The Don-Cossacks enjoy a certain kind of liberty and independence; they have a hetman atiaman or chief, nominated by the Emperor of Russia; and to this chief they yield an obedience more or less willing and implicit; in general, they are commanded only by Cossack officers, who take equal rank in the Russian army. They have a separate war administration of their own; although they are compelled to furnish a stated number of recruits who serve in a manner for life, inasmuch as they are rarely discharged before attaining sixty years of age: on the whole, their condition is happier than that of the rest of the Russian population. They belong to the Greek-Russian church. The existence of this small republic of the Don, in the very heart of the most despotic and most extensive empire in the world, appears to constitute a problem, the solution of which is not as yet definitively known, and the ultimate solution of which yet remains to be ascertained. \ As for the second branch of the Cossack race, the V / remnants, so to speak, of which, namely, Czarnoncy, still exist, and who have not hitherto lost in any-material degree the distinctive mark of their origin, a wide and striking difference is observable as to habits, mode of Ufe, customs, and social peculiarities between them and the former class, without however impairing the general mutual resemblance which must ever continue to characterize the two nations.
The south-eastern districts of Poland, the Ukraine, and Podolia, exposed in former times to the incursions of barbarian hordes, were the scenes of eternal strife and bloodshed; but as the soil of this part of Poland is the richest and most productive in all Europe, these provinces, although constantly ravaged, and frequently depopulated, became speedily repeopled, and regained their previous state of prosperity; and this the more easily, as these countries principally consist of extensive fields, capable of yielding support to a population of almost unlimited numbers. In order to impose an efficient check to the incursions of the Tatars, the WaUachians, and the Kussians, the kings of Poland made grants of vast tracts of land on the banks of the Dnieper to the Polish nobles, on condition of the latter providing for their defence at their own expense and charges; an arrangement which compelled these seignorial lords constantly to maintain a certain number of armed retainers in their pay, and to construct a line of strongholds, or fortified habitations, proof against the danger of a sudden attack. The soldiers. in their pay were, usually, either the descendants of ancient warriors, or of the primitive inhabitants of the Ukraine."
It is towards the year 1506, after the I'atar wars, and in the time of Sigismund I., king of Poland, that historians mention, for the first time, a peculiar race of men as inhabiting both banks of the Dnieper (then nominally appertaining to Poland), as likewise the large and numerous islands formed by the course of that river below the cataracts. They are described as half-savages, living from the produce of the chase, of their fisheries, and of their excursions both by sea and land into Turkey; their numbers were daily increasing by the arrival amongst them of deserters, fugitives, and adventurers of all kinds and from all countries, seeking a refuge from the vengeance of their respectiye laws, and anxious to make war on their own account; and as the word Kozah, according to the Tatar translation of it, signifies a man slightly armed, a man who belongs or owes allegiance to no one, a man who has no fixed residence, who despises the conventional forms of society, and is ever ready to adventure on break-neck enterprises, the class of men in question then received for the first time in Poland the denomination of Kosaques; and as za signifies beyond, and porog cataract, in the Polish language, they were also called " Kosaques beyond the Cataracts," Zaporogscy Kozacy, although strictly speaking this term is applicable only to the Cossacks actually inhabiting the islands of the Dnieper, known under the designation of Zaporogues.
These latter formed afterwards a kind of aristocracy amongst the Cossacks, and must not be confounded with the agricultural Cossacks: they were, however, the nucleus of the race of Cossacks of the Ukraine, and ultimately separated themselves from the main body, in order to form a confraternity apart; retaining, up to the last moment of their existence, the primitive distinctive mark of their origin. We shall, subsequently, have again to recur to this subject, when explaining the word Zaporogue.