MY INTERPRETER RETURNS. 219 



Cossack hetmans of the Zaparozhian military re- 

 public, the headquarters of which were on a group 

 of islands in the Dneiper, and which we have been 

 made familiar with in " Taras Bulba," and other works 

 relating to the Cossacks. The Cossacks have disap- 

 peared, and the* wild, free steppe, which we read of in 

 connection with them in the heydey of the Zaparozhian 

 seek, is mostly under cultivation. Nothing remains to 

 distinguish the spot, as historically significant in con- 

 nection with them and their period, but the lone crosses 

 on the mound graves of their .hetmans, and names 

 rudely scratched on the rocks on the islands in the 

 Dneiper. 



They were a fighting, carousing, turbulent set of 

 horsemen, who were always at war with the Turks, 

 Poles, and Russians. Under their famous hetman 

 Mazeppa, they joined Charles XII, of Sweden, against 

 Peter the Great, on the battle-field of Poltava in 1709; 

 and the punishment inflicted on them by the Czar for 

 joining his enemies was the beginning of their end as a 

 semi-independent people. They were afterward con- 

 cerned in the great Cossack rebellion, under Pugachev, 

 in the reign of Catherine II ; in revenge for which 

 Catherine broke up their establishment on the Dneiper 

 entirely. 



On the banks of the Dneiper, opposite the islands 

 on which were the Zaparozhian permanent military 

 camps, called the seek, is now to be found as meek and 

 unpretentious a village of grain-growers as are to be 

 found in all Russia. A peculiarity of the villages 

 hereabout was the remarkably small size of the horses. 

 Compared to the wagons and huge wagon-loads of rye 



