The great majority of the Cossacks, averse to all regular, laborious occupations, wished to live by fishing, hunting, cattle-breeding, and marauding, but there was always amongst them a considerable number of immigrants--runaway serfs from the interior--who had been accustomed to live by agriculture.

These latter wished to raise crops on the fertile virgin soil, and if they had been allowed to do so they would to some extent have spoiled the pastures.

We have here, I believe, the true reason for the above-mentioned prohibition, and this view is strongly confirmed by analogous facts which I have observed in another locality.
In the Kirghiz territory the poorer inhabitants of the aouls near the frontier, having few or no cattle, wish to let part of the common land to the neighbouring Russian peasantry for agricultural purposes; but the richer inhabitants, who possess flocks and herds, strenuously oppose this movement, and would doubtless prohibit it under pain of death if they had the power, because all agricultural encroachments diminish the pasture-land.
Whatever was the real reason of the prohibition, practical necessity proved in the long run too strong for the anti-agriculturists.

As the population augmented and the opportunities for marauding decreased, the majority had to overcome their repugnance to husbandry; and soon large patches of ploughed land or waving grain were to be seen in the vicinity of the stanitsas, as the Cossack villages are termed.

At first there was no attempt to regulate this new use of the ager publicus.