EASTERN STEPPE.
The main attempt to colonize any portion of the Eastern Steppe with
Christians was the planting of a line of Kozak camps in the countries
lying between the Volga and the Don--a region in which the soil is
less parched, the sand less deep, the herbage less scanty, than
elsewhere in these sterile plains. But even in this favored region the
fight for life is so hard and constant, that these Kozak colonists
hail with joy the bugles that call them to arm and mount for a distant
raid.
A wide and windy plain, sooty in color, level to the sight, with thin
brown moss, and withered weeds; a herd of half-wild horses here and
there; a Kalmuk rider dashing through a cloud of dust; a stray camel;
a wagon drawn by oxen, ploughing heavily in the mud and marl; a
hollow, dark and amber, in which lies a gypsy village; caravans of
carts carrying hay and melons; a flock of sheep, watched by a Kozak
lad attired in a fur cap, a skin capote, and enormous boots; a
windmill on a lonely ridge; a mighty arch of sky overhead, shot with
long lines of green and crimson light--such is an evening picture of
the Eastern Steppe.
Time out of mind two hostile forces have been flowing from the deserts
of Central Asia through this Eastern Steppe towards the fertile
districts watered by the Don. These forces are the Turkish and
Mongolian tribes. A cloud hangs over the earlier movements of these
tribes; but when the invaders come under European ken, they are seen
to be divided by differences of type and creed. The Turkish races rank
among the handsomest on earth, the Mongolian races rank among the
ugliest on earth. The Turkish tribes are children of Mohammed, the
Mongolian tribes are children of Buddha. The first are a settled
people, living in towns, and tilling the soil; the second a nomadic
people, dwelling in tents, and roving from plain to plain with their
flocks and herds.
The Moslem hordes which crossed the Ural River settled on the steppe,
built cities on the Volga and the Donets, pushed their conquests up to
the gates of Kief. The Buddhistic hordes which fought under Batu Khan
destroyed this earlier work; but when they settled on the steppe, and
married Moslem women, many of these heirs of Batu Khan embraced the
religion of their wives, and helped the True Believers to erect such
cities in their rear as Khiva, Bokhara, Samarcand, and Balkh, which
afterwards became the strongholds of their faith. Yet most of the
Mongol princes held by their ancient creed, and all the new-comers
from their country added to their strength on this Eastern Steppe.
These Turks and Mongols, enemies in Asia, kept up their feuds in
Europe; and the early Moslem settlers in these plains were sorely
pressed by their Buddhistic rulers, until the arrival of Timour Beg
restored the Crescent to its old supremacy on the Eastern Steppe.
This feud between Buddha and Mohammed led in these countries to the
final triumphs of the Cross.
The plains on which they fought for twenty generations are even now
tented and cropped by Asiatic tribes--Kalmuks, Kirghiz, Nogays,
Gypsies. The Kalmuks are Buddhists, the Kirghiz and Nogays are Moslem,
the Gypsies are simply Gypsies.
The Kalmuks, a pastoral and warlike people, never yet confined in
houses, are the true proprietors of the steppe. But they have given it
up, at least in part; for in the reign of Empress Catharine, five
hundred thousand wanderers crossed the Ural River, never to come back.
The Kirghiz, Turkomans, and Nogays came in and occupied their lands.
The Kalmuks who remain in the country live in corrals (temporary
camps), formed by raising a number of lodges near each other, round
the tent of their high-priest. A Kalmuk lodge is a frame of poles set
up in the form of a ring, tented at the top, and hung with coarse
brown cloth. Inside, the ground is covered with skins and furs, on
which the inmates lounge and sleep. Ten, twenty, fifty persons of all
ages live under a common roof. A savage is not afraid of crowding;
least of all when he lies down at night. Crowds comfort him and keep
him warm. A flock of sheep, a string of camels, and a herd of horses,
browse around the corral; for horses, sheep, and camels are the only
wealth of tribes who plant no tree, who build no house, who sow no
field. Flat in feature, bronze in color, bony in frame, the Kalmuk is
one of the ugliest types of living men, though he is said to produce,
by mixture with the more flexible and feminine Hindoo, the splendid
face and figure of the Circassian chief.
The Kalmuk, as a Buddhist, keeping to his ancient Mongol traditions,
and worshipping the Dalai-Lama, eats bull beef but slightly cooked,
and drinks mare's milk in his favorite forms of kumis and spirit; the
first being milk fermented only, the second milk fermented and
distilled. Like all his race, he will steal a cow, a camel, or a
horse, from either friend or foe, whenever he finds his chance. He
owes no allegiance, he knows no law. Some formal acts of obedience are
expected from him; such as paying his taxes, and supplying his tale of
men for the ranks; but these payments and supplies are nominal only,
save in districts where the rover has settled down under Kozak rule.
These wild men come and go as they list, roving with their sheep and
camels from the wall of China to the countries watered by the Don.
They come in hordes, and go in armies. In the reign of Michael
Romanoff fifty thousand Kalmuks poured along the Eastern Steppe; and
these unwelcome guests were afterwards strengthened by a second horde
of ten thousand tents. These Kalmuks treated with Peter the Great as
an independent power, and for several generations they paid no tribute
to the crown except by furnishing cavalry in time of war. Another
horde of ten thousand tents arrived. Their prince, Ubasha, led an army
of thirty thousand horsemen towards the Danube against the Turks, whom
they hated as only Asiatics hate hereditary foes. Yet, on the Empress
Catharine trying to place the hordes under rule and law, the same
Ubasha led his tribes--five hundred thousand souls, with countless
herds of cattle, camels, and horses--back from the Eastern Steppe
across the Ural River into Asia; stripping whole provinces of their
wealth, producing famine in the towns, and robbing the empire of her
most powerful arm. Hurt in his pride by some light word from the
imperial lips, the prince proposed to carry off all his people,
leaving not a soul behind; but fifteen thousand tents were left,
because the winter came down late, and the Volga ice was thin. The
children of these laggers are the men you meet on the plains, surprise
at their religious rites, and sup with in their homely tents. Steps
have been often taken to reclaim and fix these rovers, but with little
or no effect. Some families have joined the Kozaks, come under law,
and even embraced the cross; but the vast majority cling to their wild
life, their Asiatic dress, and their Buddhistic creed.
The upper classes are called White (literally, white bones), the lower
classes Black, just as in Asiatic fashion the Russian nobles are
called White, while the peasants are called Black.
The Kirghiz are of Turkish origin, and speak the Uzbek idiom of their
race. Divided into three branches, called the Great Horde, the Middle
Horde, and the Little Horde, they roam over, if they do not own, the
steppes and deserts lying between the Volga and Lake Balkash. Much of
this tract is sandy waste, with dots of herbage here and there, and
most of it lies beyond the Russian lines. Within these lines some
order may be kept; beyond them, in what is called the Independent
Steppe, the Kirghiz devilry finds an open field. These children of the
desert plunder friend and foe, not only lifting cattle and robbing
caravans, but stealing men and women to sell as slaves. All through
these deserts, from Fort Aralsk to Daman-i-koh, the slave-trade is in
vogue; the Kirghiz bandits keeping the markets of Khiva and Bokhara
well supplied with boys and girls for sale. Nor is the traffic likely
to decline until the flag of some civilized people floats from the
Tower of Timour Beg. Fired by hereditary hate, these Kirghiz bandits
look on every man of Mongolian birth and Buddhistic faith as lawful
spoil. They follow him to his pastures, plunder his tent, drive off
his herds, and sell him as a slave. But when this lawful prey escapes
their hands they raid and rob on more friendly soil; and many of the
captives whom they carry to Khiva and Bokhara come from the Persian
valleys of Atrek and Meshid. Girls from these valleys fetch a higher
price, and Persia has not strength enough to protect her children from
their raids.
When Ubasha fled from the Volga with his Kalmuk hosts, these Kirghiz
had a year of sweet revenge. They lay in wait for their retiring foes;
they broke upon their camps by night; they stole their horses; they
devoured their food; they carried off their women. Hanging on the
flank and rear of this moving mass, they cut off stragglers, stopped
communications, hid the wells; inflicting far more miseries on the
Kalmuks than these rovers suffered from all the generals sent against
them by the crown.
These Kalmuks gone, the Kirghiz crossed the borders and appeared on
the Volga, where they have been well received. Their khan is rich and
powerful, and in coming in contact with Europe he has learned to value
science; but the attempts which have been made to settle some portions
of his tribe at Ryn Peski have met with no success. The Emperor has
built a house for the khan, but the khan himself, preferring to live
out-of-doors, has pitched his tent on the lawn! A Bedouin of the
desert is not more untamable than a Kirghiz of the steppe.
The Nogays are Mongolians of a separate horde. Coming into the country
with Jani Beg, they spread themselves through the southern plains,
took wives of the people, and embraced the Mussulman faith. At first
they were a nomadic soldiery, living in camps; and even after the war
had died out, they kept to their wagons, and roamed through the
country as the seasons came and went. "We live on wheels," they used
to say: "one man has a house on the ground, another man has a house on
wheels. It is the will of God." Yet, in the course of five hundred
years, these Nogays have in some measure changed their habits of life,
though they have not changed their creed. Many of them are settlers on
the land, which they farm in a rough style; growing millet, grapes,
and melons for their daily food. Being strict Mohammedans, they drink
no wine, and marry two or three wives apiece. All wives are bought
with money; and divorce, though easy to obtain, is seldom tried. The
men are proud of their descent and their religion, and the crown
allows their cadis and mollahs to settle most of their disputes. They
pay a tax, but they are not enrolled for war.
These Mongolians occupy the Russian Steppe between the Molochnaya
River and the Sea of Azof.
The Gypsies, here called Tsiganie, live a nomadic life in the Eastern
Steppe, as in other countries, sleeping in wretched tents of coarse
brown cloth, and grovelling like dogs and swine in the mire. They own
a few carts, and ponies to match the carts, in which they carry their
wives and little folk from fair to fair, stealing poultry, telling
fortunes, shoeing horses, and existing only from hand to mouth. They
will not labor--they will not learn. Some Gypsies show a talent for
music, and many of their girls have a beauty of person which is highly
prized. A few become public singers; and a splendid specimen of her
race may marry--like the present Princess Sergie Golitsin of
Moscow--into the highest rank; but as a race they live apart, in true
Asiatic style; reiving and prowling on their neighbors' farms, begging
at one house, thieving at the next; a class of outlaws, objects of
fear to many, and of disgust to all. In summer they lodge on the
grass, in winter they burrow in the ground; taking no more thought of
the heat and dew than of the frost and snow. In color they are almost
bronze, with big fierce eyes and famished looks, as though they were
the embodied life of the dirt in which they wallow by day and dream by
night. Some efforts have been made by Government to civilize these
mysterious tribes, but hitherto without results; and the marauders are
only to be kept in check on the Eastern Steppe by occasional onsets of
Kozak horse.