EN ROUTE FOR DAGHESTAN.
Start from Tiflis--My yemstchik--Travelling-carts--Caucasian
road-makers--Camel caravans--On the bleak steppe--Persian
hawking--Subterranean dwellings--Shooting at
Kariur--Elizabetpol--An execrable journey--Hawks and
starling--Banditti--Curing official corruption at
Tiflis--Goktchai--A wearying day’s sport--Fear of
highwaymen--My guide, Allai--Arrival at Gerdaoul--Hospitable
Lesghians.
On Saturday morning, December 14, before the first team of sleepy
buffaloes had dragged their load of country produce through the streets
to the bazaar, before the canine concert which makes the night of
Tiflis hideous had calmed down, Ivan had returned from a last farewell
to his young wife, and I had put the last thing ready for a start.
Early as it was, my friend Lyall and his son were up and ready to speed
the parting guest they had welcomed so kindly, and before six o’clock
the clattering of their horses and the rattle of my wheels were waking
the echoes of the German colony. Dawn was breaking slowly as we dashed
over the bridge that spans the Kûr where it passes through the Tartar
bazaar. The hills were standing out black and clearly defined against
low, fleecy clouds, the golden colour of an English lassie’s hair,
while here and there a higher peak caught the bright red glow of the
morning.
Our yemstchik had been taking part in a sister’s wedding the day
before, and, as he himself said, was devoting himself to getting rid
of the headache consequent on the marriage festivities. His remedy was
the old-fashioned ‘hair of the dog that bit him.’ But, luckily for
travellers in Russia, a yemstchik never drives so well as when drunk,
so our ‘troika’ whirled and bumped through the streets, now rapidly
filling with their early-rising denizens, in grand style. In and out
amongst countless high-wheeled arbas, swearing, shouting, screaming,
just grazing one vehicle, slashing the sleepy or sluggish owner of
another with Parthian whip, chaffing, chaffed, or cheered, we bowled
along at a gallop. How we did not run over foot-passengers or smash
some other conveyance I can’t understand, for these yemstchiks turn the
sharpest corners at full speed, and apparently reck nothing of life or
limb.
Just as we were clearing the bazaar, our kind escort trying, though
mounted, in vain to keep pace with us, we met a caravan of the
long-eared beast the Brighton cockney loves. Our yemstchik gave a
yell, the donkeys stolidly refused to budge, and then followed one
of the most brilliant charges on record. The enemy, hampered by the
huge packs which they bore, reeled and gave way before our chariot’s
furious course, and though a torrent of abuse, no doubt, followed us,
the owners of the charged ones were too taken aback by the sudden onset
even to make their reproaches reach our rapidly retreating ears.
Before leaving the town we met a party of musicians coming from the
night’s debauch which here follows every wedding. These greeted us
with musical honours, and altogether our departure from Tiflis was
considered full of happy omens. As for me, happy or unhappy omens were
much a matter of indifference, for, longing as I did for the chase from
which I had been so long debarred by trivial difficulties at Tiflis, I
was only full of delight at my tardy freedom.
At the first station on the road we changed horses and drank the
stirrup-cup, said good-by to our friends, and settled down to the
serious business of travel. To those who have never travelled in Russia
by the ordinary travelling-cart it is impossible to give an adequate
idea of the miseries the shallow springless carts occasion to their
occupants as they jolt over the uneven track that is here dignified
by the title of post-road. The traveller’s luggage probably fills the
cart, and on this, with knees drawn up, he has to balance himself as
well as he can, and continually exercise all the prehensile powers he
possesses to retain his precarious position. Many natives never get
used to this method of travelling, and suffer a species of _mal de mer_
from the jolting, as well as other inconveniences. But for myself, I
had done a good deal of travelling in post-carts, and except for the
want of shelter in bad weather minded it very little, being even able
to sleep as we drove, although how I ever retained my seat whilst so
doing I could never understand.
At the first station from Tiflis we saw beside the Kûr a large
congregation of vultures gathered round some carcase which the river
had deposited on its banks. Amongst them was one large black vulture, a
very rare bird, which I in vain endeavoured to stalk and secure.
After leaving the station of the vultures we drove day and night,
sleeping in the cart whenever nature asserted her need of rest, through
a plain bounded on the right by mountains, and on the left by a scanty
line of trees, which marks the course of the Kûr. All along the route
road repairs were going on, bringing together gangs of the most
villanous-looking scoundrels the various nationalities of the Caucasus
can produce. I take it, many of the highway murders and other outrages
one hears of may fairly be ascribed to them. Strings of camels, with
solemn tinkling bells, which seemed to stretch from us to the distant
horizon, moved mechanically onwards as we passed them, their plumed
howdah sticks nodding in time to that slow soft stride, which from its
even regularity always impressed me with an idea of perpetual motion.
Several times, too, towards evening we came upon large camps near
a pool of water, where some hundreds of camels were resting, their
huge forms making, as they knelt in line, a four-sided fort, within
the walls of which were stored the bales they had brought out of the
distant East. Amongst these large camps I noticed a few of those white
dromedaries which travellers tell us are so much prized for their speed
in the East. Save for these camel caravans, of which we met two or
three a day, all bound for Tiflis, a few minor trains of donkeys laden
with charcoal, or slow-going fourgons filled with the carpets of Shusha
and Shemakha, our first two days’ journey was most uninteresting. Dead
bare steppe and barren bleak hillside, with nothing more inspiriting
than an apparently deserted Tartar cemetery to break the monotony,
with its tall unhewn headstones of white rock. Here and there, as the
evening grew into night, the road wound through low hills of such a
withered and blasted look that you felt that the memorial stones, which
you passed from time to time in dark silent places, were sufficiently
suggestive of murder and evil deeds without Ivan’s ghastly narratives.
Up to the large station of Akstapha, where several different routes
branch off from the main road between Tiflis and Shemakha, we met or
passed other travellers by tarantasse occasionally.
Once we had left Akstapha, we appeared to be the only travellers on
the road. About three stations from Elizabetpol we came across the
first specimen of Persian hawking which I had yet seen. The bird used
was a large falcon, belled and jessed, as far as I could tell from
a distance, much as an English bird might be if Englishmen still
followed the pursuit of falconry. Wherever I came across a Persian
dwelling between Tiflis and the Caspian, I invariably found the hawk
on his perch by the doorway, and his two comrades in the chase--tall,
broken-haired greyhounds--basking somewhere near him. These dogs work
with the hawk, run down hares when started, and put up partridges and
‘tooratsh’ (sand-grouse) for the hawk to strike. To these dwellers upon
the steppe greyhounds and hawk supply the place of a fowling-piece--an
instrument of destruction little used by Tartars and Persians. Each man
carries a rifle, an enormously long weapon with a diminutive stock, not
nearly as big round as a man’s wrist, with a flint lock, and a back
and fore sight, with a small hole in each through which the sportsman
peers at his game. Once you can get a view of the antelope through
these two sights simultaneously, you are pretty sure to hit him; but
the rifle requires a great deal of manipulation (sticks arranged for
a rest, &c.) before this desirable result can be attained; and in the
meanwhile it is hardly fair to expect your quarry to remain motionless.
Moreover, a puff of wind or a drop of moisture will ensure a missfire,
and altogether the antelope is very fairly safe.
After passing the Red Bridge--a place famous for many a daring deed
of highway robbery--we passed a subterranean village, or what was
practically one, the roofs being almost on a level with the ground.
Below these roofs are in most instances stables, in which dark and
ill-ventilated dens man and horse live together. The atmosphere is
worse than a London fog in the East End, and the only reason that these
dwellings do not kill those who live in them is that Tartar and steed
pass at least eighteen hours of the twenty-four in the pure air of the
outside world. Herein lies the secret of the healthy lives and iron
muscles of all Nature’s happily uncivilised children. Their houses,
it is true, are not such as would meet with the full approval of a
sanitary inspector of the nineteenth century; but then, they look upon
them as the bear looks on his den--only as a place to retire to for
sleep, or to lie down in when sick or wounded. Windows are to them
works of supererogation. When they come back to their houses it is only
because it is too dark to work or play outside; and never morning sun
wastes his life shedding glory on windows which, with frowsy blinds,
shut in sloth as they shut out daylight. It often seemed to me that
if these half-civilised people only loved pure water as they love the
fresh air, they might live to any length of days. But, alas, they
don’t. A cold tub never occurs to them, unless it comes accidentally
in fording a mountain stream, or, contrary to their expectations, as a
shower-bath from heaven.
At Kariur, the last station before Elizabetpol, I stayed for a little
rest and sport, to break the monotony of our uneasy drive. Kariur is
as bad a station as any one could wish to see--horses and men living,
for the most part, together. But it looked a likely place for game;
and, indeed, its looks did not belie it. Never in the best preserved
parks and woodlands of old England have I seen more hares. They rose
and scudded away in all directions, at every stride. Sand-grouse were
plentiful, but extremely difficult to flush; although when flushed I
thought them very pretty shooting, and when shot very fine for the
table. The meat is the whitest of any fowl I know. Bustards we saw, and
wild ducks; for the country seemed full of tiny purling streams, which
should make agriculture easy and profitable, though these natural
advantages are not utilised here. Antelopes were tolerably numerous;
and, two or three times, large grey foxes went away in that insolently
easy canter peculiar to Reynard when the hounds are not behind him. For
nearly a quarter of an hour I tried in vain to stalk a flock of very
large reddish birds with a decidedly game look and a shrill pipe, not
altogether unlike the curlew’s call. What they were I could not find
out, as they were extremely shy, and I never saw any like them again.
The Tartars did not know them any more than did my Tiflis gamekeeper,
and I much regretted that I was unable to procure a specimen. Kariur
would be a splendid place to pitch your tent near, if you wanted to
thoroughly sate your appetite for fowling, and vary your experiences
with the shot-gun by a day or two spent in antelope-stalking with the
rifle; or, in wet weather, when the soil cakes on the flying feet of
the antelope, you might join the Tartars in a capital gallop after the
greyhounds, with a certainty of a venison supper at the finish.
But much shooting, especially of the antelopes, would, I saw at once,
cause great jealousy and unpleasantness amongst your few neighbours;
so, having had a capital day, crowned by a varied bag, and, thanks
to Ivan’s skill, a savoury supper, I drove off in the dark to finish
my last stage to Gungha, as the natives call Elizabetpol. If any
Englishman should read what I have written, and, tempted by hope of
sport, follow in my track, let him take one piece of advice from me.
Never believe any one between the Black Sea and the Caspian; or, at
least, never build any hopes on alluring prospects suggested to your
mind by the statements of natives. To me Gungha was to be a land of
perfect peace, where in a really good hotel I should lay down my weary
limbs, and, after a good supper, forget, in clean sheets, the injuries
inflicted on me by the merciless bumpings of my travelling-cart. I
admit that the vision of clean sheets seemed far too good to be true,
but when I found that the occupant of the best inn’s best room could
not even get a samovar until the host’s family had finished with it,
and no better bed than the floor and his bourka would constitute, I
felt, indeed, the vanity of all human hopes.
Gungha is a much better name for the town than Elizabetpol. It has a
thoroughly Asiatic sound, as the town has a thoroughly Asiatic aspect:
flat-topped houses, thrown pell-mell together, without design or
reason in their arrangement; roads that are destitute of trottoirs,
full of pitfalls and rocks by turns; at one time dark wildernesses
of blinding dust-storms, at another hopeless morasses, in which you
sink knee-deep in mud; open sewers by every roadside, and a sufficient
quantity of trees scattered throughout to insure fever in its due
season; not one decent house in the town, and nothing either of art or
nature to attract the traveller, or detain him when there. There is
a large bazaar, under a kind of arcade, composed of a succession of
dome-like roofs; here Persian work, lambskins, and dried fruit form
the staple commodities. Under one dome the bootmakers were busy; in
the next your measure was taken, and a sheepskin turban of any hue or
shape made for you whilst you waited. Outside, at the street corner, an
itinerant barber was shaving the head of a true believer, whose tray
of gaudy sweetstuff lay on the ground beside him whilst he submitted
to the operation. In the square, near the hotel, a Persian, with his
beard and heavy moustache ablaze with henna, was, with bell and voice,
advertising the merits of a falcon which he carried on his wrist,
whose broad bright eyes were hardly less wild than his own. The man
and bird would have been a fine study for an artist’s pencil, so wild
and picturesque were they; and, as the bird huddled itself into his
open shirt front, against his copper-coloured chest, or struck out with
beak and claw from its perch at the incautious hand of any would-be
purchaser, I felt sure that the Persian’s pleasure in accepting a good
round sum would not be unalloyed by pain at parting from his brave
bird. But neither my man nor myself cared to stay longer at Gungha than
we were obliged; and, as soon as horses could be procured, we were
under way again.
The roads of the Caucasus are always execrable, but there is still
a degree of evil of which that traveller knows nothing who has not
travelled from Gungha to the next station. The only thing the road can
be compared to is the dry bed of a mountain cataract. Huge boulders
strew the path incessantly, and the arms of the miserable passenger
over it are continually almost wrenched from their sockets by the
leaps and bounds of the post-cart, for it is almost needless to say
that nothing but a determined grasp of your seat will ensure fixity
of tenure for a moment. Across the road at intervals we came upon the
beds of those streams whose winter fury had so bestrewn the road with
souvenirs of the mountain homes from which they sprung; while right and
left of us frequent cornfields showed by their springing crop that the
mountain stream brought good as well as evil in its train.
After the second station from our last starting-point, the view became
really beautiful. The stony steppe grew narrower, and on either side
high mountain ranges showed themselves, snow-capped and bright in the
clear atmosphere of what was quite an autumnal morning, though we were
now well into December. These distant peaks were those of Shusha and
Lesghia respectively.
Every now and then the sand-grouse would tempt me to call a halt; but
though the place in which they pitched was marked ever so carefully and
beaten as closely as men could beat it, we found it quite impossible
to flush the birds without the assistance of a dog. As the light
failed, we saw phalanx after phalanx of starlings wheeling, extending,
and re-massing themselves in the dusky skies; and as we drew near the
reed-beds, towards which their flight tended, we became witnesses of a
piece of very interesting bird-life. Near the reed-beds were several
trees, say half-a-dozen, and as they were bare of leaves, we could see
on every tree some two or three hawks. As the starlings swept down
with rushing wings to their nightly abiding-place, the hawks would
glide from their perches, and swooping amongst them, break and turn the
advancing host. Quick as the marauders were, the starlings did not seem
to fare half so badly as might have been expected, and at last all the
wanderers were at rest in their reedy home except one small band which,
arriving later than the rest, had been terribly harried by the hawks,
and seemed almost to have given up all hope of getting safe home. On
a tree some distance from the reeds, halfway between the ground and
the highest branch, sat in silent state, or gorged apathy, a splendid
specimen of the king of birds. Chivied perpetually by the hawks, and
fairly scared out of their wits, the little band of starlings swept
round this desert throne, and finally settled in a black throng all
round the mighty bird himself. To our astonishment he took no notice,
never moving a feather; and there we left them, the hawks baffled and
afraid to approach the starlings’ sanctuary, and the weary birds too
tired to try again for their reed-bed, too scared to mind the monarch
in their midst.
At one station we met a party of peasants who had been carrying
soldiers’ kits from one village to another, and on their return had
been stopped, beaten, and robbed of their wretched little earnings by
highwaymen. At another we met an Armenian merchant with a ‘tchapar,’ or
armed courier, who was so abominably insolent to me that I was obliged
to give him an excessively rough shaking, which cowed him considerably;
and on the appearance of my servant, who explained to the postmaster
who I was, the fellow became as servile as, owing to my old coat, he
had previously been insolent. Here, too, we heard of highwaymen, the
post-station having been robbed of some horses, which the postmaster
had been lucky enough to recover. The thieves had been caught, but I
was assured that would matter little to them, as a trifling tip would
set matters right with the local authorities, and they would soon be in
a fair way to recoup themselves for their losses.
Later on, we met two of these gentry on the road, armed to the teeth
and well mounted; but though they honoured us with a careful scrutiny,
our gleaming gun-barrels had a deterrent effect upon them, and we
drove on unmolested, though our driver suffered a shock to his nervous
system which quite upset his merriment for the rest of the drive. I am
told that amongst these Tartar highwaymen revolvers are quite common
nowadays, most of them possessing at least one of these dangerous
little tools.
The conversation turning on the lawlessness of the Caucasus, elicited
from my servant a strange _on dit_ of Tiflis. So utterly corrupt had
every branch of the civil service in the Caucasus become some three
months previous to my arrival therein, that the Emperor sent down his
secret agent, K----, with orders to inspect the state of affairs in
disguise, with plenary powers of dismissal and punishment with regard
to civil officials. He was to clean the Augean stable of Tiflis.
Supported by a band of detectives brought with him from St. Petersburg,
he soon became the terror of the town. Common rumour had it that three
of the worst in high places died of sheer fright shortly after his
advent. This may not have been the cause of their deaths, probably
was not, but that they were lucky enough thus to escape punishment
by natural deaths is historical. One of K----’s first acts was to
try the police. Disguised as moujiks, he and his men went bullying
and swaggering through the streets, apparently drunk as lords. The
difficulty was to get taken up, but after some time they managed to
accomplish even that, and were hauled away to the police-station. Here
K---- and his men tried to get off by apologies and excuses, which
were naturally vain. Then, turning to his men, he said, ‘Hey brothers,
suppose we give the good chief of police a rouble apiece; he will
see then that we good Christians cannot be drunk.’ The roubles were
paid, the liberty of the pseudo-moujiks obtained, and next day K----
came down and dismissed the chief of police and his whole staff. So
through every branch of civic administration, meeting with hindrances
at every step, but still steadfastly hunting down corruption wherever
he suspected it. Three generals holding civic posts he forced into
retirement; then, feeling that the opposition of the military in a town
still under military law was too much for him, K---- retired.
But now a bitter white mist comes creeping over the earth, wetting us
to the skin in spite of our heavy wraps, and stopping all conversation
by the chill discomfort it brings in its train; so for three hours we
lie down to rest at the next post-station, rising again at seven to
welcome as bright a morning as any I had seen on my long drive. The
country was pretty, with here and there a group of trees, and here
and there a brook. The sun was bright in the heavens, the hoar frost
sparkled on the ground, while every breath of the keen morning breeze
brought high spirits and a hunter’s appetite along with it. The country
now became hilly, even close by the post-road, and every now and then
we saw a covey of red-legged partridges scudding up the bare hillsides
at a terrible pace. These birds seemed to have taken the place of the
sand-grouse now. A drive of twenty versts from Adji Kabool brought us
to Goktchai, and here my post-cart was destined to stay its joltings
and bid its jangling bells be still for some little time.
Goktchai is a large village, with one broad main street, beginning at
the Tiflis end in a bazaar, passing halfway some barracks, where a few
soldiers are quartered, and ending in the ordinary Caucasian village.
On the way through the village bazaar my eyes rested on a freshly
slain tûr, or mountain sheep, as well as other game; and the sight of
the noble head with its grand horns, combined with a distant view of
those peaks whence it had so lately come, was too much for my powers of
resistance, and I determined then and there that I too would at least
try to kill a tûr in the wild mountains of Daghestan.
At the post-station I heard the most glowing accounts of the quantities
of game to be met with within two days’ ride of the village; but
coupled with this came the news that these mountains were so ill-famed
on account of the brigands who haunted them that scarcely any of the
villagers had ever been there, and none would go again for any wage I
liked to offer. This I received doubtfully, and through my man made
many offers, but even ten roubles a day were refused by moujiks to whom
a hundred roubles would have been a fortune with which to rest content
for life. However, though I began to believe in the reality of the
brigands, more especially as a post-cart had during the last few days
been carried off bodily in broad daylight, I determined to wait a day
and see whether no one would come to accept my liberal offer.
The day of waiting was spent in shooting hares and red-legs on
the nearest hills, whose steep sides were simply alive with these
swift-footed birds, running like flies on the almost perpendicular
faces of the cliffs, or coming like bullets overhead as my man
drove them to me. The difficulty of approaching the birds--as,
though continually in sight, they would never rise and never stop
running--reminded me of other days over the stiff furrows of
Northamptonshire; though, even with the help of a sturdy Tartar, I
found the bare rocks and mud-faced crumbling hillsides worse going
than the wet ridge and furrow. The hills were covered with dwarf larch
and pomegranate-trees, the fruit of the latter having, alas, been all
culled for this year.
Tired and thirsty, towards three o’clock we saw hanging over a steep
cliff above us a large pomegranate-tree, apparently unrobbed as yet.
Its bright fruit showed red and yellow through the foliage; so with
renewed energy my Tartar and I struggled for a quarter of an hour to
reach it. At last we succeeded, and found, to our intense disgust, that
each fruit was hollow, a part of the opposite side having been broken
away and all the interior taken out by the birds, who had left nothing
but the delusive husks which had so cruelly disappointed us. I record
this as one of many similar sells inflicted on us whilst in Daghestan.
When we started in pursuit of the red-legs we had with us a dog, but
so hard was the work that in about three hours the poor beast refused
to come another yard, and lay down resolutely to rest. His example was
infectious, and though we kept on for some time longer, we were soon
so heartily tired of the goat-like manner of progression necessary in
these hills, and the perpetual motion of the partridges, that we gave
up the chase and came home. There we found good news awaiting us. One
of the Lesghian Tartars, who lived in the second range of mountains
from Goktchai, had come in during the day to bring some game to the
bazaar, and, hearing of us, volunteered to guide us to the home of
the tûr and the chamois for a much smaller sum than that which I had
vainly offered to the Russian moujiks. Allai, as he was called, was
a man about 6 feet 3 inches in height, hard and wiry in build, who
unfortunately spoke no single word of any other language than his own
Lesghian Tartar. The ‘starost’ (elder) warned me to beware of him, for,
in spite of his gentle ways and guileless manner, Allai was suspected
of knowing a great deal more of the brigands than was exactly to his
credit. Still, brigand or not, it mattered very little to me, as Allai
was evidently the only man who could serve my purpose, and I fancied I
saw my way to securing myself and servant from any outrage which our
guide could prevent. My plan was simply to arrange with him that for
his and his brother’s services, together with the use of two horses
for the first day, or for as far as travelling on horseback should be
practicable, I was to pay him a certain sum, which sum, together with
all my other valuables, having been safely deposited with a friend in
the village, would only become his on my safe return from my trip. This
agreement, together with the precaution of letting the Russian military
authorities quartered in the village know whither I was bound, made me
feel tolerably safe, even should Allai be head and chief of all the
brigands from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and so, in spite of all
the evil predictions of the ‘starost’ and his friends, my man and I,
with Allai and his brother, set our faces to the blue mountains and
jogged right merrily on our way next morning.
Our first resting-place was to be the Armenian mountain village of
Gerdaoul. The road was beautiful in the extreme, though it required
much beauty to make amends for its roughness. The greater part of the
way our course lay over the bare bed of a mountain torrent, whose
tortuous windings were everywhere full of great boulders, over which
no beast could move at more than a foot’s pace. The hills, for the
most part bare, were boldly broken and ragged in outline; at the top
were frequent thickets of small firs and pomegranates, while every
here and there small clumps of the same flecked the white hillsides.
After surmounting this first range of hills, in which small game
seemed to swarm, we came upon a table-land which separated us from
the snow-capped range wherein our goal lay. On the very edge of this
table-land hangs the village of Gerdaoul. The faces of the cottages
composing it open out of the hillside; the roofs, mere white cones,
rise out of the table-land above. Far more imposing to the eye appear
numbers of haystacks, shaped like sugar-loaves, perched on high wooden
scaffolds to save them from marauding buffaloes, or to give shelter
to the owner’s cattle in storms or at night. Here, when Allai had made
known who and what we were, the village elder came out to welcome me
and bid me to his house, where, near a cheery hearth, on which the
huge logs glowed, cushions and carpets and slippers invited to repose.
Unluckily, none of the good men of the village spoke a word of anything
but Tartar, of which Ivan knew but little, and I only the words picked
up during the last two days. To the hungry man and the sportsman
a knowledge of the native language is not, however, an absolute
necessity, though it is an immense advantage. Signs go a long way, and
amongst a race who care for sport as the Lesghian Tartars do, sympathy
for a brother sportsman does the rest.
It was not long before tea was brought to me, and as one after another
the swarthy villagers trooped in, I soon had quite a large assembly
round me. Each man as he came in gave me a courteous greeting, and
then, crossing his legs or drawing them up under him, so as to squat
on his heels, he took up a meditative position on the floor. Amongst
themselves they were very taciturn, and never spoke to me unless I
made some remark to them. When I did, instead of being amused at my
mutilation of their language, they looked grave and did their best to
puzzle out my meaning amongst them. In the course of time a bowl of
scented water was brought me by my host, and, having washed my hands
in it, he and his friends performed their own ablutions, though, their
hands being all stained brown with some dye in use amongst them for the
purpose, the washing had but little apparent effect. I noticed that all
the Tartars and other inhabitants of Lesghia dyed their hands in this
manner.
After the bowl had gone its rounds, some game I had shot, together with
one of the chickens of Gerdaoul and a huge tray of boiled rice, was
brought in. Everything was handed to me by the host himself, and his
courtesy went so far that with his brown fingers he dexterously tore
the fowl to pieces, and selecting the best, offered them to me. These
people employed no table utensils except the silver bowl to wash in and
the silver tray on which fowl, rice, and raisins, fried in butter, were
all served _en masse_. Every one helped himself in turn from the dish
with his fingers, rolling the rice into a neat ball so as to scarcely
drop a grain. Gladly would I have done the same, but for the first day
or two I fancy more rice went down my neck than down my throat. The
meal was followed by some capital native wine, at which my Lesghian
guide looked askance, although I found afterwards that his scruples
were not troublesome except in public, and his taste for strong drink
only strengthened by occasional enforced abstinence.
After another ablution the meats were cleared away and pipes produced,
when, to my horror, I found I had lost my tobacco pouch. However, lots
of tobacco was soon forthcoming, and next morning a prettily knit
purse for the fragrant weed, worked in purple and gold by the nimble
fingers of one of the invisible daughters of the house, was presented
to me. Anything more luxurious than a lounge on the cushion-covered
carpets of Gerdaoul, with a ruddy hearth fire by your side, the good
native wine to drink, and the best of tobacco to smoke, with a crowd
of picturesquely wild fellows around you, and a distant view of the
mountains through the open doorway, it has seldom been my lot to enjoy,
and it was far into the night before I could make up my mind to leave
it all for the realms of sleep.