s, or Muscovites, as
they were then generally called, to join them in an attempt to conquer
the Crimea. The Tartars who inhabited the Crimea and the country to
the northeastward of it were on the side of the Turks, so that the
Russians had two enemies to contend with.

The supreme ruler of the Tartars was a chieftain called a Cham. He was
a potentate of great power and dignity, superior, indeed, to the Czars
who ruled in Muscovy. In fact, there had been an ancient treaty by
which this superiority of the Cham was recognized and acknowledged in a
singular way--one which illustrates curiously the ideas and manners of
those times. The treaty stipulated, among other things, that whenever
the Czar and the Cham should chance to meet, the Czar should hold the
Cham's stirrup while he mounted his horse, and also feed the horse with
oats out of his cap.

In the war between the Muscovites and the Tartars for the possession of
the Crimea, a certain personage appeared, who has since been made very
famous by the poetry of Byron. It was Mazeppa, the unfortunate
chieftain whose frightful ride through the tangled thickets of an
uncultivated country, bound naked to a wild horse, was described with
so much graphic power by the poet, and has been so often represented in
paintings and engravings.

Mazeppa was a Polish gentleman. He was brought up as a page in the
family of the King of Poland. When he became a man he mortally
offended a certain Polish nobleman by some improprieties in which he
became involved with the nobleman's wife. The husband caused him to be
seized and cruelly scourged, and then to be bound upon the back of a
wild, ungovernable horse. When all was ready the horse was turned
loose upon the Ukrain, and, terrified with the extraordinary burden
which he felt upon his back, and uncontrolled by bit or rein, he rushed
madly on through the wildest recesses of the forest, until at length he
fell down exhausted with terror and fatigue. Some Cossack peasants
found and rescued Mazeppa, and took care of him in one of their huts
until he recovered from his wounds.

Mazeppa was a well-educated man, and highly accomplished in the arts of
war as they were practiced in those days. He soon acquired great
popularity among the Cossacks, and, in the end, rose to be a chieftain
among them, and he distinguished himself greatly in these very
campaigns in the Crimea, fought by the Muscovites against the Turks and
Tartars during th