all, to this earth of ours.

Meanwhile from the steppe slow, ponderous grey oxen with sharp horns
are drawing an endless succession of wagon-loads of threshed grain
through rich, black, sootlike dust. Patiently the beasts' round eyes
regard the earth, while on the top of each load there lolls a Cossack
who, with face sunburnt to the last pitch of swarthiness, and eyes
reddened with exposure to the wind, and beard matted, seemingly
solidified, with dust and sweat, is clad in a shirt drab with grime,
and has a shaggy Persian cap thrust to the back of his head.
Occasionally, also, he may be seen riding on the pole in front of his
team, and being buffeted from behind by the wind which inflates his
shirt. And as sleek and comfortable as the carcasses of the bullocks
are these Cossacks' frames in proportion their eyes are sluggishly
intelligent, and in their every movement is the deliberate air of men
who know precisely what they have to do.

"Tsob, tsobe!" such fellows shout to their teams. This year they are
reaping a splendid harvest.

Yet though these folk, one and all, look fat and prosperous, their mien
is dour, and they speak reluctantly, and through their teeth. Possibly
this is because they are over-weary with toil. However that may be, the
full-fed country people of the region laugh but little, and seldom sing.

In the centre of the hamlet soars the red brick church of the place--an
edifice which, with its five pinnacles, its belfry over its porch, and
its yellow plaster window-mouldings, looks like an edifice that has
been fashioned of meat, and cemented with grease. Nay, its very shadow
seems so richly heavy as to be the shadow of a fane erected by men
endowed with a plethora of this world's goods to a god otiose in his
grandeur. Ranged around the building in ring fashion, the hamlet's
squat white huts stand girdled with belts of plaited wattle, shawled in
the gorgeous silken scarves of gardens, and crowned with a flowered
brocadework of reed-thatched roofs. In fact, they resemble a bevy of
buxom babi, [Peasant women] as over and about them wave silver poplar
trees, with quivering, lacelike leaves of acacias, and dark-leaved
chestnuts (the leaves of the latter like the palms of human hands)
which rock to and fro as though they would fain seize, and detain the
driving clouds. Also, from court to court scurry Cossack women who,
with skirt-tails tucked up to reveal muscular legs bare to the knee,
are preparing to