to more difficult feats—leaping from the saddles, while the horses were going at full gallop, and then remounting; springing from one horse to another; riding double; one rider carrying another who was supposedly wounded. Snatching up coins from the ground, while a crowd of men, women, and children
| Outside a Cossack yard | My Cossack driver at home with his family |