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.
At Duapsè there is an English (Indo-European) telegraph station, so,
though unexpectedly thrown on my own resources again, I was much
better off than I might otherwise have been. The Englishmen gave me
a cordial welcome, and were very good to me. Duapsè, I am informed,
is built on a graveyard, in which are buried numbers of the victims
of the Russo-Tscherkess war. In 1864, after the final subjugation
of the Caucasus, some 200,000 Circassians left the Caucasus for
Trebizond, at the invitation of their conquerors. They were for the
most part conveyed in small Turkish vessels, in which they were so
crowded, starved, and exposed, that not more than half ever reached
their destination, the others dying _en route_. Of these a very large
proportion died near Duapsè, and were there landed and buried, or left
to bleach, according to the means of their friends. Their graves are
still marked by little mounds and inequalities in the ground throughout
the place. On their miserable journey they sold everything they
possessed, and I have frequently heard in Kertch and in the Caucasus
of girls being sold for a few roubles, and valuable daggers (the last
thing almost that a Tscherkess parts with) for about the same. Now
Duapsè is a vilely squalid hole, with two telegraph stations and a
governor’s house. The steamers from Odessa and Poti touch here, if it
is fine, once a week, but if there is any sea on they cannot come in,
as I was hereafter to learn to my cost. Why Duapsè exists, and still
more why it has a governor, I never could conceive.
It was, then, with a feeling of intense relief that on October 21 I
left Duapsè behind me and turned my horse’s head southwards along the
Black Sea shore. I had managed to engage a couple of Russian peasants,
Ivan and Yepheem, to guide me to some happy hunting-grounds of which
they knew, some fifty versts from Duapsè. Taking three horses, we
loaded each with as much provisions as he could carry, and then climbed
on top ourselves. It was difficult work to so adjust yourself and
baggage, as to keep your seat over the boulders. Grip was, of course,
impossible, and balance, with a shifting basis under you, almost as
much so.
The road lay between the base of the cliffs and the sea, and as these
two were in close juxtaposition, your horse had at one time to wade
and at another to creep from boulder to boulder, in places where
even a goat would have to move with caution. This lasted for fifteen
versts, and these fifteen have in rough weather to be avoided, and a
long circuitous route in the hills substituted for them. After leaving
these stony places, the road winds up into the hills, and here the eye
had a feast indeed. All the way from Ekaterinodar the scenery had been
beautiful, but here it was superb. Range upon range of hills, as far
as the eye could see, one behind another, and each range higher than
the last, until far away one caught the sheen of snow-peaks against
the sky. The autumn foliage was a never-ending glory. One shrub in
particular caught my eye, of stunted growth, with a long oval leaf,
which was now of the most brilliant shades of red. This shrub grew in
immense clumps, and the effect at a short distance was that of vast
beds of scarlet geranium.
But the road in the hills was almost as bad as the road by the sea, and
after having done some twenty-eight versts in the whole day, our horses
were done up, and so were we. Just after noon my men stayed behind for
some time, and I, thinking nothing of it, rode slowly on. In about
half an hour they rejoined, looking mightily pleased with themselves,
and very drunk. They had discovered a large bottle holding about three
pints of vodka, which I had brought with me for our use during the
next fortnight. This they had quietly sat down to the moment my back
was turned, and finished it. It was no good my making a row about it;
I was in their hands, and determined to bear with them, at least until
I found out where game was to be found, after which I could decide
whether to keep them or try alone. Meanwhile they had finished their
grog, and as I did not mean to give up mine, they would be punished by
enforced abstinence for some time to come.
A Cossack station in the Caucasus is about as strange a place to pass
the night in as can well be imagined. Ten or a dozen privates, with
the manners of monkeys in the Zoo, all sleeping in the same room
with yourself and their officer, a youngster generally little better
educated than themselves, and thoroughly hail-fellow with them all.
Such is your company. Your couch the top of the ‘petchka’ (oven), if
you like heat and dirt, and are inclined to pay for the berth; if not,
as much room as you can get on the floor or on a form, with a Cossack’s
boots next your head and a Cossack’s head next to your boots. For
supper we got some barbel, and a fish they called ‘golovin,’ which one
of the soldiers had caught; and though tired enough to turn in gladly
even here, we were, I think, even more glad to turn out again at four
next morning.
On our way we came across signs of bears; in the first instance, in the
face of a Greek settler we met, whose nose and mouth had apparently
got discontented with their original positions, and had altered them
according to their own fancy. On inquiry, we found that two years ago
the Greek had been frightening bears from his orchard, when one of
them had attacked him and, striking him on the head, peeled the face
off his skull almost, and left him still living in this condition. He
was found, and the face replaced as well as possible, but his whole
appearance was hideously distorted.
A mile or two further on we came across fresh tracks of a regular
family of bears, who had been down to the high-water line looking for
waifs and strays whilst we were sleeping at the Cossack station.
Mid-day found us at our camping place--a ruined datch or villa
belonging formerly to General Heiman, built on an estate given him,
I believe, as a reward for his successes against the aborigines. But
the house was never finished and the land never reclaimed. Where once
the Tscherkess had magnificent orchards, nothing now remains save here
and there a fruit-tree, still bearing fruit though sparingly, choked
by the luxuriant growth of forest trees. Through the doorless doorways
and windowless frames of the ruined villa, the big trees branch in,
creepers and blackberry bushes grow merrily inside, while from the very
hearth, disturbed by our intrusion, a scared woodcock bustles away. The
spot had evidently been used as a camping place by drovers before our
day, for all round the white skulls of cattle bleached on the shore and
on the sward, while remains of camp-fires were numerous, although there
were none of recent date. All this warned us to be careful, so that
our first step, after turning out our horses, was to secrete all our
provisions, &c. in a hole beneath the flooring, and to destroy, as far
as possible, all traces of our presence.
Having done this, we turned to the greenwood, and indeed it was not
far to go. Two dozen strides, and we had almost to cut our way through
the dense undergrowth. After a time we forced our way to more open
forest, and here we parted. Not twenty minutes afterwards there was
a report that set the forest shrieking. Something came crashing down
hill past me, and rumbled away into silence down a deep tree-covered
gorge. In a few minutes I arrived on the scene of action, and found
Ivan and his mongrel pointer gloating over a fine sow he had slain.
Having gralloched her, we hoisted her on to the top of a blasted and
broken oak, and, there impaled, she presented to us a ghastly, and to
the jackals who soon arrived a no doubt very tantalising, appearance.
However, we left them to their own devices and, feeling sure of pork
chops for dinner, continued our hunt.
Twice I heard swine close to me, and both my men saw game again during
the afternoon; but the covert was so dense that we none of us got
another shot, and, what was worse, all lost our way. The sun, which
had been our guide, went down all in a moment, and left us in the dark
without a compass to steer by. For two hours and a half I struggled
through jungle that tore me to pieces, and threw me down every few
yards. I climbed out of a ravine up the white face of a cliff, gun in
hand, which cliff I inspected by daylight on another occasion, and
would not climb again for the best day’s shooting that man ever had;
and at last, fagged and bleeding, came upon Ivan resting, with his pig
up aloft keeping watch for him.
After getting the pig down and finding Yepheem, we started on the back
track; but, though the track had been comparatively easy by daylight,
with no pig to drag along, we lost it in about five minutes now. In
another ten minutes we were completely lost, and, realizing the fact,
prepared to meet it. We had, fortunately, between us two boxes of
matches, furnished with which Yepheem gave us an occasional glimmer of
light, by which Ivan hewed away with his kinjal through the tangled
creepers, while I plodded wearily on behind with the pig in tow. Two
hours of this kind of thing, added to the previous day’s work, was
more than I could stand; so we sat down, made a wood fire, and, by its
light, divided the sow longitudinally.
It was no good waiting for the moon to rise, as she was in her last
quarter; so Yepheem shouldering one half, and myself the other, we
floundered on again, to arrive at last at the ruin about midnight, dead
beat and starving, to say nothing of being saturated with the blood
of the pig, and lacerated all over by the thorns of that abominable
creeper the ‘wolf’s tooth.’ Then, after one long pull at the whiskey
bottle, I lay down and slept where I was, too tired to wait for the
chops which the men were frying by my side.
Nor were my men much less tired; for when I woke with a shiver at dawn,
one of them was asleep with his skewer of grilled pork almost untouched
by his side. Of this I speedily relieved him, and, raking together
the embers of the fire, which my men had made under the flooring the
night before, I re-cooked the kabobs, and breakfasted, not perhaps
sumptuously, but with an appetite that made amends for any defects in
the cooking.
Whilst the men still slept, I went down to the sea for a swim and a
look at the country round us. Looking from the sea you saw nothing
but endless hills, growing gradually into mountains, as they receded
farther and farther from the shore. Everywhere they seemed covered with
forest, the greater part of which was composed of Spanish chestnut
trees. Except a solitary eagle, a few porpoises rolling about near in
shore, and one of my men coming down now to collect drift-wood, there
was no sign of life anywhere. After helping to light the fire and brew
the tea, I sent Yepheem to look for the horses, which were nowhere
in sight, and meanwhile Ivan and I took our rifles and tried another
part of the forest. We had gone but a very little way when the dog
gave tongue, and was evidently driving something through the bushes
towards us. Ivan ran in one direction, I in another, to cut off the
game. Standing behind a big tree at the foot of a small hill, covered
with rhododendron clumps, I heard a rustling through the covert, such
as some small animal might make if quietly forcing his way through.
I never dreamed it was our game, but was still intently listening
for the crashing charge I was beginning to know so well. Looking
in the direction of the rustling, I was thunderstruck to see three
magnificent grey old boars following one another in single file down
hill, straight to my tree. The almost cat-like noiselessness with which
large and clumsy animals can move about in thick covert, is almost
more wonderful than the tremendous noise even small ones make when so
minded. I picked out the leading boar, fired, and with a thundering
rush they were gone. How I could have missed him I don’t know, but I
apparently did clean, and for the rest of that day I found it harder
than ever not to speak somewhat unadvisedly with my lips when a long
loop of ‘wolf’s tooth’ caught me up under the nose, or a hazel wand
flew back and cut me over the ear.
Later on in the afternoon we were all three walking abreast, with
perhaps a hundred yards between each gun, when I caught a glimpse
of Ivan stealthily scrambling up an old stump, from which elevated
position he aimed carefully, for what seemed about five minutes, at
something almost under his feet. Then followed the click that denotes
a missfire, and a great crashing amidst the rhododendron bushes, as
a big brown bear scuttled away in undignified flight. Some minutes
afterwards, whilst Ivan with many curses was descending from the stump,
his valuable piece went off, luckily damaging no one.
Except some wild boars seen by Yepheem, this was the last game we saw
during the day, although we came across regular roads made by bears
and swine, and one patch of several acres, which from the broken
fruit-trees and trampled state of the ground appeared to be a regular
bear den. The quantity of fruit one meets with in these Circassian
forests compensates in some measure for persecutions of the ‘wolf’s
tooth’ and other thorny creepers. Large apples, walnuts, grapes,
‘fourmar’ (an edible berry for which I do not know any other name),
medlars, blackberries, dewberries, and a kind of scarlet plum, occur
frequently, and whereever they occur the trees are smashed into ruins
by the bears. You begin to get some notion of the power of a bear when
you have seen the enormous boughs he has broken in his greed for fruit.
To-night the jackals were calling all round us, but the wily little
beasts never gave me a shot.
In the morning Yepheem woke us with the pleasant intelligence that our
horses had been stolen. A drover had passed along the coast whilst we
were shooting the day before, and suspicion immediately settled on his
party. Of course after this news there was no hunting for us to-day,
for while Ivan and Yepheem scoured the country for our missing steeds,
I had to sit at home and watch. At nightfall the best news they could
give me was that the Cossacks on the station at which we had slept on
our way hither had lost six of their horses at the same time.
I had time during the day to examine the insect life about our camp,
and amongst the butterflies I noticed all three meadow browns,
quantities of very large brimstones, a fritillary, and a wood argus,
whilst amongst the moths I recognized quantities of the gamma and the
humming-bird hawk moth.
When we went down to the shore to bathe, huge shoals of what looked
like bass were playing close in shore, but alas we had no means of
securing any, though they would have been a noble addition to our
ill-found larder.
Last night, whilst writing up my journal, with my legs dangling from
a rafter, and a great wood fire burning by my side, by which the men
lay curled in their bourkas, the wind that came moaning through the
open places in the wall brought with it a sound between a child’s
wail and a wolf’s howl, which was so distinct from the jackals’ cries
that it arrested my attention at once. The men sprang to their feet
simultaneously, and with excited faces whispered ‘barse’ (panther).
At our backs was the ruined doorway through which the forest trees
stretched their arms; in our front was the huge empty window place
with thickets of briar and thorn half blinding it, and right under it
the sound seemed. For a moment I believe the same feeling was on all
of us, that the next event would be the entrance of our serenader by
either door or window. However, this wore off at once, and snatching up
my rifle I crept to the window place to try to make out the beast in
the moonlight. But outside all was a maze of shadowy limbs and dark
places, with every here and there a brilliant patchwork of moonshine;
and though I went outside and carefully beat all round our camp I could
not catch sight of the barse.
To-night, having had a lazy day in camp, I was by no means in a hurry
to roll myself up in the least draughty corner, so taking my rifle,
having constructed a night sight for it, I betook myself to the beach
to await our last night’s visitor should he repeat his visit.
The hills near Heiman’s Datch come down almost to the high-water line,
so that sitting hidden under some drift-wood I had the forest close
at my back, and a little above me; so close indeed as to suggest the
possibility of a sudden spring from the bushes to my hiding place if
any beast had the courage to try it. Before me lay some forty yards at
most of strand, and beyond a perfectly calm and silent sea. Far up in
one of the valleys at my back two wolves were answering each other,
and away towards Duapsè I could hear some jackals fighting over some
carrion they had found.
But for a long time nothing happened, except every now and then a
rustle in the forest at my back, that made me start and bring my gun
to bear on its dark fastnesses. I had almost made up my mind to give
up my watch and return to the ruin, when a figure like the grey ghost
of some large hound was just visible against the sky line. It was too
dark to see even the barrels of my rifle, but aiming as best I could, I
fired. The figure bounded forward and trotted briskly along the coast
from me; so pitching my rifle low, and well in front, I fired again.
Then the beast vanished. For a minute or two I waited, expecting to see
it again, or at least hear it making off, and then, loading my rifle, I
went up to the spot at which I had last seen it. But whatever the beast
was, it had vanished, and feeling that I had wasted a couple of hours
and a couple of cartridges in missing a jackal, I went back to my roost
in the ruin.
However, on the morning after my night-watch, when we went down to
bathe and collect drift-wood for our fires, my man Ivan suddenly called
to me to look at something he had found on the stones. On inspection
it proved to be large blood drops, on the very spot, as near as I
could tell, on which my shadowy visitor of the night before had stood.
Following the blood track along the shore, we momentarily expected to
find a dead jackal, as, from the quantity of blood, the beast must have
been very hard hit. Some two hundred yards along the shore the trail
crossed the mouth of a little mountain stream, with a bed of soft clay
on one side of it, and through this the trail went. Our astonishment
may be imagined when along with the blood marks we found the fresh
tracks of a large panther (or more properly leopard), which had
evidently been the beast wounded by me in the dark the night before. Of
course the search was now prosecuted with far greater ardour, at least
on my part. As for the men, they have so many yarns about the much
dreaded barse, that they were not as keen as they might have been; and
when the trail turned from the shore and entered some extremely dense
and dark thickets, they came to a stand, and nothing would induce them
to enter the forest with me. Unfortunately the dog was of their mind,
so that after wandering blindly about for some time, tearing myself to
pieces, and losing my temper terribly, I had to give up my search, with
the conviction strong upon me that a noble and (in this part of the
world) rare quarry was lying dead within a stone’s throw of me.
‘Barse’ is the name given by the peasants on the Black Sea coast, and
in fact generally throughout the Caucasus, to any feline animal larger
than a wild cat; and this indiscriminate use of the word occasioned
me a good deal of trouble. Too often when they tell you of barse, the
animal they refer to is only the lynx, of which there are at least
two varieties in the Caucasus, and which is extremely numerous on
some parts of the Black Sea coast. The natives trap it for its skin,
which is one of the commonest in the furriers’ shops of Tiflis and
Ekaterinodar. But that the leopard or ocelot (the snow leopard of
India) does occur not uncommonly in the Caucasus, even on its western
coast, I was assured by Professor Radde, the courteous director of
the Tiflis Museum, who showed me great kindness in going over his
collections with me during my stay in that town. And even had I had no
further confirmation than the tracks I have above alluded to, I should
feel convinced that the beast I wounded was an unmistakable leopard.
Returning from our tracking operations, we were startled by seeing a
strange figure moving about inside our camp, evidently looking for
anything light enough to carry away. Remembering our horses, we never
for a moment doubted but that this was one of the gentry who had stolen
them, returned possibly for the saddles. Had he been, he would have had
fleet feet to have escaped, for we went for him like terriers for a
rat. But our anger was turned to rejoicing when we recognised the face
of a friendly Cossack from the next station, who had brought our horses
back with him, and was looking for nothing more valuable than a still
smouldering ember to light his cigarette by. Our horses had joined his
‘taboon’ (herd), which had been pasturing in a valley somewhere between
our camp and his station, and he had there found them the night before.
On hearing this good news Ivan and his chum announced to my disgust
their intention of going straight back to Duapsè, before any further
accidents happened, alleging as their reasons that their wives could
not do without them any longer. As a matter of fact, I presume their
own appetite for sport was satiated, and their appetite for vodka
becoming daily more unendurably keen. As no words or promises of
mine could turn them from their resolve I gave in to them, merely
stipulating that they should leave me one of their horses to take
me twelve versts further up the coast, to the hut of a Tscherkess
telegraph watcher, who lived by that irrepressible mountain torrent the
Golovinsk. To this they agreed, and I moreover managed to persuade the
Cossack to accompany me to Golovinsky, as another Cossack station at
which he could rest was not far from the watcher’s hut. So we parted
company, my men and I, and I don’t think I suffered any great loss from
their defection. My reasons for wishing to go to Golovinsky were, that
a report had come down the coast that in the extensive chestnut forest
round the watcher’s hut bears were more than usually numerous, the man
himself having recently killed two by shooting from a platform in a
tree during the night.