THE COMING OF SUMMER IN THE CAUCASUS
ANYTHING more wonderful than the change from winter to summer on the
Caucasian mountain slopes could not easily be imagined. In April the
plains were deep in snow, and in May, when English woods were leafing,
every tree and bush looked stark and bare. Only by an occasional sallow
in bloom one knew that the winter was over. The snowdrops and blue-bells
sprang up in winter’s traces, and then verdure danced out and clothed
valley and slope up even to the summit of some low hills. The English
spring, as I imagined it, was months ahead, but dawdled on among the
cold winds; this hot summer overtook it at a bound and rushed on to its
later glories, to the blossoming and fruiting of vine and pomegranate.
Of the wonderful things that happened in May it is difficult to write
calmly. The fairies did not linger; they came trippingly, they waved
their wands, they ran. The spells of green and gold were wrought, and
charm moved over the land. The cowslip appeared, budded, blossomed,
faded—in one short week. At quick step the dainty lilies of the valley
came and took their place, and for three days glistened among grasses
and ferns upon the rocks; and slender, graceful Solomon Seals stooped
lovingly toward their sister lilies. Then hillsides suddenly blazed with
yellow rhododendrons. Honeysuckle bloom came nestling in sunny corners
among the rocks, then tall, sweet-scented bog-bean; ten varieties of
orchis I found, and wild rose, wild strawberry and raspberry, wild vine,
wild walnut, peach and pear and plum. In the grassy places, just dry
after the last melted snow, out came the lizards, so that the plain
literally squirmed with them, cunning, vicious little lizards basking in
the sun, small and brown in May, but fat and green and speckled later,
kissing at one another like snakes, and fond of biting off one another’s
tails. In the May sun the adder shot off from his damp sun-bath as one
crushed through the scrub. The trees burst into leaf, first in the
valleys and then on the hills. Each day one watched the climbing green
and saw the fearful dark brow of a mountain soften away and pass from
deep impenetrable black to soft laughing green. Snowy peaks lost their
glory of white, and one knew them to be but little grey Grampians beside
the huge mountains of Elbruz. The road-mud hardened and Persian
stone-breakers were busy smashing their little heaps of boulders; in a
week they had gone and the piles of rocks had become neat little heaps
of flints. Then came terrific storms, a thunder-burst each week, and the
rivers rose in their shingle beds and flooded off towards the Caspian
and the Black Sea, carrying all manner of _débris_ of uprooted shrub and
tumbled rock. One soon saw the uses of the flints: they solidified the
road. But, indeed, one day’s sun sufficed to dry up a night’s flood. The
wild winds soon blew up the Sirocco—such dust storms that the whole
landscape was for hours lost to the eyes. What of that—that was a day’s
unpleasantness to be covered by ample compensations. The sun was
strengthening and its magic was awakening newer, richer colours than the
English eye can care for, was working in strange new ways upon the soul
mysteries and body mysteries of men and women. One knew oneself in the
South, in the land of knives and songs. Every man seemed on horseback.
The Georgian chiefs and the Ossetines and Cherkesses came careering
along the military roads, their cartridge vests flashing, daggers
gleaming. The _abreks_ and _sheikhs_ sprang down from the hills,
appalling the lesser traffickers of the road, pilgrim, merchant, tramp,
by their show of arms and bizarre effrontery. The strange hill
shepherds, looking like antique Old-Testament characters, came marching
before and behind their multitudinous flocks, with their four wolfish
sheep-dogs in attendance and their camping waggons behind; from the
mountain fastnesses they came, their faces one great flush of shining
red, their eyes bathed in perspiration, blazing with light, their lank
hair glistening. Often I lay beside the stream in the Dariel Gorge and
watched flocks of a thousand or fifteen hundred sheep and goats pass by
me. The lively mountain lambs, brown and black and white, very daring or
short-sighted, would plunge three or four at a time into the stream
beside me, would come up and stare in my face and bleat and then run
away. Then the under-shepherds, who hold long poles and keep the
marching order, would rush up and hurry them away from the water to the
road, the procession of dust and woolly backs would slowly pass away to
the music of the incessant calling of ewe and lamb.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF CAUCASIAN SHEPHERDS]
The flocks are marched to the market towns, and big deals in hundreds
and thousands of head of sheep are made. Or the shepherds encamp outside
the town and send batches of sheep to be hawked through the streets. The
Persian butchers come out and bid for their mutton. Boys run about the
herd feeling the flesh of the sheep, masters weigh them in their arms or
compare weights by holding a sheep in each hand. Each butcher takes one
or two, or three or four, as he feels he is making a bargain or
otherwise. One must not forget the twenty minutes’ parley over prices.
At last the business gets accomplished, and the flock goes on down the
street to other butchers and leaves its little doomed contingent at each
stall. On one occasion when I was watching, a lamb refused to be
separated from a purchased brother, and, despite all efforts of the
butcher and shepherd, came bleating back to the three who were bought.
The hillman hawker and the townsman exchanged some witticism, and then
the former struck a bargain and gave the affectionate lamb in cheap. I
know the man’s stall and once or twice have bought mutton there. The
butcher does not slaughter all his sheep at once. First one goes and
then another. One dead sheep or a part of one always hangs in his shop.
All parts of the animal are sold at the same price, fourpence a pound,
and customers do not, as a rule, specify leg or breast or neck, but
simply the quantity they require. When the butcher buys four sheep he
kills one and hangs it in his shop, and the other three live ones are
under the counter eating fodder or playing about among the customers’
legs. The sheep-hawker makes his tour of the town and is all day at it,
tramp, tramp, tramp, through mud or dust. In the evening one may see the
muddied remnant of the flock, the rejected, the unsold, being driven
wearily back to the main flock on the plains. Very melancholy the little
party looks, and it is difficult to think them the fortunate ones, so
woebegone and wretched do they appear. All movement forward is a labour
to them; not a few are lame, others have succumbed, and sometimes one
sees the hawker with a dead lamb on his shoulder. No dogs are in
attendance; none are needed.
There is plenty of money going in the town, plenty of wine and all good
things for the up-country man when he cares to come in. With relief the
house-heating is given up in April. Life becomes lighter, winter things
are put away, windows are taken out, the summer wind begins to blow
through all dwellings. The white-clad townsman takes his ice at his ease
in the fresh air on the boulevards. The full, fat peasant eats as much
as he can of pink and white and yellow for two copecks, and standing
beside the ice-cream barrel, smacking his lips, testifies his
appreciation by voluble remarks to passers-by. The Persian gunsmith sits
in his open booth and inlays precious daggers, setting the handles with
little constellations of stars. In glass cases, beside his shop,
Caucasian belts and scimitars sparkle in the sun. There are streets of
these workers where one might feel the sun was being robbed of his rays.
One is in the land of the “Arabian Nights,” from which nightmare and
opium have been taken away. There is a gentleness, an ease and
brightness not to be found in Little Russia or Moscow. Somewhat typical
of this and wonderful in its way is the march of Russian regiments, the
easy, swinging march, not quick, no, rather slow even, but pleasant and
easy as for long distances. It was pleasant to regard a detachment of
these marching so, their leaders singing a solo of a national hymn, the
rest taking up the chorus. Pleasant also to listen to the singing of the
workmen operating with the hand-crane at the riverside. There seemed to
be general happiness and content among men as among animals. The sun
bade love and life come from turf and rock and tree and man, and from
man none the less than from the rest there came the answer unspoilt by
self-sight and introspection. In scarlet and purple and blue came the
answer. One saw all the truth as one looked at dark Georgian maidens
trooping along a vineyard in May. To these this sun gave promise of a
wine harvest.
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