Now, all thinking to the Evil One, once for all! Take your pipes in your teeth, and let us smoke, and spur on our horses so swiftly that no bird can overtake us." And the Cossacks, bending low on their horses' necks, disappeared in the grass.

Their black caps were no longer to be seen; a streak of trodden grass alone showed the trace of their swift flight.
The sun had long since looked forth from the clear heavens and inundated the steppe with his quickening, warming light.

All that was dim and drowsy in the Cossacks' minds flew away in a twinkling: their hearts fluttered like birds.
The farther they penetrated the steppe, the more beautiful it became.
Then all the South, all that region which now constitutes New Russia, even as far as the Black Sea, was a green, virgin wilderness.

No plough had ever passed over the immeasurable waves of wild growth; horses alone, hidden in it as in a forest, trod it down.

Nothing in nature could be finer.