The Cossacks | Page 9

deprive him of all he possesses. Besides, the
continuous performance of man's heavy work and the responsibilities
entrusted to her have endowed the Grebensk women with a peculiarly
independent masculine character and have remarkably developed their
physical powers, common sense, resolution, and stability. The women
are in most cases stronger, more intelligent, more developed, and
handsomer than the men. A striking feature of a Grebensk woman's
beauty is the combination of the purest Circassian type of face with the
broad and powerful build of Northern women. Cossack women wear
the Circassian dress-- a Tartar smock, beshmet, and soft slippers--but
they tie their kerchiefs round their heads in the Russian fashion.
Smartness, cleanliness and elegance in dress and in the arrangement of
their huts, are with them a custom and a necessity. In their relations
with men the women, and especially the unmarried girls, enjoy perfect
freedom.
Novomlinsk village was considered the very heart of Grebensk
Cossackdom. In it more than elsewhere the customs of the old
Grebensk population have been preserved, and its women have from
time immemorial been renowned all over the Caucasus for their beauty.
A Cossack's livelihood is derived from vineyards, fruit- gardens, water
melon and pumpkin plantations, from fishing, hunting, maize and
millet growing, and from war plunder. Novomlinsk village lies about
two and a half miles away from the Terek, from which it is separated
by a dense forest. On one side of the road which runs through the
village is the river; on the other, green vineyards and orchards, beyond

which are seen the driftsands of the Nogay Steppe. The village is
surrounded by earth-banks and prickly bramble hedges, and is entered
by tall gates hung between posts and covered with little reed-thatched
roofs. Beside them on a wooden gun-carriage stands an unwieldy
cannon captured by the Cossacks at some time or other, and which has
not been fired for a hundred years. A uniformed Cossack sentinel with
dagger and gun sometimes stands, and sometimes does not stand, on
guard beside the gates, and sometimes presents arms to a passing
officer and sometimes does not. Below the roof of the gateway is
written in black letters on a white board: 'Houses 266: male inhabitants
897: female 1012.' The Cossacks' houses are all raised on pillars two
and a half feet from the ground. They are carefully thatched with reeds
and have large carved gables. If not new they are at least all straight
and clean, with high porches of different shapes; and they are not built
close together but have ample space around them, and are all
picturesquely placed along broad streets and lanes. In front of the large
bright windows of many of the houses, beyond the kitchen gardens,
dark green poplars and acacias with their delicate pale verdure and
scented white blossoms overtop the houses, and beside them grow
flaunting yellow sunflowers, creepers, and grape vines. In the broad
open square are three shops where drapery, sunflower and pumpkin
seeds, locust beans and gingerbreads are sold; and surrounded by a tall
fence, loftier and larger than the other houses, stands the Regimental
Commander's dwelling with its casement windows, behind a row of tall
poplars. Few people are to be seen in the streets of the village on
weekdays, especially in summer. The young men are on duty in the
cordons or on military expeditions; the old ones are fishing or helping
the women in the orchards and gardens. Only the very old, the sick, and
the children, remain at home.


Chapter V
It was one of those wonderful evenings that occur only in the Caucasus.
The sun had sunk behind the mountains but it was still light. The

evening glow had spread over a third of the sky, and against its
brilliancy the dull white immensity of the mountains was sharply
defined. The air was rarefied, motionless, and full of sound. The
shadow of the mountains reached for several miles over the steppe. The
steppe, the opposite side of the river, and the roads, were all deserted. If
very occasionally mounted men appeared, the Cossacks in the cordon
and the Chechens in their aouls (villages) watched them with surprised
curiosity and tried to guess who those questionable men could be. At
nightfall people from fear of one another flock to their dwellings, and
only birds and beasts fearless of man prowl in those deserted spaces.
Talking merrily, the women who have been tying up the vines hurry
away from the gardens before sunset. The vineyards, like all the
surrounding district, are deserted, but the villages become very
animated at that time of the evening. From all sides, walking, riding, or
driving in their creaking carts, people move towards the village. Girls
with their smocks tucked up and twigs in their hands run