The Cossack worried more about a good measure of wine than about his fate.

One has to see this denizen of the frontier in his half-Tatar, half-Polish costume--which so sharply outlined the spirit of the borderland--galloping in Asiatic fashion on his horse, now lost in thick grass, now leaping with the speed of a tiger from ambush, or emerging suddenly from the river or swamp, all clinging with mud, and appearing an image of terror to the Tatar...." Little by little the community grew and with its growing it began to assume a general character.

The beginning of the sixteenth century found whole villages settled with families, enjoying the protection of the Cossacks, who exacted certain obligations, chiefly military, so that these settlements bore a military character.

The sword and the plough were friends which fraternised at every settler's.

On the other hand, Gogol tells us, the gay bachelors began to make depredations across the border to sweep down on Tatars' wives and their daughters and to marry them.