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.