and labour. In consequence of this outlook women are
strongly developed both physically and mentally, and though they
are--as everywhere in the East--nominally in subjection, they possess
far greater influence and importance in family-life than Western women.
Their exclusion from public life and inurement to heavy male labour
give the women all the more power and importance in the household. A
Cossack, who before strangers considers it improper to speak
affectionately or needlessly to his wife, when alone with her is
involuntarily conscious of her superiority. His house and all his
property, in fact the entire homestead, has been acquired and is kept
together solely by her labour and care. Though firmly convinced that
labour is degrading to a Cossack and is only proper for a Nogay
labourer or a woman, he is vaguely aware of the fact that all he makes
use of and calls his own is the result of that toil, and that it is in
the power of the woman (his mother or his wife) whom he considers his
slave, to deprive him of all he possesses. Besides, the continuous
performance of man's heavy work and the responsibilities entrusted to
her have endowed the Grebensk women with a peculiarly independent
masculine character and have remarkably developed their physical
powers, common sense, resolution, and stability. The women are in most
cases stronger, more intelligent, more developed, and handsomer than
the men. A striking feature of a Grebensk woman's beauty is the
combination of the purest Circassian type of face with the broad and
powerful build of Northern women. Cossack women wear the Circassian
dress--a Tartar smock, beshmet, and soft slippers--but they tie their
kerchiefs round their heads in the Russian fashion. Smartness,
cleanliness and elegance in dress and in the arrangement of their huts,
are with them a custom and a necessity. In their relations with men the
women, and especially the unmarried girls, enjoy perfect freedom.

Novomlinsk village was considered the very heart of Grebensk
Cossackdom. In it more than elsewhere the customs of the old Grebensk
population have been preserved, and its women have from time immemorial
been renowned all over the Caucasus for their beauty. A Cossack's
livelihood is derived from vineyards, fruit-gardens, water melon and
pumpkin plantations, from fishing, hunting, maize and millet growing,
and from war plunder. Novomlinsk village lies about two and a half
miles away from the Terek, fro