The Cossacks of the Ukraine

The immense solitudes which spread between the Volga, the Don, and the Dnieper, between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, appear to have been, from time immemorial, the fatherland of those wandering nations and barbarian hordes who, subsisting by rapine and pillage, thundered down upon civilized Europe like an avalanche; leaving in the rear of their destructive and fearful track nought save carnage, conflagration, ruin, and despair. Confounded and intermixed, as regards their origin, the one with the other, these predatory tribes have passed, ever since the ancient Scythians, under different names; but all bear one peculiar, distinctive, and forcibly-impressed character, both individually and in common, too indelible to be either obliterated or mistaken: whilst, the general resemblance observable amongst them is so decided and striking, as to preclude their being confounded with any other races; notwithstanding that a few varying shades in individual character, attributable to slight differences or modifications of general climate - the moral results of successful or of unsuccessful wars - and other accidental circumstances influencing the destiny of so numerous and widely-extended a race of barbarian adventurers, may have caused some disparity in the general features of resemblance otherwise recognizable among them. The origin of the Cossack tribes is lost in the obscurity of ages; and many celebrated historians are still divided in opinion as to whence the term Cossack, or rather Kosaque, is properly to be derived. This word, indeed, is susceptible of so many etymological explanations, as scarcely to offer for any one of them decided grounds of preference. Everything, however, would seem to favour the belief that the word Cossack, or Kosaque, was in much earlier use in the vicinity of the Caucasus than in the Ukraine.