THE LITTLE RUSSIANS AND COSSACKS. 



293 



and bagnios. To tlieso plundering hordes Christian bands were opposed, which 

 afterwards became famous under the name of Cossacks. They consisted chiefly of 

 the independent elements in the border-lands between the rival Slav and Moslem 

 populations, of the Dnieper fishermen, and of adventurers accompanying the trading 

 caravans of the steppes. Under the influence of the chivalrous ideas prevailing in 

 the West, the Polish and Lithuano-Russian nobles converted these Cossacks 

 into a sort of "Ukranian knights" (ri/fzarstvo Ukrayinne). Some of their first 

 rallying-points were Kanev and Chigirin, in Kiyovia, though Cherkasi soon 

 became the chief centre of the Lower Cossacks about the Middle Dnieper, and the 

 term Cherkasi is even still applied to the Little Eussians by tlieir Great Russian 



Fig. 148. — Khortitza. 



Scale 1 : 200,000. 



SP-^O' 



32^50 



L of H 



47 



^"^ V Cot, BAiPwa1<l\ 



55 



û5°IO L ofb 



BniTO-ws- Û Wells. 



2 Miles. 



neighbours. Towards the close of the sixteenth century they established them- 

 selves farther south, in the Dnieper islands below the confluence of the Samara, 

 about the great falls, whence their Russian name of Zaporog {Za poroj'fsi), or 

 "People beyond the Falls." Li this well-protected spot they soon became the 

 terror of the Moslem marauders, and attracted multitudes of the peasantry, 

 escaping from serfdom in Poland and Lithuania, and raising their numbers in the 

 seventeenth century to " 120,000 armed warriors" (Beauiilan). They crossed the 

 Black Sea to burn Sinope, in Asia Minor, and in 1624 one of their expeditions 

 sacked the suburbs of Constantinople. Li the sixteenth century the central 

 sitch, or stronghold, was in the island of Khortitza, amidst the Dnieper rapids. 



