SHORES OF THE CASPIAN.--RETURN TO TIFLIS.
Lenkoran--Abundance of game--Eryvool forest--Native fowlers--A
hunting lodge--Swarming coverts--Wild boar--A paradise for
sportsmen--Pigs at bay--‘Old Shirka’ and his quarry--A dying
eagle--Caspian woodpeckers--Festive nights--Watching for a
tiger--Forest life by night--The eagle-owl and his prey--End of
a long vigil--The rainy season--The streets of Lenkoran--The
return journey to Tiflis--Adventure at Adji Kabool--Experiences
of post-travel--Bullying a station-master--Armenian
Protestants--Russian telegraph service--In miserable plight--A
spill over a precipice--Refitting our tarantasse--_Argumentum
ad hominem_--An awkward predicament--Chasing a
yemstchik--Renewed life at Tiflis--Great snowfall--Running down
antelope--The ‘black death.’
Lenkoran is almost surrounded by marshes, in which snipe and woodcock,
with all manner of long-legged, long-necked strangers to a British eye,
together with hundreds of the falcon tribe, disport themselves daily.
Here my man and myself spent a day or two shooting specimens of the
birds least known to us; but on the third day we took horse and rode
to a larger lake, on which we embarked with our friend the German,
intending to cross over to the woods which fringed the further side,
somewhere in the depths of which the ‘Shabby Shanty’ lay. On this lake
were simply myriads of water-hens. The whole surface seemed dark with
them, the reeds alive with their ceaseless cries. The sale of these
birds is quite a feature in the street life of Lenkoran. The bazaar is
full of their carcasses; at every street corner you meet men hawking
them for sale; every other peasant you see is carrying two or three
home for the pot.
On the lake are many flat-bottomed boats in which the fowlers pole
themselves through the mazy waterways in the reed-beds, until at
a sudden turn a closely packed bevy of water-hens offers them a
remunerative shot. So cheap are the birds in the bazaar, that to kill
them singly with the gun would entail absolute loss on the gunner. But
besides these wild-fowlers, who are after all but occasionally employed
in their pursuit, there are the regular enemies of the poor little
fowl, men who have decoys, and nets drawn across certain straits, down
which they drive the birds, until in diving to escape they are caught
by scores in the submerged net. There are naturally quantities of other
fowl on these lakes, but the water-hen seems to thrive and abound most,
and is so much more easily taken than the others that it is the staple
food of a large number of the inhabitants of Lenkoran.
On our voyage we overhauled one of the regular fowlers, a Tartar,
with whom we had a rather hot dispute. As he drew up his net full of
struggling or already drowned birds, we were horrified to see that
instead of killing outright those which were not yet dead, he took
the trouble to break their legs and wings, and so cast them a living,
helpless mass of pain and fear into the bottom of his boat, there to
live for hours in horrible anguish. We explained to the fellow how much
simpler for him, and how much kinder to the birds it would be, to wring
their necks outright; but we might have spared ourselves the trouble.
The Tartar intellect could not comprehend the beauty of mercy, and all
we could get was a grin and the assurance that if he did not break
their legs or wings they would escape him; and as he might be out a day
or two, if he killed them at once they would not be fresh when taken to
market. It was no good arguing any more; so merely insisting on putting
all he had so far taken out of their misery with our own hands, we left
him, feeling that were we to give way to our own impulses he would
have spent the next few hours with four broken limbs in the bottom of
his own boat. The water-hens are sold at about fivepence, wild duck at
about sixpence a brace.
On the far side of the lake a troop of villagers were waiting to carry
our baggage through the swampy forest, where neither horse nor cart
could now conveniently travel, to our host’s log hut.
The chief objects of cultivation here were rice and mulberry-trees;
and though the wild boars played the deuce with the rice-fields, the
mulberry-trees and their devourers the silk-worms throve amazingly.
Mr. Müller, our host, had not knocked about in all the odd corners of
the earth for nothing, so that when we reached his Shanty, though at a
couple of dozen paces or so you might meet with impenetrable jungle,
we found it the most comfortable well-built house we had seen since
we left Tiflis. In the night wild boars had dug up the small patch of
garden by the door; on a little lawn not far off, a badger had turned
up all the turf in his nocturnal gambols; while right and left as we
approached snipe and cock went off like crackers from under our feet.
During the first three days of our stay at Eryvool, we did nothing but
shoot cock and pheasant, or, with a pack of fine dogs, the pride of Mr.
Müller’s heart, hunt the wild swine that abounded in the thick places
of the forest; while east and west, and south and north, our messengers
went forth offering large rewards for tidings of any tiger or leopard
within three days’ march.
To those who have not seen the wild-fowl shooting of the Caspian, any
account of the swarms of cock and snipe (chiefly jack) at Eryvool in
the beginning of the year 1879 would seem overdrawn. We were sick of
shooting before the three days were over, though it took more than
one day of ceaseless firing to get used to the snap-shooting, which
is alone practicable in these dense coverts. Wherever the forest was
at all dry--and this was for the most part in fairly open places--the
rush and glitter of a pheasant’s noisy wings broke the monotony of
cock-shooting. Once, as I snapped at one of the ghost-like little
birds flipping over the top of the thick bush with silent wing, that
had kept me engaged all the morning, the bushes at my feet were parted
with a crash. With an indignant snort, and tail curling crisply over
his retreating quarters, the black form of an old boar afforded
an excellent mark for my second barrel. Luckily for me he did not
charge, or a rent in my waistcoat might have rewarded me for foolishly
assaulting so formidable a foe with No. 6.
Everywhere the forest was carpeted with flowers, though the crocuses,
of which my English correspondent Mr. Maw was so anxious to obtain
specimens, had not unluckily shown their heads as yet. The commonest
flower of all was the crimson cyclamen, and next to it its white
congener.
Day by day the story was the same. Cock-shooting in the morning, a run
with the dogs in the evening, a merry night with Mr. Müller in the
Shanty, but still no tidings of a feline foe. Let the history of one
day stand for that of many. An hour’s plodding through mud and slush on
a bright spring day, with every now and then a snap-shot at a brown
flash of light that glides through the trees before us, has at last
brought us to that thick covert in which we expect to find the great
wild boar. All the dreamy spirit of the young year is abroad; and as we
lazily drag our legs over the clinging morass, every briar that winds
itself round us almost tempts us to give in and roll over on the soft
black mud, rather than resist any longer the sleepy influence of the
season and the perpetual assaults of bog and briar. The weight of our
rifles has doubled; never before were our coats so thick, never before
did an old mossy trunk look so irresistibly tempting; and take it all
in all, we begin to think a cigarette and castle-building, with the
buzz of the woodland life in our ears and the languor of spring in our
blood, would be infinitely better than this ceaseless toil for a boar
who as little cares probably to be roused from his deep dreams as we
care to rouse him.
Luckily at this moment, when we were all but yielding to the
temptations of the sunshine, the deep voice of old Shirka sounded a
_réveillée_: in a second dreaminess had gone, the briars ceased to
hold, and if the young wood did swing back and nearly switch our eyes
out or break the bridge of that too prominent nose, we heeded it not.
For before us, with gruntings and with snortings loud enough to wake
the whole drowsy woodland, a great black sow is crashing through the
covert, the sable imps, who call her mother, pressing close behind,
while the deep voices of Shirka and his mates urge them on to still
more desperate endeavour. Each gunner, who up till now has been but
half animate, plunges recklessly through the rending thorns to gain
some point at which to turn the chase or make that shot which shall
render him the after-dinner hero of the day. And now from the deep
baying and the cessation of the crashing amongst the scrub, we judge
that Shirka and his friends have collared the quarry in the thick
thorn yonder; so thick that the light can barely penetrate, and so
viciously tenacious and spiteful as to give the invading sportsman
an idea of personal malice. From a point of vantage we at last get a
glimpse of the fray. There are seven small pigs, and on the flanks of
each a dog is hanging, while the great yellow dog Shirka and another
are struggling silently with the old sow in the middle of a small
pond of black mud and water. But she is too strong for them: we dare
not, however, help with our rifles, and cannot get to close quarters
in time with our knives; so one by one the little squeakers wriggle
themselves away, and the old mother and her litter, after another rapid
burst, get clean off, and leave us all lamenting. Had the pigs been
of larger growth the dogs would in all probability have concentrated
their attentions more upon one object, and so our chase might have had
a happier issue.
As it was we pursued our way in crestfallen silence, until Shirka
makes a point at a small thorn-bush by our side. ‘Nonsense, old dog,
come away; we can see through it.’ Hardly were the words out of our
mouth than with more activity than you would give a pig credit for, a
huge old boar springs from the very heart of the thicket, and the brave
yellow Shirka plunges recklessly at him. The veteran hound is one great
record of a thousand fights, his tawny hide seamed and knotted with the
marks of many a tusk, but he is as reckless now as he was when a puppy;
and dearly as his master loves his old hound’s pluck, he would give
a great deal to see a little of that discretion mixed with it which
might save his favourite from an untimely end. As the hound closes the
boar turns, and in the turning offers a fair mark for the rifle on the
other side of the thicket; so once more old Shirka is saved from those
gnashing ivory bayonets which he has so often rashly challenged.
After this there is a lull. The hounds’ loud voices have proclaimed to
every living thing that death is abroad in the forest, and boar and
roe have moved off to some deeper recess, where in shadowy silence
they can spend the spring noontide unmolested. One bird the rifle’s
reverberating voice has not scared, and as the great eagle comes
wheeling over the forest path, he throws quite a shadow on his enemies
below. But the voice that stilled the wild boar can still yours, too,
poor forest king, and though you come down but slowly, you must rest
awhile on that old gnarled oak before your pinions are strong enough
to bear you away again, to die in peace. Yet though the blood drops
slowly from your beak, you cling fiercely to the tough old oak with
iron claws worthy of their perch, and look in silent, wondering rage
at the foe scarce thirty feet beneath. Then with one supreme effort
you launch yourself on your last voyage: again the leaden hail strikes
upward under the now failing pinions, and the great lord of air furls
his sails and with a dull thud comes down, eyes still unclosed, talons
still drawn back to strike, and the curved beak eager for other blood
than the red stream that dyes it now. Peace be with you, brave bird;
like many another, when the shot had been fired, I would have given the
last rouble in my pocket not to have fired it. Still as a hunter you
lived, and, by a just retribution, by a hunter’s hand you died.
After this the handsome form of the great black woodpecker attracted
our covetous eyes, and for nearly a couple of hours his delusive
whistle lured Ivan and myself from tree to tree, always near us yet
never in sight. All things come to those who wait, and at last his
crimson crest was added to the scalps of those already slain. During
this day, too, we were lucky enough to shoot that rare bird the
_picus St. John_, a woodpecker much resembling our common spotted
woodpecker. _A propos_ of woodpeckers, my friend Mr. Müller, who was
a keen observer of natural history, assured me that he had frequently
observed near his house during the last two years an extremely small
woodpecker, in shape like all its congeners, in size if anything
slightly less than a sparrow, and in colour brilliant emerald green.
Being a zealous preserver of rare birds, he had never attempted to
molest the pair, which he assured me built every year near his hut; and
I fear that it was my keenness to see the bird and his suspicions of my
evil intentions with regard to them, which prevented his ever pointing
out to me these specimens of a woodpecker as yet unknown I believe to
British ornithologists.
Towards evening, tired with the chase, we would light our cigarettes
and make our way home by some well-known track, shooting as we went
sufficient cock and pheasants to secure us against the possibility of
scarcity during the next few days. Not uncommonly, as we drew near the
house, the dogs that for the last quarter of an hour had been wearily
following at our heels, with drooping tails, stopping from time to
time to lick a lacerated paw, would suddenly erect their hackles, and
fresh as ever charge furiously into the home enclosure, where, after
the manner of more fashionable beings, the wild swine family had been
paying us a visit, having first carefully ascertained that we were sure
not to be at home.
The nights sped by blithely enough. The New Year’s festivities, if not
of any very formidable pretensions at Eryvool, were at least lovingly
protracted, and every night our great-limbed German friend might be
seen mixing his loved lint wine for our delectation and his own.
But one night the lint wine was not brewed, not more than ten
‘papiroses’ were smoked, the talk was no longer of Australian
gold-diggings or American prairies--for had not the natives brought
tidings of the game we had come so far to seek? At some distance from
our dwelling two nights before a reiving tiger had struck down a
Persian’s cow at a little settlement on the edge of the forest; there
was the cow lying still, plain for all eyes to see, and the tiger’s
track clearly marked on the sand-bank of the little rivulet hard by.
The next night saw an eager trio of sportsmen on the spot. Round the
copse where the tiger had been, and to which we hoped he might return,
Mr. Müller, Ivan and myself posted ourselves, each perched in a tree,
and pledged solemnly to one another to wait there in silence through
the livelong night. Their perches I did not see, but my own I have
cause to remember. A tall tree-stump, perhaps twenty feet high, had
been roughly hewn or broken at the top, the ragged edges of which were
terribly apt to break, and pierce the too confiding being who placed
his weight upon them. Round this rough throne some small branches made
a fairly dense screen; and as some compensation for the deficiencies of
my seat, I discovered two deep cavities, into which my long jack-boots
fitted admirably. Perched here, I heard the last soft scrunch of my
companions’ retreating tread; and then taking a preliminary look at my
watch, I fairly settled down to my night’s vigil.
For a time, of course, we could expect nothing. Our passage through
the woods was sufficient to have precluded all hope of seeing any game
for an hour to come. How still it all seemed. Even the sea is a noisy
babbler compared to the depths of a forest at night. What a glorious
moon that was that gleamed down through the network of creepers and
wild vine above, throwing long shadows on the grassy opening below.
But how slowly the moments pass! Is it possible I have only been here
a quarter of an hour? I move restlessly, though silently, on my perch,
and then the intense cold which is numbing my right leg calls for
attention. On withdrawing the suffering limb from its hiding-place
the mystery is solved--that comfortable hole, which fitted the foot
so excellently, is a natural well, in which the offerings of many
forest showers have been carefully stored. No wonder that, as the water
soaked through during that frosty night, the unlucky leg grew numb. The
change of posture necessitated by this discovery is decidedly a change
for the worse, and stronger and stronger grows the conviction in my
mind that a fair set-to with Mr. Stripes for a quarter of an hour by
broad daylight would be far better than this silent night-watch on a
painfully acute tree-stump.
Gradually the inmates of the woods seem to regain confidence. That
sharp querulous bark came from a jackal, who is ‘loafing around’ as the
Yankees say, just within the shadow of the thicket opposite us. Then
there is a whish, whish of whirling wings, and we hear phantom flights
of duck come sweeping over the tree-tops close to us, but invisible to
our eyes in spite of the bright moonlight. The silence is one moment
intense; then, before you have time to blink, the rush of wings is upon
you and past you, and the birds are rattling and plopping down into the
dark little forest pools, in the soft mossy places, or, best of all,
amongst the young wheat of the luckless Persian. What a merry chuckling
they make as every fresh flight comes in from its day-dreams and play
on the sea. Each batch of new comers takes at least ten minutes to
publish its budget of news and arrange for its places at supper.
Again a sudden silence falls on them. Too-whoo-op! too-whoo-op! Ah! you
may well crouch trembling under covert now. But as soon as the shadow
of the great night-fiend has passed on, the ducks are as merry and
noisy as ever. It is well for them that they have no human minds, or
the horror of his presence would have stilled their innocent merriment
for the night. A more terrible foe than the eagle-owl to all that are
too weak to resist him it is hard to conceive. The huge spread of
utterly silent wings, the lugubrious cry, the enormous talons, sharper
and more tenacious than those of an eagle, and those great fierce eyes,
luminous with yellow fire, all contribute to make a _tout-ensemble_ of
which a Hindoo devil might be proud. Ghostlike, he glides by close to
the earth, a silent cloud in the moonlight, on wings that never seem to
stir. Woe to the crouching hare whose ears, quick though they are, have
told her nothing of the approach of her mortal foe.
If the Tartars and moujiks of the steppes where the eagle-owl is found
are to be believed, once the great bird seizes its prey, it has not
itself the power of relaxing its grip immediately. Knowing this, and
dreading lest the old grey hare, gaining fresh strength from terror,
should in her mad career under thorn-bush and briar tear her unwilling
rider to fragments, the owl clutches the ground or some other object
with one talon, while with the other she strikes the prey. And now
it becomes a tug of war for life and death. If the owl’s muscles are
strong enough to hold the prey, well for the owl; but if not, the
moujiks tell strange stories of having found half one of these grim
birds, one talon still clutching the ground, and the other, with the
remainder of the bird’s body, still firmly fixed to the back of its
escaped victim.
By-and-by, without even a rustle to announce his approach, a
large uncouth beast, like a small bear with extremely bandy legs,
is performing strange gambols on the moonlit turf beneath our
hiding-place. After watching him long enough to recognise in him a
large badger, he catches a glimpse probably of my rifle-barrels, and
noiselessly as he came, so noiselessly he melts as it were out of the
moonlight into the mysterious shadows beyond. And so, with here and
there a glimpse of the private life of its denizens, the long night in
the forest passes away, growing colder and colder till near the dawn.
At last there is a sound that startles the whole neighbourhood, and
the rustling of retreating feet tells plainly that, though we saw them
not, every shadow had its tenant. A crashing of boughs, and a firm,
soft tread comes direct to my hiding-place; and with straining eyes I
watch, until the outline of the great beast shall slowly emerge from
the shadow.
‘Hulloh! are you asleep up there? Come down, and have a pull at my
flask. No more chance of a tiger to-night.’
And so the vigil ends. The great beast was our friend M. The night had
worn to morning, and, slowly unbending my stiffened limbs, I let myself
down to _terra firma_, glad that the watch was over, even though it
ended in nothing better than a nip of _eau-de-vie_.
Once more after this I watched the stars brighten and fade in the cold
grey of morning, waiting alone for a tiger which never came; then,
fearful lest the wet season should set in, and prevent our return to
Tiflis, I bade adieu to my friends, and on January 11 we started on the
return journey to Tiflis.
As soon as our cart came round the sky grew gradually blacker, and
with the first jingle of the horses’ bells the patter of the first
instalment of the rainy season was mingled. From the time we turned our
faces to Tiflis until the moment when Ivan left me in the baths of that
city, waiting till he should bring clean clothes in which to attire me
for my reappearance in a partially civilised world, the weather went
steadily from bad to worse, and discomfort grew to actual misery.
I will not weary my readers with more than a few glimpses of the return
journey, of which the first shall be the suburbs of Lenkoran. As we
approached them the road became so bad that our horses could barely
proceed at a walk; and, looking ahead, we found the street a morass,
bridged with planks, through which we could by no means pass. At the
sides of the road, where the trottoirs had been, women, with their
scanty clothing tucked up round their waists, were taking a mud bath
and walking exercise simultaneously, with this trifling drawback, that,
should they miss the trottoir, they would probably disappear in the
dark profound beyond. This was, of course, an exceptionally bad state
of things, and we were told only happened during the first day or two
of the rainy season, after which the streets got better, the filth
accumulated during the summer having been washed away by the rains.
Wishing the ‘white doves’ a merry time of it, we with great difficulty
got our vehicle out of the road on to the steppe; and here, though
progress was slow, it was at least better than it had been. Two days
spent in alternately being dragged over morasses by our horses, and
dragging them and the cart out of the same, did not sweeten our
tempers, I presume; and it was perhaps for this that a luckless Persian
suffered at Adji Kabool. Here in the early morning I was sitting
huddled up in my bourka amongst my luggage in the extremely narrow
space allotted to one of two passengers in a Russian post-cart, when a
‘tchapar’ calmly pushed me to one side, and seated himself comfortably
beside me, without ceremony or apology. On inquiring what he meant,
and explaining that the post-cart was hired by me, paid for by me,
and intended only to be tenanted by me and mine, the intruder just
deigned to tell me that he was a ‘tchapar,’ had a right to travel in
any cart he chose, and meant to travel in mine, whether I liked it or
not. Now, if this were true, it would not be an additional attraction
in Russian post-travelling; but I fancy it was not: so I requested my
would-be fellow-traveller to make himself scarce at once, and as he
persisted in refusing, I hoisted him into the mud by the wheels. As
soon as he recovered an upright position he clapped his old flint-lock
rifle to his shoulder, and putting the muzzle almost into my face,
deliberately pulled the trigger. Luckily for me, in his fall all the
powder which should have formed the train to the charge had been spilt.
Moreover, his barrel was choked with good holding clay, so that, taken
all together, had the piece not missed fire, the danger would have been
greater to him than to me. After this display of rage and impotence,
he turned to the people of the station, and so worked upon them by his
arguments that, had I not taken the reins out of my yemstchik’s hands
and driven off, whether they would or not, I am persuaded I should
have been detained perhaps for days at Adji Kabool, until I could
communicate with Tiflis or Lenkoran.
To travel by post-road in this part of the Caucasus, and indeed all
over Russia I believe, a man should be as voluble, as loud-tongued,
and as profane as the proverbial Billingsgate fisherwoman or a certain
English M. F. H. I wot of. The only kind of language a Russian servant,
most of all a Russian car-boy, can understand, is loud swearing. From
his childhood he has been accustomed to it. His mother’s term of
endearment to him as she dandled him on her knees was probably ‘ach
te sukin sin’ (ah, you son of a she-dog), about equivalent in English
to ‘you little monkey.’ His master’s name for him when good-tempered
was ‘rosbolnik’ or ‘mashanik’ (thief or scoundrel), and he himself,
in addressing his horses, of which he is often extremely fond, and to
which he seldom applies the lash, heaps on them epithets of the fondest
endearment and foulest abuse at one and the same time.
Our experiences of post-travel on our return to Tiflis were of the
very worst. At Aksu in mid-day we were refused horses on the old plea
that there were none--an excuse utterly untrue, as a glance at the
interior of the stables assured us. Reiterated demands were met by
sulky refusals, and on following the station-master to his own private
room I was reminded that the guests’ chamber was my place, whither he
would come if sent for. On sending my man he found the door barred, and
all further interview denied. This little trick was more than I could
stand, so crossing the yard to the fellow’s room I demanded the horses
or the complaint-book--a book in which travellers have a right at all
times to enter their grievances, which is kept affixed by a seal to the
table in the guest-room, and which is the sole check upon the absolute
power of a station-master. To remove this or to refuse to produce it,
is the greatest crime the station-master can commit, and would, if
reported, ensure his eviction from his post. But in this case the man
remained firm, being deep in a drinking bout with his yemstchiks, and
refused point blank to produce either horses or book, or to let me
in. Feeling convinced that I had Russian law on my side, and that the
fellow, for his own sake, dare not make any report, I kicked his door
down, and taking him by the arm brought him across to the guests’ room,
where a couple of Armenian merchants in the same plight as myself were
kicking their heels and cursing the cause of their needless delay.
Having got my enemy into the room, I had the doors shut, showed him
some letters of introduction I had with me, and then telling him I
knew to what he was liable if I reported his refusal to produce the
complaint-book, I began to solemnly roll up the cuffs of my Tscherkess
costume, preparatory, as I informed him, to administering to him severe
corporal punishment. The letters, my knowledge of Russian post-road
rules, and perhaps a certain air of meaning what I said, had their
effect, and in a minute the other side of the Asiatic character was
revealed, the insolent brutality giving way to disgusting, fawning
complaisance as if by magic. But I knew my man too well to let him go,
so that, having made him order two troikas, one for ourselves and one
for the Armenians, I kept him a close prisoner until the carts were
actually at the door, when, with many thanks from my fellow-travellers,
I left Aksu rejoicing.
These fellow-travellers claimed my help again at the next station,
alleging that they were co-religionists of mine, being members of the
Protestant Church at Shemakha. It seems that forty years ago their sect
was founded at Shusha, my informants said, by English missionaries,
but the names they gave them, ‘Larambe’ and ‘Fanther,’ sounded very
un-English in my ears. Shortly after the founding of the Protestant
Church at Shusha, the non-Protestant Armenians rose against their
newly-converted brethren, and induced the Czar to have them expelled
from Shusha, whence they migrated to Shemakha, and there founded a
church, in which they now celebrate five services a week, and number
500 of the richest inhabitants of Shemakha amongst their congregation.
From Shemakha I sent a telegram on to Capt. Lyall or Mr. G----, I
forget which, friends of mine at Tiflis, to announce my return, and
to prevent my letters being sent on to Lenkoran. To give some idea of
the Russian telegraph service between Tiflis and the Caspian I may
here mention that, though I took many long days to get from Shemakha
to Tiflis, that telegram only arrived simultaneously with me, whilst
one sent from Baku, three weeks before, arrived two days after me; and
though I travelled by the post-road, and spent some days shooting _en
route_, a letter posted by me in Lenkoran just before I started arrived
long after me. So much for internal communication on this side the
Caucasus.
Day after day we plodded on, getting dirtier, more starved and ill
every day; travelling often as much as sixteen hours in an open cart at
a stretch, the best travelling we ever accomplished being 132 versts in
that time. At Shemakha we stopped to shoot antelopes, as much for the
sake of the pot as for the sport. A day’s rest and a good dinner had
become absolutely necessary; and though the accommodation at Shemakha
was so bad as to make the rest impossible, we obtained the dinner. Thus
refreshed, we turned our faces on Friday morning towards Tiflis, with
a fixed resolve to make no further stoppage in the thirty-six hours’
travelling which remained between ourselves and the good things of that
place.
For the last ten days my leading idea, my favourite day-dream, the
_ultima Thule_ of my ambition, had been a hot tub. To sit and boil in a
hot bath of sulphur water and get out a clean man into a clean shirt,
had been the one luxury in life to look forward to; and now that it
was within thirty-six hours’ travel of me, I felt almost content as I
curled myself up in my cart, though snow and rain soaked in through my
ragged old clothes, through which the wind cut almost to my backbone,
and the red mud splashed up, plastering eyes and mouth, until we had
passed beyond all semblance of humanity. But there were to be more
trials yet. As we neared Akstapha the night had fallen, and, weary
with perpetual motion, I had cowered down under my bourka in a vain
endeavour to hide myself from the cold and doze away the tedious hours.
The weather was abominably raw; an icy night fog, blown by a cutting
breeze that met us in the teeth, wetted and chilled us to the bone.
The hour was between nine and ten, the moon had not yet risen, and the
night was starless. The road was through the hills, and needless to say
heavy and hard to find in the darkness.
Suddenly I was roused by my man’s voice calling me to get out at once.
Peeping, half-asleep, from under my rugs, I could see very little of
anything except that my man and the yemstchik had both got down and
the cart had stopped. ‘What is the matter?’ I asked, feeling for my
revolver, and expecting the oft-promised highwaymen. ‘One of the horses
has fallen down,’ came the answer. Cross at being disturbed for so
little, and not wanting to get my stockinged feet wet in the mud,
I was curling myself up again with a sulky injunction to the men to
let the horse get up and be hanged to him, when, to my horror, I felt
the cart tilting over in a way that threatened soon to reverse our
relative positions. In a moment I was wide awake. The cart was already
so far over that I was obliged to jump the way it was falling, and
my next sensation was that of travelling through space, such as one
sometimes experiences in a dream. This came to an end with a jerk, and
my next recollection is of being dug out of the mud at the bottom of a
considerable precipice from among the _débris_ of boxes, broken cart
and horses, which had accompanied me in my fall. By the greatest good
luck nothing had struck me, though the heavy built cart had fallen so
close as to pin down the corner of my bourka, which was still on my
shoulders. Luckily, too, only one of the horses was so far damaged as
to be unable to proceed. There was no village within reach. To walk on
to Akstapha in the then state of the roads and weather would have been
a wearisome trudge, even if we could have persuaded the driver to leave
his horses and guide us, or ourselves to leave our belongings in his
charge, which we could not do.
Here, then, I had a splendid opportunity of witnessing the really
wonderful handiness of Russian peasants in extremities. Thanks to
our love of tobacco we had with us a box of brimstone matches;
grovelling about by the light of which we retrieved all that was
not utterly destroyed of our luggage, and by means of old ropes,
pocket-handkerchiefs, and what not, so tied and spliced together the
broken harness, that after two hours’ work in that bitter winter night
we managed to extricate our cart and make yet another start for Tiflis.
Beyond Akstapha, snow had evidently been falling for some time past,
and still continued to fall until we reached Tiflis. Every verst showed
us deeper drifts, and at the last station from Tiflis the drivers,
in defiance of their master’s orders, refused to get out of their
warm corners to drive us through the wintry night to the end of our
journey. After many threats and much persuasion one was prevailed on
to mount the box, and though we only proceeded at a snail’s pace, we
consoled ourselves with the thought that every minute brought us nearer
our bourne. At last, when we had got some three versts on the way,
the horses were brought to a standstill by their driver, who calmly
announced his intention of returning.
We were already half-frozen and irritable from constant mishaps, so
that his announcement was not very cheerfully received, and every
effort was made to urge him on. Everything else failing, in an evil
moment Ivan persuaded me to use the common Russian argument, and, if
he would not take copecks, give him stick. He took a very fair thumping
as stolidly as an ox, and then utterly nonplussed me by quietly handing
me the reins, and decamping into the darkness before I had time to
think.
Never in my life did I feel in a more awkward predicament. The roads
were deep with snow; the night dark as pitch; the way unknown, over a
succession of hills down the sides of any of which one false step might
at any time hurl us. It would never do to let the rascal go. As quickly
as we could Ivan and I dragged our team round and, risking everything,
galloped hard in the direction of our runaway into the darkness behind,
until, as luck would have it, we nearly ran over him. Having found him,
all manner of bribes were devised, every fearful threat conjured up
that our imaginations could furnish us with, and by the joint pressure
of hope of reward and fear of punishment we at last got the sulky brute
on to his seat, and at about six in the morning drove into Tiflis.
True to my resolution, I made the cart set me down at the baths; large
subterranean places, in which, in an extremely hot atmosphere, you
may bathe yourself in little baths of natural hot water, strongly
impregnated with sulphur, after which a swarthy little Tartar, nearly
naked, comes and, kneeling on your chest, kneads your body with his
clenched hands, thumps and smacks you, pulls out your different joints
and replaces them, making your fingers crack in a marvellous manner,
and finally dries and leaves you, feeling as if you had just had the
gloves on with the celebrated Professor Bat Mullins, of Panton Street
renown. Meanwhile, my servant had taken away every rag I possessed,
and in a state of happy, cleanly nudity I sat awaiting that greatest
of boons to a weary wayfarer, a clean shirt and an invitation to
breakfast. Both arrived in due time, and feeling once more that I was
a few steps removed from a Tartar beggar in appearance as well as in
feelings, I betook myself to an Englishman’s house, vowing that, if I
could help it, my experiences of Russian post-travelling should never
go beyond my last stoppage at the sulphur baths.
The snowfall that now enveloped Tiflis was--so the inhabitants told
me--the heaviest they could ever remember, and certainly never could
Tiflis have looked better than it did under the white pall that hid all
its foulness and lent such _éclat_ to whatever beauty it possesses.
For me, too, the snowfall had its advantages, in affording me an
opportunity of witnessing the pursuit of the antelope on horseback as
practised by the Tartars of Kariâs. About two score well-mounted men,
all carrying rifles on their shoulders and a powerful greyhound on
their horse in front of the saddle, started at an early hour for the
steppe. Having found a herd of antelope, they proceeded to surround
and break it up, so that the quarry might separate. Then each man chose
his own prey, and for the first part of the day followed it slowly from
place to place, never pressing it hard enough to make it gallop any
distance, yet never losing sight of it. In this way travelling slowly
over the unfrozen snow, which ‘balled’ fearfully on its pointed feet,
the antelope became weary and harassed, the continual slow pace tiring
it far more than a smart gallop, during which the snow would not have
so much chance of clinging to the flying feet. When the poor little
beast is sufficiently exhausted, the hunter begins to close in, and
even should the antelope make a dash at the last it is ten to one it
gets headed by one of the hunter’s comrades. If, however, it lets the
Tartar get tolerably near, he drops his hound from its place beside
him for the first time, and cheering him on with voice and example,
speedily runs down the already exhausted prey.
What puzzled me most was how the Tartars induced their dogs to retain
their equestrian position, but I presume early training will teach the
dog as much as it does the man.
Whilst staying in Tiflis, I first heard the report of the ‘black
death’ or black small-pox, as the Russians called the plague which
was devastating Astrachan; and fearing lest the story should be true
that it was spreading with rapid strides towards Russia, or at least,
that having come from the coasts of the Caspian I should be put in
quarantine, I determined to make my way to the Black Sea, have one more
turn at the bears of Golovinsky, and then get back to England before
the fever became prevalent. The Tiflis authorities made very little
difficulty, only taking my larger impedimenta under their care, for
the purpose of disinfecting them before sending them on to England; so
that in another day or two I found myself once more at Poti, with my
faithful Ivan the Pole still with me.