A TWO-HUNDRED-MILE WALK
I WAS at Kutais in the beginning of May, and I walked from that town two
hundred miles across the Caucasus to Vladikavkaz, which I am told is a
notable feat. It will certainly remain very notable in my mind, both in
respect of the sights I saw and of the adventures I survived. I ascended
from the Italian loveliness of Imeretia, where the wild fruit was
already ripening in the forests, to the bleak and barren solitudes of
Ossetia, where I had to plough my way through ten miles of waist-deep
snow. I was attacked by roughs at Gurshevi and escaped from them only to
lose myself on the Mamison Pass, where I found the road overswept by a
twelve-feet drift of snow. I spent the night with shepherds on the pass
in a koutan, a shelter for cows and sheep, half-house, half-cave, made
of stones and mud. A shepherd showed me a track over the snow next
morning, and after five hours of the most arduous walking I ever did in
my life I reached the other side of the Caucasus. But I arrived there
only to have a new adventure. A heavy snowstorm had come on so that it
was difficult to find the road, and at Lisri I inquired of a hillman
lounging in the way. This man arrested me as a spy and asked ten
shillings to release me, and since I refused to pay the bribe I was
hailed before the Ataman to give an account of myself. Such account
proving unsatisfactory, I was formally arrested, and in fact remained a
prisoner for five days. Strangely enough I was hospitably entertained
during my captivity by chiefs and priests, but the fifth night I spent
actually in prison, in a dirty Caucasian gaol with two robbers and a
madman.
The air of Kutais is pungent with the fragrance of honeysuckle and
sweet-briar, rhododendron and azalea—it tickles the nose. I set off on a
peaceful Sunday morning when a sun hotter than we ever know in England,
even in July, was flooding the valley of the River Rion with a
superabundance of light and heat. The road, eighty miles long from
Kutais to Oni, is perhaps the most beautiful in Europe, and this
morning, its forested mountains bathed in grey-green loveliness and
garlanded with flowers, it was a vision of Paradise. As a Georgian
priest had said to me, “When you get there you will see; it is summer,
everything is perfectly beautiful. It is heaven. If one were sent there
after death one would not be disappointed.”
I took it very easily this first beautiful day, and between dawn and
sunset walked not more than twenty miles. The swallow-tail butterflies
and large silver-washed fritillaries sipping honey from bush to bush
probably strayed further than I did. I envied not at all the dozen
people crammed into the Oni stage-coach—a vehicle constructed apparently
out of currant boxes. In fact, the shorter distance traversed in a day
the richer has been that day, one may say. The travellers on the
stage-coach certainly didn’t make a supper off wild strawberries as I
did. That was the reward of my first day’s sauntering. I found them that
day. I did not find any more. The land became cooler and cooler, the
next day and the next, till it was obvious I was travelling out of
summer into winter again. But these strawberries were rich; they were
nearly as large as thimbles, and I gathered about two pounds of them.
I slept that night under a rock a hundred feet above the road, and
suffered no disturbance either from robbers or from bears. A soft rain
plumped down just after sunset but I was in shelter. I slept, and indeed
I could not say what happened that night beyond that the goddesses of
sleep were gentle and kind to me. Just before dawn next morning I was
awakened to hear the cuckoo calling from the dark forest opposite.
Something in myself craved hot tea. I jumped up and took the road.
I swiftly walked the eight versts to Mekhven, where an innkeeper was
taking down his shutters, and I persuaded the man to put up his samovar
and give me tea. Tea is a luxury in these parts, for wine is the cheaper
drink. It was no ordinary affair that a stranger should walk in at dawn
and demand tea, and the innkeeper must have told at least ten villagers
of the fact before he put a stick to the kettle. In five minutes his
parlour was full of the curious. That I was English seemed to make a
profound impression, but one man asked me whether our country was in the
direction of Tiflis, and another whether it was nearer Persia or Japan.
One thought Queen Victoria was on the throne; another asked if Russian
was spoken in London, and were there many Georgians there. I had my tea,
four glasses, and then drank the company’s health in a tumbler of red
wine. They replied, wishing me health on the road, and an affecting
reception when at last I reached my hearth and home; might the English
prosper and their king live long over them!—no doubt to the
gratification of the shopkeeper, who filled a large pitcher from a
half-deflated calf’s skin under his counter. The population were of the
sort “never deep in anything but wine.”
The succeeding day was also one of full abundant sunshine. My roadside
companions were large yellow rock roses and wild geraniums. In the woods
I observed wild walnut trees and raspberry bushes. What feasts were
promised for the later summer! I went forwards towards Alpani, meeting
many Svani upon the road, a rather wilder tribe than usual, and very
ignorant of the Russian language. With many of these I shook hands,
however, that seeming to be the custom on the road. Five miles beyond
Mekhven three Russian tramp labourers, of the type Gorky represented,
wanted me to accompany them, but I declined. It was not easy to keep
clear of them, however, and we kept meeting one another throughout the
day. This was a day of thirst, as indeed might be said of many
succeeding days. White wine and lemonade, red wine with radishes and
bread and salt—no shop seemed to purvey more solid fare, and the only
alternative to wine was water. But there is water on the road better
than in the shops. I may safely say that if I have sampled all their
wines I have also tried all their waters and tasted all the rock salts.
There must be at least a score of varieties of water along the road,
from streams like dilute quinine and iron to foaming seltzer water. In
several villages the people fill a bucket with seltzer water every
morning. Its taste is best just as it comes out of the rock. Near Alagir
the River Ardon is white with sulphur, for there is an immense gushing
sulphur spring there, and a natural manufacture of sulphurous and
sulphuric acid. I suppose before ten years have passed someone will have
found it advantageous to work this spring. The appalling smell of
sulphuretted hydrogen should be sufficient advertisement. Indeed, the
richness of the land from an industrial point of view, and its lack of
development, is a fact which is bound to strike a modern European with
wonder. Handsome copper and silver ore and delicious-looking asbestite
are to be found with scarcely straying from the road.
At Zhouetti I stepped into an inn, and when the people heard I was an
Englishman they sent across the way to a factory there and brought a
German to see me, Herr Petersen, and we drank white wine and lemonade.
He judged I must be hungry since one could get nothing fit to eat in
these parts, and so ran back and fetched a box of sardines. So with
unleavened bread and hard-boiled eggs I made a rough lunch there. At the
factory is prepared barite powder, used in the manufacture of chintz.
Herr Petersen was very kind, but counselled me against the natives.
I slept that night under a wall in a barley field and was very cold, so
the next night I chose a better place, in the snug shelter of an
overhanging rock, and screened from view by a full blooming hawthorn
bush.
On the third day it rained much, and I spent some hours in caves or
under trees. The verdure had a different aspect in the wet, and I
reflected as I waited that the spring is not advanced by rain, but it
gathers strength in the rain to proceed more quickly when the sun comes
out. So with the tramp!
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