of ordinary occurrence, and known only to the eagles,
hawks, ravens, and beasts of the plain. For the Wil-
derness was of this character at that period. The last
traces of settled life ended on the way to the south, at
no great distance beyond Chigirin on the side of the Dnie-
per, and on the side of the Dniester not far from Uman;
then forward to the bays and sea there was nothing but
steppe after steppe, hemmed in by the two rivers as by
a frame. At the bend of the Dnieper in the lower country
beyond the Cataracts Cossack life was seething, but in the
open plains no man dwelt; only along the shores were
nestled here and there little fields, like islands in the sea.
The land belonged in name to Poland, but it was an empty
land, in which the Commonwealth permitted the Tartars to
graze their herds; but since the Cossacks prevented this
frequently, the field of pasture was a field of battle too.

How many struggles were fought in that region, how
many people had laid down their lives there, no man had
counted, no man remembered. Eagles, falcons, and ravens
alone saw these; and whoever from a distance heard the
sound of wings and the call of ravens, whoever beheld
the whirl of birds circling over one place, knew that
corpses or unburied bones were lying beneath. Men were
hunted in the grass as wolves or wild goats. All who
wished, engaged in this hunt. Fugitives from the law
defended themselves in the wild steppes. The armed
herdsman guarded his flock, the warrior sought adventure,
the robber plunder, the Cossack a Tartar, the Tartar a
Cossack. It happened that whole bands guarded herds
from troops of robbers. The steppe was both empty and
filled, quiet and terrible, peaceable and full of ambushes;
wild by reason of its wild plains, but wild, too, from the
wild spirit of men.

At times a great war filled it. Then there flowed over it
like waves Tartar chambuls, Cossack regiments, Polish or
Wallachian companies. In the night-time the neighing of
horses answered the howling of wolves, the voices of drums
and brazen trumpets flew on to the island of Ovid and the
sea, and along the black trail of Kutchman there seemed an
inundation of men. The boundaries of the Commonwealth
were guarded from Kamenyets to the Dnieper by outposts
and stanitsas; and when the roads were about to swarm
with people, it was known especially by the countless flocks
of birds which, frightened by the Tartars, flew onward to the