Start from Tiflis—My yemstchik—Travelling-carts—Caucasian road-makers—Camel caravans—On the bleak steppe—Persian hawking—Subterranean dwellings—Shooting at Kariur—Elizabetpol—An execrable journey—Hawks and starling—Banditti—Curing official corruption at Tiflis—Goktchai—A wearying day’s sport—Fear of highwaymen—My guide, Allai—Arrival at Gerdaoul—Hospitable Lesghians.
Start from Tiflis—My yemstchik—Travelling-carts—Caucasian road-makers—Camel caravans—On the bleak steppe—Persian hawking—Subterranean dwellings—Shooting at Kariur—Elizabetpol—An execrable journey—Hawks and starling—Banditti—Curing official corruption at Tiflis—Goktchai—A wearying day’s sport—Fear of highwaymen—My guide, Allai—Arrival at Gerdaoul—Hospitable Lesghians.
On Saturday morning, December 14, before the first team of sleepy buffaloes had dragged their load of country produce through the streets to the bazaar, before the canine concert which makes the night of Tiflis hideous had calmed down, Ivan had returned from a last farewell to his young wife, and I had put the last thing ready for a start. Early as it was, my friend Lyall and his son were up and ready to speed the parting guest they had welcomed so kindly, and before six o’clock the clattering of their horses and the rattle of my wheels were waking the echoes of the German colony. Dawn was breaking slowly as we dashed over the bridge that spans the Kûr where it passes through the Tartar bazaar. The hills were standing out black and clearly defined against low,fleecy clouds, the golden colour of an English lassie’s hair, while here and there a higher peak caught the bright red glow of the morning.
Our yemstchik had been taking part in a sister’s wedding the day before, and, as he himself said, was devoting himself to getting rid of the headache consequent on the marriage festivities. His remedy was the old-fashioned ‘hair of the dog that bit him.’ But, luckily for travellers in Russia, a yemstchik never drives so well as when drunk, so our ‘troika’ whirled and bumped through the streets, now rapidly filling with their early-rising denizens, in grand style. In and out amongst countless high-wheeled arbas, swearing, shouting, screaming, just grazing one vehicle, slashing the sleepy or sluggish owner of another with Parthian whip, chaffing, chaffed, or cheered, we bowled along at a gallop. How we did not run over foot-passengers or smash some other conveyance I can’t understand, for these yemstchiks turn the sharpest corners at full speed, and apparently reck nothing of life or limb.
Just as we were clearing the bazaar, our kind escort trying, though mounted, in vain to keep pace with us, we met a caravan of the long-eared beast the Brighton cockney loves. Our yemstchik gave a yell, the donkeys stolidly refused to budge, and then followed one of the most brilliant charges on record. The enemy, hampered by the huge packswhich they bore, reeled and gave way before our chariot’s furious course, and though a torrent of abuse, no doubt, followed us, the owners of the charged ones were too taken aback by the sudden onset even to make their reproaches reach our rapidly retreating ears.
Before leaving the town we met a party of musicians coming from the night’s debauch which here follows every wedding. These greeted us with musical honours, and altogether our departure from Tiflis was considered full of happy omens. As for me, happy or unhappy omens were much a matter of indifference, for, longing as I did for the chase from which I had been so long debarred by trivial difficulties at Tiflis, I was only full of delight at my tardy freedom.
At the first station on the road we changed horses and drank the stirrup-cup, said good-by to our friends, and settled down to the serious business of travel. To those who have never travelled in Russia by the ordinary travelling-cart it is impossible to give an adequate idea of the miseries the shallow springless carts occasion to their occupants as they jolt over the uneven track that is here dignified by the title of post-road. The traveller’s luggage probably fills the cart, and on this, with knees drawn up, he has to balance himself as well as he can, and continually exercise all the prehensile powers hepossesses to retain his precarious position. Many natives never get used to this method of travelling, and suffer a species ofmal de merfrom the jolting, as well as other inconveniences. But for myself, I had done a good deal of travelling in post-carts, and except for the want of shelter in bad weather minded it very little, being even able to sleep as we drove, although how I ever retained my seat whilst so doing I could never understand.
At the first station from Tiflis we saw beside the Kûr a large congregation of vultures gathered round some carcase which the river had deposited on its banks. Amongst them was one large black vulture, a very rare bird, which I in vain endeavoured to stalk and secure.
After leaving the station of the vultures we drove day and night, sleeping in the cart whenever nature asserted her need of rest, through a plain bounded on the right by mountains, and on the left by a scanty line of trees, which marks the course of the Kûr. All along the route road repairs were going on, bringing together gangs of the most villanous-looking scoundrels the various nationalities of the Caucasus can produce. I take it, many of the highway murders and other outrages one hears of may fairly be ascribed to them. Strings of camels, with solemn tinkling bells, which seemed to stretch from us to thedistant horizon, moved mechanically onwards as we passed them, their plumed howdah sticks nodding in time to that slow soft stride, which from its even regularity always impressed me with an idea of perpetual motion. Several times, too, towards evening we came upon large camps near a pool of water, where some hundreds of camels were resting, their huge forms making, as they knelt in line, a four-sided fort, within the walls of which were stored the bales they had brought out of the distant East. Amongst these large camps I noticed a few of those white dromedaries which travellers tell us are so much prized for their speed in the East. Save for these camel caravans, of which we met two or three a day, all bound for Tiflis, a few minor trains of donkeys laden with charcoal, or slow-going fourgons filled with the carpets of Shusha and Shemakha, our first two days’ journey was most uninteresting. Dead bare steppe and barren bleak hillside, with nothing more inspiriting than an apparently deserted Tartar cemetery to break the monotony, with its tall unhewn headstones of white rock. Here and there, as the evening grew into night, the road wound through low hills of such a withered and blasted look that you felt that the memorial stones, which you passed from time to time in dark silent places, were sufficiently suggestive of murder and evil deeds withoutIvan’s ghastly narratives. Up to the large station of Akstapha, where several different routes branch off from the main road between Tiflis and Shemakha, we met or passed other travellers by tarantasse occasionally.
Once we had left Akstapha, we appeared to be the only travellers on the road. About three stations from Elizabetpol we came across the first specimen of Persian hawking which I had yet seen. The bird used was a large falcon, belled and jessed, as far as I could tell from a distance, much as an English bird might be if Englishmen still followed the pursuit of falconry. Wherever I came across a Persian dwelling between Tiflis and the Caspian, I invariably found the hawk on his perch by the doorway, and his two comrades in the chase—tall, broken-haired greyhounds—basking somewhere near him. These dogs work with the hawk, run down hares when started, and put up partridges and ‘tooratsh’ (sand-grouse) for the hawk to strike. To these dwellers upon the steppe greyhounds and hawk supply the place of a fowling-piece—an instrument of destruction little used by Tartars and Persians. Each man carries a rifle, an enormously long weapon with a diminutive stock, not nearly as big round as a man’s wrist, with a flint lock, and a back and fore sight, with a small hole in each through which the sportsman peers at hisgame. Once you can get a view of the antelope through these two sights simultaneously, you are pretty sure to hit him; but the rifle requires a great deal of manipulation (sticks arranged for a rest, &c.) before this desirable result can be attained; and in the meanwhile it is hardly fair to expect your quarry to remain motionless. Moreover, a puff of wind or a drop of moisture will ensure a missfire, and altogether the antelope is very fairly safe.
After passing the Red Bridge—a place famous for many a daring deed of highway robbery—we passed a subterranean village, or what was practically one, the roofs being almost on a level with the ground. Below these roofs are in most instances stables, in which dark and ill-ventilated dens man and horse live together. The atmosphere is worse than a London fog in the East End, and the only reason that these dwellings do not kill those who live in them is that Tartar and steed pass at least eighteen hours of the twenty-four in the pure air of the outside world. Herein lies the secret of the healthy lives and iron muscles of all Nature’s happily uncivilised children. Their houses, it is true, are not such as would meet with the full approval of a sanitary inspector of the nineteenth century; but then, they look upon them as the bear looks on his den—only as a place to retire to for sleep, or to lie down in when sick orwounded. Windows are to them works of supererogation. When they come back to their houses it is only because it is too dark to work or play outside; and never morning sun wastes his life shedding glory on windows which, with frowsy blinds, shut in sloth as they shut out daylight. It often seemed to me that if these half-civilised people only loved pure water as they love the fresh air, they might live to any length of days. But, alas, they don’t. A cold tub never occurs to them, unless it comes accidentally in fording a mountain stream, or, contrary to their expectations, as a shower-bath from heaven.
At Kariur, the last station before Elizabetpol, I stayed for a little rest and sport, to break the monotony of our uneasy drive. Kariur is as bad a station as any one could wish to see—horses and men living, for the most part, together. But it looked a likely place for game; and, indeed, its looks did not belie it. Never in the best preserved parks and woodlands of old England have I seen more hares. They rose and scudded away in all directions, at every stride. Sand-grouse were plentiful, but extremely difficult to flush; although when flushed I thought them very pretty shooting, and when shot very fine for the table. The meat is the whitest of any fowl I know. Bustards we saw, and wild ducks; for the country seemed full of tiny purling streams, which should make agricultureeasy and profitable, though these natural advantages are not utilised here. Antelopes were tolerably numerous; and, two or three times, large grey foxes went away in that insolently easy canter peculiar to Reynard when the hounds are not behind him. For nearly a quarter of an hour I tried in vain to stalk a flock of very large reddish birds with a decidedly game look and a shrill pipe, not altogether unlike the curlew’s call. What they were I could not find out, as they were extremely shy, and I never saw any like them again. The Tartars did not know them any more than did my Tiflis gamekeeper, and I much regretted that I was unable to procure a specimen. Kariur would be a splendid place to pitch your tent near, if you wanted to thoroughly sate your appetite for fowling, and vary your experiences with the shot-gun by a day or two spent in antelope-stalking with the rifle; or, in wet weather, when the soil cakes on the flying feet of the antelope, you might join the Tartars in a capital gallop after the greyhounds, with a certainty of a venison supper at the finish.
But much shooting, especially of the antelopes, would, I saw at once, cause great jealousy and unpleasantness amongst your few neighbours; so, having had a capital day, crowned by a varied bag, and, thanks to Ivan’s skill, a savoury supper, I drove off in the dark to finish my last stage to Gungha, as the natives call Elizabetpol. If anyEnglishman should read what I have written, and, tempted by hope of sport, follow in my track, let him take one piece of advice from me. Never believe any one between the Black Sea and the Caspian; or, at least, never build any hopes on alluring prospects suggested to your mind by the statements of natives. To me Gungha was to be a land of perfect peace, where in a really good hotel I should lay down my weary limbs, and, after a good supper, forget, in clean sheets, the injuries inflicted on me by the merciless bumpings of my travelling-cart. I admit that the vision of clean sheets seemed far too good to be true, but when I found that the occupant of the best inn’s best room could not even get a samovar until the host’s family had finished with it, and no better bed than the floor and his bourka would constitute, I felt, indeed, the vanity of all human hopes.
Gungha is a much better name for the town than Elizabetpol. It has a thoroughly Asiatic sound, as the town has a thoroughly Asiatic aspect: flat-topped houses, thrown pell-mell together, without design or reason in their arrangement; roads that are destitute of trottoirs, full of pitfalls and rocks by turns; at one time dark wildernesses of blinding dust-storms, at another hopeless morasses, in which you sink knee-deep in mud; open sewers by every roadside, and a sufficient quantity of trees scattered throughout to insure fever in itsdue season; not one decent house in the town, and nothing either of art or nature to attract the traveller, or detain him when there. There is a large bazaar, under a kind of arcade, composed of a succession of dome-like roofs; here Persian work, lambskins, and dried fruit form the staple commodities. Under one dome the bootmakers were busy; in the next your measure was taken, and a sheepskin turban of any hue or shape made for you whilst you waited. Outside, at the street corner, an itinerant barber was shaving the head of a true believer, whose tray of gaudy sweetstuff lay on the ground beside him whilst he submitted to the operation. In the square, near the hotel, a Persian, with his beard and heavy moustache ablaze with henna, was, with bell and voice, advertising the merits of a falcon which he carried on his wrist, whose broad bright eyes were hardly less wild than his own. The man and bird would have been a fine study for an artist’s pencil, so wild and picturesque were they; and, as the bird huddled itself into his open shirt front, against his copper-coloured chest, or struck out with beak and claw from its perch at the incautious hand of any would-be purchaser, I felt sure that the Persian’s pleasure in accepting a good round sum would not be unalloyed by pain at parting from his brave bird. But neither my man nor myself cared to stay longer at Gungha than we were obliged; and,as soon as horses could be procured, we were under way again.
The roads of the Caucasus are always execrable, but there is still a degree of evil of which that traveller knows nothing who has not travelled from Gungha to the next station. The only thing the road can be compared to is the dry bed of a mountain cataract. Huge boulders strew the path incessantly, and the arms of the miserable passenger over it are continually almost wrenched from their sockets by the leaps and bounds of the post-cart, for it is almost needless to say that nothing but a determined grasp of your seat will ensure fixity of tenure for a moment. Across the road at intervals we came upon the beds of those streams whose winter fury had so bestrewn the road with souvenirs of the mountain homes from which they sprung; while right and left of us frequent cornfields showed by their springing crop that the mountain stream brought good as well as evil in its train.
After the second station from our last starting-point, the view became really beautiful. The stony steppe grew narrower, and on either side high mountain ranges showed themselves, snow-capped and bright in the clear atmosphere of what was quite an autumnal morning, though we were now well into December. These distant peaks were those of Shusha and Lesghia respectively.
Every now and then the sand-grouse would tempt me to call a halt; but though the place in which they pitched was marked ever so carefully and beaten as closely as men could beat it, we found it quite impossible to flush the birds without the assistance of a dog. As the light failed, we saw phalanx after phalanx of starlings wheeling, extending, and re-massing themselves in the dusky skies; and as we drew near the reed-beds, towards which their flight tended, we became witnesses of a piece of very interesting bird-life. Near the reed-beds were several trees, say half-a-dozen, and as they were bare of leaves, we could see on every tree some two or three hawks. As the starlings swept down with rushing wings to their nightly abiding-place, the hawks would glide from their perches, and swooping amongst them, break and turn the advancing host. Quick as the marauders were, the starlings did not seem to fare half so badly as might have been expected, and at last all the wanderers were at rest in their reedy home except one small band which, arriving later than the rest, had been terribly harried by the hawks, and seemed almost to have given up all hope of getting safe home. On a tree some distance from the reeds, halfway between the ground and the highest branch, sat in silent state, or gorged apathy, a splendid specimen of the king of birds. Chivied perpetually by the hawks, andfairly scared out of their wits, the little band of starlings swept round this desert throne, and finally settled in a black throng all round the mighty bird himself. To our astonishment he took no notice, never moving a feather; and there we left them, the hawks baffled and afraid to approach the starlings’ sanctuary, and the weary birds too tired to try again for their reed-bed, too scared to mind the monarch in their midst.
At one station we met a party of peasants who had been carrying soldiers’ kits from one village to another, and on their return had been stopped, beaten, and robbed of their wretched little earnings by highwaymen. At another we met an Armenian merchant with a ‘tchapar,’ or armed courier, who was so abominably insolent to me that I was obliged to give him an excessively rough shaking, which cowed him considerably; and on the appearance of my servant, who explained to the postmaster who I was, the fellow became as servile as, owing to my old coat, he had previously been insolent. Here, too, we heard of highwaymen, the post-station having been robbed of some horses, which the postmaster had been lucky enough to recover. The thieves had been caught, but I was assured that would matter little to them, as a trifling tip would set matters right with the local authorities, and they would soon be in a fair way to recoup themselves for their losses.
Later on, we met two of these gentry on the road, armed to the teeth and well mounted; but though they honoured us with a careful scrutiny, our gleaming gun-barrels had a deterrent effect upon them, and we drove on unmolested, though our driver suffered a shock to his nervous system which quite upset his merriment for the rest of the drive. I am told that amongst these Tartar highwaymen revolvers are quite common nowadays, most of them possessing at least one of these dangerous little tools.
The conversation turning on the lawlessness of the Caucasus, elicited from my servant a strangeon ditof Tiflis. So utterly corrupt had every branch of the civil service in the Caucasus become some three months previous to my arrival therein, that the Emperor sent down his secret agent, K——, with orders to inspect the state of affairs in disguise, with plenary powers of dismissal and punishment with regard to civil officials. He was to clean the Augean stable of Tiflis. Supported by a band of detectives brought with him from St. Petersburg, he soon became the terror of the town. Common rumour had it that three of the worst in high places died of sheer fright shortly after his advent. This may not have been the cause of their deaths, probably was not, but that they were lucky enough thus to escape punishment by natural deaths is historical. One of K——’s first acts was to trythe police. Disguised as moujiks, he and his men went bullying and swaggering through the streets, apparently drunk as lords. The difficulty was to get taken up, but after some time they managed to accomplish even that, and were hauled away to the police-station. Here K—— and his men tried to get off by apologies and excuses, which were naturally vain. Then, turning to his men, he said, ‘Hey brothers, suppose we give the good chief of police a rouble apiece; he will see then that we good Christians cannot be drunk.’ The roubles were paid, the liberty of the pseudo-moujiks obtained, and next day K—— came down and dismissed the chief of police and his whole staff. So through every branch of civic administration, meeting with hindrances at every step, but still steadfastly hunting down corruption wherever he suspected it. Three generals holding civic posts he forced into retirement; then, feeling that the opposition of the military in a town still under military law was too much for him, K—— retired.
But now a bitter white mist comes creeping over the earth, wetting us to the skin in spite of our heavy wraps, and stopping all conversation by the chill discomfort it brings in its train; so for three hours we lie down to rest at the next post-station, rising again at seven to welcome as bright a morning as any I had seen on my long drive. The country was pretty, with here and there a groupof trees, and here and there a brook. The sun was bright in the heavens, the hoar frost sparkled on the ground, while every breath of the keen morning breeze brought high spirits and a hunter’s appetite along with it. The country now became hilly, even close by the post-road, and every now and then we saw a covey of red-legged partridges scudding up the bare hillsides at a terrible pace. These birds seemed to have taken the place of the sand-grouse now. A drive of twenty versts from Adji Kabool brought us to Goktchai, and here my post-cart was destined to stay its joltings and bid its jangling bells be still for some little time.
Goktchai is a large village, with one broad main street, beginning at the Tiflis end in a bazaar, passing halfway some barracks, where a few soldiers are quartered, and ending in the ordinary Caucasian village. On the way through the village bazaar my eyes rested on a freshly slain tûr, or mountain sheep, as well as other game; and the sight of the noble head with its grand horns, combined with a distant view of those peaks whence it had so lately come, was too much for my powers of resistance, and I determined then and there that I too would at least try to kill a tûr in the wild mountains of Daghestan.
At the post-station I heard the most glowing accounts of the quantities of game to be met with within two days’ ride of the village; but coupledwith this came the news that these mountains were so ill-famed on account of the brigands who haunted them that scarcely any of the villagers had ever been there, and none would go again for any wage I liked to offer. This I received doubtfully, and through my man made many offers, but even ten roubles a day were refused by moujiks to whom a hundred roubles would have been a fortune with which to rest content for life. However, though I began to believe in the reality of the brigands, more especially as a post-cart had during the last few days been carried off bodily in broad daylight, I determined to wait a day and see whether no one would come to accept my liberal offer.
The day of waiting was spent in shooting hares and red-legs on the nearest hills, whose steep sides were simply alive with these swift-footed birds, running like flies on the almost perpendicular faces of the cliffs, or coming like bullets overhead as my man drove them to me. The difficulty of approaching the birds—as, though continually in sight, they would never rise and never stop running—reminded me of other days over the stiff furrows of Northamptonshire; though, even with the help of a sturdy Tartar, I found the bare rocks and mud-faced crumbling hillsides worse going than the wet ridge and furrow. The hills were covered with dwarf larch and pomegranate-trees, the fruitof the latter having, alas, been all culled for this year.
Tired and thirsty, towards three o’clock we saw hanging over a steep cliff above us a large pomegranate-tree, apparently unrobbed as yet. Its bright fruit showed red and yellow through the foliage; so with renewed energy my Tartar and I struggled for a quarter of an hour to reach it. At last we succeeded, and found, to our intense disgust, that each fruit was hollow, a part of the opposite side having been broken away and all the interior taken out by the birds, who had left nothing but the delusive husks which had so cruelly disappointed us. I record this as one of many similar sells inflicted on us whilst in Daghestan.
When we started in pursuit of the red-legs we had with us a dog, but so hard was the work that in about three hours the poor beast refused to come another yard, and lay down resolutely to rest. His example was infectious, and though we kept on for some time longer, we were soon so heartily tired of the goat-like manner of progression necessary in these hills, and the perpetual motion of the partridges, that we gave up the chase and came home. There we found good news awaiting us. One of the Lesghian Tartars, who lived in the second range of mountains from Goktchai, had come in during the day to bring some game to thebazaar, and, hearing of us, volunteered to guide us to the home of the tûr and the chamois for a much smaller sum than that which I had vainly offered to the Russian moujiks. Allai, as he was called, was a man about 6 feet 3 inches in height, hard and wiry in build, who unfortunately spoke no single word of any other language than his own Lesghian Tartar. The ‘starost’ (elder) warned me to beware of him, for, in spite of his gentle ways and guileless manner, Allai was suspected of knowing a great deal more of the brigands than was exactly to his credit. Still, brigand or not, it mattered very little to me, as Allai was evidently the only man who could serve my purpose, and I fancied I saw my way to securing myself and servant from any outrage which our guide could prevent. My plan was simply to arrange with him that for his and his brother’s services, together with the use of two horses for the first day, or for as far as travelling on horseback should be practicable, I was to pay him a certain sum, which sum, together with all my other valuables, having been safely deposited with a friend in the village, would only become his on my safe return from my trip. This agreement, together with the precaution of letting the Russian military authorities quartered in the village know whither I was bound, made me feel tolerably safe, even should Allai be head and chief of all the brigands from the Black Sea to theCaspian, and so, in spite of all the evil predictions of the ‘starost’ and his friends, my man and I, with Allai and his brother, set our faces to the blue mountains and jogged right merrily on our way next morning.
Our first resting-place was to be the Armenian mountain village of Gerdaoul. The road was beautiful in the extreme, though it required much beauty to make amends for its roughness. The greater part of the way our course lay over the bare bed of a mountain torrent, whose tortuous windings were everywhere full of great boulders, over which no beast could move at more than a foot’s pace. The hills, for the most part bare, were boldly broken and ragged in outline; at the top were frequent thickets of small firs and pomegranates, while every here and there small clumps of the same flecked the white hillsides. After surmounting this first range of hills, in which small game seemed to swarm, we came upon a table-land which separated us from the snow-capped range wherein our goal lay. On the very edge of this table-land hangs the village of Gerdaoul. The faces of the cottages composing it open out of the hillside; the roofs, mere white cones, rise out of the table-land above. Far more imposing to the eye appear numbers of haystacks, shaped like sugar-loaves, perched on high wooden scaffolds to save them from marauding buffaloes, or to give shelterto the owner’s cattle in storms or at night. Here, when Allai had made known who and what we were, the village elder came out to welcome me and bid me to his house, where, near a cheery hearth, on which the huge logs glowed, cushions and carpets and slippers invited to repose. Unluckily, none of the good men of the village spoke a word of anything but Tartar, of which Ivan knew but little, and I only the words picked up during the last two days. To the hungry man and the sportsman a knowledge of the native language is not, however, an absolute necessity, though it is an immense advantage. Signs go a long way, and amongst a race who care for sport as the Lesghian Tartars do, sympathy for a brother sportsman does the rest.
It was not long before tea was brought to me, and as one after another the swarthy villagers trooped in, I soon had quite a large assembly round me. Each man as he came in gave me a courteous greeting, and then, crossing his legs or drawing them up under him, so as to squat on his heels, he took up a meditative position on the floor. Amongst themselves they were very taciturn, and never spoke to me unless I made some remark to them. When I did, instead of being amused at my mutilation of their language, they looked grave and did their best to puzzle out my meaning amongst them. In the course of time a bowl ofscented water was brought me by my host, and, having washed my hands in it, he and his friends performed their own ablutions, though, their hands being all stained brown with some dye in use amongst them for the purpose, the washing had but little apparent effect. I noticed that all the Tartars and other inhabitants of Lesghia dyed their hands in this manner.
After the bowl had gone its rounds, some game I had shot, together with one of the chickens of Gerdaoul and a huge tray of boiled rice, was brought in. Everything was handed to me by the host himself, and his courtesy went so far that with his brown fingers he dexterously tore the fowl to pieces, and selecting the best, offered them to me. These people employed no table utensils except the silver bowl to wash in and the silver tray on which fowl, rice, and raisins, fried in butter, were all serveden masse. Every one helped himself in turn from the dish with his fingers, rolling the rice into a neat ball so as to scarcely drop a grain. Gladly would I have done the same, but for the first day or two I fancy more rice went down my neck than down my throat. The meal was followed by some capital native wine, at which my Lesghian guide looked askance, although I found afterwards that his scruples were not troublesome except in public,and his taste for strong drink only strengthened by occasional enforced abstinence.
After another ablution the meats were cleared away and pipes produced, when, to my horror, I found I had lost my tobacco pouch. However, lots of tobacco was soon forthcoming, and next morning a prettily knit purse for the fragrant weed, worked in purple and gold by the nimble fingers of one of the invisible daughters of the house, was presented to me. Anything more luxurious than a lounge on the cushion-covered carpets of Gerdaoul, with a ruddy hearth fire by your side, the good native wine to drink, and the best of tobacco to smoke, with a crowd of picturesquely wild fellows around you, and a distant view of the mountains through the open doorway, it has seldom been my lot to enjoy, and it was far into the night before I could make up my mind to leave it all for the realms of sleep.
Gerdaoul—Shooting partridges—Native wine-vaults—Expedition among the hills—Native houses—An inhospitable village—A dangerous ride—A welcome reception—Shepherd-boys—The Lesghians—Russian love for the Czar—Unsuitable education—Mountain-climbing—Magnificent scenery—Red deer—Vegetation—A chamois—A weary descent—A happy people—Photographing the scenery—A ‘baboushka’—‘Developing’ our photographs—A mountain châlet—The snow peaks—Wild goats and sheep—Difficult mountaineering—An alluring chase—Suspended over a precipice—A bleak night’s lodging—Mountain turkeys—Black pheasants—Lammergeiers—Advice to travellers—Return to Goktchai.
Gerdaoul—Shooting partridges—Native wine-vaults—Expedition among the hills—Native houses—An inhospitable village—A dangerous ride—A welcome reception—Shepherd-boys—The Lesghians—Russian love for the Czar—Unsuitable education—Mountain-climbing—Magnificent scenery—Red deer—Vegetation—A chamois—A weary descent—A happy people—Photographing the scenery—A ‘baboushka’—‘Developing’ our photographs—A mountain châlet—The snow peaks—Wild goats and sheep—Difficult mountaineering—An alluring chase—Suspended over a precipice—A bleak night’s lodging—Mountain turkeys—Black pheasants—Lammergeiers—Advice to travellers—Return to Goktchai.
The entire population of Gerdaoul is Armenian, and the village, like most Armenian villages, is a thriving one. The Armenians are almost as good colonists as the Germans; thrifty, sober, hard-working, and astute, they are invariably better off than their neighbours, who as invariably call them thieves, and detest them heartily. In the case of the Armenians of Gerdaoul I hoped they wronged them, for I was certainly very hospitably received and honestly treated there. The women of the village kept out of our way for the most part, though we constantly caught glimpses of theirfigures flitting about, busy with some household work, bringing home the cattle, or carpet-making.
Before almost every house stood a large frame, constructed after the manner of the wool-work frames of English ladies, only that it was as large almost as the entire face of the hut. On these, without any copy to work from, the Armenian villagers worked those carpets, which are sold in Tiflis as Persian of a second quality, or as avowedly Armenian, from Shusha or Shemakha.
There is not unfrequently another and a smaller frame covered with canvas, on which are daubs of a brilliant colour, standing in the doorway beside the carpet frame. This is for quite another purpose, and is the property of the young men of the establishment. Armed with this gaudy shield and his old gun the Armenian fowler will procure as many red-legs as he needs for the pot. Themodus operandiis as follows. A covey of birds having been found, the man approaches with his shield in front of him, so that from the first the birds never see their enemy. When the attention of the covey has been secured, the gunner stops, and planting his shield before him, watches the birds through a loophole in its centre. At first they probably retire before the strange thing that comes towards them, but as soon as it stops they stop too. Then perhaps the shield is gradually drawn back; as gradually, with heads craning forward, the birdsfollow. For some time there is a struggle between curiosity and fear; eventually curiosity gains the day, and the whole covey comes up to within some twenty yards of the snare, eagerly talking the matter over amongst themselves as they come. Suddenly the gunner gives a shrill whistle: instantly all the birds run together; and in that moment the charge of shot cuts through them, and leaves two-thirds of their number dead on the ground. Yet so foolish are they that, some of the Armenians told me, unless the gunner showed himself, the covey would keep reassembling round the snare until the last bird was killed. Thus covey after covey has been destroyed; and although the red-legged partridge is as numerous in these hills as mosquitoes in summer, still the Government has thought fit to pronounce the use of these deadly engines illegal, and to impose a heavy fine for the use of them. Of course in these hills the law is a dead letter, and the Armenians will very soon exterminate the bird that now swarms around them.
As I strolled through the village before continuing my journey, I noticed several large mounds rising abruptly in the streets, like large ant-hills. These I found on inquiry were the doors to the Armenian villagers’ cellars, and beneath each of them lay buried many a huge red jar of good native wine. Easy as it would be to open theseunguarded vaults and abstract the contents, the wine is perfectly safe, as the community is too small for theft to escape unnoticed. At the birth of every man child the wealthy Armenian buys and buries a large jar of wine, and this is not unearthed until the son’s coming of age or marriage needs celebration. I should be glad to be present at one of these feasts, as the wine of the country only requires to be kept long enough to render it excellent.
Our own cellar on the march was all comprised in a goat’s-skin, about the size when full of an ordinary pillow, with a wooden nipple at one corner. This for safety’s sake I always carried on my own shoulders, and used for a pillow at night.
Having refilled this portable cellar and thanked our hosts, we resumed our ride across the table-land to the hills beyond. The day was December 18, the air brisk and fresh, with scarcely any frost in it—so mild indeed that during the ride I noticed several clouded yellow and small copper butterflies. The only life on this table-land seemed to be that of hawks and hooded crows, which were in great force. Duels between kestrels and crows recurred continually, and to my surprise the crow generally had the best of it. Once I came upon a grand specimen of the falcon, and rode as near as I could to the place where he was sitting, to get a shot at him, hoping to add him to my collection of birds. Tomy surprise he let me come within a dozen yards of him, and then wheeling slowly up, pitched some two hundred yards further off. I followed him: again he waited, letting me come much closer before he got up, and flying only a few yards before coming down again. This time when I approached him he had evidently turned sulky, and absolutely refused to budge until I struck at him with my whip, when he slowly moved away with a dead quail still in his talons. I could not help admiring his sullen pluck, so I left him to finish his dinner in peace.
Once out of the plain, the whole scene changed. This second range was one of genuine mountains well wooded, full of loud-voiced rushing torrents, tall columns of white mist, and hoary trees, from which the beard moss hung in grey festoons. In front of us the lords of Daghestan raised their glistening white crowns, so close as almost to seem to overshadow us. After riding some miles along the side of one of these watercourses, we came in the afternoon to a Tartar village, famous for its silk. Here on all sides were fine orchards, magnificent walnut trees, and endless rows of mulberries, on the leaves of which the silk-worms are fed. The houses were of a different character to those by the post-road and in the plain. No more mud huts, but rather châlets, the lower half of composition (mud and stone) and the top story of beam and wattle, covered by a wooden or thatched roof. Aswe rode through the main street, women drew up their white wrappings round their eyes, and scuttled away like rabbits as you pass through their warren. On the outskirts of the village was a large graveyard full of tall trees and grey old stones, on which the shadows fell; while through the half light a woman, in the white robe peculiar to her people, recalled a hundred and one ghost stories, which had frightened me into good behaviour as a child.
Just outside the village I shot a fine grey squirrel, the first squirrel I have seen in the Caucasus, where their skins are much prized, the furriers of Tiflis demanding as much as one rouble seventy-five copecks for such a skin as the one I secured. As the light failed, and we were beginning to feel the corners and inequalities in our saddles in a way that told us plainly how tired we were getting, another village came in sight; and here we decided to rest, though Allai did not by any means approve of the suggestion. On asking for food we were politely cursed to our faces; and when at last, in the middle of the bazaar, we found a ‘duchan’ (inn), it was of so uninviting an aspect that a good appetite was necessary to tempt a traveller inside it. Under a wide awning was a room open on three sides to within some four feet of the ground, and inside this enclosure was a kind of dresser sloping gradually from the back wall of the placeto the window ledge. On this the customers sat, whilst below them and beside them the cooking of ‘sushliks’ went on. As soon as we were inside and seated, a host of the worst-looking scoundrels I ever saw swarmed round the place, to stare at and make remarks upon us. Never were the lions in the Zoo more eagerly and impertinently watched at feeding time than were we, and certainly never by such an ill-looking set as the owners of the shifting eyes and high cheek-bones who surged round us. The faces were worthy of a Chinese illustration of hell, and I know of nothing else to which to compare them. In their anxiety to get a good look at us, they even broke down the wooden walls of the house. All the time their tongues were busy, and from the way in which they constantly spat and gesticulated, their remarks could hardly have been favourable to us. Unwisely I helped myself from my goatskin, which gave great offence to the crowd, and evil and angry were the looks cast upon us; so that I felt that if they could but know that it was pork that filled out the sides of my saddle-bags, my fate would have been an unpleasant one. My man at this juncture lost his temper, and became abusive to a hook-nosed individual who had for some time past been peering down his throat. All I could do was of no avail; Ivan would not be pacified, and so angry did the ever-increasing crowd become that I was not at all surprised when a messenger arrivedfrom the village governor or elder, warning us that we must on no account dream of passing the night in the village, for that although he had every desire to protect us, the people were beyond his control, and we should inevitably get our throats cut. So, though the clouds were gathering black, and the evening drawing in apace, we left the ‘duchan,’ and went forward farther and farther into the shadows of the mountains, leaving behind an angry murmuring crowd that for one rash act would have worried us as terriers worry rats.
And now, as we trudged wearily up the pass, Allai rode up to me, and, with many ejaculations, besought me not only to ride with my gun at the ready, but the moment I caught a glimpse of a man behind either bush or boulder to fire at him first, and ask questions after. His fear was that some of the rascals of the village we had just left would get on ahead, form an ambuscade, and fire upon us as we approached. He himself was evidently determined to use his gun whenever he got a chance; and, in spite of all I could say, made us all uncomfortable by his nervousness throughout the journey; the more so, as we had opportunities of seeing that in most things Allai was as hardy as other men. All things have an end—even the windings of a mountain torrent; and at last, when our limbs were aching with fatigue, a tiny hamlet in the deepest recess of that shadowy ravine cheeredus with the hope of rest and refreshment. Two more minutes spent in warding off the attacks of a clamorous host of dogs; then a door opens, a flaming brand is held up, a swarthy face peers into the equally dusky countenance of our guide, and amid many greetings, we are ushered into the one-roomed cottage of a Lesghian Tartar shepherd.
Cushions and carpets were soon arranged by the hearth, slippers being brought for me; and then the hospitable good fellows set to work to serve us with their best. In the room were but few signs of civilisation—nothing, in fact, that would have been strange in the tents of the Ishmaelites of old. The men were rough and tanned to a copper-colour by the winds and weather of their wild mountain home. Their clothes were rough and ragged, and they were all armed to the teeth, never laying their kinjals aside from sunrise to sunrise; but their eyes were broad honest eyes, that looked the stranger steadily in the face; their manner to me was deferential as to an honoured guest, but perfectly self-possessed and confident.
The women of the house had retired on our entry, and for the whole of our sojourn with these people, they remained in a kind of outbuilding attached to the cottage, vouchsafing us only a rare glimpse of two very pretty faces, which were lost to sight in the folds of their envious mufflers almost before they were seen. After the chickenand rice had been cleared away, two little Lesghian boys came in to have a look at their father’s guests; and never in my life have I seen such sturdy, handsome youngsters as these two sun-browned little shepherds of seven and eight respectively. Early in the morning, before the sun had risen, these two young mountaineers were astir, waked by the bell of Shaitan, the long-bearded chief of their herd of goats. With crooks in hand, in rough togas of sheepskin, I watched the fine little fellows leading their hundred or more goats up steep mountain tracks, to pastures that hung far above the hamlet in the glen; and often during the day we caught glimpses of them and their charge on some precipitous pasture, or heard the distant notes of the rough flutes with which they amused themselves.
With such early training as this—taught at seven to rely on their own resources, and take charge of such wilful beasts as goats on a mountain pasture—it is small wonder that Lesghians have numbered amongst them such leaders as Schamyl and Mansur Bey. Nor is it wonderful that, passing year after year of their lives in the solitary grandeur of their own mountains, they become the priest-led, superstitious people they are. Schamyl the leader would have had but little influence had he not also been Schamyl the prophet, the divinely protected. I have frequently heard Russians say that the onlyreason that the Circassian war lasted as long as it did was, that it was the policy of Russia to keep the Caucasus as a training school for her young officers and raw recruits; but, though this has been often repeated by men who were in a position to know something of the matter, I would rather believe that the fiery zeal, tough sinews, and impracticable mountain homes of the Lesghians were the cause, than the calculating cruelty of their enemies. Be that as it may, the Lesghians of to-day—such at least as remain of them—are an honest race of sturdy mountaineers, who have little love for Russia, and concern themselves in no way with the outside world. Those with whom I stayed never travelled, even as far as Goktchai, more than twice a year, and, I daresay, don’t know yet that the Czar Alexander II. is dead. But the evil spirit that wrought his shameful murder was never cherished in a Lesghian or Tscherkess bosom, any more than in the breasts of his own Russian moujiks. I have known the common people of Russia for three or four years, and known some of them well: for it was ever my wont to put up in peasants’ huts, and share the moujik’s black bread when out shooting near his village, and I have never heard anything but love and respect for the Emperor from a poor man yet. The moujik and the Tscherkess of to-day are not as tongue-tied as some would have us believe; andvery few indeed are the great men of Russia whom they do not detest and abuse; but the Emperor is still to them a loving father, in whose tender mercy—if they could only get at it through the crowd of officials who fence him round, and hamper the effects of his just will—the moujik entirely confides.
If those Russians with whom I have talked on Nihilism knew anything of the subject, the Emperor’s great mistake was not the freeing of the serfs—though by that he aroused the hostility of the wealthy boyar class—but the reduction of the fees of the universities to such a degree as to render a first-rate education possible to thousands who, in after life, would have to fill positions for which they were too highly educated, and in which their excessive education would only create discontent. Is it not just possible that the excessive education which we force upon the working classes of England at the present time may have a somewhat similar effect? I plead guilty to knowing very little of politics; but when I hear on all sides the complaint that domestic servants are becoming an extinct race, having grown too fine for the state of life to which (to quote the fine old catechism phrase) it has pleased God to call them; when I hear of the difficulty of obtaining agricultural labourers, or old-fashioned country servants; when every woman can play the piano, and none cancook a potato, I begin to wonder if education may not be carried too far, and whether certain classes would not be happier without it, and their work better done. There is an old adage that ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing;’ and even in England we cannot pretend to do more than give the working classes that ‘little knowledge’ which produces the ill effects that a perfect education might or might not cure.
But these are subjects beyond me, and I escape gladly to the mountain side. When the first pale ray of the dawn crept through the one tiny window of our ‘serai,’ we left our couches, and went down to lave our hands and faces in the icy waters of the mountain torrent below. During the night a slight fall of snow had made the valley white, and a sharp frost had grizzled the long beard moss on the mountain trees. We did not stay for breakfast, but just collected all our impedimenta, determining to do two hours’ climbing before sitting down to eat and drink, and fasten on those abominable iron claws, without which the rest of the climb would be impracticable.
For one like myself, but little used to mountaineering, the first two hours’ climb was very weary work; and when at last we stopped to rest and breakfast, the high peaks seemed further off than ever. Growing close to the boulder round which we breakfasted was a medlar-tree, whosehalf frozen fruit was deliciously refreshing after our toil. But Allai gave us little time to rest, so that having hurried through our meal, and spent a few minutes in watching the sun battling his way through the mountain mists, we fastened on the climbing-irons and pursued our way up steep slopes covered with forests of beeches, whose dry fallen leaves scattered from under our feet and revealed the treacherous black ice beneath.
Here we came on bear tracks, and heard the cry of the red deer in some beech woods on a neighbouring mountain side. As we peered over an abyss we caught sight of three ‘marral,’ as the natives call them, far out of shot on the other side. To get to them would have been a day’s work; so we could only look and long; while the wild cry of another stag, which we could not see, reverberated through the woods, and made our hearts jump at the sound. Far down in the abyss the wooded tops of smaller mountains rose like islands from a tumbling sea of clouds like those we call woolsacks at home; a sea that, as evening approaches, rises higher and higher, until the whole mountain top is submerged in its cold waves. But here above the clouds, out of sight of the earth which they hid, all was bright as an Italian summer, in spite of the snow and ice, until four o’clock in the afternoon. Here, beautifying the snowy forests by their presence, I found two varieties of primula: one, thecommonest, a deep lilac; the other, a pure white; we also found some sweet violets, which, together with the primulas, made a handsome bouquet for Christmas time. The trees in the woods we passed through were almost entirely beech, everywhere covered with the beard moss, which gave them a quaint old-world look; amongst them were a few medlars and pears; while underfoot the blackberry briars made our upward progress difficult. Bracken and ‘trichomanes’ were the only representatives of the fern family which I noticed during the day.
On this our first essay on the mountain-side we only just reached the upper edge of the wooded belt, and it was here, when we had scarcely left the trees behind us, that I got my only shot during the day. Passing through a small recess in the mountain-side, where all was still dark and chill, the sun not having penetrated there since night left it, I heard a bound and a rustle, and a chamois gave me a fair running shot, of which I did not make the most, only wounding, and eventually losing him, after a day wasted in pursuit. So we turned back sore-footed and empty-handed, trudging down the mountain to the rising mist waves that crept up to meet us, and, plunging into them, felt for a time like men lost in the night, where neither the peaks of the mountains above, nor the fires of the valley beneath, were visible to us;where trees took weird shapes, like those in Doré’s pictures; where all was dank, and dark, and chill, so that a half wonder grew upon us as to whether anywhere down beneath a bright fire, cushions, and comfort could be waiting for us.
At last the house fires glimmered from below like stars through a night of fog, and hurrying on, slipping and stumbling over the wet grass, sliding off our greasy leather stockings to bump along for twenty yards or so on our aching shoulders, we reached our Lesghian house, and had soon forgotten (except when the hateful clamps caught our eye) all the petty tribulations which had interfered with our appreciation of the magnificent mountain scenery.
These Lesghians lead a happy life, though (or perhaps, because) a simple one. A flock of goats find shepherd’s work for the hardy handsome boys to do. A field of corn just above the house on a little table-land keeps the family in bread. A tree which grows in the crannies of the rock, in appearance like a small sloe-bush, supplies a decoction made from its root, and leaves so like tea as to have deceived me into believing that it was what it seemed. The industry of the women strews the floor with a superfluity of carpets, cushions, and mats; makes slippers for the men, cloth for such clothes as are not made of sheepskin, and a delicious drink from the medlars that grow on themountain. The mountain sends them down the purest of water, finds them in unlimited fuel, and provides them with a dessert as varied as that of the richest Russian in the land: medlars, beechnuts, chestnuts, walnuts, pears, and berries of a dozen different kinds. Their religion forbids them to drink wine, so that, never having used it, they do not feel the want of it. Apples may be bought in the neighbouring village of the largest size and most luscious quality for threepence per hundred. Pheasants and red-legs abound, and are easily caught or shot (though I never heard of snares being used for them), while red deer and mountain sheep are for the bolder and stronger among the young men. Wild swine come all too close to the cornfield in autumn, and in slaying of these the Lesghian not only protects his harvest, but obtains leather of the best quality for his mocassins. Bear’s fat furnishes the lamps (made after the fashion of the sepulchral lamps of Greece) with fuel; and the rheumatic patient with an external application that beats Elliman’s embrocation out of sight; while those who suffer from colds take it internally, as English people take gruel, and, I dare say, with as good a result. From the beard moss the Lesghian makes a dye with which to stain his hands, and make them a manly brown, or ‘good fast washing colour,’ as the haberdashers have it; while if he be a dandy, he borrows from it a darker huefor his moustache, and for the solitary love-lock which his religion and his barber permit him to retain. Best of all virtues, the Lesghians are cleanly. In the whole of my stay amongst them, my night’s rest was never broken by the antics of insect gymnasts or the attacks of burlier foes.
The Sunday we spent in the mountain hamlet, each according to his own fancy. Allai went at dawn into the higher peaks to look for traces of game. Ivan spent his morning cross-legged on the floor washing clothes; and at mid-day we all three met on an eminence some two hours’ climb from the valley, to photograph some of the scenery with one of Rouch’s patent dry-plate apparatuses. On our way we met the village hadji, who was vastly interested, and promised to come in and see more of us and our photographs in the evening.
In the valley the thermometer registered 70°, while on the higher peaks, from which we tried to take photographs, it registered 54° in the sun; meanwhile the grass below was matted with ice which showed no signs of thawing. We gathered quite a fine bouquet on our way up—primulas, violets, the white blossom of the wild strawberry, forget-me-nots, crimson clover, and a single golden buttercup. As for the photography, we chose some excellent views, and took them very carefully, going away quite satisfied that those at homewould be able to share our enthusiasm for the scenery of Lesghia.
On our return we were met by an admiring crowd, amongst whom for a few minutes one woman remained, curiosity in her case overcoming the modest scruples of her race. We made the best of our opportunity, and photographed her promptly; but alas! it was only the ‘baboushka.’
As the ‘baboushka’ is a variety of the female race to the best of my knowledge unknown in England, I may as well take this opportunity of describing her. She is quite an institution in Russia, no household being complete without her. Generally she is the mother of the paterfamilias, sometimes only his mother-in-law, at others merely an aged female relative who wants a home and is willing to undertake the housekeeping in return for one. Whatever she is, wherever she comes from, there she is, the motive managing power of every moujik’s home: in manner quiet, giving precedence to the wife, making no complaint when the husband gets drunk, no stirrer-up of strife, no busybody, but just a quiet old crone, with an eye on the children, an immense capacity for drudgery, and sufficient experience to help the wife in all her little troubles. Her corner is on the top of the ‘petchka’ (oven), whither she retires early in the evening, emerging thence to get the samovar ready long before daylight. Her weaknesses arevodka and the papiros, and her greatest happiness a village wedding, at which she generally assists as one of a kind of chorus which I have described before. It is needless to add, perhaps, that in appearance she is sufficiently gruesome to hold the youngest child in awe of her.
Having photographed the ‘baboushka,’ we went in to our evening meal, during and after which guests dropped in rapidly, until we had quite a crowded reception. Photography was evidently the attraction; and as soon as our pipes were lit the aged hadji moved that the photographs be exhibited. To comply with this request it became necessary to ‘develop.’ Now to stand behind a tripod with a black rag over your head, and direct the machine as required, Ivan and myself had found fairly easy; but when with chemicals and other diablerie we had to make manifest the results of our mumming on the hillside, we began to grow nervous. Still we put as good a face upon it as we could, and made at least a show of understanding what we were about. The fire-place was covered over with a bourka, the lamp extinguished, and the wondering guests seated in a circle, with strict injunctions not to shout above a whisper or stir save at their peril. Then a candle was prevailed upon to remain on an inverted dish within the threefold walls of a yellow baize screen, whence it shed a ghastly light upon all the inmates of thehut. Seated cross-legged, with a solemn face like an owl by daylight, sat the chief photographer, and Ivan served him with a due gravity. Bowls of water, and bottles of various baleful drugs, lent an air of devilment to the whole scene, which, with the wild faces round, was suggestive rather of witchcraft than photography. The first plate produced having been carefully washed, was subjected to the developing fluid. Thrice and four times was the dark liquid washed backwards and forwards over the pure surface. Interest in our guests rose to excitement; diffidence in ourselves to panic. To and fro, to and fro went the black water, but no sign of any sublime peak or picturesque village was slowly shadowed forth upon the glass.
Horrid suspicions began to take possession of us. Surely no mistake could have happened this time. True, we remembered that on the only other occasion on which we attempted photography we certainly did make a group of Tartars miserably quiet for a quarter of an hour, in all sorts of picturesque (and uncomfortable) attitudes in the main street of Kertch; that we also kept ourselves and our friends’ servants at work for two weary hours in preparations for developing, after which we opened the slides and found that no plates had ever been inserted. But this time there was no mistake about the plates. One after another we opened the slides and poured the developing fluidover their contents; but alas! none of that ‘flashing’ appearance of which Mr. Rouch so emphatically speaks resulted therefrom. On the contrary, the surface of the plates maintained an exasperating sameness in appearance.
At last, however, when almost all the plates had been laid by in disgust, something dark which would not wash out, and so small that even Allai could not quite manage to put his thumb exactly on it at the first attempt, did appear. What applause it met with; what speculations as to what it might represent. We distinctly remembered to have photographed certain majestic snow-peaks, to do which we had almost broken our hearts with uphill toil; we knew we had photographed a village from a bend in a mountain torrent at the cost of wet feet; but what was this? Could it be Allai’s hat? Might it be a back view of the stooping Ivan? Could it possibly be a fancy portrait of the photographer himself as he appeared under his robe of mystery?
Whatever it was, we explained to the credulous Lesghians that, after undergoing a magnifying process at home, it would no doubt convey a correct idea of the scenery of Daghestan to English minds. With this explanation we were thankful to see they were content, and silently resolved to give away our photographic apparatus at the first opportunity.
The next entry in the rough log I kept at thistime is made after my return from Daghestan. On December 23, Ivan, Allai, two other Lesghians, and myself started for the higher peaks, in which the tûr, or mountain sheep, are said to dwell. After a day of hard climbing we reached a ruined bothy used by mountain shepherds in the height of summer, which marks the highest point to which any of the neighbouring flocks attain even then. When we reached it, the roof had been partly blown off, and the walls broken in; snow surrounded us as far as the eye could see; snow had formed a drift inside the hut on the side opposite the breach in the wall; snow in a broken wooden trencher was being melted with difficulty over a wood fire in the middle of the hut by one of our men for tea; while, without, the hard profiles of the snow peaks surrounded us on all sides.
We had started that morning at five, and when we reached the bothy the starlight was glimmering on the snow. Once during the day I had had a glimpse of a flock of wild goats, in colour black, with fine horns and tremendous beards. They were within 150 yards, and I might easily have secured one, but unluckily was persuaded by my man to let them come a little closer, so as to make assurance doubly sure. For a moment they disappeared round a large boulder, and I waited for the leading goat to appear on my side of the mass, determined to fire as soon as he did so. But myhopes were doomed to disappointment. The next I saw of those goats they were going like mad things down the mountain-side a quarter of a mile off. Several times we saw tracks of bears, and once I heard one scrambling away, within shot of me probably, but I could not catch sight of him in time amongst the fir-trees. Another time we came upon a steep ascent, from the top of which a shower of small stones apprised us of the flight of three tûr; but though my men caught a glimpse of them, they were too far off even had I seen them, which I did not. My man Ivan had a long shot at a chamois and missed him, so that, after a hard day’s climbing, we reached the bothy empty-handed.
Once fairly amongst the snow and ice on the bare rocks, cutting steps for our ascent, and climbing rather with our hands than with our feet, I did not so much mind it; though running across a rattling moraine as it shifted from under us was a new and startling experience to me. The almost perpendicular grass slopes which we had to cross before getting clear of the forest were the greatest trials we had. Under the guidance of Adolphe Folliguet, of Chamounix, I have since tried mountaineering in Switzerland, after the tourists have all returned, and a few chamois may be seen not further from Chamounix than the Aiguille Dru; but though he does not choose the easiesttracks when in pursuit of his favourite game, or stop too often to help his less goat-like followers, I never crossed with him such difficult places as these Lesghian grass-slopes. Too hard to give you any hold for your alpenstock, the short fine grass slips from under the iron claws of your clamps; the butt of the rifle slung across your shoulders comes in collision with the steep bank and almost hurls you into space; the claws of the clamp catch in your other boot as you cautiously pass one foot over another, and at every step it seems a toss-up whether you go or stay.
It required, then, no small inducement to tempt me to continue my toil when the end of the day’s journey had been reached. But the inducement was there. As we stood for a moment at the door of the hut to take in some of the grandeur of the scenery which surrounded us, seven glorious red deer came tossing their heads as they followed one another round the boulder of a neighbouring crag. Between us and them was a great gulf fixed, which could only be crossed by a difficult and tedious climb; but the stag’s magnificent head was a prize worth trying for; so, tired though I was, I took one of the Tartars with me, and as soon as the herd had passed behind a ridge, started on their track. Following close in their steps, we had to cross a sheet of frozen snow hanging like a pentice over the edge of a bottomless abyss. Myguide went first, scooping hollows with the butt of his rifle in which to put his feet, and in his steps I followed with comparative ease, though it required a good head to look down from our perilous pathway.
Still the excitement of the chase kept me up; and once across this long stretch of snow the going was easy enough, until we came to a small chasm which had to be crossed by jumping. Had we not looked too long at it the jump would not have appalled us, as it was easily within the powers of the most third-rate athlete. As it was, it was not without a good deal of screwing up that I got myself to the sticking-point, and gave my guide a lead across. After this I went on by myself, my Lesghian going back, in despair of ever getting nearer to the deer. For nearly an hour I continued to follow up the track, expecting every time I peered over a ridge to find the herd in range just on the other side; and so alluring was the chase that even now, looking back, I cannot help feeling that if I had only gone on to that next bluff I should have had my reward.
But the human frame won’t go on moving for ever, however much the will may desire it to, and my unlucky limbs kept reminding me by certain aches and stumbles that they had almost reached the limit of their powers of endurance. So all unwilling I gave in and turned back. And nowmy difficulties began. The climb back, like all such climbs, seemed twice as long as it had appeared in coming. My eyes were getting heavy and feet like lead. There was no game ahead to allure me forward, no guide by my side to advise or direct my steps. I began to regret my persistent pursuit of the red deer. Still, in spite of my fatigue, all went well until I began to cross the roof-like sheet of snow between myself and the hut. Here the light seemed worse than it had been in coming, and the footholds hard to distinguish. When halfway across I very nearly concluded my travels, not only for that night but for ever. One of my feet slipped out of the hole in which I had placed it, and brought me on my face on the snow. Instinctively I fell inwards, driving my rifle-barrels with all my strength into the snow, and there, for the worst minute of my life, I hung, one foot still in one of the steps and the other leg hanging loose on the smooth surface, not daring to lift myself, for fear lest any extra pressure should break my remaining foothold or loosen the grip of my rifle in the snow, and so send me trebogging down the slope, over the edge of which I should infallibly shoot into eternity. However, it was Christmas Eve, and some good angel buoyed me up; and when in fear and trembling I slowly made the effort, I did with difficulty regain the upright position, and in a few more minutes got off thattreacherous snow-slope, with a feeling of relief that almost compensated for the trouble it had cost me.
In the hut the scene was anything but suggestive of Christmas cheer. Thawed snow and a little stale bread was our only fare; our only music a bitter wind, until now unnoticed, that whistled through the gaps in our walls. Even the Lesghians could not sleep, though they lay almost in the embers of the fire, the pungent smoke from which effectually blinded us for the time. All night long we moved about like wild beasts in a cage, in a vain endeavour to keep warm. Now and then one of us would sip the few drops of thawed snow from the half-burnt fragment of the wooden bowl on the fire. Once or twice a few minutes’ sleep came to us, but they were soon ended with a start and a shiver that effectually brought us back from dreamland.
I don’t think any one slept that night: the stars were almost as bright as ever when we left the hut to warm ourselves by exercise, and make believe that a new day had begun. For some few minutes before we left our bleak night’s lodging shrill whistlings on all sides had made me believe that other human beings besides ourselves were astir. As our eyes got accustomed to the light the true source of the noise was revealed. All round us groups of that great grey bird theLesghians call the mountain turkey were busily feeding, and vigorously whistling as they fed. Tame as they were, I found that shooting them in that dim light with an ‘express’ rifle was no easy work, and the only one I killed fell in a crevasse, in which we were obliged, hungry though we were, to leave him. Had I tried when I first left the hut I might have easily killed several, as they would let me approach within a dozen yards of them, so tame were they. But at that early hour we had hopes that along some one of the well-beaten tracks near the hut we might see tûr or wild goat descending to the pastures below; and with this possibility in view we let the turkeys alone until the coming dawn had made them comparatively wild.
Before dawn we saw some birds which the mountaineers call black pheasants—birds with a flight and shape in every way justifying their name. These, as well as the turkeys, disappeared as if by magic at dawn. The peaks, which had been loud with their calls and alive with their bustling forms half an hour ago, were now still as if they had never known them, and but for their tracks upon the snow, one might have fancied they were mere nightmares which the daylight had dispersed. The cause of their sudden disappearance Allai pointed out to me in the forms of two broad-winged lammergeiers that came with thefirst glow of morning, sailing on steady pinions round the mountain top.