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CHAPTER III.

A FEW days later the lieutenant, with his escort pressed
forward briskly in the direction of Lubni. After the pas-
sage of the Dnieper, they travelled by a broad steppe road
which united Chigirin with Lubni, passing through Juki,
Semi Mogil, and Khorol. A similar road joined Lubni with
Kieff. In times past, before the campaign of the hetman
Jolkyevski against Solonitsa, these roads were not in ex-
istence. People travelled to Kieff from Lubni by the desert
and the steppe; the way to Chigirin was by water, with
return by land through Khorol. In general the country
beyond the Dnieper, the ancient land of the Polovtsi, was
wild, scarcely more inhabited than the Wilderness, fre-
quently visited by the Tartars and. exposed to Zaporojian
bands.

On the banks of the Sula immense forests, which had
never been touched by the foot of man, gave forth their
voices; and in places also on the low shores of the Sula,
the Ruda, Sleporod, Korovai, Orjavets, Psel, and other
greater and smaller rivers and streams, marshes were
formed, partly grown over with dense thickets and pine
forests, and partly open in the form of meadows. In these
pine woods and morasses wild beasts of every kind found
commodious refuge; and in the deepest forest gloom lived
in countless multitudes the bearded aurochs, bears, with
wild boars, and near them wolves, lynxes, martens, deer,
and wild goats. In the swamps and arms of rivers beavers
built their dams. There were stories current among the
Zaporojians that of these beavers were some a century old
and white as snow from age.

On the elevated dry steppes roamed herds of wild horses,
with shaggy foreheads and bloodshot eyes. The rivers
were swarming with fish and water-fowl. It was a won-
derful land, half asleep, but bearing traces of the former
activity of man. It was everywhere filled with the rains
of towns of previous generations; Lubni and Khorol were
raised from such ruins as these. Everywhere the country
was full of grave-mounds, ancient and modern, covered al-
ready with a growth of pine. Here, as in the Wilderness,

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