[Transcriber's Note: Bold text is surrounded by =equal signs= and
italic text is surrounded by _underscores_.]
Our Little Cossack Cousin in Siberia
THE LITTLE COUSIN SERIES
(TRADE MARK)
_Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, each_ $1.00
By LAURA E. RICHARDS, ANNA C. WINLOW, Etc.
Our Little African Cousin
Our Little Alaskan Cousin
Our Little Arabian Cousin
Our Little Argentine Cousin
Our Little Armenian Cousin
Our Little Australian Cousin
Our Little Austrian Cousin
Our Little Belgian Cousin
Our Little Bohemian Cousin
Our Little Brazilian Cousin
Our Little Bulgarian Cousin
Our Little Canadian Cousin of the Great Northwest
Our Little Canadian Cousin of the Maritime Provinces
Our Little Chilean Cousin
Our Little Chinese Cousin
Our Little Cossack Cousin
Our Little Cuban Cousin
Our Little Czecho-Slovak Cousin
Our Little Danish Cousin
Our Little Dutch Cousin
Our Little Egyptian Cousin
Our Little English Cousin
Our Little Eskimo Cousin
Our Little Finnish Cousin
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Our Little Lithuanian Cousin
Our Little Malayan (Brown) Cousin
Our Little Mexican Cousin
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Our Little Porto Rican Cousin
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Our Little South African (Boer) Cousin
Our Little Spanish Cousin
Our Little Swedish Cousin
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Our Little Welsh Cousin
Our Little West Indian Cousin
THE LITTLE COUSINS OF LONG AGO
Our Little Athenian Cousin
Our Little Carthaginian Cousin
Our Little Celtic Cousin
Our Little Crusader Cousin
Our Little Feudal Cousin
Our Little Frankish Cousin
Our Little Macedonian Cousin
Our Little Norman Cousin
Our Little Roman Cousin
Our Little Saxon Cousin
Our Little Spartan Cousin
Our Little Viking Cousin
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (Inc.)
53 Beacon Street Boston, Mass.
[Illustration: "THE HORSES RUSHED MADLY FORWARD" (_See page 111_)]
Our Little Cossack Cousin in Siberia
By
F. A. Postnikov
_Illustrated by_
Walter S. Rogers
[Illustration: SPE LABOR LEVIS]
Boston
The Page Company
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1916, by_
THE PAGE COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
First Impression, November, 1916
Second Impression, October, 1917
Third Impression, May, 1929
PREFACE
The name Cossacks is given to a large part of the Russian population.
These people are endowed with special privileges in return for specific
military service. They are of different racial origin. There are ten
separate _voiskos_, settled along the frontiers, those of the Don,
Kuban, Terek, Astrakan, Ural, Orenburg, Siberian, Semir-yechensk,
Amur, and Ussuri. These differ in many respects, though with a similar
military organization, the primary unit of which is the _stanitsa_ or
administrative village.
The historical Cossacks are those of the Don and of the Dnieper
Rivers in Russia, of whom it has been said that they were "originally
passionate lovers of freedom who went forth to find it in the
wilderness." The other Cossack divisions have been patterned after
these by the Government. In the later sections the military spirit and
the old Cossack traditions are carefully fostered.
Our book deals with the Ussuri Cossacks of Siberia, among whom Colonel
Postnikov lived for many years, both as an officer and as a civil
engineer. Although the story is written in the first person, it is in
no sense an autobiography of the author, who was born in western Russia.
Besides the country around Ussuri River, other sections of Siberia and
other classes of people than the Cossacks are described incidentally.
In the spelling of Russian names, an endeavor has been made to give
some idea of the actual pronunciation.
THE EDITOR.
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE v
I. CHILDHOOD ADVENTURE 1
II. THE FIRST DEER OF THE SEASON 9
III. THE BOOTY SECURED 17
IV. A BIG CATCH AND NEW PREPARATIONS 25
V. "THE KETA ARE COMING!" 35
VI. TIGER! TIGER! 42
VII. THE NIGHT ALARM 52
VIII. WHAT CAME FROM ATTENDING A SKODKA 57
IX. THE HUNT 67
X. THE HUNT--CONTINUED 78
XI. A JOURNEY 86
XII. A GARRISON TOWN 97
XIII. A COSSACK DRILL 105
XIV. AN EVENING VISIT 118
XV. LENT AND EASTER 129
List of Illustrations
PAGE
"THE HORSES RUSHED MADLY FORWARD" (_see page 111_)
_Frontispiece_
"RODE AT FULL GALLOP TOWARDS US" 5
"IT SEEMED TO ALL OF US THAT THEY COULD NEVER
REACH THEIR GOAL" 17
"THE GREAT BEAST . . . JUMPED OVER THE SEVEN-FOOT
FENCE" 54
ALEXIS PAVLOVITCH 72
COSSACK OFFICERS 118
Our Little Cossack Cousin in Siberia
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD ADVENTURE
No, indeed, we don't sleep through our Siberian winters, nor do we
coddle ourselves hanging around a fire,--not we Cossack[1] children.
I was brought up in Eastern Siberia, in a Russian settlement, on the
Ussuri River, about fifty or sixty miles from where it joins the Amur.
These settlements, you ought to know, were first established in the
year 1857, in order to show the neighboring Manchus where Russian
boundaries ended. The first were along the Amur, the later along the
Ussuri River. No doubt I owe much of my hardiness to the fact that
my ancestors were among the involuntary pioneers sent here by our
government.[2]
The source of the Ussuri is so far south that in the early spring there
is always danger of a sudden breaking of the ice near its mouth and a
consequent overflow. Now it is strange, but whenever we children were
forbidden to go on the river something would tempt us to do it.
"You mustn't go on the ice, Vanka," father said to me one day as he
left for Habarovsk, the nearest big city.
I remembered the command all right until I met my chum Peter. He had a
fine new sled to show me. It could go so swiftly that when he proposed
that we cross to the Manchurian side, I said quite readily, "Whee!
That'll be grand; it isn't far, and we can get back in no time!"
Peter was on the sled which I was pulling, when we neared the low
Chinese banks of the forbidden river. They were not as near as they
had seemed. It had taken us a full half hour to cross, although we
ran all the way, taking turns on the sled. Suddenly Peter called out
in a strange tone of voice: "Stop, Vanka, stop! We must run. Look!
Hongoose!"[3]
I stopped so suddenly as almost to throw Peter off of the sled, and saw
three Manchurians on the bank. They were standing near their horses who
had huge bundles slung across their backs.
"Why," I said slowly, resolved not to be frightened, "those are
merchants."
"No," said Peter, his lips trembling; "they have rifles."
"Ye-es," I reluctantly admitted; "but see their big bundles. They are
certainly traders."
"We had better run--" began Peter stubbornly, turning from me.
[Illustration: "RODE AT FULL GALLOP TOWARDS US"]
"You're nothing but a _baba_ (old woman)," I said contemptuously,
a tingle of shame covering my cheeks at the mere thought of me, a
Cossack boy, running from a Chinaman. What would my father say, or my
grandfather? Whoever heard of their doing such a thing? Yet, to my
great surprise, my knees trembled as I recalled a scene of two years
ago, when the brave Cossack Kontuska was found two miles from our
village with his head smashed open, and it had been decided that he had
been murdered by the Hongoose. Then, with a certain feeling of being
protected, there also flashed through my mind a picture of the revenge
expedition that the Cossacks had organized, and even of the Chinese
horse that had been brought later, as one of the spoils, to my own home.
As we stood thus, one of the Manchus suddenly threw the bundles from
off his horse, and, leaping on it, rode at full gallop towards us. I
caught my breath, yet instinctively picked up a huge piece of ice,
while Peter raised the sled into the air with both his hands.
It was a regular Siberian winter morning, dry and clear. The sun was
still in the east over the high Russian bank, so that it fell full
on the approaching Chinaman, as we called him. The snow flew out
like sparks of fire from under the hoofs of his horse, accompanied
by a peculiar crunching sound. When a few hundred feet from us, the
Manchurian changed the gallop to an easy trot.
"_How a ma?_"[4] he said, when he had come up, surveying us with a
broad smile.
With a deep feeling of relief something made me recognize the fact
that he had not come to slay but merely to satisfy his curiosity. I
noticed the round red circular spot on his breast as well as the red
ball on his cap. These, I knew, indicated that he was a regular army
officer. With an awkward show of friendship he turned us round and
round, touching our clothes, looking inside of our hats, and then
said something which puzzled us. But when he had twice repeated,
"_Shango-shango_," I understood that it meant that all was right, but
whether it related to our clothes or to us, I hadn't any idea.
To show that I wasn't afraid, I shook my fist at him saying, "You are
_bushango_."[5]
He understood, and smiling good-naturedly said in broken Russian: "No,
no, me shango too." Then, opening his fur coat and putting one hand
under it, he pulled out something wrapped in a small piece of rice
paper. This he opened. It contained a few cookies smelling of peanut
oil, and these he smilingly offered to us.
I leaned heavily first on one foot, then on the other, while Peter
looked sideways, unable to decide whether it would be proper to accept
such a gift from a Chinaman or not; but tempted by a desire to show it
to our parents, we took it shyly. "How interested mother will be," I
thought, quite forgetful of my disobedience. Mother, however, never got
a glimpse of the treat; every crumb was eaten long before we got half
way back.
When I reached home, I found mother in a very nervous state of mind.
Some one had spread the report of our trip across the border, and in
her anxiety she imagined all sorts of terrible things to be happening
to us.
No sooner did she see me than she put down my baby sister, who had
fallen asleep in her arms, and embraced me. A moment after she still
further relieved her wrought up feelings by giving me a sound whipping,
and still later, after I had washed myself and had had my dinner, both
she and my older sister listened with many questions to very minute
particulars of our little adventure.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: More properly Kozak or Kazak.]
[Footnote 2: In the spring of 1857, a regiment of three sotnias of
Cossacks from the Transbaikal region were chosen by lot to settle with
their families along the Amur River. Here they were divided into small
villages or _stanitsas_ (Cossack posts) about fifteen miles apart. The
land was then for the most part a wilderness. There were forests to be
cleared and marshes to be drained. In addition to doing this pioneer
work the Cossacks had to defend the frontier toward China and provide
postal communications between the Amur and the section from which they
had come.--THE EDITOR.]
[Footnote 3: Members of organized bands of Chinese robbers.]
[Footnote 4: Northern Chinese for "Hello."]
[Footnote 5: Not good.]