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Relays of horses were prepared for them on the road, they travelled night and day, and thus passed through the Comans' country lying between the Dnieper, the Tanais, the Volga, and the Yaik, frequently having to cross the frozen rivers, and finally reaching the court of Prince Bathy on the frontiers of the Comans' country.
I could not then understand a single word of the thieves' slang they employed. It was only later on that I understood that they were talking about the army of the Yaïk, which had only just been reduced to submission after the revolt of 1772. Savéliitch listened to them talking with a very discontented manner, and cast suspicious glances, sometimes on the host and sometimes on the guide.
All at once I saw a little village I knew well, with a palisade and a belfry, on the rugged bank of the Yaïk. A quarter of an hour afterwards we were entering Fort Bélogorsk. The "kibitka" stopped before the door of the Commandant's house. The inhabitants had recognized the little bell of Pugatchéf's team, and had assembled in a crowd.
The little fort of Bélogorsk lay about forty versts from Orenburg. From this town the road followed along by the rugged banks of the R. Yaïk. The river was not yet frozen, and its lead-coloured waves looked almost black contrasted with its banks white with snow. Before me stretched the Kirghiz Steppes. I was lost in thought, and my reverie was tinged with melancholy.
"Captain Mironoff, these. "I hereby inform you that the fugitive and schismatic Don Cossack, Emelian Pugatchéf, after being guilty of the unpardonable insolence of usurping the name of our late Emperor, Peter III., has assembled a gang of robbers, excited risings in villages on the Yaïk, and taken and oven destroyed several forts, while committing everywhere robberies and murders.
Their perpetual revolts, their impatience of all rule and civilized life, their treachery and cruelty, obliged the authorities to keep a sharp watch upon them in order to reduce them to submission. Forts had been placed at suitable points, and in most of them troops had been permanently established, composed of Cossacks, formerly possessors of the banks of the River Yaïk.
On the wall hung a long carbine and a high Cossack cap. Our host, a Cossack of the Yaïk, was a peasant of about sixty, still fresh and hale. Savéliitch brought the tea canister, and asked for a fire that he might make me a cup or two of tea, of which, certainly, I never had more need. The host hastened to wait upon him. "What has become of our guide? Where is he?" I asked Savéliitch.
Each one of the rivers flowing southwards the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, and the Yaik or Ural was held by a community of these Free Cossacks, and no one, whether Christian or Tartar, was allowed to pass through their territory without their permission.
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