The autumn again is a season of enjoyment. The plains are anew covered with green, the springs yield once more an abundant supply of water, and the horses gather strength at this period of abundance, to prepare themselves for the sufferings and privations of winter. In autumn, for the first time in the year, the taboon is called on to work, but the work is not much more severe than the exertions which the restless creatures are daily imposing upon themselves, while romping and rioting about on the Steppe. The work in question is the thrashing of the corn.
A thrashing-floor, of several hundred yards square, is made, by cutting away the turf, and beating the ground into a hard, solid surface. The whole is enclosed by a railing, with a gate to let the horses in and out. On such a floor, supposing the taboon to consist of a thousand horses, five hundred score of sheaves will be laid down at once. The taboon is then formed into two divisions, and five hundred steeds are driven into the enclosure, stallions, mares, foals, and all, for when in, the more riotous they are the better the work will be done. The gate is closed, and then begins a ball of which it requires a lively imagination to conceive a picture. The drivers act as musicians, and their formidable harabnicks are the fiddles that keep up the dance without intermission.
The horses terrified, partly by the crackling straw under their feet, and partly by the incessant cracking of the whip over their heads, dart half frantic from one extremity to the other of their temporary prison. Millions of grains are flying about in the air, and the labourers without have enough to do to toss back the sheaves that are flung over the railing by the prancing, hard working thrashers within. This continues for about an hour. The horses are then let put, the corn turned, and the same performance repeated three times before noon. By that time a thousand sheffel of corn have been thrashed, after a fashion that looks more like a holiday diversion, than a hard day’s work; but in such ah operation, more corn is lost than is gained on many large farms in Germany.
CHAPTER VII
THE COSSACKS—THE CIRCASSIANS—THE MAMELUKES.
UNDER the name of Cossacks of the Bug, of the Don, of the Ural, of Orenburg, of Astrakhan—Cossacks of the Black Sea—and Siberian Cossacks—this hardy and spirited race is disseminated over all the southern portions of European and Asiatic Russia. Every man of them, between the age of fifteen and fifty, is a soldier, eager for war, and ready to engage in it, no matter at what extremity of the earth. The Russian empire is undoubtedly indebted to these tribes for the vast extension of its dominion; and Europe has to thank them for the preservation of her civilization, when threatened by the ruthless Tartar invaders. Nature seems to have fitted the Cossack to become the conqueror of the Tribes of the Desert by endowments as peculiar as those which enable the camel to traverse it. Distance and climate vanish before his wandering and adventurous spirit: the regions where the burning sun destroys all life and vegetation, or those where “the frost burns frore and cold produces the effect of fire,” have never stayed his purpose, or arrested his onward march. With singular versatility he adapts himself to all outward circumstances; as occasion requires, he combines with his warlike profession the labours of the husbandman, the fisher, the herdsman, and the trader, and readily abandons one character to adopt the other whenever it may be needful. It is not only at the point of the lance he has subdued the wild inhabitants of so large a portion of the globe; but by his wonderful facility of adapting himself to the customs of the wilderness, and establishing a commercial intercourse with its fiercest hordes. It required a mixture of the reckless and wandering spirit of the sons of Ishmael, with the intense love of gain peculiar to the children of Israel, both of which his character exhibits, to form the wandering merchant, who could trade and defend his merchandise, and who would penetrate, to effect his purpose, a thousand miles away from his station, either towards the hyperborean regions, or through the parched plains of the naked Steppes.
A Russian Tsar might speedily collect from amongst this people a larger and more formidable force of cavalry than the whole of united Europe could bring together; and in all the regular cavalry of the Russian line, there never was a horseman, however laboriously drilled, whom the untutored Cossack would not charge, wheel round, and overcome, though armed cap-a-pie, with his mere nagaica, or whip. The Cossacks are invaluable as light cavalry; they are the most daring and intelligent foragers in the world, who take care of themselves by instinct, and without taxing the foresight or the ingenuity of the general. Spreading on every side, they strike terror into the neighbourhood, and render it almost impossible to surprise a Russian force. Brought up amongst turbulent tribes, the vigilant Cossack never exposes himself to be taken unawares, as all other light troops do, when scattered abroad; and thus he can act even in the midst of a guerilla peasantry.