Russia's "Thin Blue Line"

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXV, Issue XV, 13 October 1900, Page 692

Russia's "Thin Blue Line"

OF WARDERS AND 1 HEIR LONELY WATCH-TOWERS. There is no land frontier in the world so strikingly guarded as that imaginerv line which stretches across

Asia from the Caucasus to the Pacific, and marks the south-eastern boundary of the Russian Empire. Along, this line, like a row of tiny pawns in some huge game of chess, are scattered the frontier outposts of the Cossacks — that famous irregular ’’arm” of the Russian military system. One to

twenty miles or so of the frontier these posts stand—in all some three thou sand miles and more.

The conspicuous feature of each outpost is a bluff tower, built of stone or of mud and logs. On this is erected a second tower of wooden lattice-work, with a kind of crow's nest on the top. Beside this composite structure are the stables for the Cossack ponies—the lower portion of the double tower forms a guard-room and dormitory. I'p in the crow's nest, by night and by day. watch a vigilant pair of Cossack eyes. At their owner's command is a semaphore for (lay signalling: at night lights are employed. .Just in sight, on either hand, are the flanking outposts, also with their lights b\ night and their semaphore signals by day. Silently they whisper to one another across the Asian hills and plains, sleepless, loyal—for God and the Czar.

Fifteen men there are to each post, and each day three take the duty of watching from the tower-top. Thus, one day in five, each man does eight hours’ sentinel duty—two hours up. four hours' rest, then two hours of watching again, and so on till the day is finished, when three other Cossacks take the “shift" for the next twentyfour hours. Once a month the posts are relieved from a district depot or the nearest garrison. Including the Cossack element in these latter centres, and the men actually on outpost duty, there cannot be fewer than 45.000 Cossacks on the Asiatic frontier. To these must be adt.ed the 40.000 men of the regular army who form the socalled “frontier battalions." But it is the blue-coated Cossack who, along this vast and vulnerable boundary, furnishes, in a truly literal sense, the of the Russian Eninire. If this magnificent string of communications has a disadvantage, it is that the Cossack warders are not, in

the read purport of the phrase, trained signalmen. They have merely been taught to interpret and report certain arbitrary signals, capable of conveying such warnings and requests as are likely to be necessary. The posts, however, act. in case of need, as a chain of depots supplying despatchriders who have not their equal in the whole world. A written message can thus be carried in twenty-mile stages with an almost incredible speed. The Cossack despatch-rider bestrides one horse and leads a relay, both animals advancing at the wildest gallop.