In the afternoon my curiosity regarding the great square was appeased. My host sent for his friend, the riding-master of the Cossack recruits, and he, desirous of doing what he could for the stranger, proposed a “jigitoffka,” or exhibition of horsemanship. At this I expressed my interest, and a messenger was sent to summon the young Cossacks left in the stanitza. They are famous horsemen, the Cossacks, and from their very cradles are trained to the saddle. The dexterity of some of the riders was quite remarkable. The first exhibition was a so-called “attack.” The riders divided into two ranks and charged each other at full gallop, separating just before they met, barely enough for the ranks to go through each other. Once two of the horsemen miscalculated and the horses came fairly together, one of them going over like a horse of wood. The riders remounted and continued their sport. After the men had got well limbered they went on to more difficult feats--leaping from the saddles, while the horses were going at full gallop, and then remounting; springing from one horse to another; riding double; one rider carrying another who was supposedly wounded. Snatching up coins from the ground, while a crowd of men, women, and children [Illustration: Outside a Cossack yard] [Illustration: My Cossack driver at home with his family] stood by urging the horses to greater speed. The interest in these performances soon became most intense and I found myself, quite unconsciously, cheering as lustily as if it were a Varsity football match. One trifling incident revealed a trait of Cossack character that would scarce find approval in England or in America. A young Cossack, reaching for a coin on the ground, almost succeeded in grasping it, but he lost his balance and fell to the ground amid the loud jeers of the people. Jumping to his feet he ran back to where the coin lay, picked it up, and ran off with it. The crowd laughed uproariously at this and did not call to him to come back with the prize thus unfairly captured. A moment later another rider failed completely in snatching at another coin which was thrown down, and he threw himself from the saddle and secured the money. This was a little strained, it seemed to me, so I asked a man near me why the crowd did not protest, and he answered: “Once a Cossack gets his fingers on money he never lets go. It does not matter how he gets it.”