DON COSSACKS. 
they live an amicable and pleasant life. Some- chap. 
.. , xiii. 
times they have public amusements, such as 
balls, and other assemblies of the same nature. 
Once they had a theatre, but it was prohibited. 
In some of their apartments we observed maho- 
gany bookcases, with glass doors; each con- 
taining a small library. They are in every 
respect entitled to praise for cleanliness, whether 
with reference to their persons or to their 
houses. There is no nation more cleanly in its 
apparel than that of the Cossachs. The dress of 
is considered as comfortable ; and their obligations to service are 
deemed well repaid by their privileges and their freedom. ‘ Free as 
A Cossack’ is a proverb we have often heard in Russia. The number 
of Cossack guards, who are all Dmisky, amounts to three regiments 
of 1000 each. The riumher employed in Persia and Caucasus I could 
not learn. In the year 1805, a corps of seventy-two regiments, of 
560 men each, inarched under Plato/, the Alaman of Tcherkask: but 
received counter orders, as it did not arrive in time for the battle of 
Austerlitz. At Austerlitz, only sir hundred Cossacks were present. The 
peasants near Austerlitz spoke of them as objects of considerable ap- 
prehension to the French cavalry ; particularly the cuirassiers, whose 
horses were more unwieldy. These Cossacks, Plato/ said, had suffered 
dreadfully, as they were for some time the only cavalry with the Rus- 
sian army, and, before the Emperor joined Kotuzof, had lost almost 
ail their horses with fatigue. During the quarrel of Paul with Eng- 
land, he assembled 45,000 Cossacks, as it was believed at Tcherkask, 
to march to India. I saw the plan was not at all unpopular with Plato/ 
and his officers. Plato/'s predeecssorovas the last Ataman who was 
>u possession of all his autieut privileges. He had often, by his own 
authority, bound men hand and foot, and thrown them into the Don. 
He was unexpectedly seized and carried off by the orders of the Em- 
press {Catherine) , and succeeded, as General of the Armies of the 
Don, by Maffei Ivamwitch Plato/, a line civil old soldier, with the great 
cordon of St. Anne." Heber's MS. Journal. 
