Nor are they without their sports while the mamaUga is simmering away in the sociable kettle. A day rarely passes away without a wolfchase ; a hare may frequently be run do^vn, and if the traps are attended to, many a piece of feathered game may be made to vary the monotony of their daily bill of fare. Nor are they without frequent guests to share the produce of their chase. Peasants from Podolia in search of work, soldiers on furlough, deserters from the army, and runaway serfs from the interior of Russia, are constantly wandering about the steppe ; and the tshabawn, with that ready hospitality seldom found wanting in any nomadic tribe, makes every stranger welcome to his frugal meal. The poor fugitive may pass the night securely under shelter of the tshabawn's dogs, whom no iminvited stranger ever ventures to approach, and in the morning the wanderer will seldom be dismissed without some fresh token of the kindness of his host.
When the evening meal is done, if the weather is fine, and no wolf ia view, men and dogs are sure to pass an hour or two stretched before their blazing fire of dry reeds and grass. There the tshabav/ns confer on the pohtics of the steppe, or discuss the relative merits of the grazing-grounds to which it will be most expedient to direct their next march. The council ended, the arrangements for the night remain to be made. The waggon is the lodging of the principal tshabawn, the ataman of the ottara, as he is frequently called, and here also the guests of the encampment are usually accommodated. The other tshabawns drive the sheep as closely together as possible, and then form, with their dogs, a complete circle round the flock. Each man throws his furs, that serve him for mattress and coverlet, on the spot assigned to him, and between every two beds the same measured interval occurs. The next thing is to make the beds for the dogs. This is soon done. So many dogs as there are, so many rugs are provided ; and as each dog knows his own rug by the smell, all that is necessary is to lay the rug on the spot where it is \vished the dog should take up his station for the night, and a complete cordon sanitaire is formed. A camp thus fortified may generally defy the wolf; still there are few nights pass away without an alarm, for the wolves will hover for many successive days and nights around a flock, in the hope of espying,
sooner or later, an unguarded point, or of taking advantage of the panic into which the ottara is sometimes thrown by a sudden storm.
The wide unbounded extent of the steppe makes almost every thing wild that dwells there, and as the horse assumes in a short time an air of wlldness, so also the ox that ranges over the grassy ocean, is a very different kind of animal from the ox attached to a well ordered farm. On the steppe also you hear of house oxen and steppe oxen. The former are attached to the household, work for their owner, and graze only near his house.
The breed of cows that prevails on the steppe gives but little milk. The German colonists have, in consequence, introduced cattle from Germany, and the same has been done by many of the principal landowners. The cattle of foreign breed, however, are still insignificant in numbers compared to the original race. This race, which extends over Bessarabia, New Russia, Little Russia, Podolia, Ukraine, and a part of Moldavia, is large, long-legged, with long horns, and always of a white or silvergray colour, differing in many points from the Polish, the Himgarian, or the Tartar breeds. It is from these herds of the steppe, that Russia derives her chief supply of tallow, in which articles she carries on so extensive a trade with all parts of the world. The markets of St. Petersbm-g and Moscow also are supplied with beef, almost entirely from the herds on the steppe.
Such a herd of wild oxen is called a Tshereda, and the herdsman who has the charge of it is called a Tsherednik. Such a tshereda consists of 100 to 800 head of cattle, and is a source of more profit to its owner than a taboon, inasmuch as an ox, for the sake of his tallow, wiU always command a purchaser more readily than a wild, vicious, unbroken horse.
In many respects the life of a tsheredenik bears a great resemblance to that of a tabuntshik. In summer the cattle are out in the plain, and in winter they are scantily protected by their airy sheds. The bulls and cows that are kept for breeding are never sold, but live and die on the steppe ; but the young beasts are sold to the prekashtshiks, the commissioners of the St. Petersburg and Moscow cattle-dealers, or the great tallow-boiling establishments. These men are continually travelling about from herd to herd, and as soon as they have bought a sufficient number of oxen send them off to their places of destination, under the care of their fjontshiks, or drivers.