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.
I arrived at Kertch in an opportune moment, for on the day of my
arrival the little town welcomed back one of its heroes in the Turkish
war, and as he was an old friend of mine, I came in for my share of the
merry-making. My friend and I were invited to a large supper-party,
composed of all the young blood of Kertch, and were together fêted, he
as warrior, I as sportsman, both fresh from a common field of glory
(and discomfort) in Asia.
Of the Turkish war our friend had little to say, except that the
discomfort had seemed to him greater than the danger, as the Turks were
execrable marksmen with the rifle, and though capital artillerymen,
none of their shells would explode. This I have heard frequently both
before and since.
The arrival of the old steamship ‘Kotzebul’ on Sunday put an end to all
these gaieties as far as I was concerned; and leaving behind me a whole
mass of invitations unaccepted from my hospitable friends at Kertch, I
once more sailed for the Caucasus.
From Kertch to Poti we had a fair and pleasant voyage, over a sea
calm and still as an inland lake, past a coast where mountains in the
background sink into hills in the foreground, and the hills themselves
run right down into the sea; while almost from the point where they
touch the waves with their feet the forest starts upwards and clothes
them to the very summit. On November 26, at Sukhoum, the skies were
blue and cloudless, many of the trees still in their green foliage,
some double-petalled wild roses in full bloom, and the temperature that
of an English summer.
Sukhoum itself though, in spite of the lovely weather, is but a sorry
sight. The houses are most of them ruins; the town is full of soldiers
camping amongst the ruins and making confusion worse confounded; the
gardens are already half absorbed in the wild growth that surrounds
them; the splendid avenues of ‘bignonia catalba’ which once graced the
town have been ruthlessly cut down, though useless I should think even
for firewood; there is no church left, and I saw very few women. The
streets are overgrown everywhere with belladonna, one of the commonest
weeds here. But whilst meditating over the desolation of Sukhoum, and
gathering its wild roses, the whistle of the steamer broke unpleasantly
on my ear, and my friend and myself had the nearest escape of being
left behind for a week, by the end of which time we should have had
enough of Sukhoum I think.
On board the steamer I met a certain Col. G., a very well-known and
successful sportsman, not only in the Caucasus but throughout Russia.
He had spent three years between Elbruz and Sukhoum, and had devoted a
great deal of his time to sport, but admitted that he knew very little
of the country yet. It was his opinion that this district is richer in
game than any other part of the country; and if by game you mean only
large game, I entirely agree with him. In this comparatively small area
he himself had either shot or seen shot aurochs (bos urus), ‘ollen’
(Russian red deer), roebuck, ibex, chamois, wild goat, mountain sheep
(tûr), leopards, lynxes, otters, bears (of which he too said there
were at least two kinds), jackals, and here, and here only, the black
wolf. This is a beast of which I have heard frequent mention on the
Black Sea coast, but have never seen it. It is probably only a slight
variety of the ordinary animal, but I think, from frequent mention made
of it, that it must be a variety which is more or less prevalent in
this country. The best place for aurochs now is between the Pscebai
and upper Zelenduk rivers, according to my friend. Col. G. told me of
another animal, which he declares exists in the Caucasus on the Kuban
river, to wit the beaver; but as I never heard of this creature’s
existence there from any of the natives of the Kuban districts, or from
any naturalist, Russian or other, whom I have since met, I think this
last statement of the gallant colonel’s must be taken ‘cum grano salis.’
Arrived at Poti, I found a very fair hotel for such a town, managed by
an obliging old Frenchman; and though Poti is built on an undrained
swamp, I escaped without the fever. I was met at Poti by an Englishman,
who was at that time acting vice-consul for Great Britain, and was
himself employed as agent to a large timber firm in England. To this
gentleman, Mr. Carroll, I owe many thanks for his useful hints for
my journey. The timber of which he exports most from the Black Sea
coast, is, he tells me, box, of which large quantities are found in the
adjacent forests; and the burr of the walnut-tree, an excrescence in
appearance rather like a huge fungus, but hard and of most beautifully
grained wood, out of which the thin layers are cut, which are used in
England for veneering, etc. The cost of finding and transporting these
woods from the forests in the interior of the Caucasus, between which
and Poti communication is difficult, renders them extremely expensive.
From Poti to Tiflis I had two English-speaking fellow-travellers--a
German landowner and an English mining engineer going to the former’s
property near Kutais to prospect for coal, of which there is supposed
to be a large supply there. The coal, they say, is of good quality
and in seams of considerable thickness. This engineer, who had seen a
great deal of the Caucasus, assured me, in common with many others,
that though not in sufficiently large quantities to be of any serious
importance, there was undoubtedly gold in most of the small river
beds between Batoum and Duapsè. From Poti to Rion the scenery is not
very attractive, the first part being merely a cutting through a
marsh forest, where all the growth is too rank, and so dense as to
spoil the individual development of the trees which compose it: it
has consequently a mean, stunted appearance--besides looking horribly
suggestive of fever. At Rion, however, we were cheered by the sight of
glorious snow-capped peaks in the distance; and here, having met with
a Government forester, to whom I told my story of wanderings in search
of game, I was by him persuaded to stay and shoot for a few days in the
neighbourhood of Kutais.
After unearthing the local forester, whose senior my friend was, we
prepared ourselves for any emergency, by a liberal consumption of the
inevitable tea and ‘papiros’ (cigarette), and then drove to an estate
of Prince Mirsky’s, where we passed the night. In the morning we had a
game drive, and killed a few roe deer, of which, Tartar fashion, these
fellows eat the kidneys, still warm and raw, as soon as the beast was
killed. I had the good fortune to kill a very large wolf as my own
share of the bag, and a very handsome fellow he appeared when I first
saw him, with his fore feet planted on an old stump and his hackles all
up, looking savagely over his shoulder in the direction of the yelping
curs which had disturbed him. He seemed a good deal more inclined to
fight than to run, I thought. His coat was of that strange colour that
I have so often noticed in the hares of the Crimea about the same time
of year--a silver grey, turning at different points to what you might
almost call rose pink.
Thanking my friends for the sport, and reflecting that an utter
stranger in England would be very unlikely to meet with such random
hospitality, I resumed my journey to Tiflis next day. The second half
of the journey is far more interesting than the first, and in places
the scenery reminds the traveller of Switzerland. The old town of Suram
is one of the most picturesque glimpses on the way,--a huge ruin of a
rough kind of castle standing on a little eminence, with the cottages
of its dependent town brooding, chicken-like, under the shadow of its
wing. The station, which is the end of the railway journey from Poti to
Tiflis, is by no means Tiflis, as I found to my cost, but is put as far
from the outskirts of the German colony, which forms a continuation of
Tiflis beyond the Kûr, as it well could be. Tiflis, even by starlight,
after a long, dull journey, and seen from a droshky, is a sight not to
be forgotten. You feel in a moment that the town you are now in is as
distinct from any you have ever seen before as anything well can be. In
spite of the Grand Duke’s presence and the sober little German colony,
European civilisation is still only a resident stranger in the streets
of Tiflis. The Tartar, Georgian, and Persian are all natural, and in
keeping with the place, but the occasional high hat of Bond Street
persuasion or Russian uniform is entirely out of harmony with the
surroundings.
As we crossed the Kura bridge we were met by a long string of camels,
and I was much impressed by my first meeting with these weird,
soft-footed monsters, pacing through the silent starlit street, with
their heads almost on a level with the roofs of the one-storied houses
on either side, every now and then giving a low roar, but save for
this moving on between bales like little towers, mute and noiseless as
ghosts.
On this, my first night at Tiflis, I had little time to spend in
admiring or wondering at the picturesque medley of men and things all
round me. All my time was more than filled with hotel hunting. Not a
single hotel in the town had a room unoccupied, though I tried more
hotels in that one night in Tiflis than I ever imagined the whole
Caucasus possessed collectively. The cause of this was simply that the
Lord Lieutenant was about to leave Tiflis next morning, and all the gay
world of the Caucasus was in town to bid him farewell.
At last I found a resting-place in the worst inn’s worst room, high up
next to the rafters that supported the roof, without any furniture,
even the bed being represented only by the post-house couch, two feet
too short for my legs. However, if my room had its disadvantages by
night, it had its advantages by day, for in the morning the view from
my fourth story (the only fourth story, I should think, in Tiflis) was
superb.
The town lies clustered round the banks of the river Kûr, a broad
stream, with steep banks where it passes through the town. Over its
dark waters rise tiers of flat-topped houses with external balconies,
where the ladies take the air and smoke their cigarettes in the
summer evenings, if their husbands cannot afford to take them to the
fashionable summer resort of Tiflis in the hills. Here and there fine
modern buildings of European character mar the uniformly Asiatic
nature of the scene, while in the streets splendid carriages run
into rough log-carts on huge wooden wheels dragged slowly along by
half-tamed buffaloes. Camels look pityingly down at you with mild, sad
eyes, as they stalk past; Cossacks and gentlemen in the latest Parisian
costume jostle each other on the pavement; at the street corners sit
ferocious figures with moustaches several inches long, in sheepskin
headgear, literally one-fourth the size of themselves, engaged in the
peaceful occupation of embroidering slippers or cushions, which are
afterwards exposed for sale in Abkhasian serais standing side by side
with shops wherein the wares are fresh from the boulevards of Paris;
and everywhere throughout this strange scene glide the Georgian women
in their white mufflers, which resemble nothing so much as a sheet
wound round their persons, showing only their faces and a few inches
of many-coloured skullcap at the top. Here and there you see a Tiflis
water-carrier with his skins of precious fluid carried on his horse’s
back; a Persian selling hawks, or a band of Swanetian minstrels in
skullcaps of white felt. However, when I first looked out from my lofty
post of vantage on the morning after my arrival, Tiflis was but barely
awake, and the sights I have described above were only partly visible;
the rest gradually appeared as the day got older.
As I sat on my balcony at six o’clock in the morning, with my glass
of tea and that leathery ring of bread they call a ‘bublik,’ which
forms the regular breakfast of a Russian, the only things stirring in
the streets below were the ‘dworniks’ (watchmen), and a few lumbering
peasants’ carts coming into the bazaar. I was thankful, when the day
grew older and the streets more lively, to leave my room and go in
search of something more like an English breakfast, before beginning
the business of the day; and though I had some difficulty in getting
the waiter to supply me with anything more solid than aërated bread at
such an early hour, I did eventually succeed in a capital hotel (the
name of which I am sorry to have forgotten), which I thenceforth made
my home.
My first business was, of course, to find out our English consul--a
duty which, if travelling Englishmen always observed, would conduce
materially to their comfort. It is besides a piece of courtesy which
ought not to be neglected. To a Londoner, who does not know the way to
any place, the first thing that suggests itself is to hail a cabman,
whom he looks upon as an unfailing pilot. Acting on this belief in
the unerring topographical knowledge of the race of Jehus, I hailed a
droshky, and having carefully explained to the driver where I wanted
to go, sank back in the cab, giving myself up in perfect trust to
the guidance of my pilot, and rapidly forgetting everything but the
scene in the streets we were passing through. A more perfect _mélange_
than Tiflis is impossible. There are no two houses alike; there are
no two groups of gossipers by the way speaking the same dialect; in
every street there are a score of costumes belonging to different
nationalities; and, as I afterwards found out, you can, by leaving
these main thoroughfares, dive into yet another world and a worse
Babel, by turning down towards the river and entering the bazaar.
Shops there seemed to be many and good; one of the best in the place
being kept by a Scotchman. The most attractive to the European are
those in which they sell Persian work, cushions, carpets, and arms. In
making purchases in these, it is as well, however, to take a friend
with you, who knows something of the wares offered for sale, as well as
their approximate value, and the tricks of their vendors. By doing this
I certainly in purchasing things to fit up a smoking-room at home spent
barely 100_l._ in place of about 250_l._, the sum to which the original
demands of the tradesmen for each separate item would have amounted.
Nothing annoys a foreigner more, I think, than this enforced haggling
over the price of every purchase.
But to hark back to my cabman. After driving me all over Tiflis,
through the main street, up back slums that finally ended in waste
hillside, and into squares which had no exit, and contained nothing
but shops on a kind of second story--after hailing and haranguing some
dozens of passers-by--he pulled up, and told me with much complacency
there was no English consul, but that he would find me two or three
other consuls, French, German, &c., if they would do as well. For a
moment I was puzzled what to do, as my hotel-keeper had been unable
to give me the address I wanted, and I hardly knew where else to
ask for it now my Jehu had failed me. But a telegraph-post gave me
an inspiration. Where those tall slim posts are, there must be an
Englishman or a German not far off; and telling my cabby to drive to
the telegraph station, I soon found all I wanted, as well as a kind
friend in the person of the chief of the telegraphists, Herr Günzel.
Our consul, I found, was just the man to help me--an old Indian officer
and shikaree, to whom all my wants were perfectly comprehensible. To
Captain Lyall I owe much for his ever-ready help and hospitality.
With him and Herr Günzel I passed the next few days, calling upon the
dignitaries of Tiflis, presenting my letters of introduction, and
obtaining all the information I could collect relative to Lenkoran and
the game to be found there.
With one solitary exception (Prince Gagarin, once governor of the
Lenkoran district) I was told by every one that large game abounded,
and tigers were things of everyday occurrence. Alas! I listened to
the many, and, in spite of my own conscience, closed my ears to the
one. One Russian gentleman upon whom I called showed me a letter just
received from an Englishman engaged in writing a monograph on crocuses,
asking for his assistance to obtain certain bulbs of this flower
supposed to exist at Lenkoran. I did my best, as I promised my friend
I would do, to obtain some bulbs during my stay by the Caspian; but as
there were no leaves above ground, and as the natives don’t take any
notice of flowers, or know one from another, I was completely foiled in
my attempt.
The number of musical instruments in the streets of Tiflis would lead
one to believe that the population is a most musical one. My old enemy,
the barrel-organ, turned up here in great force, especially about the
German colony. The Armenians seem most fond of it, and during my short
stay in Tiflis I twice saw a droshky containing a couple of Armenians
evidently on the spree, with organ and organ-grinder crowded in on the
top of them, playing away his hardest, while, with beaming faces which
plainly testified that they were doing the correct thing according
to their lights in the best style, they rattled through the streets.
Those who know these people will tell you that it is their favourite
folly, when they have had a little too much to drink, to engage an
organ-grinder by the day, drive him about playing over them, until
they have called at so many ‘cabaks’ on the way as to render their
seats in the droshky insecure, and then, alighting at their favourite
drinking-den, enthrone their grinder on the table round which they sit,
and to the tunes of their beloved instrument succumb gloriously to the
united charms of Bacchus and Apollo.
Next morning they go home from the gutter with a consciousness of
having spent a happy day, as a happy day ought to be spent, and regard
its memory as a thing to be proud of. It seems a strange thing, but in
Russia and amongst these people the peasants envy a drunkard instead
of pitying him. Drunkenness is to them a highly desirable condition,
and shame for it they cannot understand. The most popular Englishman
who ever lived and travelled amongst the Caucasian tribes owed his
popularity entirely to the enormous quantity of strong drink he could
absorb without doing himself any harm. The Circassians themselves have
an almost incredible facility for drinking large quantities of wine
without any apparent harm.
_A propos_ of wine, the wine of the country, or rather one of the
wines of the country, the Kachketinsky wine, both red and white, is
admirable, and far superior to any of the imported wines to be met with
at Tiflis. There is another wine which is a good deal drunk by the
ladies, called ‘Donskoi.’ It is something like Moselle, red in colour
and unbearably sweet to the palate. The people drink vodka and rough
native wine in their ‘cabaks’ and ‘duchans,’ as well as a rough kind
of beer, very sweet, and more like what mead must have been than like
any beer of to-day. Tiflis itself is full of beer-halls, but these are
rather for the military and the Germans than for the natives. These
Germans are, I fancy, an unpopular race in the Caucasus as well as
in Russia, not from any inherent vice in their natures, but from the
fact that, being more civilised than their neighbours, they utterly
refuse to mix with them, living apart in their colonies, with their
own society, school, and church, prospering beyond any other settlers,
and by their staid sobriety and orderly, thrifty life, forming a
contrast to the life around them too favourable to themselves to be
pleasing to their neighbours. ‘Nemets’ and ‘colbasnik’--dummy and
sausage-eater--are the sobriquets in which they rejoice.
On the fourth day after my arrival at Tiflis the town, in spite of its
novelty and ever-varying scenes, began to pall upon me, and with some
difficulty I arranged a shooting expedition to the neighbouring steppe
of Kariâs. Here the Grand Duke holds his shooting parties, and enormous
are the bags made, though the festivities are of such a nature as one
would imagine to interfere considerably with the shooting. But, alas!
for us, there were to be no royal forests with innumerable beaters
and any quantity of boars and tall red deer. Our hunting grounds were
the wide steppelands outside the viceregal preserves, where antelopes
(_subgutturosæ_) and all the ruffians who are wanted by the Government
at Tiflis do mostly congregate.
Early, then, in the morning, while the stars were making up their minds
to retire for the day, and a faint pink was just stealing into the
sky, our party rattled out of Tiflis; the English consul and myself on
horseback, the rest of our party on wheels. Our way lay through the
Tartar bazaar, where the fiery-bearded Persians and astute Armenians
were already astir, and then over the broad Kûr, and through lands
which but for the artificial irrigation of which the Kûr is the source
would be absolutely barren. On our road we met a quaint cavalcade, if
that may be called a cavalcade which contained but one horse: a vast
train of donkeys, some brown, some white, several hundreds in number,
part bearing bales of merchandise, and part their owners. Here and
there amongst the troop a black conical tent ambled along, nothing
visible but the tent with four thin legs trotting along under it.
This was a Tartar or Persian on his donkey, his ‘bourka’ round his
neck, hanging in loose folds to his animal’s knees, and completely
concealing man and beast. The caravan was on its way to Persia, and was
the only one of the kind I ever saw, though trains of camels and carts
are of frequent occurrence between Batoum and Tiflis.
Kariâs, or the black summer, is a name which this steppeland has earned
for itself by the excessive virulence of the fever which raged there
after the introduction of artificial irrigation. It is some thirty-five
or forty versts from Tiflis, and, besides being the preserve of the
Grand Duke and the refuge of Tiflis outlaws, it is the home of several
bands of Tartars and one German planter.
It was to the home of this latter that we turned our horses’ heads,
after being ferried over the broad dark waters of the Kûr. All the road
between Tiflis and this ferry had been bare and uninteresting: low grey
hills, looking parched and lifeless on our right, a grey dusty steppe
at our feet, and on our left the bare unlovely banks of the Kûr, with
here and there a huge vulture sitting gorged and sullen on its shore.
By the ferry a belt of low woodland lent some interest to the scene;
but this was left behind as soon as the river was crossed; and far away
on every hand stretched the level steppeland, so bare of succulent
herbage as to appear anything but pleasant pastures for the many flocks
of sheep and herds of antelope that roam over its surface.
An hour’s ride, straining our eyes in a vain endeavour to catch a first
glimpse of the antelopes, whose home we were invading, brought us to
a canal with a bridge and toll-house or something of that nature; and
the bridge once crossed, the clamour of a dozen curs and the appearance
of several Tartars advised us of our arrival at our journey’s end.
The planter himself came to meet us--a young fellow speaking many
languages as well as his own, a mere boy amongst the worst-looking
gang of labourers man ever put eyes upon, yet managing them fairly
well, and making his venture pay. His home was a mere hut, utterly
destitute of any of the comforts or refinements of that civilisation
to which he had apparently been brought up; and it would indeed need
to be a lucrative venture which should tempt a man to lead the life
our friend Adolphe led. He had been made a magistrate by the Tiflis
Government, with exceptional powers and privileges; but, as he himself
told us, he was a magistrate merely in name, unable to carry out any
measure he might deem necessary, utterly powerless to punish or bring
to punishment, and so used to the evils by which he was surrounded
as to have grown perfectly callous to them. Murder, horse-stealing,
and every other crime are of almost daily occurrence. However openly
committed, it is impossible to convict, as none dare witness against
the perpetrators of the crime, knowing full well that, should they
do so, they would live in hourly danger of their lives from that time
forth. And even in the rare cases in which the crimes have been fully
proved, and the criminals safely conveyed to Tiflis, they have been set
free again on one plea or another, until the name even of justice has
lost all meaning in the land. In the six or seven years during which
my host has lived at Kariâs he has had his horse shot under him on one
occasion, has had a bullet put through his bourka on another, and on a
third, whilst riding into Tiflis, a bullet fired from the rifle of a
concealed assassin broke the jaw of the servant who accompanied him. If
he makes himself obnoxious to any of his neighbours in the execution of
his magisterial duties, his best horses are mutilated, his cattle shot,
or his house fired. Labour is so dear and labourers so scarce that he
cannot afford to choose those he employs, and though a man comes to him
red-handed, he must engage him and be content. Thus it happens that his
own men are the veriest scum of Tiflis.
One fellow who acted as my guide was wanted by the Tiflis police for
murder, and a speech made by my host himself illustrated, I thought, as
well as anything could, the utter lawlessness of Kariâs. ‘We generally
have mutton,’ he said, ‘though, as I have no sheep and don’t buy
it, I don’t know where it comes from; some of my fellows steal it,
I suppose.’ Raids upon sheep and cattle are of common occurrence,
and free fights take place between the villages. The cattle stolen
are generally driven across the river and sold at Elizabetpol. Every
village is, I believe, theoretically responsible for the misdoings of
each of its inhabitants; and thus a man’s neighbours are to some extent
converted into amateur policemen, who watch and report his deeds. But
as a crime is rarely the result of one individual’s enterprise, the
culprit is rarely run to ground; and even if he is, the village pays an
inadequate fine, and there is an end of it.
Tiflis itself is under military law, and at the moment when I left it
for Kariâs three men were under sentence of death for a glaring outrage
committed in broad day in the streets. Two were to be hanged, and one,
in consideration of his rank as a nobleman, though filling a menial
position, was to be shot.
But the stories of the lawlessness of the Caucasus might be continued
_ad infinitum_, were it not that they would become monotonous, and, as
our consul himself remarked, the state of the country is so bad that an
honest account of it would not find credence in England. I am tempted
to say more on this subject than I might otherwise have done, because
travellers who have recently written on the Caucasus, having kept much
to the post-roads, and, luckily, escaped molestation upon them, have,
I think, given too peaceful a colouring to their picture of the country
through which they drove. In another place I may be able to say more of
the safety of the Russian post-roads.
That the fever from which Kariâs derived its evil name was of an
exceedingly virulent nature may be imagined from the fact that in one
summer, out of a village of three hundred inhabitants, only nine were
left alive. The whole place seems plague-stricken in summer, even
the river having its disease, in the shape of a small worm, which,
burrowing into the skin of those who bathe in it, eats away whole
joints, until the part affected has the appearance of being withered.
One man amongst those we saw at Kariâs had a withered finger-joint,
which he attributed to this cause.
About ten o’clock we rolled ourselves up in our bourkas, thanking our
stars that we were not settlers in the Kariâs steppe, though as a
hunting-ground it is in every way desirable. Before turning in we were
warned that we ought to be up early, and, thanks to the too lively
nature of our couches, we were up long even before we need have been.
At one o’clock the misty air feels chill and comfortless; we were
glad to busy ourselves vigorously in preparing our horses for the
day’s sport; and, though we felt like blind men following the blind,
we blundered on at a quick step after our guide into the darkness
that encircled us. After going some three versts, that seemed to us
thirty, we took our guide’s advice, and, hobbling our horses, rolled
ourselves in our bourkas, to lie waiting in the dark until the dim
light stealing over the plains should show us the antelopes browsing
within rifle-shot. But all our dreams had to be of the waking sort,
for the intense chill made it too cold to sleep, and, though the grey
dawn showed us no confiding herds, it was none the less welcome on that
account.
Gradually around us there grew out of the darkness a plain flatter
than all fancy can fashion, with never a tree nor a bush to break the
monotony, or to afford concealment to any living thing. Round this
there rose slowly on the sight a chain of low hills, with the river and
the low mountains running at right angles to them; and on the other two
sides steppe unbroken to the horizon. And now we rose and shook away
the chill and the torpor it had brought into our blood, and with a pang
of regret for that tub which circumstances so often denied, we buckled
our bourkas on to our horses, slipped cartridges into our rifles, and
spreading out into line, shaped our course across the still dim steppe
for the low hills beyond.
As the dawn brightened we began to fancy ghost-like figures flitted
away over the horizon into the unseen beyond, and at last we made
out clearly a herd of some thirty antelopes. As they scudded, with
short stiff tails erect over the plains--their horns for some reason
unnoticeable in the distance--they looked to me quaintly like large
grey dogs, with none of the deer-like attributes with which fancy had
endowed them. Once we had found one band, the whole plains seemed to be
alive with them, racing about from point to point or standing rigidly
at gaze. To see them and to long for a nearer view was one thing, to
obtain that view quite another. Fired at continually by the Tartars,
hunted by the sheepdogs, though little hurt by either, they were as shy
as any living thing could be. Stalking them was out of the question,
and they made all attempts to surround them futile by breaking through
the line almost before it began to close in on them. Nearer than five
hundred yards we seemed doomed never to get, and after half a day’s
ceaseless fag and a few wild shots at impossible ranges, my friend L.
got disgusted, gave it up, and went home.
Towards mid-day we reached the low hills which bounded the plain on
the side farthest from the canal and our home, and in my eagerness to
secure an antelope I found I had lost sight of my companions with the
horses. This troubled me very little, as I knew the way back; and if
I did not find my friends before nightfall I felt quite capable of
getting back on foot.
All over these plains near Tiflis, and in fact near any town in the
Caucasus, large flocks of sheep are pastured; at Kariâs their shepherds
are Tartars, whose pens and huts are in the low hills, at whose foot
I had now nearly arrived; but that I did not know till later. Whilst
still half a mile from the hills, I noticed a large herd of antelopes
galloping for a point, to gain which they had to cross my line of march
about a quarter of a verst in front of me. The herd looked as if it had
been recently fired at, and some of its members were far behind the
leaders, who had already crossed me. Hoping that these laggards would
not perhaps swerve from the line of the rest, I ran as hard as I could
to intercept them, and was rewarded by two long shots, which apparently
did not tell.
Though the shots did not affect the antelopes they led me into a most
unpleasant adventure. Browsing at some distance was an immense flock
of sheep, and at the sound of my rifle a dozen of the huge grey dogs
who guard these flocks came racing towards me, loudly manifesting
their displeasure at my presence as they came. Often before had I been
annoyed by these gaunt beasts in the Crimea and elsewhere, and even
known them board a traveller’s cart as it passed through one of the
Tartar villages they infested, but never before had I seen them look
so much in earnest as they did to-day. They were all round me in a
minute; and though still preserving a discreet distance, deafened me
with their hideous din, and resolutely baffled all my attempts to break
through their circle. Picking up some stones, I tried to free myself
in that way from my tormentors, without any result, until a larger
stone than the rest caught one of their number on the leg, and set him
howling lustily.
Then the shepherds, who up till that moment had been enjoying the
baiting of a stranger from the far distance, utterly careless of what
might happen to the victim, set up a shout, and leaving their flock,
one of them came towards the scene of action. The shepherds’ shout
acted in the most inspiriting way on the attacking forces, which at
once closed in on me, one brute flying straight at my throat, and
meeting my rifle barrel full in his teeth, while another wilier cur,
taking me in rear, made his teeth meet in one of the tendons behind my
knee. This was more than flesh and blood could stand, so rather than be
actually worried to death, I pulled out my revolver and let drive into
two of my assailants; the brute who had bitten me from behind getting
the first bullet. This sent the whole pack flying for the moment; so
seizing the opportunity before they had time to rally again, I made
for the shepherd, and being extremely savage collared him somewhat
roughly, and gave him to understand that unless he called his brutes
off and kept them off as long as I was within rifle-shot, I would put
the next bullet into him. After a good deal of talking and violent
gesticulation, I limped off, feeling much less sure of tramping gaily
home in case I did not find the horses than I did half an hour before.
But my adventure was not to end here. For some time I tried to stalk
different herds along the base of the hills, and was eventually led
into the hills themselves by an antelope which I imagined was wounded.
In following him I must have returned to a point in the hills opposite
to the scene of my skirmish with the dogs; for before I knew where I
was I stumbled upon three Tartars sitting round a fire, one of whom
was my shepherd friend of the morning. Seeing me they jumped up and
called to me to come to them. Their fire not being in my course and
my antelope still in sight, I kept on my way. The request became a
command; and then seeing how the wind lay, I mentally consigned them
to a more tropical climate, and looked anxiously out for the horses.
As I did not come to them, two of them came running to me, while the
third, from the top of the hill, sent out a signal-cry, not unlike the
Australian ‘cooey.’ My first thought was to stand and fight, for their
intentions were obviously hostile; besides I knew that I should be
made to account for the damage I had done their pack in self-defence
that morning. But a moment’s thought was enough to show me that unless
I meant to use my rifle, my chance against the four (for another
appeared at once on the scene) would be extremely poor; so with a good
start I took to my heels and ran. Up one hill and over its brow into
the valley that separated it from another no bigger than itself,--from
that to another and a third, the chase went on--the pursuers growing
in numbers each time I looked back, until, when quite blown, I stopped
to see whether my rifle would intimidate them, they had increased to
over a dozen. A shot from my rifle did stop them for a moment or two;
but before I was well at the bottom of the hill from which I fired I
heard them coming on again. And here I began to feel things were really
extremely serious for me. I had killed their dog--I had therefore
little mercy to expect from them. I was dead beat, and my bitten leg
made running all the more difficult. I had only half a dozen cartridges
with me; and at the very best I could not hope to make a good fight of
it, so poorly furnished with ammunition, against so many rascals with
their blood up, in a place where there was no stone or bush to get
behind. That they would make short work of me if they caught me I had
little doubt; the quarrel would in their eyes justify any outrage, and
my good rifle be an additional incentive to them to give me my quietus.
But here a double saved me. At the bottom of the little hill I was
still on was a wide earth crack: into this I jumped, whilst my
pursuers were still on the other side of the summit, and following the
course of the chasm I doubled round the base of the hill a little way
and then waited. Yelling like demons the Tartars came over the hill,
and to my infinite relief, supposing me probably to have just topped
the next rising ground, redoubled their exertions to overhaul me in
the direction which they fancied I had taken. Once safely past me, I
turned and ran back on my track for some distance, and then made for
the plains. I am thankful to say that there I found my friends and the
horses, and heard no more of either dogs or Tartars.
It was now getting late in the day. My friend G., disgusted with having
toiled many hours and taken nothing, returned to Adolphe’s. Being still
keen to secure at least one head as a souvenir of Kariâs, I kept my
horse and the guide, to make one last effort before giving up the chase.
I had heard that by riding round and round a herd in ever-narrowing
circles, a shot might sometimes be got from a nearer point than could
otherwise be hoped for. Determined to leave no stone unturned to
secure success, I tried this method, and after riding enough useless
circles to have made both man and horse giddy, I at last got within
four hundred yards of a small herd, which, standing with their heads
up, were just preparing to break away again, when, trusting rather to
my aim on foot than on horseback, I slipped out of the saddle, and,
allowing for the distance, fired at the nearest buck. At the report the
whole herd took to flight, the animal shot at bringing up the rear.
Hardly hoping to effect anything, I fired again at him, and that time
thought I saw him stagger as if the bullet struck him. But he recovered
and went on; and after catching my horse I rejoined my guide and
prepared to go home empty-handed.
On telling him, however, that I fancied I had hit the last antelope
I fired at, he insisted on following the herd to see if we could not
run down the wounded beast, which he thought would not go far. And he
was right; for after a ride of less than a mile the antelope lay down,
and, to my inexpressible delight, I was able to ride back with a fine
young buck on my saddle. Both bullets had struck him behind, but had
not smashed any large bones. In spite of my hard day and my swollen
leg, that certainly was a moment of triumph in which I deposited my
hardly-earned game in the midst of my half-incredulous friends. But
after the way of the world, having vehemently assured me that if I
worked for a week I should never get an antelope without dogs to help
me, now, with the buck before them, they calmly insisted that it was
only the luck of a tyro, and would be the first and last I should ever
bag.
We stayed one more day at Kariâs, encouraged so to do by my success on
the first day, and on this second day I was again in luck, though for
the time I did not know it. After a long patient stalk, by utilising
the only bit of slightly rising ground between myself and the horizon,
I got within two hundred and fifty yards of three antelopes feeding.
One of them, a splendid white-faced old buck, with a beautiful head,
stood at gaze, looking towards me, and broadside on. I heard my bullet
strike him as plainly almost as if it had struck a ringing bull’s-eye,
and at that distance I expected to see him drop in his tracks. For a
moment he fell on his knees, and then recovering, came straight towards
my place of ambush, passing me at a terrific pace not more than thirty
yards off. I fired the other barrel at him, but though I aimed well in
front, I saw the bullet cut up the steppe in a line far behind him.
Had I had my horse with me I might have had a chance; but as it was,
though I ran some distance on foot to see if my prize would not drop
after going a few hundred yards, I had to give it up, and the last I
saw of the antelope that day was as he disappeared from sight with half
a dozen sheepdogs at his heels. He was found next day pulled down and
eaten by dogs or wolves; and luckily his head, which my friend Lyall
obtained for me, was but little hurt. The ‘express’ bullet had caught
him full in the centre of the shoulder blade, splitting it right and
left. How any beast contrived to go as he did with such a wound I
cannot understand.
Towards evening the antelopes, which had been a good deal harassed the
last day or two, appeared to pack, and I once or twice came across
large herds, one of which must have numbered from 150 to 300. These
antelopes are, I believe, not a common variety, being found only
between the Black Sea and the Caspian. The horns, which are curved back
from the brow, start away from one another at the base, and curve in
towards each other again at the tips. They are annulated from the base
to the point at which the inward curve commences. The finest head in my
possession has twenty-four rings on either horn, the horns measuring
fourteen inches each. In this specimen the face is quite white from
age, all the handsome black and tan markings of the younger bucks
having faded out in this veteran. On my return to Tiflis I made another
discovery with regard to this antelope, to wit, that of all the flesh I
ever ate, its flesh is the most delicious.
Like all other game, antelope is very cheap in the bazaar; for though
the Russians are far from being great sportsmen, every peasant has a
gun, and dabbles in the chase for profit’s sake. Amongst the Russians
in the north I doubt not there are many genuine sportsmen to be
found--keen men, who relish a hard day’s work with a spice of danger
in it, and who care very little for a large bag if it is not owing
mainly to their own skill or exertions. But of the Russians whom I have
met in three to four years in the Crimea and Caucasus, I cannot say so
much. A Russian, though he invariably has some chaff for an Englishman
on the score of tame pheasants, &c., is essentially either a pot-shot
if a peasant, or a lover of battues if he be a gentleman. At Kariâs
(the viceregal preserves) all the shooting is of the battue order. At
another great sporting centre in the Caucasus, where a prince preserves
the shooting and wild sheep and chamois abound, even the chamois are
cleverly deluded into becoming victims of a drive. Deer-stalking, as we
understand it, and chamois-hunting, as the hardy Swiss follow it, is a
sport unknown here, except to the Tartars of Daghestan.
Although there is a plentiful supply of antelopes near Tiflis, all
those that find their way into the bazaar are run down by mounted
Tartars, none being stalked by Russians.
And yet, after their own fashion, Russians are very keen about sport.
They love to organise a party, and are extremely hospitable to the
stranger in making him one of it; but if that stranger be a keen
sportsman, and has his mind full of visions of great game to be found
and killed in their native fastnesses, the sight of the enormous
supplies of food and wine deemed necessary for a three days’ campaign
will strike despair into his heart. I am sorry to have to say it,
because some Russians have been most kind to me; but a shooting
expedition, as a rule, means an excuse for extraordinary eating and
drinking, which is carried on at such a rate that, spite of the
enormous supplies, the expedition generally has to return on the second
day, having consumed everything.
On my return from antelope-shooting at Kariâs I had to spend four or
five days at Tiflis as best I could, waiting until my papers were all
ready and everything arranged for a start to Lenkoran. Having left
almost all my European clothing at Kertch, I was hardly in a fit state
to make much use of my introductions, so I passed my time in inspecting
Tiflis and watching the life around me. And my time, thus employed,
did not hang very heavily on my hands. First, there was the Museum,
where Professor Radde did the honours in the most genial way, and added
to the interest of the collection by anecdotes of his travels on the
Amoor in the pursuit of his favourite study. The arrangement of some
of the groups of natural objects is wonderfully artistic, the wild
goats being represented in natural attitudes on their native rocks,
and the vultures gorging on a dead camel in a way that is almost too
realistic. But one of the handsomest things in the whole collection
is a magnificent chandelier of the horns of the ‘ollen’ (Russian red
deer) in the Professor’s dining-room. The sight of this led to my being
told that at Borghom, the shooting-box of the Grand Duke, the whole of
the furniture throughout is made entirely of red deer’s horns or other
trophies of the chase.
After the Museum, the (to me) most interesting sight was the Tartar
bazaar. Here it was my intention to purchase an entire native outfit in
which I might travel without exciting attention, as I should have done
had I worn European clothes, were it only my moleskin shooting-jacket.
Our consul kindly volunteered to pilot me; but before starting
on such an errand as the one in hand, certain preparations were
necessary--amongst which huge boots reaching above the knee, to enable
us to wade with comfort through the mud, and old clothes on our backs
to blind the avaricious Armenians, were perhaps the chief. The Tartar
bazaar is a network of extremely narrow streets lying near the Kûr, in
which everything is sold and every race assists in the selling. Each
street has its speciality: one is the bootmakers’ road, another the
silversmiths’ or armourers’; here only vegetables and game are sold,
there furs are the only commodities exposed for sale. And this system
has its advantages, for you can in one glance take in all the goods
of any particular kind which the bazaar contains. The whole choice
of Tiflis is before you, and if the best there is not good enough
for you, you can get no better elsewhere. But, on the other hand, the
rivalry of the different shopkeepers becomes first amusing, and then
distracting. At one moment you appear to be in danger of being torn
to pieces by contending candidates for your custom; the next, there
is every prospect of a free fight among the rivals themselves. But
this gradually calms down; and then sticking to one shop, you ask for
what you want. An article of the kind required is produced, the worst
probably in stock, and held up to your eyes tenderly and admiringly by
its owner, while he pours forth its praises in the most glowing terms
of the East. You don’t like it, in spite of its being fit for the
Prophet to wear; you don’t care about wearing it yourself, you want a
better. Well, heaven knows what will please the gentleman, perhaps--and
then as by inspiration the merchant remembers some other specimen of
the article required, and producing it pours forth its eulogy in terms
ten times as glowing as those which described the qualities of the
first. This goes on as long as you will stand it, and then with a sigh
the rascal produces something really worth having. You decide that it
will do for you, and asking its price, are promptly told that to oblige
you the vendor will take double its marketable value for it. My friend
taught me the next step in the proceedings; and I must admit that it
is a vast improvement on the old system of haggling, which requires
half an hour at least to conclude. It is simply to offer half the price
asked, and being refused, turn and walk deliberately out of the shop.
The tradesman will mark each yard of your retreat by a fresh abatement
of price or by specious offers. Take no notice, but pursue your way in
obdurate silence, and the odds are ten to one that before you are out
of sight, a little boy will overhaul you and bring you back to the shop
to receive your purchase at half price.
One of the peculiarities of the traders is, that they are continually
wanting to shake hands with you, give you a cigarette, or otherwise
scrape acquaintance with their customer. As you stand bargaining with
them while they sit cross-legged in their open shop front, they stop
to call your attention to one or other of the innumerable gamins who
infest the narrow thoroughfares of the bazaar, begging for alms. These
I believe are the children of the shopkeepers, and you are expected to
toss them a copper for the pleasure of being swindled by their father.
These gamins of the bazaar are an amusing race. Stunted, bright-eyed,
and unboundedly quick and bitter of tongue, they have neither fear nor
respect for their seniors. The lips that a moment ago were fervently
kissing your hand for the copper you gave at their asking, are at
the next moment going at the rate of sixty miles an hour in chaff and
abuse of some greybeard in collision with whom their owner has come.
Sometimes even I have seen the gamin go the length of brickbats, but
even this elicits but little remark and no punishment. Some of the
Armenian youngsters were carrying on trade on their own account, one
child of twelve having a shop of his own, and appearing no mean rival
of the older men around him. But these Armenians begin life early and
develop rapidly, passing from babyhood to manhood at a bound. Their
women marry at twelve I am told, and I have frequently seen Armenian
girls who looked old enough for anything at that age.
In one store kept by a Persian, I was immensely amused by the owner’s
admiration for the beard of a German friend who was with me. It was too
droll to see the solemn red-bearded merchant in his high conical hat
of black felt tenderly stroking the astonished German’s beard between
the palms of his hands. However, I believe my friend’s beard produced
such an impression, that the carpets shown us were of the best, and the
prices asked not too exorbitant.
Throughout the bazaar the streets are so extremely narrow that you
could in many places spring from one house to another across the
street. Everywhere the mud is more than ankle deep. At the street
corners you are run over by rough carts dragged creaking drearily along
by grim-looking buffaloes, and if you avoid this fate, a stalwart
waterman--with bare brown legs and a round skullcap of white felt, with
only one garment on, and that all open at the chest, displaying a skin
of red copper colour, with a huge jar of terra-cotta on his shoulder
filled with the precious fluid which he so seldom uses--will jostle and
knock you down. Nor must you lose your temper; for to strike or roughly
handle one of these gentry in their own domains would be to call down
the wrath of the whole bazaar on your devoted head. Here they have no
notion of fair play, and in a moment you would be hustled, beaten,
stoned, and all as pitilessly as a welsher on an English racecourse;
and if, half dead, you escaped without a knife between your ribs, you
might indeed think yourself lucky.
The most interesting shops to me were the furriers, in which I saw an
enormous number of lynxes’ skins, brought, so they said, from the Black
Sea coast; and the armourers’ shops, in which with the roughest tools
they executed most elaborate and beautiful handles in silver and black
for blades of every quality and date.
Having purchased my costume and seen as much of the bazaar as I cared
to, I returned to Tiflis proper, and here the streets were fast
filling with the gymnasts returning from school. The difference
between a Russian gymnast and an English schoolboy is as great as
that between the climates in which they live. Everywhere the Russian
gymnast has the same costume--a blue frock-coat with brass buttons and
a quasi military-peaked cap. His whole bearing, however small he may
be, is that of a little old man, half soldier, half scholar, and in all
sedate and quite a man of the world. He has, as far as I have seen, no
games; bear-fighting is unknown to him; that sterner kind of fighting,
which in English schooldays generally takes place behind the chapel, is
equally so; he wears gloves if he can afford it, he speaks French, and
makes a poor imitation of French manners; he is nearly as much addicted
to spectacles as a German student, is not the least bit shy in ladies’
society, and smokes with an easy grace that many a freshman might envy.
Poor fellow, his precocious social qualities are dearly bought at the
sacrifice of all the merry, untamed roughness of the English schoolboy.
Everywhere the streets teem with uniforms, from that of the gymnast of
eight years old to that of the general of eighty. But be not alarmed,
pacific sojourner in the streets of Tiflis! Many, nay most of these
warlike-looking men are at least as peaceable civilians as yourself.
That gorgeous apparel which you believe must cover the manly form of
a dashing cavalry officer, is but the official dress of a telegraphist
or an apothecary’s clerk. All those medals and orders adorn the breast,
not of a veteran general, but of a well-fed, contented tailor. Why he
got them he perhaps can explain to you. I have seen the phenomenon of
a peaceable civilian’s breast blazing with brass plates and orders at
a Governor’s reception, but I never could understand the cause of that
phenomenon.
To atone for the warlike aspect of many of its well-fed citizens,
Tiflis presents to you, in common with other towns in the Caucasus
and Southern Russia, some strangely domestic specimens of the officer
proper. Any day of the week you may meet on the boulevard, with sword
clanking by his side and perhaps some fair dame with him, a young
dragoon in full uniform, with a poultice tied round his neck, or a
large white cloth bandaging his manly cheeks to cure the faceache. Such
a facecloth we are accustomed to see round the scullery-maid’s red face
in England, but in full uniform it seems a strange appendage to heroic
youth.
The Russians are a hopeless puzzle to a foreigner. They stringently
prohibit the importation of the most harmless foreign newspaper,
erasing whole passages in any sent to residents amongst them by post;
and yet Mr. Grenville Murray’s book, ‘Russians of To-day,’ is allowed
to be sold, and has had such a rapid sale that I could only secure a
second-hand Tauchnitz edition for love or money; and yet no one could
lash Russian vices and foibles with a truer or more unsparing hand than
the author of that extremely clever book. There is a contradiction of
one kind or another in every phase of Russian life. The shopkeeper, who
speaks half-a-dozen languages well, cannot tell what change to give you
without the help of his abacus. Bred in a wild, rough country, with
splendid opportunities for field-sports, and really with plenty of
pluck and muscle to excel in them, the Russian gentleman cares little
or nothing for them. In the south, which alone I know, few except the
military men ride much, and when they do it is not for pleasure; still
fewer skate well, and the best of those who skate at all are half
Germans from Riga; there are no games to correspond to our cricket,
football, or tennis. Of indoor amusements dancing and cards are the
Alpha and Omega. Billiards, as played in Russia, resemble skittles as
much as billiards. In spite of the gorgeous apparel of their priests,
and the splendour of their ceremonials, few educated Russians believe
in anything; though the peasant is as truly religious as any peasant in
the world. The literature most read in Russia by ladies and idle men is
that of P. de Kock, and French novelists like him.
The members of the upper middle class, if that means men of a certain
position and wealth, can scarcely live without perfume and cosmetics;
yet in travelling, if not at home, they wash their faces much as
an elephant washes his, by drawing water into their mouth and then
squirting it out into their hands, whence they transfer it to their
faces. Many of them despise pocket-handkerchiefs, except as a means
of conveying perfume about with them. All of them will meet a male
acquaintance with the bow of a courtier of Louis XV., and spit on the
carpet of a lady’s boudoir.
But meanwhile I have arrived at the office for the sale of
‘podorojnas’, or travelling tickets; and as I am in need of one for the
journey to Lenkoran, to be commenced on the morrow, I enter. At the
desk are two clerks in uniform, with a counting-board before them. I
state what I want; and after ten minutes spent in referring to a book
of fares, and wrangling and reckoning over the abacus, they tell me the
charge is nine roubles, but suggest that perhaps I would like a return
pass. ‘Well, if I did, what would that come to?’ More reasoning, and a
hotter dispute than ever. At last the answer is arrived at, nineteen
roubles ten copecks. Now, according to all preconceived ideas, it seems
absurd that a return fare should cost more than twice the single fare,
so I declined, and asked for a single. Here a consultation ensues,
which results in my being told with many smiling apologies that they
had made a slight mistake: the single pass would cost ten roubles.
‘All right,’ is my answer, ‘only give it me.’ Here some one else’s
business intervenes, and the second clerk turns to have a chat and a
cigarette with a friend who has wandered in, probably from some other
office, in an absent way. Whilst these two shock-headed counter-jumpers
are exchanging elaborate bows and grandiloquent speeches, I have to
wait in sad disgust. At last, when the farewell bow has been performed,
and the gentleman with the dirty white shirt-front and prison crop has
had the honour of saluting his friend and wishing him good-day, clerk
number one induces clerk number two to return to my ‘podorojna.’ Then
they make a fourth calculation, going over all the old ground again,
and discover with a fine smile and bow that they have made another
slight mistake--the real sum should have been ten roubles fourteen
copecks. To prevent further calculations I hand in a hundred-rouble
note, and here follows another problem. How much change ought they
to give me? Anxious to get away I solve the problem for them, and am
met merely by an incredulous stare, while the beads on the abacus
are rattled up and down harder than ever. At length they make it out
eighty-nine roubles eighty-six copecks, and with a sigh of relief hand
me ninety roubles, adding, as they turn to the small cash drawer, ‘Now
we owe you eighty-six copecks.’ I am weak enough to set them right,
and hand them one of the five-rouble notes back. In return for this
they hand me a three-rouble note and two singles, leaving the error as
bad as ever. Again I feel impelled by conscience to interfere in their
interests; and apparently much against the grain get them at last to
pay me only what they owe, or rather two copecks less, for try as I
would nothing could induce them to be absolutely accurate.
Glad to get my pass at last, I leave the office, meekly wondering what
a pass to Lenkoran really costs, and whether it would not be cheaper
in the end for Russia to have better-educated employés in Government
offices, even if she had to pay them a trifle more. I took the trouble
to jot down this incident exactly as it happened at the time, because
I thought I might be accused of overcolouring my picture of Russian
official imbecility.
Hugging my pass to me as the emblem of freedom from an enforced stay in
a city I was already beginning to detest, I drove round to my different
friends to say adieu, and to make my last preparations for a start,
noticing as I drove the extraordinarily high-sounding names with which
the Russians of Tiflis dignify their drinking dens. Two of the lowest
order, standing side by side, were ‘The Rose of Paradise’ and ‘The
New World.’ In bidding adieu to one of my friends the conversation
turned on Professor Bryce’s book, he having met the author when in
Tiflis. He assured me that, in spite of all he could say, no one would
credit that the Professor had really achieved the ascent of Ararat,
so deep-rooted is the belief in the Caucasus that Ararat cannot be
climbed, and so utterly unable are these people to judge of the value
of an Englishman’s word. I was struck by the remark, because Professor
Bryce says in his book that none of the natives believe that Parrot or
Abich ever ascended Ararat, and it seemed singular that he, too, should
share their fate.
During the last day or two I had secured the services of a Pole,
an ex-keeper of the Grand Duke’s, who was also a kind of assistant
bird-stuffer at the Tiflis Museum. Late on the evening of my
last day he turned up, with a little bundle of necessaries in a
pocket-handkerchief, and, having handed over to him a five-barrelled
revolving rifle on the principle of Colt’s revolvers, which I had
bought for a mere song, he and I lay down to rest on beds for the last
time for many weeks. That rifle, by the way, turned out an excellently
accurate fire-arm, the only weapon made on the revolving principle that
I ever met with of which so much could be said.