Advancing with my attendant, I met household troops of the Pototskis, the Vishnyevetskis, the Kisiels, the Zbaraskis, in various uniforms, black, red, and many-colored, now quota troops of the Commonwealth, now squadrons of the king. The horses of these warriors advanced to their bellies in grass, and snorted as if swimming in water; captains managed the squadrons, as shepherd dogs tend their flocks; the Cossacks beat kettle-drums, blew their horn trumpets and fifes, or sang songs, making so tremendous an uproar that when they had passed and disappeared the wind brought back a sound, as it were, of some distant storm. At intervals moved also the wagons of bullock-drivers, which squeaked shrilly; from this squeaking our horses were frightened. Some of those bullock-drivers were bringing salt from the Liman at the Euxine; others were returning from among foul pagans at the Palus Maeotis, or from Moscow; others were taking Moldavian wine to the Saitch; and the wagons moved one after another in the order of storks, forming lines a mile long on the steppe. We met also herds of oxen, all of one color, gray, with great curving horns. Crowding together, they moved so closely as to form a solid mass, their horned foreheads swaying from side to side. Beyond the stanitsa Kiselova, one company of an important hussar regiment met us. The men were in full equipment, and a sound went from their wings, as from those of eagles. My attendant and I could not take our eyes from them, though it was difficult to look at the men, for the eye was struck by a terrible glare of sunlight reflected from their weapons; the gleams from their lance-points raised upward were like flames of burning candles suspended in the air. But the hearts rose in us, for those hussars seemed more like a company of kings than common warriors, such was the _auctoritas_ (authority) in them, and the majesty of battle. Beyond the stanitsa the country was wilder. Often in the steppe we saw at night fires of Cossack couriers sent to various stanitsas, or even of peasants who were fleeing to the steppe. We did not approach these, since we made our own fires.