Andronnikov and I were both intensely relieved at the general’s change of manner, and I was deeply grateful for the opportunities he presented to me. Long afterward when Andronnikov and I would sometimes meet--in St. Petersburg and elsewhere--we would always have a hearty laugh over our reception at the hands of this crotchety old general, and of how he melted into winsome affability when we played on his ridiculous vanity. While the deputations were being presented Andronnikov and I remained in an adjoining room, Andronnikov examining the various war trophies with which the room was stored, souvenirs for the most part of battles in the long, not-yet ended war to subdue the tribes of the Caucasus and bring the many peoples of that extraordinary region under the Russian yoke. I was silently framing questions about the Cossack that I would put to the general when I got back to him. In regard to this strange friend of the czars I suppose I knew about as much as the average reader, but certainly no more, and my notions were all vague and shadowy. I had heard war critics condemn him as practically useless in battle, though useful for scout duty and skirmish work. I had heard it said that he makes a skilful artilleryman, but with a rifle is a notoriously poor shot. But then he is not a proper military man. Scientific soldiering is not his _métier_. “Irregular” cavalry, military people call him when he is mounted. Regular Cossack officers are apt to be snubbed and looked down upon by other officers because they are not subject to the same rigid tests that regular army officers must submit to, and the discipline which is traditional with soldiers has never been imposed upon the Cossack. The Cossack is not a soldier, in the ordinary sense, though he is the main prop of the army. He is not a proper, thoroughbred Russian, though he is a loyal servant of the Czar. Cossack life and Cossack government is entirely independent, and the only official in the bureaucracy whom the Cossack recognizes is the minister of war. The Cossack has all (and more) that the most radical revolutionists in Russia desire. The Cossacks, perhaps, are the largest body of practical communists in the world. Their land, their hunting-grounds, their fishing-preserves, their timber-tracks, are held in common, and no Cossack may fish or shoot or cut wood save by the order and permission of his community. At the same time his individual freedom is beyond that of any people living under the protection of civilization. Exempt from every obligation except one--service in arms. Their service is unique in system as well as in kind. Popularly the Cossack is a modern Caliban. To the world at large he is pretty much an enigma, but mostly a thing of evil. To the muzhik and the Jew the very name, Cossack, is a synonym of horror, a word instinct with terror, with plunder, rape, massacre; the looting of shops a game by the way and the burning of houses a night’s sport.