Unsuccessful sport—Bruin and Stepan—Black bread and onions—Forest music—Mosquitoes—Ticks and other insects—Bruin’s fondness for honey—Butterflies—Our larder—Narrow escape of Stepan—Unlucky days—Watching for swine—Otters—A cold vigil—An exasperating march.
Unsuccessful sport—Bruin and Stepan—Black bread and onions—Forest music—Mosquitoes—Ticks and other insects—Bruin’s fondness for honey—Butterflies—Our larder—Narrow escape of Stepan—Unlucky days—Watching for swine—Otters—A cold vigil—An exasperating march.
To recount day by day our adventures whilst hunting at Golovinsky would certainly be wearisome to the general reader; and even the keenest sportsman has enough blank days of his own without reading the record of other people’s. In spite of the fair beginning I had made, in the first two days of my stay, sport was not always as good or game so plentiful. Day after day, from dawn to dusk, often dragging our weary limbs home through icy torrents, by the feeble rays of a young moon, without whose light we had already been some time wandering in the forest darkness, we toiled unceasingly without getting another bear, although their tracks abounded everywhere.
Boars were at first fairly plentiful, and with them we did pretty well, though with them as with the few bears we did see, Stepan almost invariablygot the shot and invariably missed it. Once he did hit an old she-bear, and a rare mess he very nearly made of it. I had got sick of seeing nothing, and was standing on an old log under which a bear had at one time made his lair, gazing idly down a long vista of forest below me. As I gazed I saw a small animal, which at the distance I could not recognise, being rolled over and over in the dead leaves by what was unmistakably a bear. I was on the point of descending to stalk her, when a report rang out below, and the old bear rolled over beside her cub. In another moment she was on her feet again, and using her fore-paw to urge him along, she was rapidly driving her cub towards me and away from the spot whence the report had come. As I watched, too much engrossed to think of firing, I saw her leave the cub and go at a really good gallop for something between her and myself. For a moment I thought I was the object of her attack; but a view of Stepan, his wretched old fire-arm as usual abandoned, bolting like a rabbit, revealed at once the true state of the case, and I made all haste to his rescue. Seeing me coming and Stepan stopping as I approached, the old she-bear turned, much to my surprise and infinitely to my disgust. Blown with my sharp rush and unduly excited, I missed the old lady entirely, or only hit her behind as she dived downhill through the high covert. Though we heard heronce or twice, tramping about in the bushes and growling over her wounds, and though I am convinced she and the cub were within a few hundred yards of us whilst we munched the black bread and onions that made our lunch, we never saw either of them again.
Black bread and an onion sounds but a poor kind of refreshment after a hard morning’s work, yet what real enjoyment that half-hour at lunch used to be to us, only those who really love forest life and nature at home can tell. All the mysterious rustlings of the forest, every breaking twig, suggested a whole volume of possible adventure to us. Coming but six weeks before from the stifling atmosphere of London, every breath of fresh air seemed full of fresh life, every forest sound replete with music. The chirping of the green frogs—those mysterious littlesaurianswhose bird-like note is so pitched as rather to lead you from than to their hiding-place; the harsh shrill note of the handsome black woodpecker, whose crimson crest is the more distinctly beautiful as it is his only adornment; the continual chattering of the traitor jays, who seem always bent on proclaiming the hunter’s presence; even the sharp rattle of the chestnuts, falling over-ripe from the trees; the droning of the bees, and the tiny but insatiable mosquito, combine, though in themselves not all harmonious, with the murmur of the sea and the whisper of the breeze,to make a woodland concert, which to some ears no other music, either of the present or of Herr Wagner’s future, could ever hope to rival.
Those mosquitoes were the only bitter drop in our mid-day draught of lazy pleasure. That they werebonâ fidemosquitoes I do not pretend, though we called them so, and hated them as much as if they had been, because, though mere microscopic midges, the lumps they raised upon us were worthy of the efforts of a Goliath among mosquitoes. From every rotten tree-stump rose a perfect steam of these evil little beasts, and being so small they could and did get through everything, and elude all vigilance.
There was another insect pest which used to cause us considerable annoyance: a kind of tick which dropped upon us unawares as we brushed against a bough, and creeping in under one’s clothing buried its head unfelt in the skin, and there took up its abode. If not found and dislodged at night, the body of the creature would grow to such an extent that in the morning it had the appearance of a large wart growing upon you, and if left longer would swell to almost any size, taking root by its head and requiring infinite care in removing; for of such a bull-dog nature is the insect that it will allow its body to be torn from its head rather than let go its hold. If this happens the result is a bad wound, hard to heal and apt to fester. There areother insects in these woods, though of a less obnoxious nature; and from one class to-day we received a most welcome addition to our larder.
My man spent a good deal of his time in hunting for honey, and was wonderfully sharp-sighted when bees were concerned, noticing them at once across a valley, observing the line of their flight, and eventually tracking them to their secret hoard with a certainty that seemed almost like the result of instinct. These Tscherkesses have a way of making a rough sort of hive for the wild bees in trees to which the bees are partial, and I believe respect each other’s hives when they come across them. Bruin, however, has less conscience than the Tscherkess, and if there is one thing which will tempt him into an indiscretion sooner than another it is honey. This man told me that once in a tree, with his nose smeared with honey, and stung all over by the indignant bees, the bear will go on feeding greedily, though the whole time he keeps crying and bemoaning himself for the pain given him by his tiny foes. At such times, so intent is he on his feast, that the hunter may approach him as closely as he pleases, and shoot him at his leisure.
The peacock butterfly was another insect of which I noticed large numbers from time to time round the outskirts of the forest; and indeed, in the whole of autumn in the Caucasus, I never noticed any butterflies, or only very few, which were notfamiliar to me as British insects, while I saw specimens of almost every butterfly which occurs with us at home. The most numerous, I think, was the clouded yellow, and its paler variety ‘hyale.’
The day we got our honey was a red-letter day for us, for on that occasion our larder reached its maximum of plenty; the boat, with stores from Duapsè, turning up on the afternoon of the same day. A bear’s ham, some pork, black bread, honey, onions, and a bottle of abomination, labelled ‘Vieux Rhum, Marseilles,’ which I doubt not had never been much nearer France than the Crimea, made my servant’s face beam with delight at the sight of such unwonted plenty; but alas! from this day our evil times were to commence; and so bare did our larder at last become that the very flies that then swarmed gave us up as inhospitable paupers before the end of a fortnight.
On trying the part of the forest in which I had killed my first bear on Monday, we could find no fresh traces of game, although the place was quite a warren of old boar runs, and full of beaten roads made by the bears. The cause of the game’s absence was evidently the presence of the carcass of my first bear, which, mangled by jackals, was already tainting the air far and wide. Some large game I did almost bag, but that was nearly being a very serious matter for one of us.
As usual, we took parallel lines along the hillside,and though from time to time a broken twig betrayed the presence of the one to the other, Stepan and I were otherwise lost to each other. For over half-an-hour we had been stalking in this way, without any event occurring to wake the stillness of the wood, when from a point above me, and coming down wind towards me, I heard a sound like that of approaching game. Slowly it came on, and as the leaves were crushed softly under its heavy even tread, which stopped from time to time that the beast might listen or pick up a chestnut, I recognised the step as that of Bruin strolling slowly home after his early breakfast. Stooping to get a better view through the hazel stems, I saw them swing and shake some eighty yards above me, and caught a glimpse at the same moment of something lighter in colour than the covert passing through it. Instinctively my rifle covered it, and from that moment, for quite three minutes I should think, I followed the bear’s every movement with my rifle’s muzzle. Twice I half pressed the trigger as a larger piece of the creature’s grey side was visible to me, picking his way slowly past me; but just as I was on the point of firing he turned and came downhill towards me. Thanking my stars that I had not fired a random shot into the brown of my game, I waited for him to come closer. There was twenty yards from me a little open space, and here, if he entered it, as he seemed likely to, I meant tokill him. Jealously my rifle followed his every movement, dreading a change of direction, and in another moment the shot would have been fired. The grey thing suddenly rose on end, or seemed to; and parting the thorn vine with its fore-arms walked into the open my man Stepan!
For a moment I felt absolutely sick, and I don’t think I was ever more unhinged in my life than I was for the rest of the day; and when, later on in the heat of noonday, I was resting in a ravine by a small pool, half dozing after lunch, hearing the same pace just above me, and seeing a great patch of grey move through the bushes, I lost a veritable bear by not firing. So Stepan’s folly nearly cost him his life, and cost me a bear. He had, it seemed, gone on too fast to the end of his beat, and getting tired of waiting for me, thought he might as well come back to meet me. Heard on the dead leaves, a bear’s step as he moves slowly along, stopping from time to time to feed or listen, is wonderfully like that of a mocassined hunter stalking slowly over the same ground.
And now, day after day, the sport grew worse. Stepan was evidently but a very poor guide. Living, as he had done, for a couple of lonely years in his hut at Golovinsky, his spirit of enterprise had never led him to explore more than the two beats in which we had already been successful.Beyond these two tracts of forest he knew nothing, and in this dense covert it is almost useless to attempt to shoot until you have first explored a little. If you do attempt it, you find yourself, sooner or later, lost in a dense mass of thorns, in which you cannot move without noise—in which, in fact, you can scarcely move at all. From above hang thick curtains of the abominable creeper which the people call aptly enough ‘wolf’s tooth,’ which is so keen and strong that even my stout jacket of moleskin was torn by it; while Stepan’s clothes, though made of the toughest canvas, ceased to exist, in spite of all his ingenious patchings, by the end of the fortnight. A few boars and two more bears were all we could get; and at last I consented to a trial of Stepan’s vaunted pack. But not until we had tried every other method did I consent to having the forests disturbed in this way.
One day, after twelve hours’ spent in the usual stalking, Stepan and I perched ourselves like ungainly birds each in a tree above a hole full of mud and water, in which herds of swine wallowed nightly. But our limbs grew cramped, and the moon rose higher in the heavens, making quaint patterns on the dark hole below, without our ever being disturbed in our night-watch. As the moon grew more dim, we climbed down again with aching limbs; and as Stepan relieved his feelings by ahoarse cough long pent up, a sudden charge through the thickets close by, with indignant snortings, told us that the herd was just approaching as we left.
On our way back, as we crossed a small tributary of the Golovinsk, a big silvery thing slid off a stone into the water, and swam along the bottom of the shallow stream close by me. In the grey morning light it looked to my drowsy eyes like a large fish, and it was not until I heard Stepan’s wretched old gun miss fire that I recognised in it a very fine otter; then, of course, it dived into deeper water, and was lost to us. Many of these, as well as a few sea-otters, are found between Novorossisk and Sukhoum, and my man showed me the skins of several which he had killed; but though I frequently saw their spoor, this was the only live specimen it was ever my luck to see.
Another long night we sat down under a juniper bush on the shingle that has, at some time or other, formed the bed of a broader Golovinsk, or has been brought down by the stream during its winter floods. On the opposite bank rose the hill forest, coming down in thorny thickets to the water’s edge. Half a mile behind us, on our side the stream, the other forest began, and a quarter of a mile below us the sea kept moaning. On all the little patches of sand the tracks of game were numerous and recent, and we had good hopes ofsport: indeed we needed them to keep us up through that cold night. On the far side of the river there was a large tract of sand and clay, which was one close-written record of the goings and comings of thirsty beasts. Yet all that weary night we saw hardly anything. At six we marched down to those icy waters of tribulation as men prepared to do or die—that is, to be miserable as comfortably as possible. Pitching ourselves and a flask of Marseilles ‘rhum’ into the bush, we arranged that Stepan should watch until midnight, and the morning watch should be mine. With a stone for a pillow, and my knees tucked up to my chin, I soon slept to the tune of the stream at my feet, to wake in about an hour’s time shivering and wet through with the mist. The sound of a well-known snore explained to me how rigid had been Stepan’s vigil; and as two or three dusky forms bolted back into the thicket on the far side as I rose unwarily to kick him, I bitterly regretted that I had not kept watch all night through.
Resolving not to disturb my trusty henchman, I settled myself in the warmest corner I could find, and prepared to keep watch till morning. And I did so through all that livelong night, until the Pleiads had worked right round into the west: a little querulous wind arose, the stars grew greyer and greyer, there came a sudden bitter chill into the air, to which all the cold of the nighthad been as nothing, and then we knew it was morning.
A violent shake roused Stepan, and without troubling ourselves about more breakfast than a crust of black bread and the flask afforded, we went into the forest. Here we had a blank day; though had Stepan chosen to fire, he had a splendid chance at two bears; but as I was at some distance, he held his hand, apparently from prudential motives.
When we came back late that evening, empty-handed, to conclude our twenty-four hours of toil with a march of a mile over the bed of the Golovinsk—feeling its boulders through our worn mocassins as plainly as if we were barefooted; the small stones burning into our sore feet like hot irons, while from the big ones we slipped, risking sprains and breakages every other step, and getting clear of the stones only to plunge into the icy stream—when we were enduring all this, I might, I think, be forgiven if I said ‘Amen’ to the Russian proverb which my wretched guide kept repeating, to the effect that ‘the chase is worse than slavery.’ It does not say much for the sporting spirit of the Russians that such should be a favourite proverb among them; but in Stepan’s case, where he had all his share of the toil and none of the enthusiasm which novelty lent me to keep him up, it was a pardonable sentiment. Poor fellow, it wasquite tragic to see him, having crossed his enemy the Golovinsk for the last time that night, sit down beside its waters, and, casting the remnants of a pair of mocassins into the stream, walk home barefoot.
Refitting—Our mongrels—Shipping our spoils—Visitors—Stepan’s yarns—The hedgehog—Legend of the bracken—The Euxine in a fury—Trebogging—Traces of Tscherkess villages—Enormous boars—Their feeding grounds—Lose a bear—Impenetrable thickets hiding the proximity of big game—A rare day’s sport—Shooting in the moonlight—An expedition—Fever—Precautions against it—Unsuccessful sport and hard fare.
Refitting—Our mongrels—Shipping our spoils—Visitors—Stepan’s yarns—The hedgehog—Legend of the bracken—The Euxine in a fury—Trebogging—Traces of Tscherkess villages—Enormous boars—Their feeding grounds—Lose a bear—Impenetrable thickets hiding the proximity of big game—A rare day’s sport—Shooting in the moonlight—An expedition—Fever—Precautions against it—Unsuccessful sport and hard fare.
After our twenty-four hours of unsuccessful labour recorded in my last chapter, we were too tired and too tattered to take the field again next day. So we spent it in drying our clothes, mending and washing them, constructing fresh mocassins from the hide of one of our boars, and generally preparing for a campaign of another kind against our enemies the bears and boars.
In this campaign we were to be assisted by a canine force, consisting of three mangy curs belonging to Stepan, and one utterly useless beast, the property of the neighbouring Cossack station. Stepan’s trio were, in their way, the three ugliest half-starved mongrels that ever were possessed with the pluck of a gamecock and the unreasoning devotion that never shows itself in anythingbut a dog. Why they should have been Stepan’s faithful slaves no human reasoning could explain. They could have picked up more by themselves than he could give them. Poor fellow, he never had any great abundance for himself. They had to sleep outside the shanty, were kicked if they put their noses inside, and were devoured by the mange, which their master never seemed to think of curing. As for breed they had none, or perhaps I should say they had a touch of every breed in them. Zizda was said to be in some way connected with a race which they called ‘harlequin;’ and if oddity of shape, oddness of eyes, and a general unevenness of colour and outline, entitle a dog to the name, old Zizda was a veritable harlequin. He was a large dog with huge paws, a very square head, wall eyes, a capital nose, and indomitable pluck, which had from time to time earned him the innumerable scars with which he was marked from tail to muzzle. The other two were utter mongrels, but staunch supporters of old Zizda in any emergency. They were an old bitch called Lufra, and a young dog, Orla, or ‘The Eagle.’ I cannot refrain from giving the dogs’ names, because they were such real heroes in the chase, and good servants to me.
The first duty of our day of rest, then, was to feed our pack—a duty often forgotten, and appreciated by the dogs now as an unprecedentedattention from us. This done, we busied ourselves in getting the skins of the game we had killed ready to send away, as a boat had been seen passing a day or two before, and having been signalled to, had promised, if possible, to call on its way back from Sotcha. It called to-day, took our skins on to Kertch, and left us a good supply of tobacco, the want of which we had hitherto keenly felt.
Another visitor turned up to-day to our utter surprise (for visitors are rare at Golovinsky)—the head gardener from the Grand Duke Michael’s forest of Ardenne, who had been out hunting for two days and taken nothing. With him was a Greek from a colony somewhere near, who complained bitterly that though he and his fellow colonists had spent most of their nights about harvest-time on platforms or trees, to shoot at and scare the bears and boars, these gentry had completely destroyed the crop of ‘koukourooz’ (maize), on which the Greek villagers greatly depend. When I found that in spite of the number of guns in the trees, not one bear or boar had been killed, I was not so much surprised at Bruin coming to look upon the noise as merely a military salute intended in his honour, which in no way interfered with his appetite.
From time to time during the day I managed to extract a little information from the taciturnStepan, but his lonely life has made him so reserved as to be almost inaccessible to the wiles of the inquirer. He is a Tscherkess who has abjured Mahometanism without apparently adopting any other faith; so of his religion he had little to tell. About his village and the life in it he said little more, and of the Tscherkess wars he absolutely refused to speak—though on that topic he evidently had more to say—from what seemed to me a fear lest any words of his being repeated might get him into trouble. So we fell back upon natural history, and on this topic he was fairly fluent.
Amongst other things he told me of some quaint habits of the hedgehog—for I presume it was the hedgehog and not the porcupine he meant; for the word he used for the beast was one which I did not know, being Tscherkess patois of some kind. But from his description the animal was either one or the other; and as the porcupine is only supposed, I think, to inhabit the Persian border of the Caucasus, the animal of Stepan’s story was probably a hedgehog. He described a hedgehog perfectly, and then added that there were two kinds in the Caucasus, one with head and feet like a pig, the other with head and feet like a hound. It was one of the latter which he noticed one day under an apple-tree in the forest, collecting and carrying off the fallen fruit by rolling over it(so he described it) until she had impaled an apple on one of her spines. She then impaled another on the other side of her body, and thus laden, retired for some time, to return without her load, for two more apples. This sounds very unlikely to me, but as the fellow had no object in inventing the story, and invariably told me the truth as far as I could discover, I give it, as well as other yarns from the same source, for what it is worth. Of the same beast the Cossacks and Stepan assert that he kills snakes by seizing their tails in his jaws and then rolling on them, turning a somersault over them, in fact, so as to drive the spines into them.
I heard too, to-day, a quaint superstition about the common bracken, which abounds here, and on the roots of which the swine feed when there are no chestnuts or berries to be had. The Circassians say there is one moment in one night of the year (alas, my authority had forgotten which night), at the very stroke of midnight, when this plant blooms. The flower lasts but a few moments, in the which if any one has the good fortune to gather and preserve it, he obtains omniscience thenceforth. Talking of such things as the foregoing, and making fresh mocassins for the morrow, the day soon passed, and we rolled ourselves up in our rugs and were happy, though we went to bed almost dinnerless.
The sea rose to-night, and raged as the Black Sea sometimes does, in so wild a way that onealmost forgets its habitual calm in these short bursts of Berserker fury. So close did the white waves come to our fragile hut, that we began to tremble lest the sea should wash through the ground floor (our only floor), as it had done once last winter; and in the middle of the night old Zizda, pressing close to the wall outside for comfort from the keen wind and driven spray, pushed his way right through the lath and plaster, and appeared wet and unceremonious by my bedside. Whether he found it much warmer inside than out I very much doubt. It must have been very bitter outside if he did. But by morning, though the waves were still white below, a bright sun was shining, and the rain-drops had been dried off the grass.
We gave the sun another hour or two to complete his good work, and then, at about nine, started for the forest with our pack.
The method of procedure was simplicity itself. Once in the forest each dog went whithersoever he pleased, and the whole team, cruising about at random, at last hit on the track of something and gave tongue. Then, with our ears only to lead us, we made to what seemed the likeliest spot to intercept the dogs and their quarry, and right good fun it was, though rough work in the extreme. Bad as are the briars and tangled masses of vine, I think the frequent ravines and hillsides, covered with their fine short grass, are infinitely worse.Rushing pell-mell to the scene of action, you expect to have face and hands lacerated as you go and take it with equanimity, content if only you can force a way at all. But having forced a way, it is annoying to have your feet slip upon those dry hillsides, and, perfectly helpless, feel yourself and rifle rapidly gliding downhill away from the point towards which, at so much personal inconvenience, you have been struggling. It was better fun to see Stepan, as he strove to descend a ravine, slide helplessly down, sixty miles an hour, to a pool at the bottom, into which he unceremoniously plopped, pursued at once by Zizda, who followed his master on his haunches, looking the picture of imbecile misery. But for bipeds and even ordinary quadrupeds there is some excuse, seeing that Bruin himself often comes to grief in these places. Witness the numerous slides on these banks, looking as if Bruin had been diverting himself and his family by the innocent amusement of trebogging.
Throughout the forest where we were hunting to-day, we found every here and there the traces of Tscherkess villages, whose occupants have fled, some long ago in the old war time, and some only last spring, to join the Turks in their war against Russia. Even in the case of these latter no sign of a house remained, only a piece of ground more level than that which surrounded it, overgrown with a dense jungle of briar; here and there a piece ofhand-wrought wood, a relic of some Circassian house furniture, and fruit-trees that were merged into the forest when their owners joined the Turks. These old ‘aouls’ are very strongholds of Bruin, and his work is visible on all sides. Little pathways, beaten smooth through the briary places, torn-down branches of the walnut and apple, and bees’ nests dug out where none but he could have got at them, all attest his presence.
It was from one of these old ‘aouls’ that our dogs first got anything to make a really good stand. The ‘aoul’ had been on the very summit of one of the chain of hills on which we were shooting. The site of it was covered with acres of dense briars, from the midst of which towered what had probably been the village pride, a patriarchal chestnut of enormous size. Here Zizda gave out his deep bass warning that game was afoot, and the other three curs made a chorus of it. I was down below in a belt of chestnuts outside the region of briars; and thinking that whatever the game was, it would probably break downhill from the thicket in which the dogs were baying it by a little track that passed me, I jumped on to a tree-stump and waited. Stepan was on the other side of the briars, quite close to the scene of action, and I naturally imagined would close in still more and get his shot. After waiting a good ten minutes, during which time neither game, dogs, nor Stepan appeared tomove an inch, I whistled to let the latter know that I was coming to the assistance of the brave dogs which he was leaving to their fate. To force my way uphill through those briars was a labour worthy of Hercules; and if the game should have broken through the dogs, there would have been small chance for the hunter fast meshed in that briary net. When at last I did get a view of the field of battle, so dense were the briars that I could not have swung my arms round where I stood; and though I stood on tiptoe, all I could discern were the waving sterns of Orla and Lufra, the brave old veteran Zizda being too close to his quarry to be visible; but from where I stood I could hear his sharp charges and the low snorts of rage which they elicited from the object of his attack.
Unable to see to shoot, I picked up a clod, and guessing the beast’s whereabouts by the low muttered thunder that came from the roots of the chestnut, I heaved it over the dogs in the direction of the sound. Then for a moment the briars swayed as if an earthquake had moved them; one of the dogs yelled as he was rolled over, with another scar added to his already numerous decorations; and then, not ten paces from me, passing at a gallop went the biggest wild boar I ever hope to see. And I missed him. It is true that I had but a momentary glimpse at him as he shot acrossa yard of open, and I snapped at him as one would at a bolting rabbit; but I shall never forgive myself for missing his enormous broadside for all that. Far through the crashing forest I heard him, with the dogs at his heels, for almost ten minutes after I had missed him; but I never saw him again.
I had heard frequently previous to this of the immense size of these Caucasian boars when old and lonely, and have myself since seen the specimen in the Tiflis Museum killed by the Grand Duke or one of his friends at the Royal forest of Kariâs, which is said to weigh twenty-one puds; and as sixty-two puds go to the ton, this would make him about 780 pounds. But in my own mind I feel convinced that the boar that charged past me from his dark fastness at the root of that old chestnut was half as large again. Every angler knows that the fish you miss is the heaviest that ever rose at your fly; of course I may have misjudged the dimensions of my boar, and therefore ask no one to believe in his immense size, though firmly believing in it myself.
That boars should grow to an enormous size here, where they are never disturbed, and where every variety of food to which they are peculiarly partial is so abundant, is hardly to be wondered at. The forests are full of all sorts of fruit, of which bears and boars alone have the gathering;patches of bracken, on the roots of which the boar feeds, are on every hillside; at certain seasons of the year he finds quantities of fish washed upon the shore, and on these he riots. As for the chestnuts, some idea of their abundance may be formed from the fact that, kneeling in one place not purposely selected, to-day, I filled all my pockets with fallen chestnuts without once changing my position; and yet their only use is to fatten the wild boar, who munches them husks and all, or more dainty Bruin, who eats the nuts, but leaves the husk in his path.
Once during the day I saw an old bear as I struggled through a veil of thorn vine up a slippery hillside, and firing brought him down with what was almost a bellow of rage or pain, in a succession of somersaults that took him past me down the hill at a pace that he would never have attained to by his ordinary method of progression. But, alas, on searching for him at the bottom of the hill where he should have lain, we found no trace of him; and though the dogs followed for a while, a large stream which he had crossed foiled them, and sent us back empty-handed.
Twice during that day did I get into close proximity to big game without seeing anything. Once in the thicket, whence the old boar had charged, I had forced my way beyond all hope of a speedy return, when the sound of Stepan’s gundown below, and the sharp treble of the younger dog’s bark, told me something was afoot in that direction. Straight towards me up the hill came the dogs, and right eagerly did I look for a tree as a coign of vantage from which to get a view of the approaching game before he absolutely ran over me. But there was not even a stump in reach. Round me was perhaps a yard of almost open space, but beyond this the briars formed a wall impenetrable everywhere, except at the point at which I had entered the little opening by an old boar’s run. To quit the opening by the only apparent outlet, on my hands and knees, with my tail to an approaching foe, did not seem prudent: so I remained where I was, hoping I should see whatever the game might be before it saw me. Suddenly, though the dogs were still only halfway up the hill, struggling slowly through the brake, as impenetrable almost to them as to us, right at my elbow I heard a heavy breath drawn, half sigh and half sniff, and then a soft shuffling of feet in the hidden places of the thicket. Almost directly this was followed by another and another sniff, and I knew that a bear was deliberately walking round me, trying to get out probably by the road by which I had entered. I would rather not have been there I admit, as Bruin fairly cornered is an ugly foe to face; and I fully expected that when the dogs arrived on the scenehe would go for his own private pathway, taking me as a mere obstructionen route, as I never for a moment doubted but that he was the beast the dogs had roused. As I stood expectant, a lovely wild cat, with a fine tawny skin, marked almost as clearly as a tiger’s, stole snakelike across the opening, utterly unheeding me, and disappeared in the brake beyond. Expecting the bear in another minute I let the cat go, and regretted it directly after, for with a regular burst of hounds’ music our pack dashed into the open, mad after their cat, and went raging on, taking no notice of the larger game close by. We searched afterwards, and found that a bear had really been there, and had stolen off by another of the hidden ‘trapinkas’ (game tracks) with which the whole brake was warrened. The dogs treed the cat, and we spent our luncheon hour in smoking her out.
The other occasion on which I got too close to big game that day was in a rhododendron brake, when our dogs, having bayed something on the other side of the hill, I was hurriedly forcing my way to them, when I became aware of sniffings and tramplings to the right of me and to the left of me, and plunging wildly on, nearly ran into something else advancing. Had the rhododendron clump not been exceptionally high (higher far than my head), I could have seen my game and had capital sport; as it was, I was kept fumbling about inthe thicket for nearly ten minutes, expecting every moment to run up against a bear, who was at the same time just as anxious not to come into collision probably as I was.
Tired and happy after a good day’s sport, during which the fun of racing after the dogs had been a pleasant change from the ordinary silent stalking, we wended our way home, the dogs at last keeping fairly close to our heels. When we were down in the flat by our old enemy, the snow-fed Golovinsk, the moon came up hazy and dim, and the owls began their weird hootings; then with a sudden rush the dogs left our heels, and were once more wakening the echoes with a nocturnal chorus worthy of the Demon Hunter’s infernal pack. In the patchwork of moonlight we caught a glimpse of something scudding away before the dogs, and joined heartily in the chase, forgetting our fatigue in the excitement. After ten minutes’ slow hunting in the briars they bayed him in a dense clump, where some larger trees shut out the silver moonshine and made midnight of the place. This wood being a favourite resort of bears at night, on account of the roseberries with which the place abounded, and of which they are fond, we went somewhat cautiously to work, and as we pushed out of the moonlight into the darkness we went shoulder to shoulder, literally feeling our way with our rifles. The dogs were right at our feet,and, as I expected, were sitting heads in air under a tall tree, on one of the limbs of which I could just make out in the moonlight an excrescence which experience taught me must be a wild cat. Rifle-shooting by moonlight is not as easy as by daylight; and though the cat came down, I don’t think she was hit hard; probably not hit at all, but merely dislodged by the bough beneath her being broken. However, be that as it may, when she did come down, she scattered the dogs right and left, and got clear away into the thicket again. Long after, when we were smoking the last pipe rolled in our rugs, we could hear them making music either over her or some luckless jackal which they had come across.
But this, our great day with the dogs, was the last on which fortune smiled on us at Golovinsky. From that day we got from bad to worse. No more boars fell to our guns, and on wild cats and fresh bear’s meat even a hungry Tscherkess will hardly feed. But when our supply of bear’s meat failed too, and nothing but a cheese rind remained, we grew desperate, and having heard of a place with a name fathoms long about ten miles from Golovinsky, where boar abounded, and had not been lately disturbed, we hired two horses from the Cossacks, and with one of them for a guide started to try our luck there. As usual, the guide knew as little of the way as we did, so that wespent nearly all the day in getting to our ground, and, on arriving, found not only no vestige of the hut which we had been told existed there, but no chestnut forests either. Add to this that, though the scenery was even finer than at Golovinsky, the herbage grew more rankly luxuriant every hundred yards as we rode up the glen—the mist, which rose in a white wall round us, drenching us to the skin before we had been in it a quarter of an hour—and it will not appear so strange that, having toiled all day to get there, I gave the order at once for a counter-march, considering that to pass one night in this den of fever would be certainly dangerous, and possibly fatal to some of us.
I was not far wrong, as events proved, for next day, although I had beaten such a hasty retreat, Stepan and the Cossack were both down with the fever, and I had an attack of intense lassitude and headache, which, if yielded to, would probably have resulted in the same. Stepan told me the weather was becoming dangerously feverish, an east wind having set in, which is always the harbinger of ill to the Tscherkess on the Black Sea coast. Fever never comes, they say, when the wind is from off the sea; but when it comes from behind the hills, then it is that the fever seizes its wretched victims.
As we climbed over the hills or up the watercourses to-day, the cold wind that was blowingwould lull for a minute, and a soft hot blast come over us, just as if fresh from the mouth of some furnace. Then the fresh breeze rising would blow it off again. These puffs of hot wind recurred at long intervals throughout the day, and were, Stepan assured me, sure precursors of fever. Whether they really were so, or whether his croaking frightened us into it, I don’t know, but next day we were certainly extremely ill. Stepan had genuine fever, and as all Russians and Tscherkesses do, lay down at once and gave the fever full play.
I had read somewhere of a doctor on the African coast who used to get his fever patients into a room with doors and windows shut, and there make them have the gloves on with him for a quarter of an hour, after which the fever left them. I owe that athletic doctor my best thanks for his example, and hereby tender them; for though I had no gloves, and no one to use them upon if I had, I acted on what seemed to me the principle of his cure, and, selecting the stiffest bit of country I knew, started on a solitary hunt with the dogs. At first I reeled, and my knees gave under me at every stride. I was sick and blind and dizzy, and felt altogether worse than I ever did, even after the first half-mile of a Rossall paper chase as a boy; but gradually things improved, as they always do if you stick to it, and I had thesatisfaction of shaking off the fever, never to be troubled with it any more, though I have spent days in Poti, of which town Baron von Thielmann says, in his excellent book on the Caucasus, that ‘no European has passed a night there and been spared the fever.’
It is my firm belief that abstinence from water whilst in the chase or on the journey will be found almost a safeguard against fever, and if, in spite of this, the mists and chills of the undrained swamps are too much for the traveller’s constitution, a good bout of violent exercise, taken as soon as the fever seizes him, will free him from his illness in its infancy.
That the natives suffer from fever is not to be wondered at. They live so poorly that an Englishman would die of want of nourishment alone, did he live as they do. They sleep out in mists that soak through and through a man as no rain ever could, and, worse than all, in the chase or on the journey, when heated and over-wrought, they lie down at every rill, and drink like thirsty cattle. I attribute my own freedom from fever to the fact that I never touched the water of the Caucasus for drinking purposes, except in the shape of one cup of tea in the morning and one at night, never drinking at all throughout the day; and though my tongue sometimes grew dry and seemed almost to rattle in my mouth, habit soonenabled me to do without water, and that without any great discomfort.
But, although I avoided fever myself, and believe that with these precautions a foreigner might well pass some time in the Caucasus and escape, more especially if he went in late autumn and returned by the end of March, I have no wish to describe the Caucasus, more especially the Black Sea coast and the neighbourhood of Ekaterinodar and the Kuban, as anything but a nest of fever. Where the vegetation is as rank, and marshes so frequent and of such extent as those round Poti and Lenkoran on the Caspian, the summer time is a dangerous time for even the most prudent.
For two or three more days, after our visit to the valley of mist and fever, I continued to hunt near Golovinsky, though my man was too ill to help me much. But day after day proved more decisively that unless I could get deeper into the forest than I had ever penetrated yet, my labour would continue to be but labour in vain. So I determined to return to Heiman’s Datch, the old ruin where I got my first boar on this coast, and after spending a few days there in search of the panther which I had wounded, or another if he was dead, return to Duapsè and thence to Kertch. To this I felt impelled by a number of reasons, of which the bareness of our larder was by no means the least. For over a week chestnuts had formedthe greater part of my fare, bread even running short, and as for meat we had none. Often at night I had had to tighten my belt as the best way of reducing the vacuum I had no means of filling. But this is a method of which Nature soon wearies, and I was longing greedily for even the good things of Duapsè.
Return to Heiman’s Datch—Bears—Stepan’s shooting apparatus—Journey to Duapsè—A delightful dinner—Interview with the Governor—Insects—German farm—A dangerous adventure—A wedding supper—Leave Duapsè for Ekaterinodar—Krimsky fair—Russian roughs—Peasant women—A show-booth—A hazardous road—Inexpensive travelling—Ekaterinodar—Table-d’hôteat the Petersburg hotel—The treasury—Droshky-racing—A beaten rival—Caucasian fish—Arrival at Kertch.
Return to Heiman’s Datch—Bears—Stepan’s shooting apparatus—Journey to Duapsè—A delightful dinner—Interview with the Governor—Insects—German farm—A dangerous adventure—A wedding supper—Leave Duapsè for Ekaterinodar—Krimsky fair—Russian roughs—Peasant women—A show-booth—A hazardous road—Inexpensive travelling—Ekaterinodar—Table-d’hôteat the Petersburg hotel—The treasury—Droshky-racing—A beaten rival—Caucasian fish—Arrival at Kertch.
Of my second visit to Heiman’s Datch I shall say but little, as, though interesting to me, it would only entail a great deal of repetition for the reader. I killed two bears, I believe, of which I bagged one, the largest specimen of a brown bear I have ever seen; his head, set up by Burton, of Wardour Street, is in my library now, and in no way belies my description of him. With the boars we did not do much good, but we at least did enough to get a fresh supply of meat, though of the coarsest kind. On one night I sent Stepan back along the coast at his own request to fetch his dogs from Golovinsky. It was a ten-verst tramp, and he chose the night to do it in. I regretted when he came back next morning that I had not accompanied him, for onhis way he met a couple of bears at different points, both of which appear to have been much bolder by night than they ever are by day. He fired at one of them and missed him. The brute turned round and appeared to search for the origin of the noise; and if Stepan is to be believed he passed a very ‘mauvais quart d’heure,’ motionless behind a big piece of drift-wood, while Bruin sat up and watched for him. However, the wind was not right for the bear, so he moved off at last, leaving Stepan to pursue his course unmolested, but resolved never to fire at another bear by night, alone and on foot—a resolution to which he stuck religiously when, some half hour afterwards, he met another coming from the direction of his own cottage.
Arrived at home, he found the dogs had gone off to the Cossack station, and in their absence the bears had been down from the hills to visit him, overturning his hives, and even breaking the door of his hut. I felt doubts in my own mind as to whether the Cossacks had not been before the bears in these matters, but as it was a damage which could not be remedied, it mattered little who bore the blame.
Returning in the grey morning, Stepan had a chance at a sea otter, which he wounded but lost. I feel that it is only fair to say for Stepan that with a proper rifle he was not such an extraordinarily bad shot as his constant misses would imply; but a sight of the tool he used would convince anysportsman that with such a weapon the chief danger was to be apprehended from it by the person behind it. Stepan’s way of loading, too, was curious: two bullets, one in its ordinary condition, the other chewed into a ragged lump of lead, over a heavy charge of powder: such was his ordinary charge; but when, as on one occasion, to this was added a second charge of powder and small slugs for pheasants, to save the trouble of extracting the first charge, with an extra bullet put in next day to meet all emergencies, the only wonder is that the weapon was not more fatal to Stepan than to the old she-bear into which he put this extraordinary broadside.
But now I must bid good-by to Stepan, whose last duty was to procure me a horse from the next Cossack station to convey myself and my bears’ skulls to Duapsè. I bid good-by to my servant with hearty goodwill, for though a poor guide and worse sportsman, he was a faithful, obliging fellow, and honest in the extreme.
From Heiman’s Datch to Duapsè is, they say, only thirty-eight versts; but the road over the shingle at the foot of the cliffs was so bad that it took me from 8a.m.to 6p.m.to accomplish the journey. I did not stay even for food by the way, but plodded steadily on at a foot’s pace among rocks and boulders, with the Tartar saddle galling my limbs, and a fierce sun pouring down on thegrey cliffs, until everything appeared at a white heat, and all life seemed stilled, except for the myriads of lizards that revelled in the fierce sunlight at the cliff’s foot. But all things must have an end, and at 6p.m.I was at rest in the telegraph station, with a substantial dinner before me and a bottle of beer, which, if not Bass’s, bore at any rate some faint resemblance to the beverage beloved of Britons.
On the Sunday morning, November 9, I received a polite message from the Governor of Duapsè to warn me that, as the Caucasus was still under military law, and not as yet entirely settled, I must oblige him by not going to stay in any Tscherkess ‘aoul,’ and if I neglected this warning, he added that my words and deeds would be watched. Moreover, he requested that I would bring my shooting trip in his district to an end. This sounded a formidable message; but on interviewing the Governor I found him not by any means inclined to be unpleasant, and indeed his only desire appeared to be to prevent my getting into scrapes by meddling with politics, though, at the same time, he was evidently exercised in his own mind as to the real object of my visit to the Black Sea coast; as he, in common with all the other Russians I met, seemed to find it impossible to believe that any man would visit a distant land merely for sport. Several times I had warningsfrom various English residents in the Caucasus that I was suspected of being a British agent, and, as such, was fully described to the police, and carefully watched. Unluckily for me, the boat to Kertch only calls every Wednesday, so that I had three weary days to pass in Duapsè.
One of these I spent in a visit to a mountain farm belonging to a German baron, and worked by two young Germans, his bailiffs. Here I saw a collection of insects made on the farm, and amongst them recognised, in addition to the species I have mentioned as seen by me before, both the British varieties of the swallow-tailed butterfly, the small wood white, the marbled white, the privet, and the elephant hawk moth, as well as the death’s head, which abounds here. There were also oak-eggers and stag-beetles, as well as another hawk moth of a delicate fawn colour, which was strange to me.
Returning from the hill farm I had an adventure which might have terminated worse. The road from Duapsè to the farm, which is situated at a great height above the sea, winds about the hill in zigzag lines. Over the road, which is steep and rough, hang the edges of the forest, and from time to time it crosses a rough wooden bridge, spanning a chasm of considerable pretensions. By daylight these chasms and their wooden bridges mattered but little, for thoughthe bridge trembled as the droggie passed over it, there was not much chance of an accident so long as you and your horse could see where you were going. After my day’s shooting I stayed late at the young Germans’, waiting to share with them their evening meal, so that it was already dark when I prepared for my ride home. I had calculated on a moon, but, the night being stormy, I was disappointed, and when I did make a start it was on a young horse, in almost utter darkness, and knowing very little of my way. However, the Germans consoled me by telling me that the road to Duapsè was the only road from their farm to anywhere, and it had no roads branching from it—moreover, the horse knew his way.
At supper they had told me that one of them, riding into Duapsè some weeks prior to my visit, had been sprung at by some animal from the trees overhanging the path; and though there was not sufficient light to distinguish the beast by, it was supposed by them to have been a lynx or a leopard. Not much distressed about this danger, but anxious about the bridges, I started on my lonely ride. All went well until I was half way to the river which separates Duapsè from the base of the hill. Then, as we got to the darkest part of the road, where the trees overhung it most, my horse suddenly turned back, and tried to bolt for home. In spite of all my exertions I couldnot get him beyond a particular point on the road home for some time; and when at last I did drive him past with heels and whip, he dashed away with a sudden plunge, and, catching the bit in his teeth, bolted as hard as he could gallop from that point to Duapsè—or, rather, the river that gives that town its name. It was no good my trying to stop the hard-mouthed little beast with the feeble tackle at my service, and, dashing through the darkness over the roughest of roads, I could only sit still, and hope that the sagacity and keen sight of the horse might save both his neck and my own. I had no time to feel nervous as we crossed the first bridge, which seemed to rock as we dashed over it—a couple of bounds, and we were on the other side—but from that to the next bridge my mind was tortured with visions of the horse’s feet slipping from under him on one of the poles, and the inevitable fall that must follow. But horses have wonderful eyes, and, if left to themselves, see as well in a dark night, I think, as their riders do by day; and, in spite of the rough road and the bridges, we were soon breast deep in the stream, and half swimming, half fording it, came in safety to the other shore.
Amongst other things which served to pass my time whilst waiting for the boat at Duapsè was a peasant’s wedding supper. At the ceremony itself I was not present, but I presume it was like allother weddings in the Greek Church, with its crowns held over the heads of the principal parties, and its symbolical knotting of the handkerchief. But the supper and its ceremonies were strange to me. During it the happy pair came in, not partaking of it with the rest, but merely presenting themselves to perform certain ceremonies. Of these the first was to take a blessing from the old people. This they did, turning in succession to each of the four quarters of the earth. Refreshments having been brought in, and all sitting except the bride and groom, these latter handed to each guest in turn a glass of wine or spirits, a cake and a coloured handkerchief. The cake you eat, the handkerchief you were expected to pocket as a wedding gift from the ‘nouveaux-mariés,’ and the wine you drank; but if in drinking it you were maliciously inclined, it was open to you, without appearing guilty of rudeness, to declare it was sour. At the word ‘gorko’ (sour) the wretched bride and groom were obliged to exchange embraces in public, and this as often as you chose to repeat the sorry joke. In return for the cake, wine, and kerchief, each guest was expected to place some wedding gift on the tray for the young couple, and in this instance the gifts were made in every case in money.
After these ceremonies had been concluded, the chief actors retired, and left the guests to makemerry at their leisure. There seemed in this particular instance to be a chorus of old women engaged to sing, dance, and otherwise become objects of ridicule. These hideous old crones gained the goodwill of the guests, as well as innumerable drink-offerings of neat vodka, by singing lugubrious chants, to my uneducated ear more fit for a funeral than a wedding. This they supplemented by indecent antics on their hind legs, and a great deal of coarse buffoonery. The only musical instrument was one in great favour amongst the moujik class—I mean the concertina. As for the other guests (for I presume the old women were invited and not paid jesters), they sat down steadily to gorge and to drink, and so well did they stick to their self-imposed task of making beasts of themselves, that the wedding supper lasted until the morning of the third day, when its drunken harmony was finally marred by one drunkard beating a girl, and another breaking a bottle over the head of the first, at which crisis the law stepped in and took the supper party under its own protecting wing.
On Wednesday, November 13, I gladly shook the dust of Duapsè off my feet, and embarking in one of the Russian Company’s steamers, passed pleasantly thence to Novorossisk. I was obliged to return to Ekaterinodar to recover my luggage and to obtain any letters which might have arrivedfor me during my absence at Golovinsky; and anxious to see as much of the Caucasus as possible, I arranged to steam to Novorossisk and proceed thence overland to Ekaterinodar. I hardly think I was repaid for my trouble, as the country through which I passed was not of a very interesting nature, and more like the neighbourhood of Tumerūk than of Duapsè. At Novorossisk I hired a cart (fourgon) with two horses and a driver to take me to Ekaterinodar, calling at the Red Foresten route. The distance was 114 versts, and including stoppages, with the heavy cart behind them, the game little horses did the journey in thirty-three hours. It is wonderful what Russian horses will do and on what a little food they do it. Neither of the horses in this instance stood fourteen hands, and they got no corn whatever on the journey.
On our way to Ekaterinodar we stayed at a large village called Krimsky—a Cossack settlement I think it was originally; and here we encountered another of those fairs at which the Russian moujik buys and sells all he wants or wants to part with during the year. I wandered into the fair whilst the horses were being watered, and found it a medley of every race in the Caucasus, distinguished from one another not more by their varied and picturesque costumes than by the endless variety of their conveyances and beasts of burden. Fashionabledroshkies, droggies of rough logs tied together with rope, lumbering fourgons, heavy ‘pavoshkas,’ light carts, like huge ozier baskets on wheels, nearly six feet high, and the house on wheels, which the Mingrelian calls his ‘arba,’ were all ranged in rows to form the streets of the fair. Round about them stood the beasts who drew them, varying from a goat to a camel, from a pony to a team of six grey oxen. The shops are simply a sheet of canvas spread on the ground, perhaps under a partially-inverted cart—some few under a more pretentious awning; and here are laid out the trader’s wares, whilst he for the most part sits cross-legged in the midst. The grandest shops, or booths rather, are generally those in which are sold the ‘ikons,’ or holy pictures, for which there is an immense sale amongst the pious Russian peasantry. They are gaudy pictures of the Virgin, or one of the saints, encased in a deep frame of brass, with much tinsel and tawdry ornament about them; but they are to be found in every moujik’s cottage, and before them he pays his simple devotions to his God, night and morning, standing bare-headed with bent head, for barely a minute perhaps, but apparently in earnest during that minute. A little taper is kept always burning before the ‘ikon.’
Next to the ‘ikon’-seller, you detect by your nose, if not by your eyes, the ‘shouba’-seller, for these sheepskin garments are excessively strong-smelling,even in their earliest stages. Close by, in the midst of a crowd of the ugliest old women on earth (and herein I do not malign the Russian ‘baboushka’), is a pedlar selling knitting-needles and other housewife’s gear. They must be hard to please from the noise they make, for the sound of their bargaining would silence the morning babel of Billingsgate.
At the back of the fair is a long row of fires on the plain, whereat the Tartar is cooking the savoury ‘shushlik’ (kabob). This is the refreshment-stall department of the fair, or at least a part of it; the other part is to be found at the little square tables at every corner, on which are a dirty bottle and two dirtier glasses, behind which stands a red-shirted moujik, and around him drunken Ivans and Stepans embrace and fight, or argue and abuse, for a Russian never fights as our English rough does. Never, perhaps, is too strong a word; but in my three or four years in Russia, though I have known men dirked in broad daylight in the bazaar, and have never entered a bazaar without seeing one or two rows going on, I have not seen two real stand-up fights. The Russian rough barks loudly, and possesses a fathomlessrépertoireof abuse, which he supplements with ready invention, but he rarely goes beyond words. At these tables too, ‘Macha,’ the demure peasant girl, as well as the ‘staruka’ (crone), are frequently to be found;and when they take their glass they take it neat as the men do, and toss it off at one gulp as cleverly. Russian peasant women are hard-working, frugal, and the earliest risers in the world, being generally up before dawn; but they are, alas! too often to be found on their backs dead drunk in the street in the morning. This is at least true of the Crimea and Caucasus. I can only speak of what I have seen.
At the Krimsky fair I discovered a show-booth, and as show-booths are not every day occurrences in such places, I proceeded to investigate it. A rough tent, with strange pictures of beasts roughly painted upon it, formed the abiding place of the show. Round this a red-bearded Persian continually prowled, with a long stick to thump the heads of penniless brats who, unable to pay for admission, kept trying to satisfy their curiosity by furtively lifting a corner of the canvas veil that concealed the mysteries within. Avoiding this functionary’s stick, I paid twenty copecks (about 6d.), and entered. There was one other spectator besides myself, and, satisfied that this was the largest audience he was likely to obtain, the gentleman of the stick kindly followed me in and prepared to perform, leaving the little boys to see as much as they could meanwhile. In the tent, in spite of all its grand advertisements, the whole show consisted only of three small monkeystied to a box, trying to get at the skins of two maneless (Persian) lions, stretched on upright sticks. These had been the glory of the show, but had recently departed this life, leaving nothing but the foolish-looking hides I now saw, to their bereaved proprietor. After exhibiting some fire-swallowing tricks, and a little serpent-charming, the Persian announced the performance over; and after disgusting him by showing him that I knew all about the manner in which his deadly serpents had been rendered harmless, I left hurriedly, lest a worse thing should befall me.
My inspection of the fair was here cut short by the arrival of my driver, announcing the horses ready to proceed. I remarked that he seemed anxious and mysterious in his manner, so followed him quietly, and asked for explanations when we got outside the town. Then he confessed that lately two or three highway murders had been committed near Krimsky; that the presence of such a collection of roughs of every race as the fair contained was not calculated to increase the safety of the road, and that his reason for hurrying me out of the fair was that he wished to leave unnoticed before dark. From the time I left Krimsky to the time that I reached Ekaterinodar I heard of nothing but robberies and murders, several of which I believe were substantially true, though that many of them were exaggerated is only natural. But it ishardly to be wondered at that there should be a good deal of this kind of crime in such an uncivilised, semi-settled district as the Caucasus, while in the Crimea, which is far more civilised and under the hand of the law, highway murders and burglaries are not unknown even in the precincts of the towns. The worst part of these highway robberies on the Russian post-roads is that you can never feel sure that your yemstchik is not in league with the highwaymen; in fact, I have heard Russians say that that was almost invariably the case.
However, we reached our journey’s end unmolested; grateful as far as I was concerned for the only accident that occurred, as helping us more rapidly on our way. This was merely a chase given us by some infuriated moujiks, whose cart we ran into and considerably damaged, when, as usual in such cases, my yemstchik returned their curses and sought safety in flight. Such a jolting I never had before; but I forgave the cart even that, as it got me into Ekaterinodar half an hour earlier than I should have otherwise arrived.
To give some notion of the inexpensive nature of travelling here, I may say that the sum I paid the peasant for driving me the 114 versts from Novorossisk was fourteen roubles, and this at the then rate of exchange (ten roubles to the pound sterling) would be 1l.8s.in English money. A meal which I had on the way at the ‘duchan’ of a small village we passed through, consisting of soup, chicken, black bread and teaad libitum, for my man and myself, together with hay for the horses, cost fifty-five copecks,i.e.about 1s.1d.Had I travelled by post from Novorossisk, I should have paid one-third less for my horses and travelled faster, owing to the fact that I should have had relays of horses and not the same pair the whole way; but then I could not have gone out of the direct course, or stopped where I liked.
Arrived at Ekaterinodar, I found myself in a hot-bed of political discussion at thetable-d’hôte, where, amongst others, I met a certain Loris Melikoff, a planter in the Caucasus, and brother, I believe, to the dictator. Remembering Prince Vorontzoff’s kindly advice, I carefully avoided being drawn into the conversation as long as politics were the subject, although some of the things these half-educated officers were pleased to say of England and her Premier (Lord Beaconsfield) were hard to leave unanswered. They could not, however, have paid him a greater compliment than they involuntarily did by the hatred which they expressed; and consoling myself with this thought, I ate my dinner with an appetite unmarred by the contempt which they were pleased to express for a nation ruled by ‘a Jew.’ This was everywhere the phrase which they hurled at myhead, considering it in our case a bitter disgrace that our Prime Minister should be an alien, and totally forgetting that not one officer of state only, but two-thirds of their highest officials—in fact, almost the entire brain of their country—are alien, and principally of the race they most affect to hate, viz. the Germans.
It may be readily imagined that I soon tired of the society at the Petersburg Hotel, Ekaterinodar, and indeed, early on the morning after my arrival, I was at the treasury (‘kasnochest’) applying for a travelling ticket. Of course I had to wait over half an hour, while half a sheet of paper was being filled in with a few signatures and my own name, and during that time I had an opportunity of observing some of the noticeable features in this public office. Most of the clerks were smoking cigarettes (those who were not had probably no tobacco); none of them used blotting-paper, but instead either blotted their manuscript on the white-washed walls or sprinkled it with sand from one of the many old sardine-boxes, supplied apparently by a frugal government to contain that valuable commodity. All expectorated with the freedom and frequency, if not with the accuracy, of the proverbial Yankee. Almost every clerk had some decoration, and all were in uniform.
But the ‘podorojna’ was ready at last, and armed with it I started once more for Kertch. On theroad the relays of horses were scarcer than usual, and in one place I was warned that at the next station there was only one relay, and congratulated by the postmaster (an old acquaintance) on being in time to get it. As he spoke, a Russian officer with a similar pass to mine and having heard the same story from the yemstchiks, made vigorous efforts to get off first and secure it. In this he failed, and I started with a lead of half a verst or more. But in a short time he came in sight, and to my horror I found he had, by paying extra, obtained another horse, thus driving four to my three, a serious advantage over these fearfully heavy roads.
The course was a long one, nearly twenty versts, and by promising my driver a large ‘pour-boire’ if we were in first, I so roused him that before ten versts were done our rival was again out of sight. As darkness had set in, I made myself as cozy as I could on my bundle of straw, and thanks to long practice slept none the worse for the jolting.
I woke with a start. Those confounded bells that the horses wear seemed to surround me; for whilst my own horses were shaking them furiously in front in a last desperate struggle to keep the lead, my rival’s four-in-hand was jingling them triumphantly just behind, as he momentarily gained on us. It was no good, our horses weredead beat, and every effort they made almost pulled the wheels off in the heavy clay. The four passed us in the darkness with a jeer from their yemstchik. But they too had had enough of it, and as the lights of the post-station were now in sight, they were content to keep just in front of us, going like ourselves almost at a foot pace.
A bright idea struck me. The first ‘podorojna’ presented gets the team, if both ‘podorojnas’ are of equal urgency, and there is only one team to have. We were now not many hundred yards from the station. Touching my driver on the back, I told him to take no notice of me: so ridding myself of my wraps, with the travelling ticket in my hand, I slipped off the tarantasse into the mud, and making a considerable detour to escape observation—which, owing to the darkness and the triumphant security of the others, was not difficult—I ran my best, and arriving considerably before the Russian officer, handed in my ‘podorojna,’ and had the yemstchik out after the fresh team before my rival entered the office. When he met me coming out his face was good to behold; but when I had explained how I had done him, he took his beating like a man, and invited me to share his basket of provisions and a bottle of wine before parting company. I hope he had not long to wait for horses.
On the steamer which took me from Taman to Kertch was a cargo of fish for the Kertch bazaar,caught in the lake between Taman and Tumerūk. They were for the most part carp, huge fellows weighing from 25 to 30 lbs., and one of the fishermen told me they were frequently caught up to 40 lbs. in weight. There were sturgeon too, from the mouth of the Kuban, caught, so they said, in snares, something after the fashion of our ordinary rabbit snares, as they routed with their noses pig-like along the bottom of the stream. There were too ‘sudak’ (Sandre), an excellent fish for the table, and the hideous ‘som’ (Silurus)—largest, I believe, of Caucasian fresh-water fishes. This whiskered water-fiend plays the part of the pike in the Caucasian lakes and rivers, feeding on all other fish, and anything else in fact that he can find. From what I have seen I should say the pike was rare in the Caucasus, having only once seen one, and that a very small specimen, near the Caspian. The ugliness of the ‘som’ has led the inventive mind of the Russian moujik to create all sorts of legends regarding him, such as his laying hold of the limbs of horses and cattle as they crossed fords near which he was lying; and even of his seizing, and thereby drowning, a man under similar circumstances. They tell too of his growing to vast proportions; one Russian colonel, whose home is in the Red Forest, claiming, and being commonly reported, to have shot one with his rifle while basking in the Kuban, where it passes through the Crasnoi Lais, whichweighed over 200 lbs. I fear this sounds very much like fisherman’s weight. What other wonderful stories of the monsters of lake and river I might not have heard, I cannot tell, for here the steamer was made fast to the Kertch jetty, and amongst the hearty congratulations of half a dozen friends, my second tour in the Caucasus came to a happy end.