The Cossacks | Page 7

snowy mountains of which mention was so often made. Once,
towards evening, the Nogay driver pointed with his whip to the
mountains shrouded in clouds. Olenin looked eagerly, but it was dull
and the mountains were almost hidden by the clouds. Olenin made out
something grey and white and fleecy, but try as he would he could find
nothing beautiful in the mountains of which he had so often read and
heard. The mountains and the clouds appeared to him quite alike, and
he thought the special beauty of the snow peaks, of which he had so
often been told, was as much an invention as Bach's music and the love
of women, in which he did not believe. So he gave up looking forward
to seeing the mountains. But early next morning, being awakened in his
cart by the freshness of the air, he glanced carelessly to the right. The
morning was perfectly clear. Suddenly he saw, about twenty paces
away as it seemed to him at first glance, pure white gigantic masses
with delicate contours, the distinct fantastic outlines of their summits
showing sharply against the far-off sky. When he had realized the
distance between himself and them and the sky and the whole
immensity of the mountains, and felt the infinitude of all that beauty, he
became afraid that it was but a phantasm or a dream. He gave himself a
shake to rouse himself, but the mountains were still the same.
"What's that! What is it?" he said to the driver.

"Why, the mountains," answered the Nogay driver with indifference.
"And I too have been looking at them for a long while," said Vanyusha.
"Aren't they fine? They won't believe it at home."
The quick progress of the three-horsed cart along the smooth road
caused the mountains to appear to be running along the horizon, while
their rosy crests glittered in the light of the rising sun. At first Olenin
was only astonished at the sight, then gladdened by it; but later on,
gazing more and more intently at that snow- peaked chain that seemed
to rise not from among other black mountains, but straight out of the
plain, and to glide away into the distance, he began by slow degrees to
be penetrated by their beauty and at length to FEEL the mountains.
From that moment all he saw, all he thought, and all he felt, acquired
for him a new character, sternly majestic like the mountains! All his
Moscow reminiscences, shame, and repentance, and his trivial dreams
about the Caucasus, vanished and did not return. 'Now it has begun,' a
solemn voice seemed to say to him. The road and the Terek, just
becoming visible in the distance, and the Cossack villages and the
people, all no longer appeared to him as a joke. He looked at himself or
Vanyusha, and again thought of the mountains. ... Two Cossacks ride
by, their guns in their cases swinging rhythmically behind their backs,
the white and bay legs of their horses mingling confusedly ... and the
mountains! Beyond the Terek rises the smoke from a Tartar village...
and the mountains! The sun has risen and glitters on the Terek, now
visible beyond the reeds ... and the mountains! From the village comes
a Tartar wagon, and women, beautiful young women, pass by... and the
mountains! 'Abreks canter about the plain, and here am I driving along
and do not fear them! I have a gun, and strength, and youth... and the
mountains!'


Chapter IV
That whole part of the Terek line (about fifty miles) along which lie the

villages of the Grebensk Cossacks is uniform in character both as to
country and inhabitants. The Terek, which separates the Cossacks from
the mountaineers, still flows turbid and rapid though already broad and
smooth, always depositing greyish sand on its low reedy right bank and
washing away the steep, though not high, left bank, with its roots of
century-old oaks, its rotting plane trees, and young brushwood. On the
right bank lie the villages of pro-Russian, though still somewhat
restless, Tartars. Along the left bank, back half a mile from the river
and standing five or six miles apart from one another, are Cossack
villages. In olden times most of these villages were situated on the
banks of the river; but the Terek, shifting northward from the
mountains year by year, washed away those banks, and now there
remain only the ruins of the old villages and of the gardens of pear and
plum trees and poplars, all overgrown with blackberry bushes and wild
vines. No one lives there now, and one only sees the tracks of the deer,
the wolves, the hares, and the pheasants, who have learned to love these
places. From village to village runs