than sounds of feasts and amusements. Exemplary order
reigned in every part, and a discipline elsewhere unknown.
On all sides were throngs of knights of various regi-
ments, armored cavalry dragoons, Cossacks, Tartars, and
Wallachians, in which served not only the whole Trans-
Dnieper, but volunteers, nobles from every part of the
Commonwealth. Whoever wished training in a real school
of knighthood set out for Lubni; therefore neither the
Mazur, the Lithuanian, the man of Little Poland, nor even
the Prussian, was absent from the side of the Russian. In-
fantry and artillery, or the so-called "fire people," were com-
posed, for the greater part, of picked Germans engaged for
high wages. Russians served principally in the dragoons,
Lithuanians in the Tartar regiments; the men of Little
Poland rallied most willingly to the armored regiments.
The prince did not allow his men to live in idleness; hence
there was ceaseless movement in the camp. Some regi-
ments were marching out to relieve the stanitsas and out-
posts, others were entering the capital,--day after day
drilling and manoeuvres. At times, even when there was
no trouble from Tartars, the prince undertook distant expe-
ditions into the wild steppes and wildernesses to accustom
the soldiers to campaigning, to push forward where no man
had gone before, and to spread the glory of his name. So the
past spring he had descended the left bank of the Dnieper
to Kudak, where Pan Grodzitski, in command of the garri-
son, received him as a monarch; then he advanced farther
beyond the Cataracts to Hortitsa; and at Kuchkasy he gave
orders to raise a great mound of stones as a memorial and a
sign that no other lord had gone so far along that shore.

Pan Boguslav Mashkevich - a good soldier, though
young, and also a learned man, who described that expe-
dition as well as various campaigns of the prince - told
Skshetuski marvels concerning it, which were confirmed at
once by Volodyovski, for he had taken part in the expedi-
tion. They had seen the Cataracts and wondered at them,
especially at the terrible Nenasytets, which devoured every
year a number of people, like Scylla and Charybdis of old.
Then they set out to the east along the parched steppes,
where cavalry were unable to advance on the burning
ground and they had to cover the horses' hoofs with skins.
Multitudes of reptiles and vipers were met with,--snakes
ten ells long and thick as a man's arm. On some oaks
standing apart they inscribed, in eternal memory of the