Beyond Nakhitchevane, several valleys abutting on the basin of the Don, isolated hamlets, and a few stanitzas, diversify the country, and make one forget the sterility of the steppes, that spread out their gray and scarcely undulating surface to the westward. The banks of the Don which are seldom out of sight, are enlivened by clumps of trees, fishermen's huts, and herds of horses that seek there a fresher pasture than the desert affords. But except these animals, we saw not a single living creature; the heat was so intense, and the country is still so little inhabited, that most of the fields appeared to us in a state of wild nature. Nothing around us indicated the presence of man. In the country of the Don Cossacks, as elsewhere throughout Russia, the post road is barely marked out by two ditches so called, which you often drive over without perceiving them, and by distance posts two or three yards high. This is all the outlay the government chooses to incur for the imperial post roads leading to the principal towns of the empire.
Before arriving in Novo Tcherkask, the capital of the Cossacks, we encountered another wandering party at least as curious as our gipsies.
Imagine our surprise when having passed through a wide ravine, which for a long while shut in the road, we saw defiling over the steppes a countless string of small cars, escorted by I know not how many hundreds of women. We advanced, puzzled and curious to the last degree; and the more we gazed the more the numbers of these women seemed to multiply. They were everywhere, in the cars, on the road, and over the steppes; it was like a swarm of locusts suddenly dropped from the sky. Most of them walked barefoot, holding their shoes in one hand, and with the other picking up fragments of wood and straw, for what purpose we could not conceive. Their carts were just like barrels with two openings, and were driven by themselves, for there was not the shadow of a beard among them. They were all returning, as they told us, from the catacombs of Kiev, to which they had been making a pilgrimage. Among them I remarked some old women who had scarcely a breath of life remaining. They seemed dreadfully fatigued, but at the same time very well pleased with their pious expedition.
Further on we met another procession of the same kind, which had already arranged its encampment for the night. Two fires, fed with those little chips of wood that had so much perplexed us, served to prepare the evening meal. All the pilgrims were busy, and formed the most varied groups. Some were fetching water in earthen pitchers, which they carried on their heads; others were kneeling devoutly, making the sign of the cross; and the genuflexions so frequent among the Russians and Cossacks; the oldest were feeding the fire and telling stories. It was an indescribable scene of bustle and noise, displaying a variety of the most picturesque attitudes and physiognomies.
All the women were of Cossack race. There is much more of pious fervour in this nation than in the Muscovites. A slight difference of text between the Bibles of the two people has occasioned a very great one in their religious sentiments. The Cossacks call themselves the true believers, and abstain on religious grounds from the pipe, and from many other things which the Muscovites allow themselves without scruple. The natural integrity of their character is rarely sullied by hypocrisy. They love and believe with equal ardour and sincerity.
At the extremity of a plateau, on the verge of a wide and deep valley, the town of Novo Tcherkask suddenly appeared to us, rising in an amphitheatre, and embracing in its huge extent several hills, the broad slopes of which descend to the bottom of the valley. All the towns we had previously seen, and which had shocked us by the extravagant breadth of their streets and their dearth of houses, were nothing in comparison with what now met our eyes. Seen from the point where we then stood, the whole town was like an enormous chess board, with the lines formed by avenues broader than the Place du Carousel in Paris. These lines, bordered at intervals by a few shabby dwellings, and separated from each other by open spaces in which whole regiments might manoeuvre quite at their ease, some churches, and a triumphal arch erected in 1815 in honour of Alexander, are the only salient points of this desert which they call a capital, and the superficial dimensions of which are, without exaggeration, as great as those of Paris.