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.
The Cossack and myself, having seen the two Russians round the first
little promontory, unearthed a small quantity of whiskey which I had
managed to save from their insatiable thirst, and with this and a
pork kabob made a very fair lunch, and laid the foundation of a good
understanding between us. Then we piled up a pyramid of odds and ends
on the back of each little horse, and made the whole fast with cords.
The equestrians’ enviable position was astride the summit of the
pyramid of luggage--a position difficult to retain when gained, and
almost impossible to attain unaided. However, after many failures the
Cossack hoisted me on to my place, and providing we never went out of a
walk I felt fairly safe. How the Cossack got up was a miracle, but he
did it somehow; and we proceeded at a walk through the shingle, that
forms the only possible pathway along this part of the shore.
We had not gone far when it seemed to me that I was gradually leaning
over more and more towards the sea. I tried to regain an erect
position, and then I became aware of my situation. My girths had got
slack, and my saddle, with its huge pile of luggage, of which I was
the highest point, was gradually turning round under my horse’s belly.
Seated as I was, I was utterly helpless; I could not readjust my
saddle, and a voluntary descent, except head first, was impossible.
So I waited the course of events, and in a few moments lay sprawling
on the ground, half buried in pots and pans, bourkas, and other
impedimenta.
This was our only misadventure, however, and about four o’clock we came
in sight of the watcher’s hut--a two-roomed wooden shanty, knocked up
in the roughest way possible, standing on the edge of the shingle, with
a big brown bear-skin stretched over the roof to dry. A more utterly
miserable-looking hut cannot well be conceived; but the skin on the
thatch consoled me, proclaiming as it did the vicinity of the game I
was in search of.
After much shouting and hammering at the board that constituted the
hut’s one door, a wild Robinson Crusoe-like fellow came shuffling out.
Tall and well built, but taciturn and clumsy to a degree, Stepan was
not a favourable specimen of the benefits of woodland isolation to
mankind. Instead of giving me a kindly welcome as, to do them justice,
all Russian peasants had hitherto done, he eyed me in the doubtful
manner in which some big dog might eye a too familiar stranger before
snapping at the would-be caressing hand. His face was shrivelled
and yellow with fever, and a frequent deep cough formed no pleasant
accompaniment to our cottage life. Gradually his sullenness gave way to
surprise at the presence of an English gentleman in those evil places,
for such he evidently deemed Golovinsky; and when I explained to him
that I wished to hire his services and the use of his hut, as well as
to put all game killed at his disposal, his delight knew no bounds. His
terms were a rouble a week, that is about half a crown; but that seemed
so unfair to me that I trebled it, and added to it a promise of ten
roubles additional for the skinning of the first bear I should kill;
and considering that he gave me house-room, black bread, and his whole
time, I think 7_s._ 6_d._ per week was not an exorbitant charge.
However, he was delighted, and though rather startled to find that
his whole larder consisted of some black bread, onions, and pork fat
(‘salo’), I consoled myself with the reflection that with the addition
of tea and sugar, which I had brought with me, we should be able to
hold out for a week at least, in which time I should probably have
obtained my coveted bear-skin.
Outside the hut all was beauty. The hut itself was as nearly as
possible the centre of a bay of fairly high hills, enclosing a couple
of hundred acres or so of plain covered with low shrubs. Beyond the
first chain of hills, which was wooded to the top, rose another and
a higher chain, and so one after another, in successive semicircles,
they rose range above range, until far away in the sapphire sky shone
the white glory of the snow-peaks. Out at sea a long line of pelicans
lay tossing on the little waves, like a small fleet riding at anchor.
Within the hut all was squalor and filth. The place consisted of two
rooms, in one of which was a telegraphic apparatus of the simplest
kind, with a handle like that of a barrel organ, and a face like the
face of a clock with letters in place of numerals. This was the deity
of the place and Stepan’s pride and fear. Near it was a camp bedstead,
and here the list of the furniture ends. The other room was merely a
shed, in which such cooking as we had to do was done; and though the
appliances were of the simplest, we never taxed them overmuch. The
floors throughout were of mud, and several inches deep in refuse,
dating from the time of Stepan’s arrival in his den.
Borrowing a spade and cutting down a large bough for a broom, I soon
had a clear floor, and by dint of hard work had in an hour’s time got a
fairly clean place to move about in. Stepan retired to the shed, and,
in spite of my protestations, took up his abode there. Had it not been
for his cough I should have fallen in with this arrangement readily
enough; but as it was, I felt he required the best accommodation the
shanty afforded. However, in the shed he remained, and for the rest of
my stay I had his best room to myself.
There were, besides Stepan and myself, three other residents at the
‘telegraph station,’ as he loved to call it--to wit, Zizda, Lufra, and
Orla, three large cross-bred dogs, devoured by mange, with which Stepan
hunts the boars that abound in the thicket at the back of his house,
killing on an average, so he tells me, half a dozen in the year. In
spite of the numbers which inhabit the adjoining forests, this small
bag is not very much to be wondered at, when the impenetrable nature of
the covert and the almost utter uselessness of Stepan’s gun are taken
into consideration.
Russian peasants have amongst them the most wonderful fire-arms in
the world, which, as a rule, they buy in the bazaars at from three
to five roubles (_i.e._ 7_s._ 6_d._ to 12_s._ 6_d._) each. I have
frequently seen the grebe-shooters along the shore at Kertch using old
rifle-barrels worn thin, tied on to a rough stock, with flint lock,
&c., the whole thing being compounded of the remains of some venerable
weapon in use in the Russian army immediately after the invention of
gunpowder. Stepan’s was no exception to this rule, and yet I distinctly
remember seeing him put in charges which I would not have ventured to
put into my high-class breech-loader.
After putting the house in order, Stepan loaded his valuable weapon
with a good charge of powder and two bullets, the first in its
naturally smooth state, the other chewed into a rough-edged mass. Thus
prepared we sallied forth and reconnoitred the little plain within the
hills. Everywhere the tracks of bears, boars, wolves, and occasionally
roe-deer presented themselves to our eyes, but of the animals
themselves we saw nothing. Pheasants rose several times from the bushes
at our feet, and Stepan tells me Golovinsky is a favourite abiding
place of theirs, in consequence of the quantity of ‘phaisantchik’
growing here, upon the yellow berry of which they feed. The pheasants
have no bad taste in berries, for when ripe I know no berry much
pleasanter in flavour than that of the ‘phaisantchik,’ in spite of its
acidity. The flavour strongly resembles that of the pineapple.
Of course, as pheasants abound here, Stepan has no fowling-piece,
and I have left mine behind at Ekaterinodar. You would imagine that
living as the Cossacks, Stepan and many others, do, in a state of
semi-starvation in the matter of meat from week to week, with an
abundance of game birds round them, they would become good shots and
keen sportsmen, or at the very least turn trappers, and so supply
themselves with food. And yet it is not so. Not one Cossack amongst
the many I have met was a sportsman, and this perhaps their want of
sporting rifles and ammunition may account for; though, if they were
allowed to use them, no better rifle than the Berdianka, with which
they are supplied, could be desired. But that neither they, nor the
settlers and peasants, should have any idea of trapping, is most
strange. In all the Crimea and Caucasus I never saw or heard of snare,
or pitfall, or any of the hundred and one devices for killing game
without fire-arms, which other nations use. The only thing of the kind
I ever heard of, was told me by a German settler, who assured me that
in some places they caught pheasants by inserting small cones of paper,
limed inside, into the earth; in the bottom of each cone a pea is
placed and others strewn around. The pheasant, after finishing the peas
scattered on the surface of the ground, finds the pea at the bottom of
the cone, and, in trying to peck it out, hoodwinks himself with the
limed paper cone, and being blinded becomes frightened, and remains
cowering on the ground, an easy prey to the trapper. But I could never
hear of any one amongst the Tscherkesses, Cossacks, or ‘plastoons’
(settlers), who had either done this or heard of its being done; and I
believe I am right in saying that the Russians, at least in the Crimea
and Caucasus, know very little of trapping, and indeed of woodcraft
generally.
I had passed the first part of this my first night at Golovinsky,
sleeping as well as I could in my only too well ventilated quarters;
and rising while it was still dark, Stepan and I had wiled away the
time in chatting of the snares and traps with which different nations
used to kill their game. As we chatted he busied himself on a pair of
rough sandals or mocassins he was making for me from the skin of a wild
boar he had killed in the spring. As soon as they were finished, he
steeped them in water to soften them, and then, first wrapping my leg
round with canvas, he fastened on the sandals, winding the long laces
round and round the canvas until they fastened just below the knee.
Thus I was booted and gaitered _à la mode Circassienne_ in a very short
time; and as the dawn slowly broke over the mountains, and the stars
grew pale and died in the grey of morning, we left our hut and walked
hard to warm ourselves in the soft rain that began with dawn.
On our way to the forest, which began at the foot of the first range
of hills, we had to ford that turbulent trout stream, the Golovinsk,
and as its waters come straight down from the higher peaks, and are
fed almost entirely by melted snow, right bitterly cold we found it.
Chilled and wet to the waist, we forced our way through a weary half
hour’s work in thorn brake and strangling creeper, while the gathered
rain-drops ran in streams down our necks and up our sleeves from every
bough we touched.
At last we gained the more open chestnut forest, and here we found
how great a boon the rain really was to us. The leaves, which the day
before had sounded like small minute-guns under our feet, firing a
warning to every beast in the forest, were now soft and silent. Arrived
among the chestnuts, Stepan and I separated, he taking a line along the
base of the hill, I choosing a parallel line much higher up. To-day the
dogs had been tied up, and our _modus operandi_ was simply to walk as
silently as possible through the forest, stopping every twelve yards or
so to listen, and trusting at least as much to our ears as to our eyes
to find the game.
For over an hour I stalked noiselessly on, hearing nothing but the
rattle of the falling chestnuts, the patter of the ceaseless rain, and
the screaming of the everlasting jays. It is easy to understand why the
Indian, whose whole life is spent more or less in the chase, becomes
such a silent, self-contained being. The whole chase is a school for
silence and self-restraint. Should you tread carelessly, a twig breaks
and your chance is lost; should a thorn run right up under your nail
from end to end, you must not complain; and should the bitter blows
dealt you in the face by the rebounding twigs, or the tearing and
strangling of the thorny creepers, at last extract an exclamation, your
chance is over for the day.
For over an hour I bore all the malice of the forest fiend silently
and uncomplainingly. But at last, in an evil moment, a long trailing
loop of thorny vine hooked me under the nose, and pulling up that
tender member to an unusual angle, held it firmly hooked in its
painful position. Then I fear the wrath within me boiled over; and as
I released my mutilated proboscis, I spoke unadvisedly with my tongue.
Hardly was the imprecation out of my lips when there was a short sharp
snort, and a black object flashed past me downhill at a hundred miles
an hour. A quick snap-shot failed to stop him, and so I passed on,
reflecting that my little explosion had cost me probably the only game
I was doomed to see that day.
But this lesson taught me caution, and a short half-hour afterwards,
whilst I was creeping noiselessly along a kind of natural cutting, I
was suddenly aware of a big black thing moving in the hazels high
above me. The creature looked as if it was browsing, and might have
been anything from a cow to a rhinoceros, for any distinguishing
feature that I could discern. However, in such a position, I argued,
it must be game of some sort, so, raising my rifle, I aimed as nearly
as possible into the middle of it, and fired. The yells that followed
my shot were proof positive that I had hit something, and before I had
time to turn, an old bear was coming straight down to me through the
brushwood, ‘puffing’ furiously as he came, like an excited locomotive
engine. I had time to notice that his mode of progression was curious
and lopsided, lurching as he did on to his hams at every step, and when
he was almost on top of me, rolling over the cutting in which I stood:
only avoiding me by a few yards, he went crashing downhill, taking
another bullet with him as he went, and lodging under a fallen tree far
down the hillside.
Here for a time I left him, making the woods hideous with his snarling
and moaning; and after some ten minutes’ shouting I managed to get
my guide, Stepan, to come to me, white and shaking with fright. He
explained to me that he thought I had been certainly killed, and in
consequence of this, I suppose, believed I should want his services
no more. Standing in the cutting, I pointed out to him the place
where Bruin lay, far down through an almost impenetrable thicket of
blackberry-bush and wild vine. Stepan did all he knew to induce me to
leave the bear to die by inches, and come for him next day; but this
seemed to me not only unsportsmanlike, but uncertain: so leaving him to
watch Bruin, I crawled into the thicket, and began forcing my way by a
game-track under the bushes to the place where he lay.
It was a difficult path, and the creepers hampered me sadly, so that
it was not without a considerable quickening of the pulse that I heard
Stepan screaming, ‘Look out, Barin (master), for heaven’s sake, here he
comes!’ The bushes parted about ten yards below, and slowly pushing his
way uphill came the bear, swinging his head from side to side, throwing
the blood and foam from his jaws, and moaning and sobbing hideously. As
soon as he caught sight of me he gave his jaws a kind of vicious snap,
and even managed to increase his pace to a trot. It was difficult to
fire in my cramped position, but I managed to do it, and, thanks to his
extreme proximity to my rifle’s muzzle, the ball went right through his
head, passing through a large oak sapling beyond, leaving a hole in it
as clean drilled as if it had been done with a hot iron.
The bear, when we came to examine him, was a very old fellow, quite
black, and with a skin in anything but a good condition. However, being
my first bear, we skinned him with great care and much exultation, and
brought home his head, tired but rejoicing.
It was still early when we got back to our hut, not more than mid-day,
in fact; but the weather was of the roughest, and our uprising had been
an early one, so that we were not sorry to pass the rest of the day in
cleaning our bear’s skin and preparing his flesh for our evening meal.
And fresh-killed bear’s meat takes a considerable time in preparation,
and when the animal happens to be as old and wiry as the beast killed
to-day, not forty cooks with forty rolling-pins could ever beat his
flesh into a reasonable degree of tenderness.
The Cossacks on the station won’t eat bear’s flesh, though they only
get meat once a week here; and partly for that reason, and partly
because with their single-barrelled rifles they consider the risk too
great, they never molest the bears. So little in fact do they know of
their comparative harmlessness, that they gave me quite an ovation when
I came back loaded with spoils to-day, and for the moment I figured as
quite a Nimrod to an admiring audience of eleven semi-savages.
I had heard a great deal in time past about the excellence of bear’s
hams, and the delicacy of bear’s paws stewed, but I felt that another
of the pleasant illusions of my youth had been destroyed when I
encountered to-night the mass of boiled black whipcord, which, in spite
of its unpleasant flavour, was undoubtedly real bear’s ham. As for the
paws, Stepan and myself baked them _à la mode_ in a little subterranean
oven; but on unearthing them we could find nothing but skin and
leather, with bones and bony sinews, and certainly nothing to eat. Even
our dogs did not seem to make much of them.
In spite of the poor quality of our food, we made, however, the
heartiest of suppers, having been strangers to meat for nearly a week;
and with a storm raging outside which seemed to threaten a repetition
of the disastrous flood that swept our cottage away last year, we slept
the sleep of the weary but successful.
The next day, Saturday, was a red-letter day for me. Rising rather
later than usual, we tried the other side of our bay of mountains,
and, in spite of the noisy wind, with great success. Hardly had we
forced our way through the growth of briars at the bottom of the hill
into the chestnuts above when Stepan, turning round, beckoned me to
stop, knelt down, and aiming deliberately, fired at something which
the bushes concealed from me. On going up to him I found that he had
fired at a boar standing end on to him some thirty yards off, and, as
might be expected, with his extraordinary weapon, had only succeeded in
frightening the beast.
Angry at the luck which had given Stepan such a chance to throw away,
I pushed noisily through the thickets, never dreaming of finding any
more game, at any rate for another half mile. Yet hardly had we gone
three dozen paces from the spot whence the last shot was fired, when
our ears caught the sound of a bear’s even step close to us, and
approaching still closer. Slipping silently behind a couple of trees,
we waited with our hearts in our mouths. Softly and deliberately
the steps drew near, with a sound closely resembling the step of a
man slowly picking his way through the forest. Every now and then
the bear paused to give a loud snuff of inquiry, which, luckily
for us, the constant shifting of the wind in these narrow valleys
completely baffled. At last I got a glimpse of her passing slowly
through the bushes, and stopping every now and then to pick up the
fallen chestnuts in a leisurely way as she paced along. I waited for a
minute or two until I could see her grey shoulder plainly through the
rhododendrons. Then I pulled, and wheeling round with a short sharp
cry, she disappeared in the higher covert, followed in her retreat by a
snap-shot from my second barrel, which evidently did not take effect.
Uncertain whether the bear was killed outright or only wounded, Stepan
and myself were somewhat shy of following her into her stronghold. At
first we both tried climbing trees, hoping to get a view of her thus;
but finding that of no avail I persuaded Stepan to follow me at a
distance in a careful survey of the place in which we had last seen
her. Poor beast, she had not gone far; the moment she was out of our
sight her strength failed her, and when we found her she was lying
stone dead, not sixty yards from the spot where the bullet had reached
her.
‘Express’ rifles are terribly destructive little weapons. This second
bear was totally unlike the one killed the day before, at least in
colour: for while he was black, her coat, a very fine one, was of a
soft light brown, so light as to be almost grey.
On examination we found that she was a yearling, and was returning from
her morning’s work, the ruin of half a fine chestnut-tree, when we met
her. Some of the boughs she had managed to break were almost as thick
as a man’s waist. On looking at her fore-arm after Stepan had skinned
her, I could not but reflect that the stories one meets with from time
to time, of hand-to-hand conflicts with bears, require a large grain of
salt for the swallowing.
Leaving Stepan to finish the skinning, I wandered on somewhat higher
up the hillside. I had not left him a quarter of an hour when I again
heard the peculiarly soft regular tread of a bear above me, and after
waiting patiently for about five minutes, I caught a glimpse for a
moment of the head of an exact counterpart of the bear then under
Stepan’s hands. Unluckily for me, she sighted me at the same moment,
and with a loud sniff plunged straight downhill at a pace that, even
had the covert not concealed her, would have rendered my chance of
hitting her extremely problematical. I saw from the direction she had
taken that she would pass almost over Stepan, and I hurried on to be
able to lend him a hand in case he only wounded her. But I waited in
vain for the report of my man’s mighty blunderbuss. Sitting engaged in
the sanguinary task of disrobing our dead bear he had suddenly become
aware of what appeared to him either the shade or the enraged sister
of the deceased charging furiously down upon him; and oppressed with a
consciousness of his guilt, Stepan fled red-handed from the avenger,
leaving his gun to take care of itself.
Poor Stepan, who was originally I believe no coward, but in days past,
according to his own version, a mighty hunter, was an instance of a man
who had suddenly lost all his nerve, and this occurred as follows. One
day, when suffering severely from fever, he was walking along the dried
bed of a mountain torrent, when, on turning a sharp corner, he almost
ran into a large bear. For a moment they stood facing one another.
Stepan, having no weapons, thought his last hour had come. There was an
awful noise, something struck him on the face, and for the time the
hapless Tscherkess passed away from this bear-haunted world to a land
of oblivion. On returning to his senses, he was surprised to find no
bear, and no bloody wound upon his scalp. Further examination showed
him, however, that a bear had stood facing him, and it was probably
the gravel thrown up by its hind feet as it slewed round in headlong
flight, that had struck Stepan, not stunning him as he supposed, but
merely in his weak state frightening him out of his senses. Since then
until now my man had only shot at bears from a platform in a tree at
night--a style of sport extremely free from danger, as, although Bruin
can climb, he very rarely if ever attempts to do so in pursuit of a foe.
Living, as Stepan had lived all his life, in bear-frequented forest
lands, he had many a story to tell of ‘Michael Michaelovitch,’ as the
peasants call him. On one occasion he and a friend had observed an
apple-tree well laden with fruit, some seven or eight versts from their
village in the forest, standing unclaimed of any man, almost sole relic
of some once prosperous Tscherkess village. Stepan and his friend, who
lived at some little distance, arranged to meet at the tree one morning
early, and gather the fruit, to be shared amongst them. Arrived at the
tree, Stepan saw some one already engaged throwing the apples down.
Thinking his friend was trying to steal a march on him, the irate
Stepan heaped all manner of abuse on him, accused him of spoiling the
apples by throwing them down; and, at last, getting no answer, fairly
yelled with rage, and began to throw things into the tree. Then the
shower of apples ceased, and, with a gruff snort, a huge old bear came
tumbling out of the tree, almost on top of the terrified villager. As
usual in these cases, Bruin was just as much frightened as the man, and
shambled off as quickly as possible, leaving the apples to the friends.
All the Russians and Tscherkesses with whom I have talked about bears,
say there are two kinds in the Caucasus--the ordinary big brown bear,
and a smaller one, that lives in the higher ranges, has a kind of white
shirt-front to his coat, and is much fiercer and more carnivorous than
his brown brother. Dr. Radde, however, of the Tiflis Museum, tells me
there is only one kind; and though I have myself seen great variety
in the sizes and coats of different individuals killed on the Black
Sea coast, I can well believe he is right. Still, I fancy the higher
ranges of Transcaucasia are very little known; and it may well be that
a variety of the common bear, differing considerably from the specimens
found on the coast, is to be met with nearer the snow-line. The
peasants tell wonderfully circumstantial stories of their favourite’s
craft (for, in a way, the bear is a great favourite with the moujik,
and hero of many a droll story): how that he lies in ambush for the
unsuspecting roe or wild goat, and pounces on him, or knocks him down
with a log used club-fashion, as he passes. Or, again, that lying hid
on a ledge overlooking some favourite pass of the tûr’s, he rolls huge
stones on his prey as it browses beneath him, and then, having killed
it in this way, climbs down and dines at his leisure.
Of course all these are mere peasants’ stories, but as they have been
told me repeatedly by peasants who have lived amongst the beasts of
which the stories are told all their lives, I give them for what they
are worth. There may be some grains of truth in them.
After putting my bear’s skin out of harm’s way, and leaving the hams to
take their chance till we returned, Stepan and I continued our hunt. In
a deep glade, where no sunlight came to disturb the drowsy stillness,
something bounded to its feet with a great noise, and hurried off
unseen, making the whole forest re-echo with its short sharp barks.
The cry was new to me, and I imagined all manner of grim beasts from
whom the sound might have proceeded, and regretted intensely my evil
luck in not obtaining a shot. Stepan, however, consoled me by telling
me it was only ‘cazeole,’ the roebuck of this part of the world, which
answers--so an old Indian sportsman tells me who has shot many of
these ‘cazeoles,’--to the Indian ‘karkee.’ Indeed, all the game found
in the Caucasus is the same as, or very nearly allied to, species found
throughout the mountains of India.
Later on in the day, whilst exploring a rhododendron thicket at the
very summit of a high hill, shut in and encircled by still higher
eminences, I heard something bolt from me through the rattling covert,
and then pause, and with a loud sniff try to get my wind. Apparently
getting it, the beast changed his course and proceeded at right angles
to the line of his first rush, and then halting, again tried for my
wind. Luckily for me, shut in as we were by the higher peaks, the wind
kept veering round; and, thoroughly puzzled and beaten, the unlucky
beast kept changing his course until at last I, standing behind a tree,
saw a long grey snout and a pair of gleaming white tusks peering out of
a thicket some thirty yards in front of me. The quick eyes sighted me
at once in spite of my tree, and I had hardly time to fire before the
owner of the eyes had retreated out of sight. Quick as the shot had to
be, however, it was wonderfully effective, and the boar went crashing
head over heels from top to bottom of the hill, there to rest still as
sudden death could make it until I could get down to him. The bullet
had gone in at the front of the shoulder, and traversing the whole
length of the spine, had perfectly pulverised it, remaining buried
just under the hide near the root of the tail; whence I extracted it
and still preserve it, smashed and flattened as it is, a memento of the
wonderful force of the ‘express’ (450) rifle.
Laden with spoils, the bear’s skin and head, as well as the tidbits
taken from the boar, we hurried home, to send up the Cossacks for the
rest of the boar, which would be a welcome addition to their perpetual
cabbage soup.