STEPPE OF THE COSSACKS. 
23 
Journeying onward, still on the Steppe, I saw little, as usual, 
to vary the road, though it now lay through the country of the 
Cossacks. The post-houses presented only male inhabitants; 
generally a father and his sons, who, being merely on a round of 
similar duty for a certain period, contentedly await, at each post, 
the time of being relieved ; after which they return to the bosoms 
of their families, in some one of those clusters of cottages, deno¬ 
minated Stanitzas, which are occasionally seen on the banks of 
the Don, or the Axai. So much for the inhabitants of these 
wastes, barren alike of human life, and the vegetable kingdom ; 
for, travelling werst after werst, we hardly met a living creature; 
and the only objects which, now and then, broke the tedious level 
of the plain, were groups of thistles, which may with truth be 
called the trees of the Steppe, most of them being from six to 
seven feet high. 
On reaching the country of the Don, the Tanais of the 
ancients, a very different scene presented itself. The 'rich pen¬ 
insula, on which stands the flourishing town of Taganrock, was 
before me; also the vast fertile plain through which the Don 
flows, and by its enormous mouths discharges itself into the sea 
of AzofF, at its eastern extremity. This magnificent river winds 
through the country for more than a thousand wersts, carrying 
with its stream the means and the rewards of industry. In many 
places, however, it has become so shallow, as to be scarcely 
navigable, particularly where it approaches the sea of AzofF, for 
there the sand thrown up in its bed forms daily accumulating 
obstacles. In the spring, when the snow tnaws on the hills, the 
stream deepens and widens, and floods the country to a consi¬ 
derable extent; then the old city of Tcherkask becomes a second 
Venice, the inhabitants having no other way of going from house 
