United States or Kosovo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All the boys of the two stanitsas were collected and driven in a body like sheep to the intervening frontier. The whole population then walked along the frontier that had been agreed upon, and at each landmark a number of boys were soundly whipped and allowed to run home!
In some stanitsas the richer families appropriated enormous quantities of the common land by using several teams of oxen, or by hiring peasants in the nearest villages to come and plough for them; and instead of abandoning the land after raising two or three crops they retained possession of it, and came to regard it as their private property.
This custom existed in some stanitsas down to the year 1850, when the boundaries were clearly determined by Government officials. * A custom of this kind, I am told, existed not very long ago in England and is still spoken of as "the beating of the bounds."
If the land suitable for agricultural purposes be plentiful, each head of a family may be allowed to take possession of as much of it as he requires, as was formerly done in the Cossack stanitsas; if, on the contrary, the area of arable land is small, as is the case in some Bashkir aouls, there will probably be a regular allotment of it among the families.
As the population augmented and the opportunities for marauding decreased, the majority had to overcome their repugnance to husbandry; and soon large patches of ploughed land or waving grain were to be seen in the vicinity of the stanitsas, as the Cossack villages are termed. At first there was no attempt to regulate this new use of the ager publicus.
Word Of The Day