FROM GOKTCHAI TO LENKORAN.
Rough travelling--Shooting by the way--Shemakha and
Aksu--Tarantasses and post-roads--A wretched station--Mud
volcanoes and naphtha springs--Bustards--On the road to
Salian--Swarms of wild-fowl--A rascally official--Disappointed
hopes--A good Samaritan--Rival hosts--Asiatic fever--The
Mooghan steppe--Pelicans and myriads of other birds--Tartar
orgies--Banished sectaries: the Molochans and Skoptsi--Arrival
at Lenkoran--A Persian gunsmith--Fellow-sportsmen.
The day after our return to the post-road, we found on waking that the
change in the weather predicted by our mountain guides had already set
in. There was no longer that crisp raciness in the air which carried us
through the day’s work with comparative ease and pleasure, but a steady
cold rain, with occasional snowstorms, blinded the sun and changed
the roads into morasses. The hills were already snow-clad in that one
night, and had we not left Gerdaoul when we did, we might have remained
for the winter. As it was, the prospect of our journey to Lenkoran was
not a bright one. Every rill that crossed the road was fast swelling to
a torrent, and the fifty-seven versts which formed our day’s allotted
work, and terminated at Aksu, were versts of misery and discomfort
hard to bear.
At Aksu the postmaster refused to give us horses, alleging that, in the
present state of the weather, to attempt the range of hills between
his station and Shemakha would only result in the destruction of the
post-cart, loss of horses, and broken limbs for the fares, especially
now that the mists and darkness of night were rendering what road there
was invisible.
On the road, before reaching Aksu, we came across three of the brigands
of whom we have heard so much, in charge of a band of ‘tchapars’
(mounted policemen), who seemed a vast deal more like the highwaymen
of romance than their sorry-looking captives did. On the morning of
December 28 we left Aksu for Shemakha, a distance of forty versts, over
hills whose sides were like wet ploughed fields. Here the post-cart
was unable to proceed as fast as we could walk, so that we solaced
ourselves by shooting _en route_, and derived some consolation from the
abundance of game which we found on these hillsides. Red-legs, hares,
and pheasants swarmed; and what with these, the owls, and other birds
of prey with which the hills teemed, we had a very lively time. Wolves,
too, have their haunts here, as witness a deserted post-cart, on the
horses attached to which a traveller and his yemstchik had escaped
during the preceding week, leaving their cart with the baggage to take
care of itself.
I used to believe, before I saw Aksu, that nowhere in the world did
magpies more abound than in Galway round Loughrea, or in some favoured
parts of France; but here in Aksu I counted seventeen of these poaching
rascals all together like a flock of sparrows. In the hills halfway
between Aksu and Shemakha I saw quite a mob of eagles and hawks, busy,
I presume, with the half-frozen smaller birds and hares. Two or three
lammergeiers tempted me to a prolonged chase; but though I hit two of
them, my number four shot would not bring them down, and I confess
to being unable to touch them with my rifle, in spite of their slow
wheeling flight.
Shemakha is not a town to detain a weary traveller long. The only inn I
could find was an underground ‘duchan,’ to which access was obtained by
a flight of stone steps leading from the road above to a kind of vault,
in which puddles stood on the floor, drained off from the mud above;
and here the cooking and liquor were as infamous as the accommodation.
Shemakha is mainly composed of flat-topped Asiatic houses and a few
smart new ones of the common Russian stamp, with white plastered sides
and green roofs that looked bitterly cold and out of place in their
setting of snow and winter storm.
The roads of this town are, without exception, the worst for a town I
ever saw; nothing but the bed of a mountain torrent could be worse.
The town bore traces of damage done by that volcanic action from
which it is a too frequent sufferer. The principal residents are, I
believe, Armenian; the principal industry the manufacture of carpets.
Shemakha is, I am told, an extremely old town, and was, in days gone
by, the capital of a ‘gubernia,’ though before the Russian rule, in the
early Persian days, the great town was Aksu, the post-station at the
foot of the hills, and not Shemakha. Now Aksu has declined to a very
insignificant position; and even should the contemplated railway from
Tiflis to Baku ever become a reality, the volcanic spasms from which it
so frequently suffers will probably prevent Shemakha ever attaining to
any real importance.
After leaving Shemakha the main post-road runs on to Baku, the
principal port on this side the Caspian. As, however, my object was
to get into Persia, or, at least, so near to Persia as to run a
chance of finding tigers, I left the main road at Shemakha, and bore
away to the south-east for Lenkoran. The road between Shemakha and
Lenkoran being extremely little used, I was destined to see, before I
reached the Caspian, the lowest depths of the discomforts of Russian
post-travelling. Hitherto there had been at least three ‘troikas’
(teams) kept at each station; now no station had more than two. One of
these teams being always retained for emergencies (such as the needs of
a special courier), there remained one team to do all the work. Luckily
for me, I appeared to be the only traveller; had it been otherwise,
I might still be stranded at some post-house on the borders of the
Mooghan steppe.
As Shemakha held out no great inducements to me to remain, my man and I
were not long in resuming our journey. After a stage of twenty versts
through rough hilly country, we put up for the night at a station
which I have recorded by name, that I may make it infamous as the very
worst post-station in the Russian empire, and, therefore, probably
in the world. It seems a great deal for one to say who, after all,
has seen only one side of the mighty empire of Russia; but it must be
remembered that in speaking thus I am simply relying on the Russians
themselves, who assure me that the Russian post-roads in the Caucasus
are the worst in the empire, and of these I have had some experience.
Though I have carefully examined my map, I cannot find the name of
the station of which I am now writing upon it; but then I have had
considerable difficulty in recognising many other well-known places,
owing to differences in the spelling of the names, and even in the
names themselves, since it is no uncommon thing to meet with a village
boasting of nearly as many names as inhabitants. Tchaillee is as near
the phonetic spelling of the name of this villanous collection of
hovels as I can make it.
When we arrived, night had set in, and with it foul weather. We were
tired, wet, and hungry. No horses could have been had even if we would
have continued our journey that night; so we decided to remain, and
asked our way to the traveller’s room. The station is placed on very
high ground, and in an exposed position. At the most exposed corner is
the room in which we were to pass the night. The floor was literally
more wet and filthy than the road without; you could not stand out of a
puddle unless you stood on the only piece of furniture in the room--a
solitary bench, extremely rickety with old age, and not large enough
to hold one man in a recumbent position. The hearth was in ruins, the
window blown in, the door off its hinges, the ceiling had partially
fallen, and even the coloured print of the Emperor, with which no
post-house or public office can ever dispense, hung in wet fragments
flapping against the mouldy walls.
We tried to bale the water from the floor, but it was labour wasted; it
returned as fast as we expelled it. Do what we would to block out the
wind, our barricades were useless against its fury, owing to the many
breaches it had already made. We asked for wood or coal--the people had
none. We asked for food--they had none. We tried the stables, thinking
we might find shelter there. Standing over their fetlocks in filthy
slush, in an atmosphere that would stifle an English horse in three
minutes, were the few wretched-looking beasts whose lot it was to live
and labour at Tchaillee. And yet, in spite of adverse circumstances
such as these, in spite of short allowance and no grooming, these hardy
brutes, though they look mere bags of bones, do more work than our
well-cared-for English horses, never seem to suffer from coughs, colds,
mud fever, or any of the hundred and one ailments to which an unnatural
amount of coddling makes our animals subject. There is this to be said
for the Russian, if he does not provide his beast with good food and
comfortable stabling, at least he leaves him the coat that nature gave
him.
After trying in vain to find a resting-place elsewhere, Ivan and
myself bribed the chief yemstchik (who was also the postmaster) to let
us share his one-roomed hovel for the night. The man was a Molochan,
and lived with his parents and his children, in a state of slovenly
misery, in this one room. The poor wife made the night hideous with a
deep racking cough that led one to hope that she would not have to
drag out a miserable existence at Tchaillee much longer. The children
were dirty, listless skeletons, too lifeless even to quarrel or play.
The man seemed to do his work as driver in the apathetic way in which
a horse might work in a mill, taking no interest in his task, and
feeling no desire to better his condition. The apathy of the Russian
moujik is the truly wonderful part of his nature. Here was a man not
more than thirty-five, with half his days idle, with his wife and
children dying before his eyes for the want of a little comfort, which
a week’s work would have given them, and yet he never seemed to dream
of mending the windows or roof, of draining the water from the floor,
or of doing anything to prevent the stifling inroads of the smoke,
any more than his wife dreamt of cleaning or rendering comfortable
the inside of her dwelling. And yet these people were Molochans, a
religious sect, professing to lead a pure life according to the light
of their own reason, disbelieving in fasting as practised by orthodox
Russians, and, as a rule, more sturdy, cleanly, and useful than the
average Russian moujik. The Russian peasant settlers in the Caucasus
struck me everywhere as deteriorating rather than improving with their
change of country. Far into the night my man and myself lay unable to
sleep, tired though we were, in this miserable den, passing the time by
knocking over with our kinjals as many as possible out of the droves
of mice who made a playground of our prostrate forms.
After leaving Tchaillee we got down again into the plains, where
the weather was much milder, and travelling more interesting to a
sportsman, since wild-fowl began to abound by the roadside, owing
probably to the proximity of the Kûr. Between the third and fourth
station from Shemakha, the names of which were apparently of such a
crack-jaw nature as to render all reproduction in English hopeless, we
crossed a tract of land covered with mud volcanoes, some of which were
as much as fifteen feet in height. Here, too, we saw naphtha welling up
from the ground and running across the post-road in large quantities.
The yemstchik told me that the whole country for miles round was full
of it, but very little was utilised, as the difficulties of transport
rendered the working of the oil unprofitable. Should a line of rail
ever be opened to Baku from Tiflis, I should imagine that these naphtha
springs will become valuable property.
Whilst staying at the next station after the mud volcanoes, I was lucky
enough to witness a passage of the strepita or lesser bustard (_otis
tetrax_). These magnificent birds were in millions all over the steppe.
The ground was grey with them; the air full of their cries, the sky
alive with the movement of their wings. With them were a few small
flocks of another bird, which I thought I recognised as the golden
plover, but of this I am by no means sure. So much struck was I by the
strange sight which this enormous passage presented, that I stayed
the greater part of the day to watch it; and when at last I left, the
almost inconceivable flood of winged creatures was still rolling on
over the steppe from west to east in undiminished numbers. The Russian
powder which I bought at Tiflis had turned out so badly, that at this
time I had almost given up using it for anything larger than teal, and
even then it was necessary to be at very close quarters to bring the
bird to bag, so miserably weak was it. Thanks, however, to the dense
masses in which the bustards stood and flew, I was enabled to secure
sufficient to supply my man and myself with a welcome change of diet,
by the expenditure of only two of my treasured ‘express’ cartridges.
Judging by what I killed, I should say the birds were only just
starting from their summer haunts in the Crimea and Caucasus for their
winter quarters in the East. Had it not been so, they would hardly have
been as deliciously plump as we found them.
But whilst watching the bustards we had let the day slip through our
hands, and to our intense disgust we found we could not reach Salian
that night; so we had to content ourselves with the last post-station
on the road thither, where we slept. In the early morning I went down
to the river, glad to see the Kûr again, if it was only for the sake
of its abundance of clear water, offering a bath without stint to the
dirty wayfarer, and the promise of caviare almost without cost to the
hungry epicure.
Thank heaven, a Russian yemstchik’s toilet does not take long to make.
A shake, a yawn, a cigarette, and, if times are good, a glass of neat
vodka, and he is ready to face anything, from his sweetheart to a
north-easter. Would that his horses’ gear was as speedily arranged
as his own; unluckily it is not. Still, in spite of the scores of
breakages in the harness of rotten rope and still more rotten thong,
our impatient desire to be off was gratified at last, and with glowing
visions of at least a clean hut and heaps of good fish and ‘ikra’ at
Salian, we bumped all breakfastless along our last stage to the land
of promise. All along our route wild-fowl swarmed, and through the low
covert we saw numbers of foxes threading their way. All the way from
Adji Kabool, a station at the foot of the hills in which Shemakha lies,
and of which I can find no trace in my map, any more than I can of the
large lake near it, to Salian and thence to Lenkoran, the country is
full of ponds, estuaries, and lakelets, which teem with wild-fowl. I
stopped the cart once to kill some pochards for dinner, and a couple of
beautiful white egrets for preserving.
And now the river came in sight, a broad, imposing stream, with the
post-house on this side, that is to say, on the eastern bank. To our
disgust, hungry as we were, we were detained at the post-house for an
hour, by the rascally Asiatic who presided there, under the pretence
that our papers must be first examined by the authorities on the other
side before we were allowed to cross. So well did the fellow impose
on us, that though both my man and myself were as puzzled as we were
angry, we submitted, until a Russian coming upon the scene, informed
us that the fellow was only trying to extort black-mail from us for
his supposed services in getting our papers in order; and our new
acquaintance, having a fellow-feeling for his countryman my servant,
took the Asiatic by his beard, spat in his face, and with many abusive
epithets ordered him to see to our immediate transport to the other
side, unless he wished to be placed in charge of the police. Our
courtesy and civil speeches the brute had answered with all possible
rudeness, attributing our politeness, as all these people do, to a
sense of our own weakness; but to the greater brutality of the Russian
the weaker nature of the Asiatic yielded at once, and in a few minutes
we were waving adieux to our timely helper from the other side the Kûr.
Our first business was to inquire where the hotel was, and our
next where caviare might be bought, resolving mentally to purchase
sufficient to feed us all the way to Lenkoran. Of course I might have
expected the answers to my questions, after all I had seen of Russian
promises and their fulfilment. Of course there was no hotel. There
were but six Russian families of any kind in Salian, all the rest were
Tartars. Whatever you wanted you might buy from Tartars in the open
bazaar, who would not serve you if they could help it; if you wanted
to eat, you might eat standing there or in the doorway of the merchant
who sold vodka. There was no caviare at Salian to be had for love or
money. It was not the right season for fresh ‘ikra,’ and ‘pressed ikra’
(_i.e._ caviare) could not be bought nearer than Bosghi Promysl, the
great fishery, fifteen miles off, where it cost rather more than it
does in the Crimea. Even had I been at Salian at the right season,
I could only have purchased this luxury, for which it is famous, by
stealth, as the whole produce of the fishery is bought up by merchants
at a distance, to whom it is sent direct, it being specially provided
by contract that they should have an entire monopoly. Thus, though
Salian and Bosghi Promysl are the places whence the greater part of the
caviare sold in Russia comes, they are the two most difficult places at
which to buy it.
Standing moodily in the wine-merchant’s doorway, munching a lump of dry
bread, the meagre realisation of all our dreams of luxury and rest,
our wayworn looks arrested the attention of a good-natured Russian
custom-house officer, one of the few Europeans in Salian. This good
Samaritan, when he heard the story of our blighted hopes, took us home
to his own house to dinner, and whilst waiting for it a curious thing
happened. A messenger arrived from another Russian official, of whom
I had never heard, also asking me to dine. Of course, I sent back the
most polite answer possible, pleading my previous engagement, and
promising to come and thank him for his civility before I left Salian.
To my astonishment, the messenger came back in a few minutes to say
that I was not to heed Mr. So-and-so--he was only a poor devil of a
custom-house officer--but was to come and dine at once with the great
man, his master. My host seemed by no means surprised at the message,
or even annoyed, though it was delivered, to my intense chagrin, in
his presence. There was but one thing to say in answer to this second
message of my would-be host; and having said it, I sat down to dine
with my first friend, meditating much on the manners and customs of
the East. But my astonishment increased when, after dinner, my host
entreated me to go with him to his rival’s, that that rival might hear
from my own lips that it was no fault of my host that I had dined
at his house in preference to that of the greater man. Of course I
yielded, and both he and I met with a very favourable reception at the
hands of the great man, who produced in my honour, on hearing that I
was an Englishman, two bottles labelled beer. These bottles of beer had
been the good man’s pride for many a day, and I verily believe it gave
him more pleasure to be able to see a real Englishman drinking his beer
than it did that Englishman to humour his whim.
In every house in Salian the Asiatic fever seemed to rage; half the
inmates of either house in which I was entertained were down with it,
and this, too, at the time of year when it is least virulent.
There being no inducement to remain in the place, we walked through
it, and having found it destitute of all objects of interest, ordered
a fresh team of horses to proceed on our journey to the Caspian. For
once the story that there were no horses was found to be a true one,
and, unable to find lodging in the town, as we were unwilling to burden
either of our hosts with our presence, especially since the fever had
deranged both their households, we made energetic endeavours to obtain
some conveyance to the next station, which was reported weather-proof,
and a capital station for wild-fowling. Whilst thus engaged we came
across a Tartar selling foxskins, and were much struck by the enormous
quantity, all recently killed, which he had for sale. They were skins
of the common fox, shot in the neighbourhood, and were being sold at
from 30 to 50 copecks apiece.
Never had we such difficulty in procuring horses as we had now. None
of the Tartars or other peasants would take us, late as it was, across
this first strip of the Mooghan desert to the next post-station. It
seemed that all the steppe was covered by nomad Tartars, who descend
every year from the hills and winter in the Mooghan. These men bear
(probably with justice) an extremely bad reputation, and, although we
at last persuaded a young Tartar of Salian to convey us in his ‘arba,’
it was only after we had spent all our persuasive powers upon him,
showing him how well armed we were, and promising that we would keep
ourselves out of sight, in order not to excite the cupidity of any of
the wandering gentry we might meet; in addition to which he stipulated
that a place should be provided for himself and ‘arba’ within the
protection of the walls of the post-station until next morning.
Under these conditions we stowed ourselves away in the bottom of his
cart, which resembled nothing so much as a huge oblong wicker-basket
on solid wooden wheels, some eight feet high. This edifice was drawn
by one horse, through rather than over eighteen versts of villanous
road, the consequence being that we proceeded at a foot’s pace for the
whole distance. Far and near in every direction were the fires of the
Tartar encampments. Several times, much to our driver’s disgust, we
had to pass within a few hundred yards of their wretched tents, which
consist of four sticks stuck in the ground, and a piece of black felt
stretched over the top. Under this they rest, the four sides open to
every gust of wind, while a large fire close by warms them where they
lie, and with its flickering flames lends additional wildness to the
scene, as well as to the grim figures passing and repassing before
it, and strangely magnifying the group of animals tethered hard by.
These nomads must be more than mere gipsies, from the number of horses
and cattle which I saw in their encampments. They are a great bore to
the sportsman, for, though the Mooghan is alive with antelopes in the
summer, these sensible little beasts leave it as soon as the Tartar
hordes make their appearance.
As we left Salian the evening was closing in fast, and the whole sky
was a vivid stormy crimson, which, being caught by the endless level
plain, had a very grand effect. A vast flight of pelicans in marching
order, line upon line, came slowly winging their way from the fishery
at Bosghi Promysl to their night’s rest in some reed-bed on the Kûr.
The solemn even flight of these great birds, their countless numbers,
great size, and quaint grave aspect were in wondrous keeping with
the scene, and formed with it a _tout-ensemble_ not easily forgotten.
Once or twice _en route_ a wild-looking fellow on horseback rode up
and inspected us, but, though our driver’s nerves were much upset by
these visits of inspection, no evil came of them, our visitors probably
thinking one such wretched horse as ours was hardly worth the stealing.
From Salian to Lenkoran would have been an excessively uninteresting
drive had it not been for the teeming bird-life on all sides. The
nearer we got to the Caspian, the more the fowl increased. At one
place we shot splendid Numidian cranes, whose stately forms might
frequently be seen. At another flamingoes, white and rosy, tempted us
from our tarantasse. In the mist of early morning an eagle, alit by the
roadside, almost frightened us by his apparently gigantic proportions;
and even when he flew away, unharmed and but little alarmed by our
bullets--when, too, we had made all allowance for the exaggerating
properties of the mist--we could scarcely believe that he belonged to
any known species, so gigantic did he appear.
In those parts of the journey where the post-road ran through
sand-hills near the sea, the noise of the fowl was simply deafening.
In the Crimea the varieties of wild ducks are extremely numerous, but
here it seemed almost as if there were as many different species as
there are ducks anywhere else. The most striking, after the flamingoes,
swans, and pelicans, were perhaps the bright red duck, called here
‘gagar,’ and the beautiful mandarin duck, which I only saw once at
close quarters. But amongst the countless flights there were scores of
different plumages, to whose wearers I could give no name; and I feel
sure that any ornithologist who is at the present moment looking for
some new ground over which to follow up his favourite study, would find
ample reward for the journey in a visit to the swamps round Lenkoran in
the winter months.
Travelling by night over the steppe, we passed a Tartar village at
some little distance, from which came an unwonted glow of red light,
and cries as of pandemonium let loose. On asking Ivan what it meant,
I was told that it was the Tartar Bairam, or rather the preparation
for it. Anxious to see what was doing, I, contrary to my driver’s
advice, slipped out of the tarantasse and stole unobserved upon the
scene--a scene wilder than the witches’ meeting in Macbeth. Among the
huts and hayricks on the wet steppe, a mob of half naked Tartars had
erected a post, and on this post had fixed a monster firebrand. From
this the light glowed and flickered on the brown limbs and wild faces
of an excited band of dancers, who, in perfect time, kept advancing
and retreating around it, singing in time to their steps the while.
Now and again another band, which formed a chorus to the principal
performers, broke in with a chant, of which I could only catch two
constantly-repeated words, seeming to my ears to be best represented
thus, ‘Shaksay, Maksay.’ The dance, though extremely rude and simple,
was effective from the surroundings and the great accuracy with which
each performer executed his part; and this was the more remarkable
since every male from four to eighty in the village seemed to be taking
part. The women only were idle spectators.
After watching them for some time the dance came to an end, and the
people began to scatter, a signal for me to get back to my cart before
any one caught me intruding. Ivan, my man, told me that in another
fortnight they would begin still wilder rites, hacking and mutilating
themselves with knives, after the manner of the priests of Baal.
The Russian peasants tell you that the Tartars do this in memory of a
certain Lutra, queen and Amazon, erst of Erivan, whom Russian soldiers
slew. She, dying, bade the Tartars thus maltreat themselves once a
year in memory of her, the which if they did, she on her part would
in thirty years’ time rise again, to lead and rule over them in great
glory. Many a thirty years has passed since then, and Lutra the queen
has not kept her word: through which some of the Tartars have of their
own accord ceased to observe these rites; others have yielded to the
power of Russian law, which forbids these savage orgies under penalty
of very heavy punishment; while still a few practise their rites in the
darkness of midnight and in the desolate wild places of the steppeland.
For at least thirty versts of our journey the road was impassable,
owing to the overflow of the river; and this necessitated a long
circuit extremely unwelcome to us. In the villages that we passed
through towards the end of our drive, the people were for the most
part Molochans, clean, hard-working peasants compared to those around
them, but very objectionable from at least one point of view, as
nothing would induce them to cook our game for us for fear of defiling
themselves--fifty per cent. of the birds we shot being unclean in
their eyes. These Molochans, near Lenkoran, are probably some of the
descendants of the 1,500 or 2,000 that the Emperor Nicholas drove out
of Russia into the Caucasus.
The country near Lenkoran is in places good meadow land, covered even
now with rich young grass; here and there it has been broken up for
cultivation, and in such places the soil appears extremely rich.
At last a long line of sordid huts announced themselves as the suburbs
of Lenkoran, and the homes of another sect, which the Emperor Nicholas,
with greater reason perhaps, expelled from Russia. These are the
Skoptsi (eunuchs), or White Doves as they prefer to call themselves.
Besides mutilating themselves, these people drink no strong drink,
and eat very little of anything beyond bread and oil. The people of
Lenkoran say they live a quiet, harmless life. Those I saw of this sect
were big bloated men, with faces as devoid of expression as the lives
they lead.
Though Lenkoran was of course not the paradise it had been represented
to be at Tiflis, it was, however, less disappointing than many of the
places I had seen. There were really a few Europeans in the town; there
was a fair bazaar where food could be bought; there was a room attached
to the establishment which grandiloquently styles itself the Lenkoran
Club, in which we could sleep on a wooden floor in comfort; there was
a post-office, and (although it took a long time to find him, and
when found, he had nothing but a single pair of shears for apparatus)
there was a barber. For the rest Lenkoran is at this time of year a
sea of mud; in the summer it must be a cloud of dust. The streets are
in places paved, though badly; there are no shops outside the bazaar,
which is held in an open space without the town, and where most of the
traders are Persian or Tartar; the houses are ill-built; and from the
dismal, sickly-coloured sea, which lies motionless by the walls of the
town, comes an offensive odour which must be unbearable in summer. The
officials of the place are almost all Armenian.
Soon after my arrival, I went down to the bazaar to look for a
gunsmith, and finding an old Persian cross-legged in a booth hung with
ancient arms and dangerous-looking guns, submitted my fowling-piece to
him for repairs. The injury he had to set right was a bad dent in one
of the barrels, got by a fall from the tarantasse on our road here.
The last I saw of him he had the end of something like a poker down
the muzzle and was belabouring my luckless gun with a sledge-hammer. I
think this must have nearly roused me; but it evidently did not quite,
for my next recollection is of waking suddenly in the booth beside
the old armourer, who had long ago finished my gun’s repairs, and was
now gravely amused at Ivan’s face of surprise at the odd position in
which, after half a day’s search, he at last found me. Be it said to
the honour of that Persian, when I left the bazaar my gun was fairly
mended, and there was nothing missing from my pocket.
During that first day at Lenkoran I had much to do, especially as my
man was told by the employés of the local forester that we should not
be allowed to shoot without a licence. An interview with the forester
himself soon set this right, and in his house I saw the skin of a
recently killed leopard, which gave me greater hope of success than I
had dared hitherto to indulge in. On the day after my arrival I was
lucky enough to make the acquaintance of a German gentleman named
Müller, who from the moment he discovered my nationality took me under
his especial care. We met first at the house of one of the sportsmen of
Lenkoran, who, having heard of my arrival, had arranged a banquet in
my honour. Here, after dinner, whilst discussing the chance of seeing
a tiger--a chance which grew more and more remote the more I pursued
it--one of the guests proposed that I should make a house of his in the
neighbouring forest my head centre during my stay. This hut he called
the ‘Shabby Shanty,’ and the chance of resting under the roof of a
house with an Irish name and an English-speaking master, with capital
sport all round, was too good to be refused; so as usual I decided on
the spur of the moment to entrust myself to my new friend’s care.
It is only fair to say that wherever I went in Russia, I invariably met
with ready hospitality, so much so that my whole journey was little
more than a series of expeditions begun, if not finished, under the
auspices and at the suggestion of some new-found friend.