These vast level regions were the principal thoroughfares of the hordes of Mongols and Tartars, who from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century overspread Russia, and penetrated as far as Silesia.  In Northern Russia, at least, a shade of the old forms and constitutions was preserved; and native princes reigned under Mongol dominion; but in the South every thing was broken up, and the country laid completely waste.  Fugitives, reduced to a life of plunder and booty, congregated here and there; the country on the Lower Don, near the entrance of this river into the sea of Azof, was one of their strongholds; another portion found refuge on the islands of the Dnieper, just below the present site of Yekatrinoslav.  Here they fortified themselves in little rude castles; while, after all, their situation out of the track of the wild barbarians was their best shelter.

The first named region was principally the asylum for fugitives from Great Russia; deserters and exiles from other parts of the country joined them; and the Tartar population, which they found on the spot, and the neighbouring Kalmuk tribes, mingled with them.  These are the Kozaks of the Don; of whom the Kozaks of Grebensk, of Yaitzk, and of the Ural, are branches.  They are Russians, and sing the songs of their brethren, the Russians.  The river Don, or, as it is familiarly and at the same time respectfully called, Don Ivanovitch[32] plays a prominent part in their ballads.  They have a touching childlike love for that noble river, so majestic and yet so gentle, that once gave shelter on its banks to their forefathers.  Father Don, the stilly (tikho) Don, Don Ivanovitch, are its constant epithets.  The scene of a considerable number of their ballads is in the vessels which glide upon the ‘stilly’ Don.

The fugitives who had congregated on the Dnieper were also Russians; but the mixture of other nations, which they received, would appear to have come principally from the Circassians of the Caucasus, as the still beautiful shape and countenance of the Tshernomorski seem to indicate;[33] and also in part from the Ruthenian tribes of the Carpathian mountains, as their language proves.  These are the Zaporoguean Kozaks; so called from having their principal seats beyond the porogues, or water-falls of the Dnieper.  Both sections of the Kozaks founded a kind of military democratic government; and tried to shelter themselves against their enemies in those rude castles called Sicza, best protected by thick woods and the surrounding water.  They soon began to spread out in the small towns called Groazisko, fortified also indeed, but built so slightly that they were almost as soon erected as destroyed.  The Kozaks of the Don, after the deliverance of Russia in the second half of the fifteenth century, acknowledged in some degree the sovereignty of the Russian Tzar; and aided Ivan II to conquer Siberia.  They were used by his successors as border guardians against the wild Asiatic hordes; whom they partly chased from their homes in the Ural mountains, and settled there in their stead.  Thus they spread all over Siberia; always looking back with a pensive and languishing feeling to their “dear fatherling,” their gentle “nourisher,” their “stilly Don Ivanovitch.” [34]