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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



to say that all visitors to Cossack abodes repre- 

 sent them as having long been a highly-civilized 

 and cultured people, living under a government of 

 an almost ideally perfect democratic form, and 

 having at several periods of their history exhib- 

 ited an amount of maritime enterprise and daring 

 not much inferior to that of the early Scandina- 

 vian pirates whose deeds at sea are so universal- 

 ly celebrated. If we examine the reports made 

 after personal observation by visitors of our own 

 and other foreign nations during the last and the 

 present centuries, we shall see how unjust is the 

 reputation which the Cossacks have acquired, and 

 how distinctly it can be traced to the malevolent 

 invention of their ungrateful Muscovite fellow- 

 subjects. 



In speaking of the Cossacks it is not easy to 

 use a satisfactory collective appellation. They are 

 not, strictly speaking, a race, a people, or a com- 

 munity. Ethnologically they spring from a mixt- 

 ure of races ; politically they are subjects of the 

 Russian czars, whose language they speak, and 

 they consist, not of one, but of several distinct 

 communities. Every one has heard of the Don 

 Cossacks, the Orenburg Cossacks, the Cossacks 

 of the Ukraine, etc., the prefix always indicating 

 some special, and often altogether independent, 

 division. These divisions are sometimes as eth- 

 nically distinct as the territories they occupy are 

 geographically remote, allowance being made for 

 the predominant Slavonic element present in all 

 instances. The origin of the Cossacks has been 

 a matter of some discussion. Klaproth held that 

 it had " been by no means satisfactorily solved." 

 And though most writers now agree in the ac- 

 count they give of it, their agreement to a great 

 extent results in what is in effect a begging of the 

 question. A recent German writer, Von Drygal- 

 ski, has had the courage to admit that " whence 

 they came, and how in general the name Cossack 

 arose, no historian has yet been able convincingly 

 to explain." The various explanations and deri- 

 vations of their name would go a long way toward 

 making up, by themselves, a treatise on etymology. 

 The historian Karamsin understands the word 

 " Cossack " as meaning a volunteer or free parti- 

 san. Klaproth refused to admit that it could be 

 derived from the Turco-Tartar word Ckazack, 

 signifying a robber, or even from a synonym 

 meaning a sledge. " Some say it is a Tartar 

 word," writes Clarke, the learned traveler of the 

 beginning of this century, whom many subsequent 

 visitors to Russia have copied without troubling 

 themselves to acknowledge it, " some say it is a 

 Tartar word meaning an armed man ; others, a 



rover; others, that the Poles called them Cos- 

 sacks from a word in their language signifying 

 goat." This he stigmatizes as a " wild pursuit 

 of etymology ; " an opinion in which most people 

 will be disposed to agree with him. Mr. Oliphant, 

 who believes the Don Cossacks to be " the most 

 compound beings in the universe," says that he 

 has met with derivations of their name " from 

 words in other languages which signify respec- 

 tively an armed man, a sabre, a rover, a goat, a 

 promontory, a coat, a cassock, and a district in 

 Circassia." The most recent attempt to settle its 

 etymology has been made by a German writer, 

 who tells us that " it is known that in Western 

 Asia there exists an extraordinarily numerous 

 and wide-spread nomad people of Tartar origin, 

 the so-called Kirgis-Kaisaks, who in reality dis- 

 tinguish themselves from the Kirgis proper, or 

 Kara-Kirgis, and for a century have given them- 

 selves the name of Cossacks — in German, Vaga- 

 bund." This word, it is probable, has found its 

 way from Asia into Europe, and is used to de- 

 note people of similar habits to the Kirgis tribe 

 above mentioned. Grekov, a Russian, declares 

 for this hypothesis, and observes that in Russia 

 it was customary to designate homeless wanderers 

 by the same term. 



The progress of philology will probably sooner 

 or later settle this etymological puzzle ; but the 

 question of the origin of the people by whom the 

 name is borne will not prove quite so easy of so- 

 lution. Clarke says that the Cossacks have been 

 known as a distinct people for nearly a thousand 

 years. Constantine Porphyrogenitus had written, 

 "Beyond the Papagian country is the country 

 called Casackia, but beyond the Cossacks are the 

 summits of the Caucasus." Jonas Hanway, who 

 traveled in the reign of George II., regarded them 

 as " a species of Tartars." Clarke opposes to this 

 the view of the German Storch, who insisted 

 that they were of Russian origin ; and his own 

 opinion is that they were a " mixture of various 

 nations, principally Circassians, Malo-Russians, 

 and Russians, but also of Tartars, Poles, Greeks, 

 Turks, Calmucks, and Armenians." Klaproth 

 believed that the Cossacks of Little Russia, whose 

 history could be traced back only to 1340, were 

 the most ancient. After the reduction of Red 

 Russia by the Poles, he says, it is " probable that 

 many Russians emigrated from that country to 

 seek an asylum lower down the Dnieper, where 

 they intermingled with the Tartars and Tscher- 

 kessians." The invasion of Russia by the Tar- 

 tars in the fifteenth century, and the fall of Kiev, 

 increased the number of these refugees. In blend- 



