These sturdy Russian wanderers assimilated many adventurous elements, took up among them many Tartars and Slavs, and so to-day the Cossack type is a more or less distinct one. The total Cossack population of Russia is more than 3,000,000. Some years ago they owned nearly 146,500,000 acres of land, of which 105,000,000 acres was arable and 9,400,000 forest land. This land is held by the Cossacks in community partition as a state reward for their military service. It will be seen that the Cossack holdings amount to about fifty acres for each man, woman, and child of the people. There is an admiring, half-envious Russian catchword about being as “free and as rich as a Cossack.”
The Cossacks are the roughriders of Europe. As the cowboys of the American plains and gauchos of the pampas, the Cossacks are as intensely interesting, wild, free, plain folk who live in the saddle in the open places, and whose rough democracy is the expression of the same naïve, rudimentary culture as that of their new-world brothers in spirit. None of their members are allowed to starve, and none of them has succeeded in winning overmastering position through the laying up of great wealth.
The Cossack is favored by the state, and is a main prop of the state’s authority. To be born a Cossack is to be born a soldier. Every Cossack bears the obligation of twenty years’ military service. He enters into this service at the age of eighteen, spends three years in a preliminary Cossack division, next passes twelve years in active service, and spends his last five military years in the Cossack reserve. It is the picked men from his ranks who constitute the imperial guard, a body of the finest type of fighters, whom the czar can trust when he can trust no one else around him. These Cossack soldiers have been the greatest terror with which Russia has been able to threaten Europe. They have been the empire’s most efficient internal police, and they have marched eastward to the Pacific and southward to the zones of British influence, conquering for the czar a vast domain.
Colt with Six Feet.
A colt with six feet was born on the farm of George E. Gano, near Frankfort, Kan. One extra foot grew from the knee and the other from the ankle of the other front foot. In other respects the animal is normal.
Town of Active Old “Boys.”
Lewistown, Pa., has many aged citizens that are still in active life. Among their number are John Gantz, still laboring at ninety years of age; Obdiah Umberger, hearty[Pg 62] at ninety; Reverend Andrew Spanogle, driving an auto at ninety-two years; Thomas Kennedy, laying brick at four-score years; William N. Hoffman, getting around like a boy at seventy-nine years and just as jolly.
Shah is a Gem Plutocrat.
Should the Shah of Persia be deprived of his income, he would still be one of the richest persons in the world. He would only have to sell his ornaments, gems, and precious stones to become possessed of about $35,000,000.