Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

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The streets and cafés are full of Russian officers and soldiers, including many stately Cossacks wearing tall chimney-pot hats of white Persian lamb and the many other accoutrements that pertain to that race of professional warriors. A Cossack, as perhaps you know, comes from the valley of the river Don, in eastern Russia, where soldiers are bred, and they go into the Russian army for life, furnishing their own uniforms, their own horses, and their own arms, as well as their own rations and supplies, for which they receive a lump sum per month. They are doubtless the finest cavalry in the world and are absolutely loyal to their employers. It is a matter of principle and not a matter of partisanship. In all the Russian revolutions, in all the conspiracies against the czar and the government, no Cossack has ever been corrupted. On the other hand, they are absolutely merciless. They seem to be entirely without the ordinary feelings of humanity, knowing neither sympathy nor sorrow, regret nor remorse. They will shoot an infant as readily as an armed foe.