SUMY,
August 12.
... I have been to the Crimea. I spent twelve days at Suvorin’s in
Feodosia, bathed, idled about; I have been to Aivazovsky’s estate. From
Feodosia I went by steamer to Batum. On the way I spent half a day at
Suhum--a charming little town buried in luxuriant, un-Russian greenery, and
one day at the Monastery, at New Athos. It is so lovely there at New Athos
that there is no describing it: waterfalls, eucalyptuses, tea-plants,
cypresses, olive-trees, and, above all, sea and mountains, mountains,
mountains. From Athos and Suhum I went to Poti; the River Rion, renowned
for its valley and its sturgeons, is close by. The vegetation is luxuriant.
All the streets are planted with poplars. Batum is a big commercial and
military, foreign-looking, _cafe’-chantant_ sort of town; you feel in it at
every step that we have conquered the Turks. There is nothing special about
it (except a great number of brothels), but the surrounding country is
charming. Particularly fine is the road to Kars and the swift river
Tchoraksu.
The road from Batum to Tiflis is poetical and original; you look all the
time out of window and exclaim: there are mountains, tunnels, rocks,
rivers, waterfalls, big and little. But the road from Tiflis to Baku is the
abomination of desolation, a bald plain, covered with sand and created for
Persians, tarantulas, and phalangas to live in. There is not a single tree,
there is no grass ... dreary as hell.... Baku and the Caspian Sea are such
rotten places that I would not agree to live there for a million. There are
no roofs, there are no trees either; Persian faces everywhere, fifty
degrees Reaumur of heat, a smell of kerosine, the naphtha-soaked mud
squelches under one’s feet, the drinking water is salt.
... You have seen the Caucasus. I believe you have seen the Georgian
Military Road, too. If you have not been there yet, pawn your wives and
children and the _Oskolki_ [Translator’s Note: _Oskolki_, (i.e., “Chips,”
“Bits”) the paper of which Leikin was editor.] and go. I have never in my
life seen anything like it. It is not a road, but unbroken poetry, a
wonderful, fantastic story written by the Demon in love with Tamara.