THE RAINS.
Poti--Chasing wild boar--Red-deer--Turks and
Cossacks--Sotcha--Lynxes--Game in the Caucasus--A hunting
party--A wounded sow--Beautiful scene--An unexpected bag--Our
_cuisine_--The ‘evil eye’--Overtaken by the rains--Our tent
inundated--Surrounded by wolves--Cheerless days--A terrible
catastrophe--Welcome help--Golovinsky--A wild scene--Eluding
the storm--Fording a torrent--A refuge--Scant supplies--Cossack
cradle-song--The Cossacks of to-day--Russian plantations--A
terrible ride--Struggling for life--Cossack loafers--Ride to
Duapsè--Forlorn days--Mad wolves--Wrestling a Tartar--Laid up
with fever--Return to England.
We left Tiflis in a snow-shroud, which had, after three days’ continual
fall, frozen hard. We found Poti in her spring dress, bright with
violets and cyclamen. Here we were detained two days waiting for the
steamer, and it may give some idea of the place, when I say that the
second day was passed in hunting wild boar within a verst of our hotel,
which is the centre of the town; and so successfully, that after
plunging about in pools waist-deep from dawn to mid-day, we carried
back a fine porker in triumph for our dinner. To help us in the hunt we
had some sixteen dogs and all the able-bodied roughs of Poti, one of
whom was armed with the only specimen of an ancient blunderbuss which
I ever saw in actual use.
The neighbourhood of Poti must at no very distant date have been one
of the most favourite habitats of the red-deer in the whole world.
The Mingrelian nobles were all staunch preservers of game, and it
was not until Russian greed of territory had angered them, that they
in revenge for their wrongs, real or fancied, at the hands of their
somewhile ally, and to deprive that ally of his favourite recreation,
taken with or without their consent, slew all the tall stags and
graceful roebucks in their land, whenever they could find them, by
foul means or fair. So it came to pass that within the last ten years
speculators have bought cartloads of stags’ horns in the neighbouring
‘aouls’ for a few roubles the load, and even to within the last three
years it was still possible to find in out-of-the-way places ladders
used to reach from the peasants’ ground-floor to his loft, composed
entirely of the branching glory of the forest king. These things are
now of the past, for the Mingrel has discovered that stags’ horns are
marketable commodities: native middlemen have ferreted out every pair
of antlers in the province, and established a regular trade in these
and in boars’ tusks, the majority of which articles were sent to France
to be made up into the hundred and one knicknacks with which people
adorn their libraries. Still the red-deer is by no means extinct even
now; in proof of which a gentleman working at Poti, in the capacity of
a civil engineer, told me that a few months before my arrival he had
been invited to a large shooting party on the domains of one of the
neighbouring princes, on which occasion not less than one hundred shots
were fired at red-deer during the day, although, owing to bad shooting,
very few were bagged.
From Poti we steamed to Sotcha, where I was entertained by the agent
of a German gentleman, Mons. G., who stayed on the estate to protect
it throughout the late war. The danger to the property, he informed
me, was to be apprehended not from the Turks but from the Russians,
more especially the Cossacks, against whose evil doings he inveighed
very bitterly. According to my authority, wherever the Turks camped
during the war, private property was respected, and crops only mulcted
of as much as was necessary for the immediate use of the troops.
On the contrary, whereever the Cossacks were, there too was wanton
destruction. Their only excuse if remonstrated with was, ‘if we don’t
do it the Turks will;’ and their officers refused to interfere.
At a small place in the immediate neighbourhood of Sotcha, for
example--Adler or Pol Salian--the Turks never showed their noses, and
yet the place is in ruins. No compensation was granted to any of the
sufferers from Cossack wantonness after the war by the Government.
In Sotcha roses were in bloom when I arrived, as well as strawberries;
and my host told me that a few days before my arrival he gathered
half a dozen ripe strawberries in his garden, which had ripened out
of doors, and this in the beginning of February. Up to the time of
which I write there had been no frost at Sotcha. The chief produce of
the neighbouring gardens are grapes, of which several varieties grow
in great luxuriance on the slopes just above the town--if town you
can call the few houses that surround the landing-place. But if the
Governor has not been misinformed and is not too sanguine, Sotcha has
a future, and may at no distant date develop into a second Yalta. A
little table-land on the Poti side of the town has already been laid
out in sites for villas, to be erected as summer residences for a
number of old military officers and their families. Better still, all
the sites are bought and paid for.
During the day which I lost at Sotcha waiting for horses--for of course
I lost one, as every impatient traveller in this land of delays must be
invariably content to do--I heard again of the fearless depredations
of the lynx. During the night the dogs of Sotcha--an extremely large
and influential body--were heard raising their voices in a manner
altogether unusual even with them; and on inspection it was found that
one large beast of half sheep-dog, half setter breed, had been killed
on his chain by a lynx in the very middle of the town, and partially
eaten where he lay.
It has been said that there is very little game in the Caucasus, and it
was partly to correct that mistake that this book was written. To show
how far from true the assertion is, Mons. G., with whom I was staying
at Sotcha, told me that before the Tscherkesses left the Caucasus it
was their custom to make an annual expedition to the main chain of the
mountains along the Black Sea coast, between, say, Anapa and Sukhoum,
to obtain game to salt for winter use. On one of these expeditions
my informant accompanied seven Circassians, a few years before their
evacuation of their native wilds; and, during a fortnight, of which
at least a week was spent in coming and going, the eight guns made an
enormous, though by no means unusually large bag, of which one single
item was forty-two chamois. There were also bears, ibex, mouflon, and
red-deer among the slain; and though on this occasion they saw no
aurochs, Mons. G. assured me that he has seen some even more recently
than that.
On the second day at Sotcha, after a row with the chief of the
Cossacks, I managed to get horses for my now formidable party,
composed, with the exception of myself and servant Ivan, of volunteers
from the little town we were leaving. Some of these volunteers,
however, when they had it finally explained to them that my little
bell-tent would really only hold two, and those two would certainly
be my friend Mr. Digby Lyall and myself, made up their minds wisely
to stay behind; so that in the end the party only consisted of Mr.
L. and myself, my servant Ivan, a guide Niko, an Imeritine--whose
services, had I only been lucky enough to obtain them on my first
visit, would have been invaluable--Ivan Kotoff, a Russian moujik or
peasant proprietor, and a Cossack with the horses named Kalivan; while
at Golovinsky I added my old ally Stepan to the motley crew. This was
by far the largest party I had ever had with me in the Caucasus; and by
their aid, and the aid of Stepan’s dogs, I expected to do great things
with the bears and boars of Golovinsky.
As soon, however, as we arrived at the place, I found times had
changed. Stepan had now some work to do; and a gruff German
telegraphist was in possession of the hut in which I had formerly taken
shelter. However, by the help of his chief’s letter of introduction
to all telegraphists at the various Caucasian stations, and thanks
to my bell-tent, I was soon fairly comfortable; but the next morning
revealed a very sad state of things. Where in early autumn the bears’
tracks had been as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa, there was not now a
single broad footprint to be seen. All the family of Bruin was either
hybernating, or had moved off to winter quarters in some more favoured
spot. Boars, however, were as plentiful as before, and the first day’s
sport gave me as fine a run with the dogs after a wounded sow as I ever
wish to have. Crouching in a narrow track, which her kindred had worn
by frequent use through the dense covert of blackberry bushes, I first
saw her come pounding down upon me in an opposite direction to that in
which I was going, and for a moment expected to be run over by her if
no worse. She saw me luckily in time to pull up, and before she could
turn I gave her a bullet from my smoothbore, which lodged somewhere
near her spine. After this the dogs got round her, and snapping and
snapped at she carried the whole pack headlong down the precipitous
wooded banks at a pace that rendered human pursuit all but hopeless.
For all that, ten minutes break-neck work, with many a crashing fall
and all too rapid slide, brought me to a point from which I caught a
glimpse of the old black beast brushing through a thicket, with the
dogs all over her; and hardly thinking of the risk the pack ran, I took
a snap-shot, and, as good fortune would have it, turned her there and
then into pork.
Leaving her suspended in slings of wild-vine tendrils beyond the reach
of prowling wolves or marauding jackals, we kept along the edge of
the cliffs until we came to the fairest site for a sportsman’s grave
that the mind of man could conceive. Here, on the very summit of a
gracefully rounded hill-top, was some three acres of greensward, almost
as fine and even as an English lawn. Up to its very edge rose the
dense forest-trees, through and over the tops of which came glimpses
of the opalescent sea far down beneath. Here, in the morning, the soft
sea-breezes shook music out of the rustling leaves, and in the evening
the lengthening shadows wove strange traceries on the grass. Here the
wild cherry-blossoms whitened the sward in the spring-time, and in
autumn the drooping vines hung heavy clusters over the dead chiefs
tomb, in recognition of the tender care his ancestors had bestowed upon
the parent vine in days gone by. What a difference between this breezy
sunlit hill-top and the terrible regions of brick and mortar in which,
after their narrow life in town, the dead of London lie pent! One could
almost echo the sentiment of a veteran fox-hunter speaking of his
favourite grass country as compared to another, ‘It would be better to
be buried here than live there.’
But in the midst of our day-dreaming a distraction of a sufficiently
startling nature called us back to the present. In admiring the view
we had strolled from our first post of observation into a thicket of
already budding yellow azaleas, from which, as soon as we put foot in
it, went forth the most extraordinary noises, while we found ourselves
the centre of what appeared to be an enormous black shell in the very
act of exploding. A second glance revealed the true nature of the black
objects that rushed frantically about on every side of us. Unwittingly
we had disturbed the rest, nay, stepped right into the middle of the
resting-place of a big black sow and her litter of lively black imps.
Such a hunt after sucking pigs as followed it would be difficult to
describe. The dogs had been sent home; so all the work had to be done
by ourselves; and from the small size of our prey and the thickness of
the covert, it was almost as easy to catch as to shoot the succulent
morsels. Most of them escaped us, but we got enough to satisfy us; so,
tired and fairly content, we retraced our steps.
During the rest of our stay at Golovinsky we had excellent sport with
the wild swine, killing one boar whose head an English naturalist
declared to be the largest he had ever seen in England. But all boar
and nothing else grew monotonous; and after a week of this sport we
struck our tents and moved away to Yakorski, where, with hills and
woods all round us, a clear purling brook by our side and the sea at
our feet, we had good sport till the weather changed. The only drawback
was that the tent which was meant to hold two had to hold four, and
owing to accidents and oversights, our gear was of the most primitive
nature. We had one enormous caldron, in which we boiled our pig-soup
or our tea, as the case might be, and from this, when its contents
had somewhat cooled, we, sitting in a circle round it, had to bale
our dinner with spoons constructed by some genius from the bark of
the willow. The process was rather slower, owing to the incommodious
shape of the spoons, than lapping would have been, but it was the only
way. Amongst the many things for which I have to be grateful to the
Indo-European Company is the one teacup which did service for the four.
This was neither more nor less than a broken insulator which someone
found, with a piece of wood inserted in the hole at the bottom to
prevent leakage.
Living in this primitive fashion, we passed several days, and enjoyed
fair sport; the large supply of meat which we had hung on the
beech-tree nearest our tent, attracting nightly bands of jackals, who
formed a cordon round us and kept our dogs in a state of excitement
the whole twenty-four hours. Apart from the sport, my man Niko was
almost sufficient amusement in himself. A wilder, less tutored fellow
could not be found, unless it were among savages; full of superstition
and stories of the chase, he always kept us amused by the camp-fire.
Amongst other things in which he firmly believed, as do most of his
people, was the ‘evil eye.’ He had a gun with him, with which he told
us that last year he had wounded eighteen wild boars in succession
without bringing any to bag. Alarmed by this bad luck, he went to the
‘wise man’ of his village, and by him was reminded that the gun had
been lent for some time to a friend. This friend possessed an ‘evil
eye.’ The only remedy was to secure a gun belonging to his friend and
spoil it, after which his own gun would return to its natural good
behaviour. Niko took the ‘wise man’s’ advice, and I presume paid him
for it, surreptitiously spoilt his friend’s gun, and from that time his
shooting improved rapidly, until he was again the Niko that he used to
be. Nothing I could say would convince him of the folly of his story;
and so much did he believe in it that he even tried to persuade me,
when one of my guns went wrong through an overcharge of powder, that
the ‘evil eye’ had been at work on my own weapons also.
But after a few days the clouds began to gather blacker and blacker
amongst the mountains, and the rainy season, which we believed we had
left behind us by the Caspian, was upon us with a rush. On Friday,
February 15, the rain swept over us in torrents; but, though the
hills were all hidden, and the creaking and groaning of the trees
almost frightened us, whilst the ground underfoot became a morass,
the bell-tent kept us fairly dry. A temporary lull in the storm on
Friday afternoon tempted us out of our shelter; and, though the woods
were dripping and full of the music of a hundred newborn rivulets,
we essayed a farewell hunt. The rain seemed to have aroused all the
dormant energies of the porcine race; and, at one time, the noise they
made amongst the fresh pools as we came on them unawares was rather
suggestive of a morning in a cattle-market than one spent in a mountain
forest.
It is difficult to believe how wild swine swarm in some parts of this
coast, warrening the bushes with their runs, and covering every marshy
place with their bathing-holes. Once we were fairly in the forest the
heavens opened their sluices again, and before long our clothes were
so sodden as to be almost too heavy to carry, our boots parting like
wet blotting-paper; and when, weary and drenched, we got back to camp,
we found the camp-fire submerged, and our bell-tent merely an awning
over a pond about a foot deep. The men had neglected to entrench our
position, and we were fairly washed out. Luckily my aversion to beetles
had induced me to have my bed raised some two feet from the ground,
and, cowering on this, we spent our time until Sunday morning. To make
a fire was impossible. There was not a dry spot of earth within a
square mile from our tent on which to lay it; and, even had we found a
dry spot, the blinding sheets of rain would have washed it away as soon
as laid. No fire meant very little food, as none of us could eat raw
wild swine’s flesh, and we had very little else.
In the night a lot of wolves descended from the mountains, and,
attracted by the smell of our beech-tree larder, came right into the
camp, their weird howlings, as they answered one another from point to
point, sounding very eerie in the storm. Worse than that, Niko, who had
been hunted by wolves only a year before, within a mile or two of this
spot, got extremely nervous, and, worse still, made the other men so.
This, they said, was the month in which wolves were most to be dreaded;
and, in a pack, with no fire to scare them, there was no certainty that
they might not invade our tent during the night-watches.
To get back to the telegraphist’s hut was our first idea; though,
remembering its fragile nature, I had my doubts whether there was much
better accommodation there than with us. This, however, was rendered
impossible. During the night the mountain streams had risen, and a man
who had attempted to cross them in the evening was all but drowned
before he could get back to shore. At the outset of the storm our
Cossack, with the horses, had deserted and left us to our fate, so
that there was nothing for it but to sit perched like owls on our
little platform in the bell-tent, and smoke away the time until the
rain should cease. My wretched men had no change of garments, so that
for the two days they had to sit and sleep in their sodden clothes,
and nothing but constant application to their beloved vodka-bottle
could have saved the poor devils from fever. During that last night
the rage of the storm increased, and, though our tent was in a
wonderfully sheltered place, it rocked and tugged at its moorings in
an alarming manner, whilst at last it ceased to be waterproof, and our
roof resembled nothing so much as the rose of an immense watering-pot.
I think on Saturday night I must have gone to sleep in spite of the
streams from above and the howling wolves outside, for in the morning I
was quite startled by a gleam of sunshine, and, roused, I fancy, by the
cessation of that perpetual pattering of rain-drops which had lulled me
to sleep. As I moved my stiff limbs my clothes cracked with the frost
that had followed the rain, and our tent itself was hard frozen, while
outside the sun was shining through a heavy snowstorm going on in the
second range of mountains behind and giving but a very cheerless light
to the miserable scene around. Still, it was sunshine, and as such
stirred us to fresh endeavour, as nothing but sunshine can stir a human
being. By dint of drainage and a few sticks we had kept moderately
dry, we managed to light a fire, although, except for the few feet
drained for the fire-place, there was still no dry spot for the sole
of a man’s foot. But the crushing blow was to come. The rain had done
worse than wet us--it had washed down the meat from our larder. The
watchful wolves had been rewarded for their patience, and we were left
breakfastless!
Very miserable wretches must we have appeared when rescue came in the
form of our returning Cossack, late that afternoon, with some strong
horses to carry us safely through the rapidly-subsiding torrents; and a
bare-legged ride on bare-backed Cossack horses, through streams which
wetted, and nipping north-easters that froze, our half-starved bodies,
was no pleasant finale to our adventure. It was hardly to be wondered
at that when we did get to shelter my men told me they had had enough
sport for some time to come, and meant to return to Duapsè as soon as
possible. I myself was no longer as keen as I had been, and it was
agreed that we should gradually make our way to Duapsè, stopping for
one last hunt, if only to supply us with food, at the ruins of Heiman’s
Datch.
On February 19 we bade adieu to Golovinsky for the last time, and since
then its bay of wooded hills, with the three tall blasted trees marking
the spot where my first bear fell, has been only a memory to tempt me
back. I should like to see it once more, with its glorious cone-shaped
tulip-tree in full blossom; its jungles of rose-bushes, whose enormous
berries testified to the size of its perished blooms, in the perfect
beauty of summer; its great forests of chestnut decked with spires of
flowers; and its long stretches of rhododendron and azalea in their
summer dress. It must indeed be lovely then; and if the fever were only
a possible and not an absolutely certain consequence of the enjoyment
of its wonderful beauty, the pleasure would be worth the risk.
But the wintry scene around us now was very different. Above, the
ragged clouds hung black and threatening. Out at sea, the waves were
for some distance yellow with the influx of turbid mountain torrents.
Trees were hanging their heavy dripping heads, broken and mutilated by
the three days’ storm. The sea, too, had been at wild work during the
night; and when the Black Sea does wake to mischief it is a demon in
its gusty rage. The shore was strewn everywhere with drift-wood, and
over the carcass of an unhappy stranded porpoise eagles were poising
and soaring. Two of my little party had a touch of the fever, and my
own throat was sore and swollen, so that the tonsils seemed almost to
choke me if I made any unwonted exertion. It was evidently time to
get home. At Heiman’s Datch a forest fire had recently raged, and no
game could be obtained for the larder, so that we were almost without
provisions.
Taking all these things into consideration, we determined next
morning to go straight on to Duapsè, and give up any further hope of
shooting. Thus resolving, we built up a fire of drift-wood under the
old flooring, and lying round it dreamed of home, dry clothes, and
good dinners. Alas! that good resolutions should always be formed too
late. When morning came, like a nightmare came upon us that creaking
and groaning of the trees we had learned to know so well; that rush and
babble of waters that meant imprisonment for a starved-out garrison.
The tiny rill below the ruin, which the day before had been nowhere
ankle-deep, was now boiling and foaming with a rage perfectly ludicrous
in such a baby river, and with a force that made it almost unfordable.
Not a moment was to be lost, and in spite of the pitiless storm we
determined to push on foot along the shore to the next Cossack station
for horses before we were hopelessly hemmed in by the mountain-streams.
It was already doubtful if we were not too late; so leaving Ivan the
Pole at the ruin to guard our effects, my young friend L., Ivan Kotoff,
and myself, shouldered our small kits and trudged away breakfastless
over the wet shingle. It was heavy going over the yielding beach, laden
as we were with bourkas and what not in that blinding rain, and I was
thankful when I saw my friend L. safely at the end of it. Young as
he was, I am bound to say he made less trouble of it than our burly
Russian fisherman, whose red beard kept wagging the whole time, and
whose complaints were the harshest sound even in that stormy scene.
At Selenik’s Datch we found the stream that there empties itself into
the sea swollen beyond recognition, and divided into two, forming two
small cataracts, which hurtled along the big boulders in a way that
was a marvel to those who had only seen it in its days of restful
calm. Kotoff at once pronounced it unfordable, and, being our guide,
the others unluckily would not listen to my arguments, though at
considerable risk I backed them by fording the first stream, which
was more than waist deep, by myself. Naturally, though I was several
times all but washed off my feet, and to lose my footing would in all
probability have been to lose my life, it would have been simple enough
to have crossed had we all linked ourselves one with the other, and
together breasted the torrent. But the Russians were white-livered,
and would not come, so that I had to wade back again; and wet through,
disgusted and hungry, with my throat as I knew in a dangerous state, I
felt very like throwing up the sponge.
After a weary tramp through the long wet covert, Kotoff found us a
dismantled cowshed on the Selenik property. Here we kindled a poor
fire, and tried in vain to dry the clothes which the rain, driven
through the broken roof, soaked as fast as we dried them.
Our only supplies were three or four handsful of rice, and we had
a two days’ appetite to appease. Hunting about in the cowshed, we
found an old paint-pot, and having cleansed it by burning, patched
its leaks with clay, and boiled in it the rice and the few bunches
of sorrel which we found growing near, we made our first meal since
noon of the preceding day. What with the unpleasant taste which the
pot possessed and imparted to what was put in it, together with the
naturally disagreeable flavour of the coarse sorrel, it was all we
could do to eat the mess when made, in spite of hunger, and the root of
horse-radish which we boiled with our greens to give them a flavour.
After this we brewed our last pinch of tea in the same pot, and
immediately regretted the waste, as the horse-radish flavour so far
predominated that the addition of tea to the water was useless.
In all our distress we had one consolation. I had by great good luck
saved a box of really first-rate cigars which I picked up in Tiflis;
and with these to comfort us, young L. and myself huddled together in
a corner where there was more wall and fewer crannies than elsewhere,
and prepared to make a night of it, while the men lay huddled in their
bourkas. Nothing save the voices of the storm and the spluttering of
the fire, which the rain soon extinguished, broke the sullen stillness
of the night.
It was not a cheerful end to my shooting expedition; and again the
truth of the Russian proverb, which the men sometimes muttered,
appeared a possibility, ‘the chase is worse than slavery.’
During the night one of the men sang us some wild Cossack songs, one
of which I had often heard the women crooning parts of before. Whether
it was that the wild forms and scenes that were round me lent them a
beauty the words do not really possess, or whether there is in fact
some charm in this cradle-song of a warlike race, in some things not
unlike our borderers of two centuries ago, it seemed at the time very
impressive. I will therefore try to help my readers to judge for
themselves, from a translation of Poushkin’s verses, which, if it
does not convey all the spirit of the original, is at least a close
transcript of the words and metre.
COSSACK CRADLE-SONG.
Sleep, my darling boy, serenely,
Bai-oosh-kie-baiou,
While the still moon, calm and queenly,
Gleams thy cradle through.
I will rise and tell thee legends,
Chaunting rhymes thereto;
Ah, thine heavy eyes are closing,
Bai-oosh-kie-baiou.
’Neath the rocks grim waves are sweeping--
O’er them glides the Turk:
Comes the vengeful Tscherkess creeping,
Whets an hungry dirk.
Peace! thy father, battle-hardened,
Keeps watch keen and true.
Sleep then, darling, sleep securely,
Bai-oosh-kie-baiou.
Know thou, too, that days are nearing,
Loud with war’s alarms.
Thou shalt spring to horse unfearing,
Bearing warrior’s arms.
I’ll weave charms upon thy saddle
With a silken clue:
Sleep, my baby, sleep, my heart’s blood,
Bai-oosh-kie-baiou.
Cossack to the core I read thee,
Hero-like thou’lt stand:
To the field myself I’ll lead thee--
Child! dost press my hand?
Ah, the bitter tears in secret,
Tender mothers rue;
Sleep, my angel, stilly, sweetly,
Bai-oosh-kie-baiou.
Ah, the bitter grief, the sorrow,
Comfortless to wait!
Each morn praying for the morrow,
All night guess thy fate.
I shall dream thy days are wasted,
Pining fond and true--
Sleep--cares all as yet untasted--
Bai-oosh-kie-baiou.
Round thy neck, my boy, I’ll fasten,
Ere thy path be trod,
Relics rare thy life to chasten,
And to lead to God.
Tender heart, grow strong for peril,
Be to mem’ry true!
Now, sleep on--wild days are coming--
Bai-oosh-kie-baiou!
The words ‘bai-oosh-kie-baiou’ are merely the refrain of the song, and
as untranslatable as our ‘lullaby,’ so that I have left them in the
original.
From scraps of songs which I have from time to time heard crooned in
the Crimea and elsewhere, I should almost imagine that Poushkin’s
words here translated are only a remodelled and completed form of some
popular cradle-song in use in his time among the Cossacks.
I am sadly afraid the Cossacks are no longer the romantic personages
they were when the poet wrote of them. ‘Richard’s occupation’s gone’
may be said of them. There is no one left for them to fight, and their
existence as Cossacks would lack an object were it not for their duties
as postmen. They are as rough as ever, but not, I should say, as ready
with their weapons. Their love of cattle-lifting can no longer be
legitimately gratified, and I fear I have cause to add that it has
degenerated to the level of petty pilfering.
Singing and smoking we passed the night, trying in vain to still the
voices of our unappeased appetites with the dull narcotic which refused
to numb our pain. The rain had partially ceased at dawn, and with that
wonderful rapidity which characterises their fall as well as their
rise, the mountain torrents, which had been our gaolers the night
before, had now sunk to such a degree that arm in arm we just managed
to struggle through.
Once free from our prison, with the prospect of breakfast and horses
at the next plantation, even Ivan pulled himself together, and before
mid-day we were all lying rolled up in borrowed rugs, while our clothes
were dried, and our appetites appeased by a meal of black bread. This
was all we could get, for, like ourselves, Koylor’s Datch had been in a
state of siege, and if the rain continued was likely to remain so.
These Russian plantations in the Caucasus are terribly unremunerative
I am told, in spite of the richness of the soil. I think the reason is
chiefly that they are very much neglected by their owners, no capital
being expended on them; in addition to which there is no market for
their produce within reach, and no reasonable roads anywhere. Moreover,
fever demoralises the workmen, and the wild swine devastate the crops.
Whilst refreshing ourselves at Koylor’s Datch, we sent for horses,
intending to make all speed for Duapsè; and to our great joy the
weather cleared a little in the afternoon, so that when the horses and
the Cossack guide arrived we were able to swing ourselves into dry
saddles and proceed forthwith.
Between our starting point that afternoon and the Cossack station, at
which we hoped to pass the night, a mountain stream larger than most
of its fellows emptied itself into the sea, and it was of this stream
that we were most afraid. The Cossack who brought the horses reported
it extremely high, but in one place still fordable, so that it was with
eyes fixed anxiously on the sky that we hurried on. My young friend
L. had become so far knocked up that he thought it wiser to stay at
Koylor’s Datch, from whence I was glad to hear that he eventually got
safe back to Sotcha, and thence to Tiflis.
For the first verst or so of the sixteen we had to travel before
nightfall, the weather kept clear and bright, after which it grew
suddenly murky and overcast. The sea, muddy and discoloured near the
shore by the unwonted access of turbid fresh water, spread itself
out in broad streaks of vivid green and Oxford blue in the distance.
The waves rose apace, and came washing right under our horses’ feet
till they touched the cliff that walled us in beyond. Thunder began
to mutter, and the whole under-sky seemed to grow into waving plumes
of dark purple smoke. Then the rain came again, with sheet lightning,
near thunder, and little drifts of snow, which seemed strangely out
of place with the vivid lightning. By this time the cold had grown so
intense that I was glad to fasten my rapidly stiffening bourka round my
neck and bury myself in its voluminous folds. Suddenly the snow and
the thunder ceased, and for ten minutes there was a respite, the sky
growing more wild and eerie every moment. What with the fury of sky
and sea, the horses became so panic-stricken as to be almost beyond
our control. Then the sun, after being long hidden, showed himself low
down on the waves--for it was already five o’clock, and owing to the
storm nearly as dark as night. In shining out now he only added to the
horrors of the scene the most ghastly purple face ever sun put on. And
no wonder, for he was peering through a hailstorm, which soon reached
us, whitening the waves with its volleys of ice-bullets as it advanced.
Never before or since have I seen such a hailstorm. The stones gave us
positive pain as they struck our faces and hands, and were as large on
the average as the bullets of my ‘express.’ Meanwhile the thunderstorm
had commenced anew, and, while the lightning flashed with extreme
brilliancy so near us as to be dangerous, the voice of the thunder
almost drowned all other sounds. Alas! in the intervals between the
thunderclaps we now began to hear another voice--the voice of gurgling,
fighting waters, and of the heavy stones and tree-trunks whirled along
by them in their fierce career seaward.
When at last the stream came in sight, its appearance was no more
inviting than its voice; but from its great breadth for a mountain
stream, I judged it was not so deep as its turbid appearance led one
to believe. Deep or shallow, it had to be crossed. The Cossack said
he knew the ford, and offered to lead the way; and, after all, its
wild foamings were little worse than the hailstorm that raged around.
So, when he plunged in, leading the packhorse behind him, I followed
close on his heels, entirely trusting to his local knowledge for a safe
passage. Luckily for him, the Cossack was only a featherweight, while
the horse he bestrode was one of the largest and most powerful I had
seen during my travels; so that, though the packhorse with his burden
was immediately upset and washed away, the man, clinging to his horse,
which made a gallant swim for it, got safe to shore a long way down
stream. I was less lucky than the Cossack, whose fate I had not seen;
for, while half blinded by a vivid flash of lightning, my wretched
little screw toppled over into the deep water, and was immediately
carried after its comrade, leaving me to swim for my life in a stream
like a mill-race, with my long wet bourka round my neck, hampering my
limbs and drowning me with its heavy folds, and a ten-pound ‘express’
rifle on my shoulders. It was well for me then that swimming had
been one of my favourite forms of athletic exercise in my boyhood,
or I should never have managed to extricate my hands from the bourka
and make a fight of it with the stream. Something, a stone or some
drift-wood I suppose, gave me a severe blow on the kneecap in crossing,
but this I only discovered subsequently, and when at last I struggled
somewhere safe to shore amid the shouts of my men, I think, as I stood
spent and dripping in the hailstorm after my icy bath, I fully realised
the pleasures of travelling in the Caucasus in the rainy season.
To go for the Cossack who had led me into the scrape by his ignorance
of the ford, to deprive him of his horse, and, having seen my men cross
by the true shallow higher up, to gallop madly for the Cossack station,
were my first acts on recovering myself a little; and between my bath
and the station I never drew bridle until I tumbled off breathless at
the door, whence, regardless of questions, I made my way to the room
where a dozen Cossacks lay loafing in every stage of dirt and idleness.
Casting all squeamish scruples to the winds, I stripped off my icy
clothes where I stood, borrowed a shirt from one dirty rascal and an
unutterable sheepskin from another, got a wandering telegraphist, who
happened to be at the station, to give me about half a pint of neat
spirit and as much hot tea as I could drink, and turned in with my back
against the stove, trusting to the heat within and without to restore
my circulation--which the ride had failed to do--and so save me from
the consequences of my immersion.
In the course of the evening my men arrived, having saved most of the
baggage, which had got loose from the unfortunate packhorse, and when
I woke in the morning I found myself quite a hero for my swim, and,
better than that, a hero with some moderately clean dry clothes to get
into. In the night, nevertheless, the gallant Cossacks’ chivalry and
respect had not prevented their stealing my watch and what remained of
my sodden cigars. Having dried these in the oven, they had converted
them into fine-cut tobacco, which, when I woke, had provided every
loafer amongst them with a little store of cigarettes. But my throat
warned me that it was no time to make a trouble of trifles, and that
it was imperatively necessary to get back to Duapsè at once, catch the
boat thence on the morrow, and get to Kertch in time for medical advice
if I needed it.
In the night the sea had come up to the foot of the cliffs, thus
barring the usual road to Duapsè, and obliging us to ride some forty
versts, by precipitous and rugged bridle-roads, over the cliffs,
during which ride the horses’ vile pace, the infernal machine called
a Tartar saddle, and the ruggedness of the roads combined to inflict
on my already aching frame unspeakable tortures. Worse than all, when
the last jolt had been suffered, and the last writhing submitted to in
fording the stream that separated us from Duapsè, we found that, owing
to the bad state of the weather, the Odessa steamer would not touch
there for a week, so that for seven days we might kick our heels and be
miserable in that charming watering-place.
That week was too dark an era in my travels to say much about it.
I prefer, if possible, to remember the Caucasus without Duapsè.
Despondency took hold of my faithful Ivan, as soon as he had got his
pay: like a true Russian, he took to drink, and all through my illness
left me to my fate, in a drunken peasant’s cottage, while he wept and
sang by turns in the only ‘duchan’ in the place. Day by day my throat
became worse. The telegraphists were kind to me; but neither they nor
the doctor (veterinary, I believe he was) knew what was the matter with
me; and every night the steam that rose from the damp mud floor of my
room only added to my illness.
Once the Governor came to see me; and as he, too, was a doctor, gave me
some advice; but I doubt whether his prescriptions, had he left any,
could have been made up in his government. However, he brightened half
an hour for me with his chat, and that, doubtless, did as much good as
any medicine would have done. He told me of some wolves which had gone
mad, and were keeping a couple of villages in a state of panic by their
attacks, having already bitten a man and several cattle, all of which
had since died from hydrophobia. This madness of the wolves is not
by any means unfrequent, I was told, and, strangely enough, generally
takes place during the coldest part of the year. I had intended to have
gone to the villages in the morning to see what I could do for the
peasants with my ‘express,’ but was unluckily tempted into a wrestling
match with a celebrated native wrestler; and the exertion of winning
one fall out of three against him was the last straw that broke the
camel-like back of my constitution. The fellow was a capital wrestler
and extremely strong; he had acquired some of his best throws, oddly
enough, in England; so that, though he threw me handsomely twice, I
could console myself with the reflection that he had learnt to do it in
my own country.
That night there was a wedding in Duapsè, and every one naturally got
drunk; and whilst I was tossing in high fever on my bed a score of
drunken moujiks in enormous boots were dancing and shouting in the next
room. Two nights this lasted; at the end of the second, when I was
very nearly beyond any further enduring power, Providence willed it
that the steamer should arrive; and as the doctor insisted that I had
nothing more than a bad sore-throat the matter with me, I was taken on
board and landed at Kertch, in a critical stage of a violent attack of
diphtheria.
So ended my shooting adventures in the Caucasus, and I may well be
thankful that in the person of M. Bulberg, of the Russian telegraph
service, I found a kind friend and attentive nurse, as I did also in
my old friend the English Consul. After a fortnight’s careful nursing
at M. Bulberg’s rooms by a clever German doctor--whose name I am
ungrateful enough to have forgotten, though I am not the less grateful
for his services--I tided over my illness. As soon as I was pronounced
in a safe state to travel, both as regarded myself and others, I
started for England, still wearing some of the rough gear in which I
had travelled, and arrived at the station of the town in which I dwelt
such a deteriorated specimen of the English race, that what with my
rags and my beard, the first people I met on alighting--who were the
ladies of my own family--cut me dead, and for quite a couple of minutes
refused to recognise me.
THE END.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET