The Cossacks' duty is to defend their country as valiantly from the encroachments of the external and... and the onslaught of the external enemy.

They've withstood untold natural perils and human encroachments, but now some of them are in jeopardy, and they can't just get up and get out of the way.

To my everlasting relief and after a year's toil in this lonely place have I finally stumbled upon a suitable place for my cargo fortified by nature against the encroachments accidental or deliberate even of those who would force our tongues to betray its trust.

Gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of England, says that the encroachments of trespassers, and the houses and fences thus raised on the borders of the forest, were considered as great nuisances by the old forest law, and were severely punished under the name of purprestures, as tending ad terrorem ferarum ad nocumentum forestae, etc., to the frightening of the game and the detriment of the forest.