When placed on some distant Asiatic frontier they can at once transform themselves into squatters--building their own houses, raising crops of grain, and living as colonists without neglecting their military duties.
I have sometimes heard it asserted by military men that the Cossack organisation is an antiquated institution, and that the soldiers which it produces, however useful they may be in Central Asia, would be of little service in regular European warfare.

Whether this view, which received some confirmation in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, is true or false I cannot pretend to say, for it is a subject on which a civilian has no right to speak; but I may remark that the Cossacks themselves are not by any means of that opinion.

They regard themselves as the most valuable troops which the Tsar possesses, believing themselves capable of performing anything within the bounds of human possibility, and a good deal that lies beyond that limit.

More than once Don Cossacks have assured me that if the Tsar had allowed them to fit out a flotilla of small boats during the Crimean War they would have captured the British fleet, as their ancestors used to capture Turkish galleys on the Black Sea! In old times, throughout the whole territory of the Don Cossacks, agriculture was prohibited on pain of death.

It is generally supposed that this measure was adopted with a view to preserve the martial spirit of the inhabitants, but it may be explained otherwise.