AMONG THE INGOOSHI
I
AT Dalin-Dalin an old crone served me with sushky biscuits and milk. Her
shop had apparently been built to suit her own height, for there was not
room for a man to stand up. It was an interesting little shop, and it
kept everything, from ink to mushrooms. A large notice on the counter
confronted the customer. It said, “No Bargaining,” which was very
surprising, and suggested to my mind that the owner might have some
connection with Germans, for whoever heard of such a sordid notice being
put up in a Russian shop. A Georgian horseman had interpreted for me,
because the old woman understood no Russian. The Georgian, who was just
such a dandy as I have described earlier, was drinking cranberry beer at
the table with me and had bought a packet of tea. He had evidently come
from a small village where there was no shop; his horse was tied to a
post outside. He had given a six-shilling note to change, and all the
while we drank the old woman was hunting for coin. I looked on with some
amusement, for she had already a large Russian basin full of black,
greasy coppers. She began counting them out very seriously. I put a
question through the Georgian, asking if she had any eggs in the shop.
When it had been repeated, she looked up for a moment and replied: no,
but she would go out and find some. And she lost count and said
something which seemed to correspond to “Eh, deary, deary, deary, dear.”
Then suddenly her husband, an old gaffer, came in, and deposited a
little bag of three-farthing bits, about a hundred of them. So they made
up the change, all of coppers, though the horseman expostulated, “All
that black money even a strong horse couldn’t carry!”
The tribe that inhabits Dalin-Dalin is the Ingoosh, said to be descended
from Englishmen, hence their name. An idea is current that the Crusaders
used to go to the Holy Land by the old Georgian road, which for two
thousand years has been the one recognised road over the Caucasus. A
number of English were converted to Mahommedanism and settled in the
mountains and took Caucasian women to wife. Their language has many
words reminiscent of English, but I think the legend rather an unlikely
story. It compares favourably with the myth that the Georgians are
descended from the Egyptian army of Sesostris, who marched into the
Caucasus and disappeared from their native land for ever more. And both
stories find a companion in the explanation the priests give to the
peasants that it was in the Caucasus that the Tower of Babel was built,
the Babylonian Steeple, as they call it, and that the hundred different
races and languages are the living proof of the confusion of tongues.
Just outside the village an Ingoosh chief rode up to me. He was a fine
figure. He sat erect on a black horse; on his shoulder hung a black
sheepskin cloak, his breast was ornamented by silver-mounted cartridge
cases; at his belt of polished leather were pistol and dagger. A
scimitar in a silver sheath lay across the shoulders of his horse and
was attached to his belt by a light chain. His brows and hair were bushy
and black, his eyes keen and domineering. He held the reins with one
hand and kept wheeling his horse about. He was evidently in wrath and
indignation; his aspect boded terror. I spoke first and greeted him.
“Hail!”
“Hail! Where are you from?”
“Dalin-Dalin.”
“Where are you going to?”
“The next village.”
“What do you mean?”
“The next village; I don’t know what it is called.”
“Why?”
“To see it.”
“That’s not the truth. Besides, there is no next village. You must go
back.”
“Yes, all right, afterwards.”
“Afterwards! What do you mean? I say _at once_!”
“Yes?”
“Yes. What is your tribe? You’re not a Russian?”
“I am an Englishman.”
“A what? That’s not true.... The English travel in flying machines.”
I convinced him by showing my passport, whereupon he was much mollified
and begged me to do him the honour of sleeping under his roof that
night. I said that if I could not get forward I would return and take
advantage of his hospitality. So we parted. I never went back.
[Illustration: INGOOSH WOMEN, WITH WATER-JAR]
I knew he was without authority, and that the dapper little Russian
officials in Vladikavkaz had three times his power. Though one would say
they were but thirds of men, pitiable waste ends of men beside this
proud cavalier, yet he was more amenable to the common law than they
were. A hundred years ago would he not have been a king and they—slaves!
But the wheel of fortune has turned.
The road onward was lined with the tombs of chiefs. I had walked about
three miles before I came to the first of these; each grave was marked
by a high stone, on which was represented, in red and blue painting, the
estate of the deceased. The stones stood upright, because they marked
the graves of Mahommedans; the tombstones of Christians lie flat on the
ground. The name and fame of the deceased was set forth in characters
resembling Georgian or Persian writing, and all around the writing were
little paintings of the different things that marked him out as a
nobleman—his swords, daggers, pistols, his belt and scimitar. Above the
writing was shown the moon under which he died, and the star or stars.
And underneath the writing and the martial emblems were little pictures
of his domestic belongings, of his tea-kettle and his water-jar and his
praying beads, gently and carefully drawn so that one loved mankind for
the little dearnesses there. The painter had actually put in his
goloshes and his jack-boots and the rug he slept on. On this first tomb,
too, it was all arranged in the shape of a man; the moon represented his
head, the stars his neck, the swords his arms, the jack-boots his feet,
and the writing in the middle his body. It seemed to me that men had
tried to gain the attention of God and had done this like children,
wishing to be taken notice of. If there is a human God that comprehends
our life He must smile at our dear ways. Man must be very lovable to
Him.
I walked by many tombs and all were similarly marked; some were larger
than others, and had many stones around for the traveller to rest upon.
I took rest at noon and ate my mid-day meal and looked upon the scene.
Near by, on a ridge, there were graves of another sort, a close-packed
cemetery with hundreds of stones, and on them no emblems were painted
and no names written. They were the graves of the retainers, of the
nameless many. Six miles away, on a mountain, I saw the village of
Fortoug. Thence the way wound indolently upward along the sides of
gnarled cliffs. A thousand feet beneath lay the silver river. The scene
was one of splendour and of strange, wild beauty. For a moment I was
alone with myself. It seemed that the wild earth that is so shy of men
had taken me to herself and had lost all her timidity. She was living as
she does when no one is looking on. Earth is more beautiful than all
women, more gentle than the timidest, more splendid than the
grandest.... A pathos of longing came over me as if a cloud had crept
into the sky; I was solitary; why was I here? What was happening in the
other places of the world, in Moscow, in Lisitchansk, in London, on
Ludgate Hill, in my English home? Why did man live in a scene and forget
all the other scenes that existed at the same time? Why did I long to be
conscious of the whole surface of life at once, to be, as it were,
everywhere at home at once? The pathos of the present time is that it is
breadth with length, infinite breadth, and that our scene is only one
point on that infinite line. The Present Time is everywhere at once. Its
duration is but for an instant, a minute, an hour, but its content is
universal. It is more instant than light shed, it covers the worlds at
once and is existent simultaneously to the ends of space, and it is as
punctual on the furthest star as on the little mountain road where I am
sitting. The blade of grass trembling at my feet has trembled just in
time. Its movement is contemporaneous with the present time all over the
world. The shadow which for a moment dwells over the valley, changing
the little mountain rivulet which is tumbling down to the Terek from a
warm, flashing, inviting stream to what appears a river of salt or ice,
is the aspect of the present time made up for me by the gnarled and
frowning cliffs, the mountain road, the heavy ox-cart upon it and the
clumsy, patient oxen beating up the dust, the ruined castle on the
mountain, with the cottages of Fortoug clinging to it like lichen, and
the clustered gravestones on the knoll where the tribesmen lie buried,
and the solitary tombs of the chiefs. It is made up for God, the
universal eye, by—everything!
At Fortoug the whole village turned out to see me, and the old man of
the place took charge of me and sat me in his best room whilst his
daughter made dinner for me. And he had never seen an Englishman before,
had never heard of them, the Inglechani, for that was how he translated
the Russian word Anglichanin into his language. Where did my tribe lie?
He was surprised not to have seen any of us in their valley before. I
pointed north-west, beyond Elbruz. He nodded as if he understood, and
then my meal came up—lamb cutlet and millet-bread—bread baked of
millet-seed and very dry. Then the old gentleman showed me photographs
of his four sons, fine fellows; they had all left home and gone he knew
not where. He begged me to remain and rest as long as I pleased, and
assured me I could find no further road into the mountains, and that the
river was unfordable, and that I should have to return the way I came.
As I did not wish to rest or to take his advice about the road I thought
it better to pretend I would return to Dalin-Dalin. That satisfied him.
It did not occur to him that I should make a detour and follow the river
course, path or no path.
II
As the sun was sinking I found a resting-place soon. I chose a pleasant
grassy hollow sheltered by two boulders. It was above the road and just
beneath a graveyard: I could see all that happened on the road without
standing the chance of being seen myself. But in truth there was little
to see, beyond an occasional horseman and an ox-cart now and then. Each
man who came rested a little beside the tombs before going on, for the
road was a stiff climb. At sunset a party of Mahommedans came and said
their prayers, faced Mecca, bowed to the earth, kissed it, rose and
bowed again.
Then the owls stepped out from their hiding-places in the walls of the
rocks and flew for little stretches noiselessly, and shrieked at one
another. The shadow after sunset had begun low and now was claiming the
summits of the cliffs; presently it would rest upon the sky itself, and
night would have come. One by one the stars appeared, and I lay in my
sleeping-sack and looked up at them. It became a perfect night, lit by a
bright moon and a myriad of clearest stars. There was a silent breeze
and a freshness on its wings; I lay full stretched on the ground and
fitted my body to the soft earth. One could almost imagine that the dead
in the tombs all lay as I did and stared into the starry heaven: I
looked at the railed-in village of the dead above me and down to where
the large tombs lay. They did lie as the poet wished, “under the wide
and starry sky,” and, to the dwellers in the villages, to be buried so
was ordinary. They knew of no other life or death. They could not
compare their stars with other stars, and therefore knew not of their
beauty. I had seen the human stars lit on the Thames Embankment. It
seemed very beautiful that the hand which wrote:
“Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie,”
also wrote, “There are no stars like the Edinburgh gaslamps and no
atmosphere like the air of Auld Reekie.” Again one wished to be
everywhere at home. “Philosophy,” Novalis said, “was home-sickness.”
A little procession of cloud-scuds passed over the sky and I fell
asleep. I awakened again as the dawn light was flooding upward: the
peaks of distant white summits were rosy-red with the reflection of
sunrise. Then gradually, as the shadow had climbed upward the night
before, so the light came down—down, down into the valley. It was as if
angels were being let down by shining rope ladders. A lark jumped from
the grass beside me, brown and wet, and twittered on a boulder and sang
three notes. It was magical.
I gathered sticks and dry grass and made a fire, and watched it burn,
and boiled a kettle on it, and made tea and munched millet-bread. I had
a supply of this “biscuit.” After tea a river dip and then onward!
The whole of this day, from sunrise to sunset, I wandered and met not
one human being. Therefore I nearly starved, for I had a very poor day’s
rations in my bag. After making my detour past Fortoug I had to climb
the steep cliff in order to proceed, for there was no means of following
the river otherwise. The water hugged the rock and was very deep and
rapid. I crept through a wood on hands and knees, and when I got to the
other side found an impassable wall stretching up to the snow-line. I
found a cleft, however, and a path leading away from the direction I
wished to take. I went along this. It was difficult to follow, and led
up to a perfectly barren region, where there was not a shrub or blade of
grass, or even a piece of moss to be seen; nothing but grey rock and the
waste end of last winter’s snow, not yet melted by the summer sun. I
grew rather anxious, for I had no wish to sleep at such a height in such
cold air, but suddenly the path diverged downward again, and late in the
evening I clambered down a dangerously steep slope right into a valley.
The boulders were very loose, and there was a chaos of them, large and
small. One had to step from one to another all the way down, and
sometimes just a touch would send a rock bigger than myself thundering
into the valley below. At last, in the twilight of the evening, I found
myself on the Georgian road in the Gorge of Dariel. I was some way up
the gorge, just at the Trans-Caucasian frontier. I hailed a cart coming
along and got a lift to the Kazbek village. It was quite dark when we
arrived, so I plucked out Nicholas’s epistle from my bosom and inquired
the way to the village pope.
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