SPORT
IN THE
CRIMEA AND CAUCASUS
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
SPORT
IN
THE CRIMEA AND CAUCASUS
BY
CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY, F.R.G.S.
LATE BRITISH VICE-CONSUL AT KERTCH
[Illustration]
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1881
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
SPORT IN THE CRIMEA.
PAGE
Outfit--The droshky--A merry party--The Straits of
Kertch--The steppe--Wild-fowl--Crops--The Malos--The ‘Starrie
Metchat’--Game--Tscherkess greyhounds--Stalking bustards--A
picnic--Night on the steppe 1
CHAPTER II.
CRASNOI LAIS.
A frozen sea--Swarms of wild-fowl--The Indo-European
telegraph--Sledging on the Azov--A desolate
scene--Taman--Journey inland--Tumerūk--Hotels--A dangerous
sleep--Foxes--Wolves--A hasty retreat--Ekaterinodar--Supper in
the forest of Crasnoi Lais--An exciting night’s sport--Driving
the forest--Cossack beaters--Wild deer--Other game--The
bag--Rations of vodka--A Cossack orgy--Vulpine sagacity--Wolf
stories--Return to Kertch 15
CHAPTER III.
ODESSA AND MISKITCHEE.
Mountaineers and Shikaree--Outfit--Journey from London to
Odessa--Snipe-shooting on the Dnieper--A drunken yemstchik--A
collision--Prince Vorontzoff--Aloupka--Yalta--Livadia and
Orianda--Miskitchee lake--A Tartar butcher--Native hovels--A
shooting party on the lake--A dreary bivouac 41
CHAPTER IV.
THE RED FOREST AND BLACK SEA COAST.
Journey to Taman--Downpour on the steppe--Tscherkess
bourkas--Long-tailed horses--Absence of cultivation--The
Moujiks--Causes of political discontent in
Russia--Veneration for the Czar--Cheapening supplies--A
Russian writer on Englishwomen--Post stations--A terrible
tragedy--Hotels--Ekaterinodar--The fair--Russian
tea--Russian police--Bivouacking with Cossack
foresters--Exciting sport--Shooting a white boar--Sad
disappointment--Pheasant-shooting--A Cossack colonel--An
execrable journey--Caucasian women--Great consumption of
supplies--In a Cossack saddle--Mineral springs--A scorching
bath--Lotus-eaters--Incidents of the road--An insolent
Tartar--Parting 59
CHAPTER V.
HEIMAN’S DATCH.
Duapsè--Tscherkess emigrants--By the sea-shore--Superb
scenery--Drunken guides--A Cossack station--Bears--Take
possession of a ruined villa--Hiding our provisions--Wild
swine--Astray in the jungle--A rough breakfast--Boars
in file--A missfire--Forest fruit--Lose our horses--A
panther--Night-watch--Shooting in the dark--On the
trail--_Barse_--A friendly Cossack--Deserted by my servants 93
CHAPTER VI.
GOLOVINSKY.
Lunch in the forest--Picturesque riding--A spill--Telegraph
shanty at Golovinsky--Robinson Crusoe--Native guns--Tracks
of game--Multitudes of pheasants---Paucity of native
hunters--Tscherkess mocassins--Experiences of forest
life--Killing a bear--Cooking him--Another bag--A lost
chance--Anecdotes of ‘Michael Michaelovitch’--Shooting a boar 110
CHAPTER VII.
DENSE COVERTS.
Unsuccessful sport--Bruin and Stepan--Black bread and
onions--Forest music--Mosquitoes--Ticks and other
insects--Bruin’s fondness for honey--Butterflies--Our
larder--Narrow escape of Stepan--Unlucky days--Watching for
swine--Otters--A cold vigil--An exasperating march 132
CHAPTER VIII.
HUNTING WITH DOGS.
Refitting--Our mongrels--Shipping our
spoils--Visitors--Stepan’s yarns--The hedgehog--Legend of the
bracken--The Euxine in a fury--Trebogging--Traces of Tscherkess
villages--Enormous boars--Their feeding grounds--Lose a
bear--Impenetrable thickets hiding the proximity of big
game--A rare day’s sport--Shooting in the moonlight--An
expedition--Fever--Precautions against it--Unsuccessful sport
and hard fare 145
CHAPTER IX.
RETURN TO KERTCH.
Return to Heiman’s Datch--Bears--Stepan’s shooting
apparatus--Journey to Duapsè--A delightful dinner--Interview
with the Governor--Insects--German farm--A dangerous
adventure--A wedding supper--Leave Duapsè for
Ekaterinodar--Krimsky fair--Russian roughs--Peasant
women--A show booth--A hazardous road--Inexpensive
travelling--Ekaterinodar--_Table d’hôte_ at the Petersburg
hotel--The treasury--Droshky-racing--A beaten rival--Caucasian
fish--Arrival at Kertch 165
CHAPTER X.
TIFLIS.
The Russo-Turkish War--Sukhoum--Alleged abundance of
game--Poti--My fellow-travellers--Sport in Kutais--Arrival
in Tiflis--Hotels and other features of the town--The
British Consul--Organ-grinders in request--A ‘happy
day’--Drinking habits--Native wines--German settlers--Shooting
expedition--A caravan--Kariâs steppe--A lawless
country--Fevers--Antelope-hunting--An unpleasant adventure:
running for dear life--A wounded antelope--The lions of
Tiflis--Museum and bazaar--Schoolboys--Prevalence of uniforms
and orders--Phenomena of Russian life--Buying a travelling
pass--Professor Bryce’s ascent of Ararat 186
CHAPTER XI.
EN ROUTE FOR DAGHESTAN.
Start from Tiflis--My yemstchik--Travelling
carts--Caucasian road-makers--Camel caravans--On the bleak
steppe--Persian hawking--Subterranean dwellings--Shooting
at Kariur--Elizabetpol--An execrable journey--Hawks
and starling--Banditti--Curing official corruption
at Tiflis--Goktchai--A wearying day’s sport--Fear of
highwaymen--My guide, Allai--Arrival at Gerdaoul--Hospitable
Lesghians 231
CHAPTER XII.
THE LESGHIAN MOUNTAINS.
Gerdaoul--Shooting partridges--Native wine-vaults--Expedition
among the hills--Native houses--An inhospitable village--A
dangerous ride--A welcome reception--Shepherd-boys--The
Lesghians--Russian love for the Czar--Unsuitable
education--Mountain-climbing--Magnificent scenery--Red
deer--Vegetation--A chamois--A weary descent--A happy
people--Photographing the scenery--A ‘Baboushka’--‘Developing’
our photographs--A mountain châlet--The snow peaks--Wild
goats and sheep--Difficult mountaineering--An alluring
chase--Suspended over a precipice--A bleak night’s
lodging--Mountain turkeys--Black pheasants--Lammergiers--Advice
to travellers--Return to Goktchai 255
CHAPTER XIII.
FROM GOKTCHAI TO LENKORAN.
Rough travelling--Shooting by the way--Shemakha
and Aksu--Tarantasses and post-roads--A wretched
station--Mud volcanoes and naphtha springs--Bustards--On
the road to Salian--Swarms of wild-fowl--A rascally
official--Disappointed hopes--A good Samaritan--Rival
hosts--Asiatic fever--The Mooghan steppe--Pelicans and
myriads of other birds--Tartar orgies--Banished secretaries:
the Molochans and Skoptsi--Arrival at Lenkoran--A Persian
gunsmith--Fellow-sportsmen 287
CHAPTER XIV.
SHORES OF THE CASPIAN.--RETURN TO TIFLIS.
Lenkoran--Abundance of game--Eryvool forest--Native fowlers--A
hunting lodge--Swarming coverts--Wild boar--A paradise for
sportsmen--Pigs at bay--‘Old Shirka’ and his quarry--A dying
eagle--Caspian woodpeckers--Festive nights--Watching for a
tiger--Forest life by night--The eagle-owl and his prey--End of
a long vigil--The rainy season--The streets of Lenkoran--The
return journey to Tiflis--Adventure at Adji Kabool--Experiences
of post-travel--Bullying a station-master--Armenian
Protestants--Russian telegraph service--In miserable plight--A
spill over a precipice--Refitting our tarantasse--_Argumentum
ad hominem_--An awkward predicament--Chasing a
yemstchik--Renewed life at Tiflis--Great snowfall--Running
down antelope--The ‘black death’ 311
CHAPTER XV.
THE RAINS.
Poti--Chasing wild boar--Red-deer--Turks and
Cossacks--Sotcha--Lynxes--Game in the Caucasus--A hunting
party--A wounded sow--Beautiful scene--An unexpected bag--Our
_cuisine_--The ‘evil eye’--Overtaken by the rains--Our tent
inundated--Surrounded by wolves--Cheerless days--A terrible
catastrophe--Welcome help--Golovinsky--A wild scene--Eluding
the storm--Fording a torrent--A refuge--Scant supplies--Cossack
cradle-song--The Cossacks of to-day--Russian plantations--A
terrible ride--Struggling for life--Cossack loafers--Ride to
Duapsè--Forlorn days--Mad wolves--Wrestling a Tartar--Laid up
with fever--Return to England 340
_A verst is equal to three-quarters of an English mile._
SPORT IN THE CRIMEA AND THE CAUCASUS.
CHAPTER I.
SPORT IN THE CRIMEA.
Outfit--The droshky--A merry party--The Straits of
Kertch--The steppe--Wild-fowl--Crops--The Malos--The ‘Starrie
Metchat’--Game--Tscherkess greyhounds--Stalking bustards--A
picnic--Night on the steppe.
Scarcely a week’s journey from London, with delicious climates and
any quantity of game, it always seemed a marvel to me how few English
sportsmen ever found their way to the Crimea or Caucasus. It is
now something more than five years ago since I first made myself
acquainted with the breezy rosemary-clad steppes of the former, or
the low wooded hills on the Black Sea coast of the latter. For nearly
three years resident at Kertch, I had ample opportunity of testing
all the pleasures of the steppe, and a better shooting-ground for the
wild-fowler or man who likes a lot of hard work, with a plentiful and
varied bag at the end of his day, could nowhere be found. Of course
the sportsman in the Crimea must rough it to a certain extent, but
his roughing it, if he only has a civil tongue and cheery manner, will
be a good deal of the ‘beer and beefsteak’ order. The Russians are
hospitable to all men, especially to the sportsman; and the peasants,
even the Tartars, are cordial good fellows if taken the right way.
On the steppes you need rarely want for a roof overhead, if you prefer
stuffiness, smoke, and domestic insects to wild ones, with dew and the
night air. If you can put up with sour cream (very good food when you
are used to it), black bread, an arboose, fresh or half-pickled, with
a bumper of fearful unsweetened gin (vodka) to digest the foregoing,
you need never suffer hunger long. But for the most part sportsmen take
their food with them. Perhaps if my readers will let me, it would be
better to take them at once on to the steppe, and tell them all this
_en route_.
Imagine then that for the last two days you have been hard at work
out of office hours loading cartridges with every variety of shot,
from the small bullets used for the bustard down to the dust-shot for
the quail. Here, in Kertch, take a victim’s advice: make your own
cartridges, don’t buy them. The month is July; the first of July,
with an intensely blue sky, far away above you, giving you an idea of
distance and immensity that you could never conceive in England, where
the clouds always look as if they would knock your hat off. I should
have said the sky will be blue by-and-by, for at present it is too dark
to see, and we are carefully tucked away in bed; the impedimenta of
the coming journey--cold meats, flasks of shooting powder, and jumping
powder; bread, guns, and a huge string of unsavoury onions--all on
the floor beside us. Ding, ding, ding! as if the door-bell were in
a fit, then a crash and silence. No one ever rang a door-bell as a
Russian droshky-driver rings it. He likes the muscular exertion, he
loves the noise, and doesn’t in the least mind being sworn at if, as
in the present instance, he breaks the bell-wire. A year in Russia
has hardened us to all this, so merely speculating as to whether our
landlord will pay more for broken bell-wires this half than last, we
bundle out of bed and submit meekly to the reproaches of our friends
outside on the cart. They, poor fellows, have had half an hour’s less
sleep than we have, and it’s only 4 A.M. now, so any little hastiness
of speech may be forgiven them.
But on such a morning as this, and on such a conveyance as our droshky,
no one could remain sleepy or sulky long. The brisk bright air makes
the blood race through your veins, and the terrible bumpings of the
droshky on the uneven track, or half-paved streets, keep you fully
employed in striving to avoid a spill or a fractured limb. Anything
more frightful to a novice in Russia than the droshky I cannot
conceive. This instrument of torture is a combination of untrimmed logs
and ropes and wheels, with cruelly insinuating iron bands, merciless
knots, and ubiquitous splinters. Manage your seat how you will, you
are bound to keep bumping up and down, and at each descent you land on
something more painful than that you have encountered before.
In spite of all this, as the droshky leaves the town, the old German
jäger breaks out into a hunting ditty, and, truth to tell, until the
wind is fairly jogged out of us we are a very noisy party. Then we try
to light our cigarettes and pipes, and if we are lucky, only have the
hot ashes jerked on to our next neighbour’s knee. Gradually the dawning
light increases, the clouds of pearly grey are reddening, and the long
undulating swell of the steppeland slowly unfolds itself around us. On
our left are the Straits of Kertch, the sea looking still and hazy,
with some half-dozen English steamers lording it amongst the mosquito
fleet of fruiterers and lighters which fills the bay. All round us are
chains of those small hills, whose dome-like tops proclaim them tumuli
of kings and chiefs who went to rest ages ago, when the town behind us
was still a mighty city, rejoicing in the name of Panticapæum.
Once clear of the ranges of tumuli or kourgans, as they call them
here, there is nothing but steppe. On all points, except the seaside of
the view, a treeless prairie; no hills, no houses, scarcely even a bush
to break the monotony of bare or weed-grown waste. On the right of the
post-road by which we are travelling (a mere beaten track and really
no road at all) run the lines of the Indo-European Telegraph Company,
their neat slim posts of iron contrasting not unfavourably with the
crooked, misshapen posts which support the Russian lines on our left.
Unimportant as these might appear elsewhere, they are important objects
here, where they are the only landmarks to man, and the only substitute
for trees to the fowl of the air.
All along the road on either side of us the wires are now becoming
lined with kestrels, just up evidently, and looking as though they
were giving themselves a shake, and rubbing their eyes preparatory to
a day’s sport amongst the beetles and field-mice that swarm on the
steppe. The number of kestrels round Kertch is something astonishing,
and I almost think that with the other hawks, the blue hen harrier,
kites and crows, they would almost outnumber the sparrows of the town.
Now, too, our lovely summer visitants, the golden-throated bee-eaters,
begin to shoot and poise swallow-like over the heads of the tall yellow
hollyhock growing in wild profusion over the plain; hoopoes, with
broad crests erect, peck and strut bantam-like by the roadside, while
every now and again the magnificent azure wings of the ‘roller’ glitter
in the morning sun among the flowers.
The ‘bleak steppeland’ is what you always hear of, and shudder as
you hear, dread Siberian visions being conjured up at the mere name.
But who that has seen the steppes in the later days of spring, or in
the glow of midsummer, would apply such an epithet to lands that in
their season are as richly clad in flowers as any prairie of the West?
Long strips of wild tulip, Nature’s cloth of gold, blue cornflower,
crow’s-foot and bird’s-eye, the canary-coloured hollyhock and crimson
wild pea, all vie in compensating the steppeland for her chill
snow-shroud in the months that are gone and to come.
Rich as the land is, the crops by the roadside are few and paltry, the
chief being rye, maize, millet, and sunflowers. The sunflowers are
cultivated for their seed, which is either used for making oil, or more
generally is sold in a dry state as ‘cernitchkies.’ ‘Cernitchkies’
furnish the Malo Russ, male and female, with one of their most
favourite means of wasting time. Go where you will, at any time, in
Kertch, you will find people cracking these sunflower seeds, and trying
to make two bites of the kernel. At every street corner you find a
stall where they are sold, and you rarely come in without finding one
of the little grey shards clinging to your dress, spat upon you by some
careless passer-by, or sent adrift from some balcony overhead.
Beside these crops, you come across long strips of water melons, the
principal food of the Malo Russ in the summer, and one of the chief
sources of the Asiatic cholera sometimes so prevalent here. But for the
most part the land is untilled--left to its wild-flowers and weeds.
The peasant of the Crimea makes but a sorry agriculturist. The Malo
Russ is a lazy, good-natured ne’er-do-weel; his days being more than
half ‘prasniks’ (saints’ days), he devotes the holy half to getting
drunk on vodka, the other half to recovering from the effects of the
day before. One day you may see him in long boots and a red shirt, with
his arms round another big-bearded moujik’s neck in the drinking den,
or husband and wife, on the broad of their backs, dead drunk, on the
highway. The day after you’ll find him in a moralizing mood, seated on
his doorstep, smoking the eternal papiros, or nibbling sunflower seeds.
Russians have told me that there are more holy days than calendar days
in the year. To be holy a day need not be a saint’s day--a birthday in
the Emperor’s family is quite enough to make a ‘prasnik.’ Of the actual
Church fêtes there are 128.
The best agriculturists here are the German colonists, whose neat
homesteads remind one for the moment of lands nearer home. Even the
Tartars are better than the Malo Russ, but they have lately been
leaving the Crimea in large numbers to escape the compulsory military
service which Russia seeks to impose upon them. Everywhere the army
seems to be the worst enemy of the State.
At last our ride comes to an end, and there is a general stretching of
limbs and buckling on of shot-belts and powder-flasks, for with many
muzzle-loaders are still the fashion here. The place at which we have
stopped is the ‘Starrie Metchat,’ or old church, a Tartar ruin near a
well, embosomed in rosemary-covered hills. Near this well we pitch our
tents, and then we each go off on a beat of our own. Here there is room
enough for all, and as some excellent Russian sportsmen have a careless
way of shooting through their friends’ legs at a bolting hare, perhaps
solitude has its peculiar advantages.
As you breast the first hill the sweet-scented covert comes nearly up
to your waist, and right and left of you huge grasshoppers jump away
or into your face with a vicious snap that is at first enough to upset
the best regulated nerves. But see, your dog is pointing, and as you
near him a large covey of grey birds, larger than our grouse, get up
with whistling wings, and with smooth undulating flight skim round
the corner of the next hill. You get one long shot and bag your bird
perhaps. The dog moves uncertainly forward, and then stands again. Go
up to him; wherever strepita (lesser bustard) have been you are sure
to find a hare or two close by. Time after time have I found this,
although I cannot account for the fact in any way. The hares here are
larger than our English hares, and in winter turn almost white, the
skins in autumn having sometimes most beautiful shades of silver and
rose upon them. The largest hare I ever remember to have seen weighed
nearly thirteen pounds--it was an old buck--while in England a hare of
eight pounds is exceptionally large.
The dogs used in the Crimea for coursing are called Tscherkess
greyhounds; they stand considerably higher at the shoulder than our own
dogs, are broken-haired, with a much longer coat than our staghound,
and a feathered stern. I am told that on the flat the English greyhound
beats them for a short distance; but that in the hills, or with a
strong old hare well on her legs before them, the Crimean dogs have it
all their own way. I never had the good fortune to see the two breeds
tried together. In fact, what coursing I did see was utterly spoilt
by the Russian habit of cutting off the hare, and shooting her under
the dog’s nose. This is, of course, utterly alien to our notions of
sport--but so are most of their sporting habits. They never shoot
flying if they can get a chance sitting. Bears and boars and such large
game they shoot from platforms in trees at night; and I never saw a
horse jump in all my three years in Southern Russia. Of course, what
applies to the Crimea and the Caucasus may not apply to other parts of
Russia.
As long as we keep in the rosemary, hares, quails, and strepita are
all we are likely to meet with, except that in the valley and on the
less sunny hillsides the dogs ever and anon flush large owls, that
sail away hardly as bewildered as they are generally supposed to be by
the sunlight. Overhead kites and harriers swim about in the clear sky,
keeping a keen look-out for winged quails or wounded hares. But as we
get to the top of the next rising ground we see in the plain far away
at our feet a long line of what might well be grey-coated infantry. A
closer inspection, or a previous acquaintance with the objects before
us, will enable us to make them out to be bustards feeding line upon
line in a flock--or herd, to speak correctly--of several hundreds. Most
of them are busy with their heads on the ground, gleaning what they can
from an old maize field; but here and there, at a slight distance from
the rest, stands a sentry that the most wary stalker cannot baffle,
or the most alluring grain tempt from his ceaseless watch. Knowing
that we are already seen, and being perfectly well aware that by
ordinary stalking on these open plains we could never get nearer than
three hundred yards from the herd before the old sentinel sets them
all in motion with his shrill call, we retrace our steps, and get our
comrades together. Then the horses are put to, and all with our guns in
readiness we drive towards the point at which the bustards were seen.
When within sight of them we make arrangements among ourselves, and
then the droshky is driven quietly past the bustards some five hundred
yards from them. All their heads are up, and the whole of the herd of
two hundred is watching us intently; but they know something of the
range of a gun, and feel safe enough to stay yet awhile. Watch hard as
you may, grey birds, you didn’t notice that one of the occupants of the
droshky has just rolled off, gun in hand, and is now lying flat buried
in a deliciously fragrant bed of rosemary. One by one, as the droshky
circles round the watchful birds, the occupants drop off and lie still,
until at last we have a cordon of sportsmen drawn right round the herd,
and only the yemstchik remains on the droshky. Slowly, so as not to
frighten them, he narrows his circle, while each hidden gunner keeps
his eye anxiously on his movements.
At last, having stretched their necks to the very utmost limit and
twisted them into gyrations that would surprise a corkscrew, the
bustards think they have had enough of it, and there is a slow flapping
of wings, and hoisting of the heavy bodies into air. Slowly, with a
grand solemn flight, wonderfully in keeping with the wild majesty of
the boundless plains on which they live, they sail away towards the
hills. Suddenly the leaders stop with a jerk, and try too late to
change their direction. From the covert beneath the sportsman starts
to his feet, two bright flashes are seen, two reports follow, one huge
bird collapses at once and another lowers for a moment, and then goes
feebly on to fall at the first discharge of the next hidden gun. Right
and left the remainder fly, rising somewhat as they do so, but still
not high enough to take them out of danger, and when at last they have
passed the fatal circle, five fine birds reward our stratagem.
One of us has to face a storm of chaff hard for a disappointed
sportsman to bear, for in his excitement he had neglected to change
his cartridges; and although standing within short pistol-shot of a
passing monster, the quail-shot produces nothing more than a shower of
feathers, enough almost to stuff a bolster with.
By thus surrounding them, and by shooting them occasionally from a
cart, a few of these magnificent birds (larger than a turkey and finer
eating) are killed from time to time throughout summer and autumn. A
few too are sometimes picked up by the gunner in the early summer
whilst still young, as they hide separately or in small coveys in the
deep undergrowth. But the only time when any quantity are exposed in
the bazaar for sale is in the depths of winter. Then when a snowstorm
has caught the birds hiding in the valleys, and clogged their wings
with snow, which a bitter wind still more surely binds about them,
these poor denizens of the desert are surrounded and driven like a
flock of sheep into the Tartar villages, where they are butchered, and
thence sent in cartloads into Kertch, to be sold at a rouble and a half
(3_s._ 6_d._) apiece.
After slaying the bustards, having done enough for glory, we have time
to remember a thirst that would empty a samovar and an appetite that
would astonish a negro. Gladly we hurry back to our little tent in a
cleft at the foot of the hills, and while one unpacks the cold meats,
dried sturgeon and caviare, another gets water for that tea without
which our repast would be poor indeed to a Russian. Being born and
bred Englishmen, two of us might well have been expected to prefer
our native beer to tea, but it is wonderful how fond men get of the
delicious tea brewed in Russia, with its slip of lemon in it to add
piquancy to the flavour. For my own part, after really severe exertion
I am most thoroughly convinced it is by far the best restorative you
can take, and one which I should prefer to any other liquid whatever.
Try as you will you can neither get nor make such tea in England,
and once away from Russia, you must be content to leave the blessings
of tea, ‘swejie ikra’ (fresh caviare), and the soothing papiros
(cigarette) behind you; for numerous as tobacconists are in England, I
know none where really good cigarette tobacco can be bought, such as
you smoke in the Crimea.
Meanwhile, as we are still here, let us lie on our backs and enjoy the
delicious weed, watching the yemstchik arrange that wonderful puzzle of
old cord which constitutes the harness of a troika. At last the horses
are ready, and depositing ourselves and game on the jolting vehicle, we
let our legs swing over the side, and if used to the motion manage to
get a great deal of pleasure out of the drive home.
As the evening closes in over these wild waste lands, a stillness and
peace seem to come with it of which one has no knowledge in the towns.
The piping of the quails, the long soft wail of the coolik (curlew),
and even the notes of the German hunting horn on the other droshky far
in front, all seem to make fitting music for the hour and scene; and as
the stars begin to shine out from a sky of infinite depth and metallic
blueness, the oojai domoi (home already) is spoken not without an
accent of regret, though limbs are tired and steppe roads rough.