Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus
by Clive Phillipps-Wolley · English · Gutenberg #48835 · 532,388 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus
Author: Clive Phillipps-Wolley
Release date: April 30, 2015 [eBook #48835]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPORT IN THE CRIMEA AND CAUCASUS ***
SPORT
IN THE
CRIMEA AND CAUCASUS
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
SPORT
IN
THE CRIMEA AND CAUCASUS
BY
CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY, F.R.G.S.
LATE BRITISH VICE-CONSUL AT KERTCH
[Illustration]
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1881
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
SPORT IN THE CRIMEA.
PAGE
Outfit--The droshky--A merry party--The Straits of
Kertch--The steppe--Wild-fowl--Crops--The Malos--The ‘Starrie
Metchat’--Game--Tscherkess greyhounds--Stalking bustards--A
picnic--Night on the steppe 1
CHAPTER II.
CRASNOI LAIS.
A frozen sea--Swarms of wild-fowl--The Indo-European
telegraph--Sledging on the Azov--A desolate
scene--Taman--Journey inland--Tumerūk--Hotels--A dangerous
sleep--Foxes--Wolves--A hasty retreat--Ekaterinodar--Supper in
the forest of Crasnoi Lais--An exciting night’s sport--Driving
the forest--Cossack beaters--Wild deer--Other game--The
bag--Rations of vodka--A Cossack orgy--Vulpine sagacity--Wolf
stories--Return to Kertch 15
CHAPTER III.
ODESSA AND MISKITCHEE.
Mountaineers and Shikaree--Outfit--Journey from London to
Odessa--Snipe-shooting on the Dnieper--A drunken yemstchik--A
collision--Prince Vorontzoff--Aloupka--Yalta--Livadia and
Orianda--Miskitchee lake--A Tartar butcher--Native hovels--A
shooting party on the lake--A dreary bivouac 41
CHAPTER IV.
THE RED FOREST AND BLACK SEA COAST.
Journey to Taman--Downpour on the steppe--Tscherkess
bourkas--Long-tailed horses--Absence of cultivation--The
Moujiks--Causes of political discontent in
Russia--Veneration for the Czar--Cheapening supplies--A
Russian writer on Englishwomen--Post stations--A terrible
tragedy--Hotels--Ekaterinodar--The fair--Russian
tea--Russian police--Bivouacking with Cossack
foresters--Exciting sport--Shooting a white boar--Sad
disappointment--Pheasant-shooting--A Cossack colonel--An
execrable journey--Caucasian women--Great consumption of
supplies--In a Cossack saddle--Mineral springs--A scorching
bath--Lotus-eaters--Incidents of the road--An insolent
Tartar--Parting 59
CHAPTER V.
HEIMAN’S DATCH.
Duapsè--Tscherkess emigrants--By the sea-shore--Superb
scenery--Drunken guides--A Cossack station--Bears--Take
possession of a ruined villa--Hiding our provisions--Wild
swine--Astray in the jungle--A rough breakfast--Boars
in file--A missfire--Forest fruit--Lose our horses--A
panther--Night-watch--Shooting in the dark--On the
trail--_Barse_--A friendly Cossack--Deserted by my servants 93
CHAPTER VI.
GOLOVINSKY.
Lunch in the forest--Picturesque riding--A spill--Telegraph
shanty at Golovinsky--Robinson Crusoe--Native guns--Tracks
of game--Multitudes of pheasants---Paucity of native
hunters--Tscherkess mocassins--Experiences of forest
life--Killing a bear--Cooking him--Another bag--A lost
chance--Anecdotes of ‘Michael Michaelovitch’--Shooting a boar 110
CHAPTER VII.
DENSE COVERTS.
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 132
CHAPTER VIII.
HUNTING WITH DOGS.
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 145
CHAPTER IX.
RETURN TO 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’hôte_ at the Petersburg
hotel--The treasury--Droshky-racing--A beaten rival--Caucasian
fish--Arrival at Kertch 165
CHAPTER X.
TIFLIS.
The Russo-Turkish War--Sukhoum--Alleged abundance of
game--Poti--My fellow-travellers--Sport in Kutais--Arrival
in Tiflis--Hotels and other features of the town--The
British Consul--Organ-grinders in request--A ‘happy
day’--Drinking habits--Native wines--German settlers--Shooting
expedition--A caravan--Kariâs steppe--A lawless
country--Fevers--Antelope-hunting--An unpleasant adventure:
running for dear life--A wounded antelope--The lions of
Tiflis--Museum and bazaar--Schoolboys--Prevalence of uniforms
and orders--Phenomena of Russian life--Buying a travelling
pass--Professor Bryce’s ascent of Ararat 186
CHAPTER XI.
EN ROUTE FOR DAGHESTAN.
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 231
CHAPTER XII.
THE LESGHIAN MOUNTAINS.
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--Lammergiers--Advice
to travellers--Return to Goktchai 255
CHAPTER XIII.
FROM GOKTCHAI TO LENKORAN.
Rough travelling--Shooting by the way--Shemakha
and Aksu--Tarantasses and post-roads--A wretched
station--Mud volcanoes and naphtha springs--Bustards--On
the road to Salian--Swarms of wild-fowl--A rascally
official--Disappointed hopes--A good Samaritan--Rival
hosts--Asiatic fever--The Mooghan steppe--Pelicans and
myriads of other birds--Tartar orgies--Banished secretaries:
the Molochans and Skoptsi--Arrival at Lenkoran--A Persian
gunsmith--Fellow-sportsmen 287
CHAPTER XIV.
SHORES OF THE CASPIAN.--RETURN TO TIFLIS.
Lenkoran--Abundance of game--Eryvool forest--Native fowlers--A
hunting lodge--Swarming coverts--Wild boar--A paradise for
sportsmen--Pigs at bay--‘Old Shirka’ and his quarry--A dying
eagle--Caspian woodpeckers--Festive nights--Watching for a
tiger--Forest life by night--The eagle-owl and his prey--End of
a long vigil--The rainy season--The streets of Lenkoran--The
return journey to Tiflis--Adventure at Adji Kabool--Experiences
of post-travel--Bullying a station-master--Armenian
Protestants--Russian telegraph service--In miserable plight--A
spill over a precipice--Refitting our tarantasse--_Argumentum
ad hominem_--An awkward predicament--Chasing a
yemstchik--Renewed life at Tiflis--Great snowfall--Running
down antelope--The ‘black death’ 311
CHAPTER XV.
THE RAINS.
Poti--Chasing wild boar--Red-deer--Turks and
Cossacks--Sotcha--Lynxes--Game in the Caucasus--A hunting
party--A wounded sow--Beautiful scene--An unexpected bag--Our
_cuisine_--The ‘evil eye’--Overtaken by the rains--Our tent
inundated--Surrounded by wolves--Cheerless days--A terrible
catastrophe--Welcome help--Golovinsky--A wild scene--Eluding
the storm--Fording a torrent--A refuge--Scant supplies--Cossack
cradle-song--The Cossacks of to-day--Russian plantations--A
terrible ride--Struggling for life--Cossack loafers--Ride to
Duapsè--Forlorn days--Mad wolves--Wrestling a Tartar--Laid up
with fever--Return to England 340
_A verst is equal to three-quarters of an English mile._
SPORT IN THE CRIMEA AND THE CAUCASUS.
CHAPTER I.
SPORT IN THE CRIMEA.
Outfit--The droshky--A merry party--The Straits of
Kertch--The steppe--Wild-fowl--Crops--The Malos--The ‘Starrie
Metchat’--Game--Tscherkess greyhounds--Stalking bustards--A
picnic--Night on the steppe.
Scarcely a week’s journey from London, with delicious climates and
any quantity of game, it always seemed a marvel to me how few English
sportsmen ever found their way to the Crimea or Caucasus. It is
now something more than five years ago since I first made myself
acquainted with the breezy rosemary-clad steppes of the former, or
the low wooded hills on the Black Sea coast of the latter. For nearly
three years resident at Kertch, I had ample opportunity of testing
all the pleasures of the steppe, and a better shooting-ground for the
wild-fowler or man who likes a lot of hard work, with a plentiful and
varied bag at the end of his day, could nowhere be found. Of course
the sportsman in the Crimea must rough it to a certain extent, but
his roughing it, if he only has a civil tongue and cheery manner, will
be a good deal of the ‘beer and beefsteak’ order. The Russians are
hospitable to all men, especially to the sportsman; and the peasants,
even the Tartars, are cordial good fellows if taken the right way.
On the steppes you need rarely want for a roof overhead, if you prefer
stuffiness, smoke, and domestic insects to wild ones, with dew and the
night air. If you can put up with sour cream (very good food when you
are used to it), black bread, an arboose, fresh or half-pickled, with
a bumper of fearful unsweetened gin (vodka) to digest the foregoing,
you need never suffer hunger long. But for the most part sportsmen take
their food with them. Perhaps if my readers will let me, it would be
better to take them at once on to the steppe, and tell them all this
_en route_.
Imagine then that for the last two days you have been hard at work
out of office hours loading cartridges with every variety of shot,
from the small bullets used for the bustard down to the dust-shot for
the quail. Here, in Kertch, take a victim’s advice: make your own
cartridges, don’t buy them. The month is July; the first of July,
with an intensely blue sky, far away above you, giving you an idea of
distance and immensity that you could never conceive in England, where
the clouds always look as if they would knock your hat off. I should
have said the sky will be blue by-and-by, for at present it is too dark
to see, and we are carefully tucked away in bed; the impedimenta of
the coming journey--cold meats, flasks of shooting powder, and jumping
powder; bread, guns, and a huge string of unsavoury onions--all on
the floor beside us. Ding, ding, ding! as if the door-bell were in
a fit, then a crash and silence. No one ever rang a door-bell as a
Russian droshky-driver rings it. He likes the muscular exertion, he
loves the noise, and doesn’t in the least mind being sworn at if, as
in the present instance, he breaks the bell-wire. A year in Russia
has hardened us to all this, so merely speculating as to whether our
landlord will pay more for broken bell-wires this half than last, we
bundle out of bed and submit meekly to the reproaches of our friends
outside on the cart. They, poor fellows, have had half an hour’s less
sleep than we have, and it’s only 4 A.M. now, so any little hastiness
of speech may be forgiven them.
But on such a morning as this, and on such a conveyance as our droshky,
no one could remain sleepy or sulky long. The brisk bright air makes
the blood race through your veins, and the terrible bumpings of the
droshky on the uneven track, or half-paved streets, keep you fully
employed in striving to avoid a spill or a fractured limb. Anything
more frightful to a novice in Russia than the droshky I cannot
conceive. This instrument of torture is a combination of untrimmed logs
and ropes and wheels, with cruelly insinuating iron bands, merciless
knots, and ubiquitous splinters. Manage your seat how you will, you
are bound to keep bumping up and down, and at each descent you land on
something more painful than that you have encountered before.
In spite of all this, as the droshky leaves the town, the old German
jäger breaks out into a hunting ditty, and, truth to tell, until the
wind is fairly jogged out of us we are a very noisy party. Then we try
to light our cigarettes and pipes, and if we are lucky, only have the
hot ashes jerked on to our next neighbour’s knee. Gradually the dawning
light increases, the clouds of pearly grey are reddening, and the long
undulating swell of the steppeland slowly unfolds itself around us. On
our left are the Straits of Kertch, the sea looking still and hazy,
with some half-dozen English steamers lording it amongst the mosquito
fleet of fruiterers and lighters which fills the bay. All round us are
chains of those small hills, whose dome-like tops proclaim them tumuli
of kings and chiefs who went to rest ages ago, when the town behind us
was still a mighty city, rejoicing in the name of Panticapæum.
Once clear of the ranges of tumuli or kourgans, as they call them
here, there is nothing but steppe. On all points, except the seaside of
the view, a treeless prairie; no hills, no houses, scarcely even a bush
to break the monotony of bare or weed-grown waste. On the right of the
post-road by which we are travelling (a mere beaten track and really
no road at all) run the lines of the Indo-European Telegraph Company,
their neat slim posts of iron contrasting not unfavourably with the
crooked, misshapen posts which support the Russian lines on our left.
Unimportant as these might appear elsewhere, they are important objects
here, where they are the only landmarks to man, and the only substitute
for trees to the fowl of the air.
All along the road on either side of us the wires are now becoming
lined with kestrels, just up evidently, and looking as though they
were giving themselves a shake, and rubbing their eyes preparatory to
a day’s sport amongst the beetles and field-mice that swarm on the
steppe. The number of kestrels round Kertch is something astonishing,
and I almost think that with the other hawks, the blue hen harrier,
kites and crows, they would almost outnumber the sparrows of the town.
Now, too, our lovely summer visitants, the golden-throated bee-eaters,
begin to shoot and poise swallow-like over the heads of the tall yellow
hollyhock growing in wild profusion over the plain; hoopoes, with
broad crests erect, peck and strut bantam-like by the roadside, while
every now and again the magnificent azure wings of the ‘roller’ glitter
in the morning sun among the flowers.
The ‘bleak steppeland’ is what you always hear of, and shudder as
you hear, dread Siberian visions being conjured up at the mere name.
But who that has seen the steppes in the later days of spring, or in
the glow of midsummer, would apply such an epithet to lands that in
their season are as richly clad in flowers as any prairie of the West?
Long strips of wild tulip, Nature’s cloth of gold, blue cornflower,
crow’s-foot and bird’s-eye, the canary-coloured hollyhock and crimson
wild pea, all vie in compensating the steppeland for her chill
snow-shroud in the months that are gone and to come.
Rich as the land is, the crops by the roadside are few and paltry, the
chief being rye, maize, millet, and sunflowers. The sunflowers are
cultivated for their seed, which is either used for making oil, or more
generally is sold in a dry state as ‘cernitchkies.’ ‘Cernitchkies’
furnish the Malo Russ, male and female, with one of their most
favourite means of wasting time. Go where you will, at any time, in
Kertch, you will find people cracking these sunflower seeds, and trying
to make two bites of the kernel. At every street corner you find a
stall where they are sold, and you rarely come in without finding one
of the little grey shards clinging to your dress, spat upon you by some
careless passer-by, or sent adrift from some balcony overhead.
Beside these crops, you come across long strips of water melons, the
principal food of the Malo Russ in the summer, and one of the chief
sources of the Asiatic cholera sometimes so prevalent here. But for the
most part the land is untilled--left to its wild-flowers and weeds.
The peasant of the Crimea makes but a sorry agriculturist. The Malo
Russ is a lazy, good-natured ne’er-do-weel; his days being more than
half ‘prasniks’ (saints’ days), he devotes the holy half to getting
drunk on vodka, the other half to recovering from the effects of the
day before. One day you may see him in long boots and a red shirt, with
his arms round another big-bearded moujik’s neck in the drinking den,
or husband and wife, on the broad of their backs, dead drunk, on the
highway. The day after you’ll find him in a moralizing mood, seated on
his doorstep, smoking the eternal papiros, or nibbling sunflower seeds.
Russians have told me that there are more holy days than calendar days
in the year. To be holy a day need not be a saint’s day--a birthday in
the Emperor’s family is quite enough to make a ‘prasnik.’ Of the actual
Church fêtes there are 128.
The best agriculturists here are the German colonists, whose neat
homesteads remind one for the moment of lands nearer home. Even the
Tartars are better than the Malo Russ, but they have lately been
leaving the Crimea in large numbers to escape the compulsory military
service which Russia seeks to impose upon them. Everywhere the army
seems to be the worst enemy of the State.
At last our ride comes to an end, and there is a general stretching of
limbs and buckling on of shot-belts and powder-flasks, for with many
muzzle-loaders are still the fashion here. The place at which we have
stopped is the ‘Starrie Metchat,’ or old church, a Tartar ruin near a
well, embosomed in rosemary-covered hills. Near this well we pitch our
tents, and then we each go off on a beat of our own. Here there is room
enough for all, and as some excellent Russian sportsmen have a careless
way of shooting through their friends’ legs at a bolting hare, perhaps
solitude has its peculiar advantages.
As you breast the first hill the sweet-scented covert comes nearly up
to your waist, and right and left of you huge grasshoppers jump away
or into your face with a vicious snap that is at first enough to upset
the best regulated nerves. But see, your dog is pointing, and as you
near him a large covey of grey birds, larger than our grouse, get up
with whistling wings, and with smooth undulating flight skim round
the corner of the next hill. You get one long shot and bag your bird
perhaps. The dog moves uncertainly forward, and then stands again. Go
up to him; wherever strepita (lesser bustard) have been you are sure
to find a hare or two close by. Time after time have I found this,
although I cannot account for the fact in any way. The hares here are
larger than our English hares, and in winter turn almost white, the
skins in autumn having sometimes most beautiful shades of silver and
rose upon them. The largest hare I ever remember to have seen weighed
nearly thirteen pounds--it was an old buck--while in England a hare of
eight pounds is exceptionally large.
The dogs used in the Crimea for coursing are called Tscherkess
greyhounds; they stand considerably higher at the shoulder than our own
dogs, are broken-haired, with a much longer coat than our staghound,
and a feathered stern. I am told that on the flat the English greyhound
beats them for a short distance; but that in the hills, or with a
strong old hare well on her legs before them, the Crimean dogs have it
all their own way. I never had the good fortune to see the two breeds
tried together. In fact, what coursing I did see was utterly spoilt
by the Russian habit of cutting off the hare, and shooting her under
the dog’s nose. This is, of course, utterly alien to our notions of
sport--but so are most of their sporting habits. They never shoot
flying if they can get a chance sitting. Bears and boars and such large
game they shoot from platforms in trees at night; and I never saw a
horse jump in all my three years in Southern Russia. Of course, what
applies to the Crimea and the Caucasus may not apply to other parts of
Russia.
As long as we keep in the rosemary, hares, quails, and strepita are
all we are likely to meet with, except that in the valley and on the
less sunny hillsides the dogs ever and anon flush large owls, that
sail away hardly as bewildered as they are generally supposed to be by
the sunlight. Overhead kites and harriers swim about in the clear sky,
keeping a keen look-out for winged quails or wounded hares. But as we
get to the top of the next rising ground we see in the plain far away
at our feet a long line of what might well be grey-coated infantry. A
closer inspection, or a previous acquaintance with the objects before
us, will enable us to make them out to be bustards feeding line upon
line in a flock--or herd, to speak correctly--of several hundreds. Most
of them are busy with their heads on the ground, gleaning what they can
from an old maize field; but here and there, at a slight distance from
the rest, stands a sentry that the most wary stalker cannot baffle,
or the most alluring grain tempt from his ceaseless watch. Knowing
that we are already seen, and being perfectly well aware that by
ordinary stalking on these open plains we could never get nearer than
three hundred yards from the herd before the old sentinel sets them
all in motion with his shrill call, we retrace our steps, and get our
comrades together. Then the horses are put to, and all with our guns in
readiness we drive towards the point at which the bustards were seen.
When within sight of them we make arrangements among ourselves, and
then the droshky is driven quietly past the bustards some five hundred
yards from them. All their heads are up, and the whole of the herd of
two hundred is watching us intently; but they know something of the
range of a gun, and feel safe enough to stay yet awhile. Watch hard as
you may, grey birds, you didn’t notice that one of the occupants of the
droshky has just rolled off, gun in hand, and is now lying flat buried
in a deliciously fragrant bed of rosemary. One by one, as the droshky
circles round the watchful birds, the occupants drop off and lie still,
until at last we have a cordon of sportsmen drawn right round the herd,
and only the yemstchik remains on the droshky. Slowly, so as not to
frighten them, he narrows his circle, while each hidden gunner keeps
his eye anxiously on his movements.
At last, having stretched their necks to the very utmost limit and
twisted them into gyrations that would surprise a corkscrew, the
bustards think they have had enough of it, and there is a slow flapping
of wings, and hoisting of the heavy bodies into air. Slowly, with a
grand solemn flight, wonderfully in keeping with the wild majesty of
the boundless plains on which they live, they sail away towards the
hills. Suddenly the leaders stop with a jerk, and try too late to
change their direction. From the covert beneath the sportsman starts
to his feet, two bright flashes are seen, two reports follow, one huge
bird collapses at once and another lowers for a moment, and then goes
feebly on to fall at the first discharge of the next hidden gun. Right
and left the remainder fly, rising somewhat as they do so, but still
not high enough to take them out of danger, and when at last they have
passed the fatal circle, five fine birds reward our stratagem.
One of us has to face a storm of chaff hard for a disappointed
sportsman to bear, for in his excitement he had neglected to change
his cartridges; and although standing within short pistol-shot of a
passing monster, the quail-shot produces nothing more than a shower of
feathers, enough almost to stuff a bolster with.
By thus surrounding them, and by shooting them occasionally from a
cart, a few of these magnificent birds (larger than a turkey and finer
eating) are killed from time to time throughout summer and autumn. A
few too are sometimes picked up by the gunner in the early summer
whilst still young, as they hide separately or in small coveys in the
deep undergrowth. But the only time when any quantity are exposed in
the bazaar for sale is in the depths of winter. Then when a snowstorm
has caught the birds hiding in the valleys, and clogged their wings
with snow, which a bitter wind still more surely binds about them,
these poor denizens of the desert are surrounded and driven like a
flock of sheep into the Tartar villages, where they are butchered, and
thence sent in cartloads into Kertch, to be sold at a rouble and a half
(3_s._ 6_d._) apiece.
After slaying the bustards, having done enough for glory, we have time
to remember a thirst that would empty a samovar and an appetite that
would astonish a negro. Gladly we hurry back to our little tent in a
cleft at the foot of the hills, and while one unpacks the cold meats,
dried sturgeon and caviare, another gets water for that tea without
which our repast would be poor indeed to a Russian. Being born and
bred Englishmen, two of us might well have been expected to prefer
our native beer to tea, but it is wonderful how fond men get of the
delicious tea brewed in Russia, with its slip of lemon in it to add
piquancy to the flavour. For my own part, after really severe exertion
I am most thoroughly convinced it is by far the best restorative you
can take, and one which I should prefer to any other liquid whatever.
Try as you will you can neither get nor make such tea in England,
and once away from Russia, you must be content to leave the blessings
of tea, ‘swejie ikra’ (fresh caviare), and the soothing papiros
(cigarette) behind you; for numerous as tobacconists are in England, I
know none where really good cigarette tobacco can be bought, such as
you smoke in the Crimea.
Meanwhile, as we are still here, let us lie on our backs and enjoy the
delicious weed, watching the yemstchik arrange that wonderful puzzle of
old cord which constitutes the harness of a troika. At last the horses
are ready, and depositing ourselves and game on the jolting vehicle, we
let our legs swing over the side, and if used to the motion manage to
get a great deal of pleasure out of the drive home.
As the evening closes in over these wild waste lands, a stillness and
peace seem to come with it of which one has no knowledge in the towns.
The piping of the quails, the long soft wail of the coolik (curlew),
and even the notes of the German hunting horn on the other droshky far
in front, all seem to make fitting music for the hour and scene; and as
the stars begin to shine out from a sky of infinite depth and metallic
blueness, the oojai domoi (home already) is spoken not without an
accent of regret, though limbs are tired and steppe roads rough.
CHAPTER II.
CRASNOI LAIS.
A frozen sea--Swarms of wild-fowl--The Indo-European
telegraph--Sledging on the Azov--A desolate
scene--Taman--Journey inland--Tumerūk--Hotels--A dangerous
sleep--Foxes--Wolves--A hasty retreat--Ekaterinodar--Supper in
the forest of Crasnoi Lais--An exciting night’s sport--Driving
the forest--Cossack beaters--Wild deer--Other game--The
bag--Rations of vodka--A Cossack orgy--Vulpine sagacity--Wolf
stories--Return to Kertch.
It was in February of 1876 that I first made acquaintance with the
Caucasus. Once or twice before then it is true that I had crossed over
to Taman and had a day’s pheasant-shooting on the reedy shores of the
Kuban. As we poled our flat-bottomed boat along its sluggish waters,
I had a glimpse every now and again of the track of boar or cazeole
(roe), that made me long for a chance of a longer stay on its banks.
But it was not until the February of 1876 that my wish was granted.
For weeks we had had all business stopped by the frost. The whole of
the Azov was frozen as hard as the high-road, and it was only beyond
the forts and well into the Black Sea that any open water could be
found. Here the wild-fowl swarmed. Along the edge of the ice, where
the open water began, lines of cormorants stood solemn and patient,
fringing the ice with a black border of upright forms for miles. Beyond
these in the open water were myriads of crested duck (anas fuligula),
golden-eye pochards, scaups, and whistlers. Here and there in bevies,
with hoods extended, the great grebes sailed about, while great
northern divers and rosy-breasted mergansers all added their quota to
the beauty of the scene. More beautiful than all others, groups of
smews, with their plumage of delicately pencilled snow, ducked and
curtsied on the swelling wave, while overhead the pintail whistled by,
the large fish-hawks poised in air, and the gulls laughed and chattered
perpetually.
For the last few weeks most of my time had been spent among the
wild-fowl or skating with the fair ladies of Kertch on the rink by the
jetty. But one fine morning the lines of the Indo-European Telegraph
Company between Taman and Ekaterinodar were good enough to break down,
and my friend the chief of the Kertch station was ordered to make an
inspection of them along their whole length from one point to another.
It seemed to him a long and wearisome journey to make by himself, so
that like a good man and considerate, he asked me to share his sledge
with him. Always glad to give me a chance of enjoying myself in my own
way, my kind old chief readily agreed to the arrangement, and within
an hour from the time when K. first proposed the trip, he and I were
hard at work in the bazaar purchasing stores for the journey. There
is of course a post-road from Taman to Ekaterinodar, but badly indeed
will those fare who trust to the resources of a Russian post station
for their bodily comfort. This we well knew, and in consequence a large
stock of German sausages, caviare, vodka, and other portable eatables
and drinkables were stowed away in the body of our sledge.
For many days previous to the time of which I write, the over-sea route
from Yenikale to Taman had been open to carts and sledges, while vans,
laden with corn, had been continually crossing with only an aggregate
of two accidents in the last four days. It was then with but few
misgivings that we embarked in our sledge with a really good ‘troika’
(team of three) in front, coached by the noisiest rascal of a yemstchik
that ever swore at horses. Our road for the first twenty-two versts lay
over the bosom of the Azov, and as we passed through regular streets of
mosquito shipping, and now and then under the hull of some big steamer
caught in the ice, the sensation was strangely novel. For the first
ten versts the road was good, the pace exhilarating, and buried in our
warm rugs we hugged to ourselves the conviction that we were in for a
really good thing. After this, however, we got to piled and broken
ice, where the accidents of the last four days had occurred, and where
our driver averred a current existed. Here my friend got nervous, and
insisted on walking at a fair distance from the sledge, which proceeded
meanwhile at a foot’s pace. This in the increasing frost mist was not
so cheerful, but the current was soon cleared, and in another half hour
we landed safe and sound at that miserable little town of Taman.
The only living things we had passed on our way were several wretched
assemblies of pale-looking gulls, literally frozen out, poor fellows,
and a few huge eagles, squatting on the ice, their plumes all ruffled
up, suffering probably as much from a surfeit of wounded ducks as from
cold. The whole scene as we crossed was as desolate as the mind can
well imagine; Kertch behind us, white with snow, clustering round the
hill of Mithridates, a mere skeleton of her former glory in the days of
Greek and Persian; Taman, once too a prosperous city, now a few hovels
buried in a snowdrift; Yenikale perhaps more dead than either; and all
round the long low hills, the rounded tumuli of dead kings; the tall
bare masts of the belated ships; a frozen sea beneath and a freezing
sky above.
Once in Taman we gave our driver a good tip (‘na tchai’) for the tea
as they call it, and betook ourselves to a friend’s house for a few
minutes’ rest before our next start. Why a yemstchik’s fee, which is
invariably spent in nips of vodka (unsweetened gin) should be called
tea-money, has always appeared to me an unanswerable enigma. Taman
hardly deserves a description, even from so humble a pen as mine. It
has a jetty and a telegraph station; is the post from which a few
cattle are shipped to Kertch, and to which a few travellers to the
Caucasus come from the same place. Once it was a large and flourishing
city, twin sister to Panticapæum (Kertch) on the other side of the
straits; now it is a collection of miserable hovels, surrounded by
mud knee-deep in winter and storms of dust in summer, with an odour
of fish and the vodka shop in all seasons. There are near to Taman
some large oil-works, from which naphtha is said to be extracted in
large quantities. It may be so, but I hear that their original owner
is bankrupt, and he was a Russian; so that as the present proprietors
are Americans, and as such less likely to be able to protect themselves
from local frauds, I should not feel inclined to invest my bottom
dollar in the Taman Oil Company.
Such a wretched place did we find Taman, that we were glad to leave
it and commence our journey inland at once. In describing a journey
the traveller as a rule looks to the scenery to supply at least a
very large portion of his description; what then shall the luckless
traveller do, who has literally no scenery to describe? The road is
a beaten track by the telegraph posts, with, every sixteen or twenty
versts, a white house with a straw yard and some sheds at the back,
and a black and white post with a bell roofed in on the top of it in
the front. This is the post station. The country surrounding it is
apparently waste, and, except for a few flocks of sheep, an old hooded
crow or two, and maybe a bustard, quite untenanted by living things.
Always the snow beneath and the jingling bells in front, and this with
no incident to rouse one, naturally ends in sleep.
Towards evening we came in sight of a larger group of buildings
than any we had hitherto seen, and this we found was Tumerūk, our
resting-place for the night. As far as we could see it was a larger
town than Taman, with the inevitable green-domed church, a good
spacious bazaar, barracks I think, and a neat little club-house. We
were told that Tumerūk derived its wealth from the sturgeon fishery
carried on to a very great extent in its neighbourhood. We were
also told there were two good hotels in the place, and set off in
high spirits to search for them, a comfortable bed to follow a good
supper of sturgeon and caviare being things as welcome as they were
unexpected. We searched diligently and found the first hotel, a
moujik’s drinking den or ‘cabak.’ There was a table with a man under
it, and many more nearly ready to follow his peaceful example, but no
beds and no supper. At last we found the grand hotel, a gaunt white
house near the bazaar. With doubting hearts (for the place looked
deserted) we beat at the little door, but got no response. After nearly
ten minutes spent in mutilating our knuckles and damaging the door, a
fellow in shirt and slippers turned up, looking as astonished as his
besotted face would allow him to. The ‘cazain’ (master) was away, he
said, and spite of his boasting anent the capabilities of his house,
we soon found there was no food in it but black bread--no servant but
himself. But he managed to find us a room in fair repair, with a couple
of the usual wooden bedsteads in it, and this we took. To our horror
we found the stoves had not been lighted for a month, and were out of
order, so that the cold indoors was greater than that without. Still
it was too late to seek a lodging elsewhere, so we had some of our own
stores cooked, a dram of Tumerūk vodka from the cabak, a small charcoal
stove put in the middle of the room, and then rolling ourselves in
every fragment of clothing we could find, and almost regretting that we
had ever left our comfortable quarters in Kertch, we proceeded to reap
the reward of our long drive in a deep and dreamless sleep.
Towards morning I half awoke with an idea that the house was attacked,
so violent was the noise that aroused me, and at once jumped up to see
what was happening. But the moment I was out of bed a strange giddiness
seized me, and turning round I fell, and remember no more until I found
a friendly telegraphist endeavouring to rouse me with libations of cold
water freely applied. Gradually I came round, but with such an intense
headache and utter inability to use my own limbs, that I had rather
have remained insensible. I was utterly unable to help in rousing my
poor friend K., and as my senses came back to me I became seriously
alarmed lest our morning callers should have been too late to save him.
The truth was, something was wrong with the charcoal stove. Every
aperture through which ventilation could be effected had, Russian
fashion, been hermetically sealed for the winter, and my friend and I
had had the narrowest escape from asphyxiation possible. After immense
efforts we brought him round, but in spite of the bracing cold and the
rapid driving, we both suffered from racking headaches and extreme
lassitude for the rest of the day.
The travelling during this second day was of a more interesting nature;
the country being covered in many places for miles with jungles of
a tall reed called ‘kamish,’ in which pheasants are said to abound,
and boars and roe to occur not infrequently. After getting out of the
reedy land we came to a tract of another nature, bare and rock-strewn;
and here, within half a mile of the station at which we slept, I
was surprised to see numbers of foxes hunting about in the snow for
food. I should think that at one time a score must have been in sight
simultaneously. As soon as we had taken in our rugs and ordered the
samovar, I took my rifle, as it was not yet dusk, and tried to stalk
one of these little red rovers, without the least compunction, as
foxhounds are probably a blessing of civilisation with which these
barren lands will never be acquainted. But though I stalked a good deal
and shot once or twice, I did no good until I got to a frozen lake,
some three-quarters of a mile from the station. Here I wounded a fox
and followed him for some distance over the ice, and in doing so came
across the remains of some large animal lately torn to pieces by brutes
of prey.
Having given up my fox, I was meditating what manner of beasts these
might be, when my answer came in a long, weird howl. No need to tell
any one what that sound is. Instinct teaches every man to recognise the
wolf’s howl, and once heard it is not easily forgotten. The first howl
was followed by another and another, and though I have no wish to pose
as a coward, I frankly admit I wished I was anywhere but three-quarters
of a mile from a house, and all the distance two feet deep in snow,
which would not bear my weight on the surface. The wind, luckily,
was from them to me, so that, though I walked back at my best pace,
plunging frantically into deep drifts every few yards, from which I
was spurred on by ever-recurring wolf music, I saw nothing, though I
heard a good deal of my grim serenaders. It was a retreat, I admit,
undignified, if you will; but if the wind had been in another quarter
it might have been worse. Over our tea that night the station-master
spun many a long yarn of the doings of the wolves, highly coloured
perhaps, but true in part, I believe. Next morning their tracks were
numerous by the post-road, and they must evidently have been about in
some force.
After another day’s journey, passing through a few Cossack villages,
with their green-domed churches and walled enclosures, we at last came
in sight of our journey’s end, Ekaterinodar. This is the first town of
any size on this side the Caucasus, and at first sight even this is
more forest than town. The trees have just been sufficiently removed
to make room for the houses, but wherever no house actually stands
the forest has not been interfered with. The effect was extremely
pretty, now that the snow had loaded every tree with its white plumes
and given the streets a hard white covering; but in summer, when the
acacias (which predominate here) are in blossom, Ekaterinodar must be
as lovely as it is malarious. In summer and early autumn fever rages
here, and even now every man and woman that we pass in the streets has
a yellow wizen face that tells of the ravages of this Asiatic curse.
Here at last everything is genuinely Asiatic except the buildings. The
grotesque combinations of top hat and long boots are not seen here. The
denizens of the streets are tall Cossacks with high sheepskin hats,
with a crown all scarlet cloth and gold braid; short broad-shouldered
Tartars, in loose blue garments, belted at the waist with
bright-coloured shawls; women in short petticoats and high boots with
bashliks over their heads. The shops are most of them open magazines,
with no glass front, but instead an awning in front of them, and
inside a broad counter, on which the proprietor sits cross-legged with
cigarette or long pipe in mouth. The wares for sale consist chiefly of
pelts brought in by the Tscherkesses from the neighbourhood; and here,
in the examination of them, my friend and I spent no small time, as a
great deal of the natural history of the country may be gleaned from
these middlemen, and many a good guide and hunter be secured from among
their clients.
I shall pass over the two days we spent here as shortly as possible. My
friend had his work to do, and my own time was filled up by chatting
with the officers who frequented the hotel at which we were staying.
It was whilst thus engaged that we first heard of the existence of
a large royal forest of some twenty-nine square versts in extent,
which lay only some fifteen versts out of our course on the return
journey. To make up our minds to visit it, having secured letters of
introduction to the royal forester (Col. R.), was the work of five
minutes, and next morning saw us with a friend in our sledge, who knew
the colonel, dashing with buoyant spirits over the glittering snow.
When the long line of darkly-wooded country first caught our eyes clean
cut against the frosty blue sky, the stars were already in the heavens,
and an occasional bark told us the foxes were all abroad, busy in their
nocturnal forays.
After a drive of half-an-hour through dim forest rides, a fire
glimmered ruddily through the trees, and the deep baying of hounds told
us we had almost arrived. The forester’s house was a small four-roomed
cottage, with a wattle enclosure round it, while outside the enclosure
a few huts and a huge bonfire betokened the presence of the score of
Cossacks who formed his staff. Throwing open his door, our host rushed
out to meet us, a little wiry man, with a ruddy complexion, bright
merry eye, huge grizzled moustache, and the most cordial manners
possible. Once inside the cottage, the samovar was soon steaming
comfortably, and a supper of caviare and roebuck broth, with the meat
to follow, was discussed with an appetite which even the schnapps
could not increase. Then bed was proposed, and my friend being a
German, and of a certain age, readily fell in with the proposition. Not
so the writer. To sit still or go to bed, now when all the longings of
one’s life were almost granted, hearing the veteran sportsman before
me discoursing calmly of the boars that had broken into his enclosure
the night before, or the stag which he had shot a few nights before
that, was too much for my boyish impatience; and my kind old host,
seeing it, was as pleased at my keenness as amused at my impatience.
Going out, he found one of the Cossacks was just preparing for a night
hunt, and returning asked me if I would care to accompany him. Of
course I jumped at the offer, and was starting forthwith. But my host
called me back, and making me leave my own useless garments behind me,
dressed me in a huge pair of felt boots of his own and his fur-lined,
much-braided forester’s coat. Thus attired, I must have been too much
of an attraction for my lazy friend, who shook himself together, and
being similarly clad resolved to follow me.
The Cossack who was to be our chaperone was a sturdy, ill-favoured
fellow, in the wildest combination of sheepskins conceivable, but he
seemed to know his work, and was none the worse for being silent. As we
passed down the long forest aisles, our footsteps, thanks to the felt
shoes and the snow, were soundless even in that still night. Half an
hour’s tramp through a perfect fairy land of frozen oaks, with a carpet
of snow at their feet, on which our guide silently pointed out many a
fresh track, and then we paused. One of us was to stay here; I stayed,
my friend took a position a quarter of a mile further on, the Cossack
being at the same distance beyond him. My own post was at the foot of
an enormous oak, and here I crouched, my long felt boots deep sunk in
the snow, my back against the tree, and my rifle across my knees.
Now it was that I learnt how necessary it is to wear the clothing of
the country. Sitting thus with my feet in the snow in tight leather
boots, I must have either kept up the circulation by moving my feet
occasionally, which would have been fatal to my chance of sport, or I
must have had my feet frost-bitten. As it was, in my loose boots of
felt, my feet were almost too hot, and of course the rest of my body
kept about the same temperature as my feet.
Once my companions had taken up their posts the whole forest was still
as death for some minutes. The stillness indeed was so great as to be
oppressive, and the occasional sounds--an owl’s weird hoot, the howl
of a wolf, or the stealthy spring of an old grey hare--only heightened
the effect by contrast. On every side I could look down long vistas of
frozen hazels with tall oaks rising above them, through whose quaintly
twisting limbs the intense metallic light of the winter moon gleamed
down on the sparkling snow, or catching the icicles that hung in huge
clusters from them drew from them all manner of pale prismatic colours.
Every now and again a dark shadow glided over the snow, and a sound
like a devil’s low chuckling laugh told one that the substance of
that shadow was the great eagle owl, whose strong silent pinions were
creeping, a very shadow of death, over some doomed hare. At one time
a company of wolves seemed to have gathered round, for as soon as a
long vibrating howl had moaned itself into silence on one side, another
took up the strain and startled the forest on the other. All round us
this music was kept up, but not a single wolf showed himself either
to my companions or myself. Suddenly there was a loud report as if an
enormous piece of artillery had been fired, and as the echoes thundered
through the forest, the whole seemed to wake at once to a fiendish riot
of strange sound. Every prowling beast and weird night-bird screamed
in concert, and then all was silence again. This was caused by the
cracking of the ice on the Kuban some miles off.
After an hour of intense enjoyment of this kind, I was roused by a
distant crashing, as though a regiment was noisily breaking its way
through the undergrowth. On and on it came, growing ever louder as it
drew near, until the noise in that silent place seemed worthy of a herd
of elephants. It came straight towards where I lay, and my heart beat
so loudly with excitement that I really believed for the moment that
the approaching beasts must hear it as I did; and in my anxiety I even
pressed my breast with my hands in an unreasoning hope of silencing it.
The noise was now so close that it seemed impossible but that I must
see the cause of it, when suddenly another sound caught my ear. A slow
scraping sound, painfully distinct for a minute, while the other sound
ceased; then a rasping sound and a crash as of some heavy body falling,
followed by a thundering rush, a glimpse of four splendid deer,
magnified by the moonlight, bounding across one of the hazel vistas
some four hundred yards off, a sharp, clear whistle, and then as the
sound of the flying deer died away, the tramp of approaching footsteps,
and all was over. The Cossack arrived first, and behind him my German
jäger, woefully crestfallen, as well he might have been could he have
known what black wrath filled his companion’s heart. The deer had been
coming straight to me when my friend, alarmed by the tremendous noise
they made amongst the frozen branches, had attempted to swarm the oak
under which he had been placed. For a time he got on very well, and
then losing his hold on the slippery trunk, he came down on his back
with a crash that unluckily frightened our game more than it hurt him.
So ended our first night’s sport; but though we bagged nothing, no real
sportsman I think would allow that a night spent amid such glorious
surroundings, listening to the voices of Nature in one of her wildest
moods, was a night wasted. At any rate when we got home my rest was the
sweeter for my toil.
The day following this eventful night was spent in preparations for
the grand drive fixed for the morrow; but though there was much to be
done, our kind host arranged to give us some shooting in the afternoon
of this day also. Lunch over, we took the hounds out--dark brown dogs
with tan chests and points, looking as if they had a large cross of the
bloodhound. The _modus operandi_ of the day’s sport was simple in the
extreme. The whole forest was divided into sections, each containing
one square verst. Round one of these the guns were placed, and then the
forester and his dogs went into the thick of it, and in a few minutes
the woods were full of deep-toned music. The dogs seemed to me to hunt
everything they came across, from a stag to a running cock pheasant,
and the business of the gunner was to kill and, if possible, to bag the
game before the dogs did. There was a great deal of excitement, men
shouting, dogs baying, guns firing, and hares scuttling to the right
and left of you, while through all, with a beautiful pertinacity which
hardly allowed him time to fire a shot, the veteran forester tootled
away on his horn. This would have augured badly for our sport on the
morrow but that the forest was immense, and we were only in an outlying
bit of it, from which we probably drove some game towards our next
day’s ground. Although the snow was covered with tracks, we saw nothing
but hares, of which we bagged about twenty.
The morning of Thursday broke as brilliantly as its predecessors, and
the sun seemed if possible to glare with a harder light on the frozen
snow. Outside our door the forester was apparently on the point of
knocking down three or four Cossacks almost as excited as himself.
His voice rose to a scream, his arms kept swinging about; even I knew
enough Russian to hear that he was swearing awfully, and I had my fears
lest something had happened to mar our day’s sport. However, he finally
calmed down, and presently I heard him calling a huge-bearded ruffian
a little dove (golubchik), whom he had addressed as the son of the
most immoral of the canine race not five minutes before. He was merely
explaining some of the minor details in the business of the coming day,
he told me afterwards.
About 7.30 a Cossack colonel, with a hundred of his men, turned up.
This was the local Nimrod, and these the beaters he brought with him;
and a wilder lot to look at, a more thirsty lot to refresh, a noisier,
more frolicsome lot altogether, you could not find even at Donnybrook
fair. With the colonel came another Russian and a couple of young
Frenchmen, and this made up our party.
A huge sledge was in attendance for the sportsmen, and another for
the game. The beaters were sent on, and some of the more reliable
entrusted with a third sledge laden with eatables and a cask of goodly
dimensions. As the last Cossack disappeared down the forest drive,
we turned back into the cottage, lighted our cigarettes, and having
collected our ammunition, took our places on the sledge waiting for
us, and drove merrily to the meet. On our way the overhanging branches
caught us now and again, sweeping one of our number into the snow, amid
peals of laughter from all but the victim.
Arrived at the rendezvous, strict silence was enjoined, the guns were
posted, each a hundred yards or so from the other, along one side of
the division, with orders on no account to leave those posts until told
to do so. Meanwhile the Cossack colonel had taken his hundred men to
the opposite side of the section, and all being in readiness, we heard
his horn signal ‘forward,’ and then all was silent as the grave. Every
eye was strained on the bushes and thick covert in front, every ear
intently listening for the patter of feet or the sound of breaking
brushwood. But as yet no sound: even the Cossacks were too distant to
be heard as yet. Did some one move along the line? No, every soul is
still as we are. Again the crash; the sound that set our hearts beating
a few nights ago, but now far less startling in the daylight than it
was then in the shadows and stillness of night.
Here they come trooping towards our line, four does and a tall stag in
front, half trotting, half walking, tossing their dainty heads up and
down as they approach. They advance straight towards the oak at which
I saw my German friend posted, and I reluctantly hold my hand that he
may make the best of his chance. Nearer and nearer they come, and yet
no shot breaks the stillness, though they are almost past him. Suddenly
they throw up their heads, and with a rush are lost in the forest
beyond, without a shot having been fired at them. My friend had of
course broken the rules, left his own tree, and gone off to one which
seemed to him to have greater attractions. Thus the deer had for the
second time passed him unfired at.
Soon the shots began to ring out, at first only a dropping fire, though
towards the end of the drive the firing was so frequent as almost to
resemble file-firing. After the red deer a wild cat came towards me,
moving softly over the snow; and as my eye followed him I became aware
of some dozen grey forms that had risen suddenly ghost-like all round
me: one old hare sitting absolutely under my tree and gazing apparently
rigidly into my face. There she sat, listening to the shots, without
stirring for some five minutes, until in the open between two great
oaks a fine red fox came trotting stealthily towards us, his broad
heavy brush spread, and seeming to trail on the snow behind him, which
threw his whole graceful, undulating form out in bold relief. It seemed
against one’s English nature to shoot him, but it had to be done, and
a charge of heavy shot rolled him over on the snow. It seemed like
shooting a friend.
By this time the cries of the beaters had drawn very near, some of
their forms even showing from time to time in open places. Three quick
springs and an abrupt pause in the bushes in front of me now arrested
my attention, but thinking after a time that it was only another hare,
I singled out one of these long-eared gentry, and rolled him over. As I
did so two roebucks broke covert, and galloped rapidly past our Russian
friend on the left, who, making a neat right and left, laid them both
on the path.
This was the shot of the day. A bugle now sounded a warning to turn
our backs to the beaters and only shoot as the game passed us, thus
avoiding the chance of bagging a beater. The hares came thick and fast,
and as they cantered steadily away, a large number of them were bagged.
When we came out on to the path there were four roes, a red deer, of
which I had caught a passing glimpse as she crashed along the line, my
fox, and thirty-seven hares. My fox I say, but I was doomed to find
myself mistaken. It seems after he had been to all intents and purposes
killed, he had crawled along the line and lain down to die in front
of the Cossack colonel. This worthy gave him the _coup de grâce_, and
claimed him in consequence. The red deer too, whose throat a Cossack’s
bullet had cut as neatly as if it had been done with a knife, staggered
on towards the colonel, and here, as its knees trembled preparatory to
lurching forward in death, that gallant officer put a charge of small
shot in its haunch, spoilt the venison, and secured another easy prey.
The rule of the chase is here opposed to the English rule, and, I
think, to common sense. With us the man who inflicts the first wound,
with the Russians he who deals the last, obtains the quarry.
After two more beats, in which more game of the same kind was bagged,
we repaired to the sledges at the cross rides for refreshment. I was
much amused by the doling out of the vodka to the Cossacks. The cask
was mounted on the sledge and there tapped, the forester, with three
or four to help him, forming the Cossacks in line, and giving each man
his nip in rotation, which he pitched straight down his throat in true
Russian style, without ever giving the liquid time to wet the sides in
passing. As the men went down after taking their nip, I noticed they
coolly fell in again at the other end, and in time got another turn.
One enormously tall fellow in a white sheepskin hat, which must have
been double the height and circumference of an English ‘topper,’ with a
crown of green cloth, got three drams in this way. But his hat and his
height betrayed him, and put an end to the affair.
During the rest of the drives the sport varied very little; first
came the wolves, slinking out almost before the beaters had entered
the other side of the covert, then the deer, wild cats, and foxes in
regular succession, and last of all the roes and hares. If there had
been boars or bears I believe they would probably have followed the
wolves and preceded the deer. But there were none seen all day.
When the game was counted out at evening the bag was one red deer, nine
roe, two wild cats (splendid yellow tabbies, half as large again as a
large domestic mouser), three foxes, two skunks, much prized for their
pelts, and 175 hares, and this divided amongst some twenty guns, of
whom two-thirds acted only as scarecrows to the game. The sport was
good and wild enough in itself, but poor and without charm as compared
to the still hunt of the night before.
Arrived at the forester’s house, the hares were given as wages to the
beaters, who exchanged their skins for vodka from some neighbouring
drinking shop, and made a vast stew of the carcases. With an enormous
bonfire blazing, they made themselves merry on this rough fare until
late into the night, dancing wild, graceful flings and reels, and
singing national songs, in which a tone of melancholy and depression
seemed to run through the warlike character of a border ballad.
The whole scene was one which Turner’s pencil might have gloried
in, but no pen could do justice to the wild figures in their ragged
sheepskins and mountainous hats of many-coloured wool, lit up by the
long red flames, and backed by the hoary forest heavy with its months
of snow.
In the morning before leaving Crasnoi Lais we saw a very curious
instance of the sagacity of wolves. A herd of roebuck had settled down
in fancied security in a hollow in the midst of one of the forest
sections. A pack of wolves had discovered them there, and when we
came in the morning the forester showed us plainly by their spoor
their method of attack. At every few hundred yards round the entire
circumference of the ‘quartal’ a wolf had entered it, and the whole
pack gradually converging towards the centre had surrounded and killed
three of the roes, which in rushing from one wolf must have dashed
right into the jaws of another. My friend told me that he himself had
been witness of another instance of the wolf’s cunning whilst driving
on the post-road in winter. A cow and her calf were feeding by the road
side, and two wolves were endeavouring to carry off the calf. One of
them kept frolicking about in front of the cow, rolling on the ground
or snapping at her nose, to distract her attention, the calf meanwhile
getting under her mother in rear. Here the second wolf attacked her,
and seemed in a fair way to accomplish his object when my friend drove
by.
The natives have many wonderful tales to tell of wolves, of which
perhaps the most incredible is that if, when you are pursued by a pack,
you have the presence of mind to squat down on your haunches, the
wolves will come and surround you in a similar attitude, and after some
time spent in contemplation will slowly retire, leaving you unmolested.
I can only say that the man who had faith enough to put this to the
proof would deserve to live to tell the tale. It is in spring, when
the she-wolf is followed by a party of her grim suitors, that the
Tscherkesses and Cossacks most dread this animal, and then they say
they are extremely dangerous, and that if you are unlucky enough to
wound the lady, nothing but their death will release you from the
attacks of her enraged suite.
Having bid a hearty adieu to our host, and taking a couple of roebuck
with us to testify of our prowess to envious friends at Kertch, we got
under weigh next morning on our return journey. On our way I wounded
an old wolf which I saw slinking round some kamish (reed) beds by the
roadside; but though I followed him far into the reeds I never bagged
him, and could by no means get another fair shot at him with my rifle.
Three days’ fast travelling saw us back at Kertch, the heroes of the
hour; for though Ekaterinodar with its forest is so near, the Russian
sportsman is of so unenterprising a nature that none of our comrades
knew it except by report. The comforts of our English consulate were
none the less appreciated after the cold bare rooms of a Russian post
station in the Caucasus, and we both agreed that though such sport was
glorious, a comfortable home to return to was a blessing mightily to be
desired.
CHAPTER III.
ODESSA AND MISKITCHEE.
Mountaineers and Shikarees--Outfit--Journey from London to
Odessa--Snipe-shooting on the Dnieper--A drunken yemstchik--A
collision--Prince Vorontzoff--Aloupka--Yalta--Livadia and
Orianda--Miskitchee lake--A Tartar butcher--Native hovels--A
shooting party on the lake--A dreary bivouac.
It was not until the August of 1878, three years after the events
recorded in my last chapter, that a passage in a recently published
book on the Caucasus drew my attention again to my old hunting grounds.
It was Mr. Freshfield in this work (‘The Frosty Caucasus’) who wrote
that in all his travels in the Caucasian mountains he had seen little
more game than a couple of tame bears in a Tscherkess village.
This struck me as strange, and as I was at that time meditating a
sporting tour in some as yet unchosen locality, I decided to go to
the Caucasus for myself, and test its capacities to the utmost of my
ability as hunting ground for large game. Since my return from Asia I
have seen Devouasseux, Mr. Freshfield’s guide, who tells me that the
author was too intent on his favourite pursuit of mountain-climbing to
have much time for looking for game. And indeed the book itself leads
one to infer this. The climbing of almost impracticable mountains and
the pursuit of great game could not be combined by any one. To achieve
success in either pursuit is enough for most men.
After passing a week in preparing my outfit, which was by no
means a formidable one, I was ready to start. An ‘express rifle,’
a double-barrel smoothbore (C. F. No. 12), fitted with metal
cartridge-cases, which when inserted converted the gun into a
muzzle-loader, a suit of moleskin, one of Rouch’s photographic
apparatuses, and a pair of Dean’s field boots, were the chief items in
my outfit. The first three articles are indispensable, the other two
absolutely useless, as I was unable to work the one, and had but little
occasion to test the other. Besides, I believe Mr. Dean’s boots are not
much good without the dubbin supplied with them, and this my servant
promptly lost. No doubt properly used with this, they are as excellent
as their many advocates believe them to be.
The most difficult thing to get was a really good map of the Caucasus,
containing the names of the principal small streams and villages. This
I afterwards secured in Russia under the name of ‘Map of the Caucasian
Isthmus,’ by Professor Dr. Karl Koch (‘Karte von dem Kaukasischen
Isthmus,’ Berlin, 1850). In this map most of the important villages
are marked, and the names are sufficiently like those given them by
their inhabitants to enable a stranger to recognise them.
The journey from St. Katherine’s Docks to Odessa, _viâ_ Vienna, has
nothing in it worthy of record. Most men who travel nowadays have seen
as much of it as they care to. For my own part, having made the journey
several times, I think the things that have made most impression on
my mind are the gradual improvement in the railway carriages, from
the time you leave our English abominations until the time you find
yourself surrounded with at least all the necessary conveniences of
life on the last stage to Odessa; the gradual diminution in pace,
until some little distance from your journey’s end it amounts to
little more than a crawl; the sudden clearing and brightening of the
atmosphere once you have crossed the channel; the predominance of blue
in all the dresses of the French peasant; the absence of fences to
make a run interesting, if runs took place in this land of vulpecides;
the disappearance of the rook, and the appearance of his grey-backed
congener the hooded crow in his place; the multitude of magpies, and
the loquaciousness of one’s travelling companions. I am afraid my
readers, if I have any, will at once put me down as unobservant, but
it may only be that first impressions are lost if the same journey is
often repeated.
Arrived at Odessa, my old chief and kind friend, Mr. George Stanley,
Her Majesty’s Consul-General there, received me with great kindness,
and to him and Mr. Mitchell I am indebted for much valuable information
and many acts of attention. During the few days I stayed at Odessa I
had one very excellent day’s snipe-shooting with Mr. Stanley on the
Dnieper, during which we bagged fifty-six snipe in an hour between us.
Of these, I am in honesty bound to admit, that Mr. Stanley, whose hand
had not forgotten the cunning acquired in Egypt, bagged by far the
larger share.
On our way home we had a specimen of the driving of Russian yemstchiks,
which would have considerably lowered them probably in the esteem of
their ardent admirer Sir Robert Peel. Our fellow seemed a little the
worse for vodka, and as soon as we got away from the house at which
we had been staying, we had proof that his looks did not belie him.
The bracing air roused his spirits; his horses were ‘little doves’ and
‘sons of dogs’ in the same breath, his whip whirled about, and tossing
their heads in the air, the team (in which there were two young ones)
took the bit in their teeth, and went away straight across the steppe,
over gullies, with a bump that would have smashed any springs had
there been any, down slopes at a rate that took your breath away, and
all the while the yemstchik laughing and swearing, and not minding
one bit. Two of his crimson velvet cushions dropped off into darkness
behind him, and this probably sobered him. At last we got on to the
track, and though the pace was still violent, we were comparatively
safe here. Once we collided with a droshky, the driver of which was
unusually moderate in his oaths at the accident, and passed on quickly
and disappeared. We discovered afterwards that a valuable piece of the
harness of our own troika had been lost, carried away by the droshky
in the collision probably, seeing which the droshky man had held his
tongue, and made off with his prize.
But our troubles were not yet over. As we neared Odessa there was a
sharp turn in the track. As we turned I saw our danger, but there
was no time to avert it; and in the twinkling of an eye we charged a
telegraph post. The tall thin post passing between our off leader and
the shaft horse, cut clean through every atom of harness, and set the
young one free. For a moment he stood stunned and trembling, and then
with a snort betook himself off into the darkness as fast as legs could
carry him. This finally restored our driver to a state of most solemn
sobriety, and for the rest of our journey we were conveyed at a safe
and moderate pace by the remaining two horses. The fellow was lucky
enough to recover his horse next day, but not without considerable
trouble and expense. I believe he and two or three hired comrades spent
the night on the steppe looking for the stray horse.
After this I bade adieu to my kind friends in Odessa, receiving as a
last kindness from Mr. Stanley an introduction to Prince Vorontzoff,
who, luckily for me, happened to be travelling by the boat in which
I had embarked. This introduction stood me in good stead, as his
Highness, who speaks English like an Englishman, gave me letters
of introduction at Tiflis, by exhibiting the address and external
signature of which I was able to allay the suspicions of the Cossacks
on the Black Sea, and otherwise help myself. I owe Prince Vorontzoff
many thanks for his ready kindness to a stranger, and repeat them with
the same sincerity with which I tendered them when he left the boat for
his lovely place at Aloupka.
Aloupka is to my mind the finest castle in Russia, in the most
picturesque position. It is a strange mixture of the half fortress,
half castle, of early feudal times, Moorish magnificence, Russian
luxury, and English comfort. In the distance it looks massive and
glorious, with magnificent timber, gardens, and vineyards stretching
down to the sea at its feet, the grey summit of Aië Petri towering over
it from behind, and away to the right the Bear Mountain, couched with
his head on his paws, looking ever seaward.
Yalta itself is the Eden of Russia perhaps, but it is an Eden in
which most of the inhabitants are invalids, all the hotels infamously
exorbitant in their charges; and life, unless one is addicted to the
process of the grape cure, excessively monotonous. The palace of
Livadia is beautiful, but would, I think, scarcely please ordinary
English taste as much as the magnificent foliage (artificially
arranged) at Orianda (the Grand Duke Constantine’s seat), or the
stately beauty of Aloupka. The mountains round Yalta and as far as
Theodosia are extremely fine, and I know of few things more beautiful
than some of the views to be obtained from their pine-clad sides. I
believe a few roe and chamois are to be found on them, but these are at
least partially preserved.
Arrived at Kertch I was at home again, and soon in my old room at
the consulate. A right merry time we had of it, and, as was natural,
devoted a couple of days to our old friend Miskitchee, the lake that
‘best of all lakes the fowler loves,’ on these Crimean steppes.
Miskitchee is the Tartar name for a village some sixty versts from
Kertch: the lake, which adjoins the village, shares with the latter
its name. The lake is a piece of shallow water some two miles long by
half a mile broad, and nowhere deeper than up to a man’s waist. It is
for the most part covered with the high reed called here ‘kamish,’ and
on the mud banks round its edges and in the little lagoons within the
reeds myriads of wild-fowl play by day, and chatter and feed all night.
Here have I had many a good day’s wild-fowling, passed many a merry
night, and had at least one adventure, which, as far as I remember, was
somewhat in this wise: I had been staying at the house of the chief
farmer in the village, a Greek or Armenian--I forget which--for some
few days, on a shooting expedition. One morning, about six o’clock, I
was tramping over some damp steppeland, where pools were frequent, and
snipe should have been more so, but were not. After an hour spent in
looking for something to shoot, I had almost resolved to be off again
to my favourite lake, when I heard a voice calling to me in Russian.
Looking up I saw a Tartar, rather a smart one too, in a fawn-coloured
robe and the inevitable sheepskin hat, standing upright in a big flat
cart, with a troika of capital horses before him. On coming closer I
found he was inviting me to take a seat in his cart, assuring me that
he, too, was a sportsman, and had to drive over a part of the steppe
that morning where game abounded. Having no gun with him, he would
show me where sport might be had if I liked. However, roubles in those
days were rare with me, and I feared that if I accepted the lift I
should have to pay a considerable fare, so I declined as graciously as
possible. My friend persisted, and at last I told him frankly that if
he gave me a passage to these happy hunting grounds of which he spoke
it would have to be a free one, and include a return before nightfall.
He consented at once, so without more ado I got into his cart, and
drove off with him.
After a verst or two I began to find my friend was no ‘blagueur,’ for
in a very short time we had bagged several hares and a few quail. His
sight was the most marvellous I ever met with. Standing up in his cart,
as he drove rapidly over the uplands, he would from time to time pull
up suddenly, exclaiming, ‘Vot zeits!’--Lo, a hare! at the same time
pointing to some distant object on the ploughed land or prairie. It
was no good my looking, for I could discern nothing, so that I had
to dismount and simply trudge for one or two hundred yards in the
direction he indicated, until sure enough, from under my very feet, the
hare started, until then utterly undiscernible to me.
And now the object of his morning drive was revealed to me. On a
hillside near us was a mighty flock of sheep, tended by a few ragged
Tartar lads and one grey-headed shepherd, with the usual retinue of
huge mongrel sheepdogs--brutes who go for you on every opportunity.
Hailing the old shepherd, a bargain was soon struck, and we dismounted
to choose our sheep. My friend plunged in among them, and after
regarding many with the eye of a profound connoisseur, chose four.
To choose them was easy, to secure them seemed less so. Kicking off
his shoes and rolling up his long loose sleeves, the purchaser tried
to approach his purchase. The more he advanced the more rapidly the
sheep retired, trying in vain to lose himself amongst his comrades or
substitute another in his place. But the Tartar was not to be done, and
in a quarter of an hour three were secured, caught by the hind leg,
jerked over on their back, all four legs tied together, and bundled
into the cart. Ambitious of imitating my friend, I too took off my
boots, and made frantic efforts to collar an innocent-looking beast.
After an enormous waste of time I did get hold of a leg of mutton,
though not, I believe, the right one. The jerk was neatly given, but
alas! not by the right creature. In a moment I was sprawling, and in
another the whole flock was romping over my breathless body. How I
extricated myself I know not, but when I did I sat me down, feeling
sheepish in more ways than one, and resumed my boots a wiser, though a
sadder man.
Having got our whole cargo on board, we set off for the nearest Tartar
village, killing on the way another hare. By the way, whenever I
killed anything, my guide insisted on cutting its throat and breaking
its legs, a superstitious observance, I have since heard, common to
all Mahometans. Arrived at the village, an old man (the moollah I
think he was) climbed to the top of a low hovel in the middle of the
straggling main street (if streets there are in Tartar ‘aouls’), and
shouted himself hoarse in the Tartar tongue. What he said I knew not
then, but from subsequent events I believe it was to the effect that
the good butcher, Lotso, had brought with him five fat sheep, all or
any of which he was prepared then and there to convert into mutton,
if sufficient customers were forthcoming. Any one who wanted mutton,
to raise his hand. After a great deal of talking all by himself, the
moollah came down from his perch, and a crowd forming round him, a
tremendous row ensued. It looked like being a free fight, but it was
soon over, and perhaps the Tartar housekeepers may take to themselves
the credit of settling on the joint for the day sooner than their
English representatives at home.
The purchases being settled, a sheep was selected from the cart, and
carried to a stone trench hard-by, its throat cut, and the whole
operation of skinning and dismembering completed in a very few minutes.
Meanwhile a number of gaunt curs, drawn by the smell of blood, had
crowded round, and so hardy were they that it was all a dozen Tartars
could do, whirling their knouts round the butcher as the whips do when
the huntsman is breaking up his fox, to keep the brutes at bay. Then
the meat was parcelled out, the money paid, cash down, the entrails,
tied up in the skin (butcher’s perquisites), thrown back into the cart,
and after a drink of sour cream at the dirty brown hands of a Tartar
princess, we were on our way for the next village, to repeat the same
process.
And now all our sheep having been slaughtered and sold, the gloaming
came on, and with it a hunger on my part that made me anxious to get
back to my quarters at the friendly Armenian’s. Turning to the Tartar,
I suggested our return, when he coolly informed me that I had better
make up my mind to pass the night at his house at J----, naming a
village of some half-dozen houses, at which an execrable murder had
occurred some months previously. It may have been the memory of this,
or it may have been his ghastly handiness with the butcher’s knife,
or perhaps the thought of my cosy quarters at Miskitchee, that made
me resolve that go to that place I would not. Accordingly I reminded
him of his promise. All the satisfaction I could get was that if I
wanted to go back I must walk. Did I know in which direction Miskitchee
lay? Yes, out yonder, over that low line of hills. A grim laugh, and
the assurance that Miskitchee was in an exactly opposite direction,
increased my suspicions of my quondam friend, as I knew by certain
landmarks that he must be lying. A moment’s consideration showed me
that a walk at this hour, even supposing I did not lose my way, would
end probably in a night on the steppe, at the mercy of this man or
any other who chose to stalk me, and surprise me in the dark or in my
sleep, to say nothing of the absolute necessity in case of my leaving
the cart of abandoning my game. So I changed my tactics. He had no
fire-arms, and sat on the edge of the cart. I had my gun, and sat
behind in the body of it. Mustering what little Russian I knew, I let
him understand that I held him to his promise; that I had heard of
J---- and its evil reputation, and didn’t mean to go there; that I knew
the track now on our right was the home track; and that, if he refused
to take it, I would blow him off his cart with a charge of No. 5. This
was a rough argument, and he seemed nonplussed. He tried to argue me
into going another way; he tried to laugh me out of my suspicions--he
even began to bully. I simply watched him, repeated my proposals, and
sat still. Meanwhile the horses were pulled up. Then my friend tried to
slip off his seat, and so get out of his awkward position in front of
my gun’s muzzle. I cocked my gun with a click, and brought it in a line
with his back. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then with a curse
he took the right road at a sulky pace.
All that drive I never took my eyes off him, and never let go my gun.
Gradually he seemed to become better tempered, and when we got within
half a mile of Miskitchee he turned and spoke to me, to assure me that
further than that nothing would induce him to drive me.
Satisfied now that I could get home in safety, I got down, taking
a couple of hares and some birds with me, leaving the rest for the
Tartar, and walked off to Miskitchee, thankful to have got off so
well. On my way back I thought I had probably been over suspicious,
and made a fool of myself. However, on my arrival, I found I had been
searched for all day, and great anxiety had been felt for me. It
seems my butcher was of more professions than one, being indeed the
most notorious horse-stealer on these steppes. He had camped near the
village the night before, and made several inquiries about me, having
seen me returning from shooting that night. He had also expressed great
admiration for my gun, a rather handsome breech-loader. This, together
with the fact that the butcher, one of my host’s best horses, and
myself had all disappeared simultaneously next morning, accounted for
the anxiety felt, as well as for the butcher’s objection to return to
the village that night.
Such was one of the memories Miskitchee called up in my mind. But on
this my last visit I saw little to remind me of my adventure. The
Armenian had, I believe, gone, and the whole village looked asleep
in the sunshine as we passed it by: a straggling group of one-storied
hovels, with the sunlight glinting on rows of yellow gourds on the
thatch; a dark, good-looking Tartar girl in a scarlet cap and many
ringlets, much bespangled with small gilt coins, standing in a doorway,
round which there was some sort of an enclosure. At another cottage
door, with his legs in the mud of the main street and his quarters on
the somewhat drier mud of his dining-room floor, lounged, cigarette
in mouth, a pink-shirted Russian moujik. Inside the hovel, if we had
had time to look, we should probably have seen a heap of bedclothes
between the roof and the top of the oven; this would be the baboushka’s
(grandmother’s) bed. A wooden bedstead with more disarranged clothes on
the floor; here the rest of the family, mother and father and brats,
all sleep; a filthy, open fire-place, in one corner; a ragged woman,
of ape-like propensities, combing a dirty child in another; and on the
floor two more half-naked brats, fighting over the family loaf of black
bread, from which they are in vain endeavouring to hammer a morsel with
the back of an axe. From a blackened greasy beam overhead, adorned with
a few strings of onions and withered apples, a dim light shines down
upon the whole, proceeding from a tin of mutton fat, which makes the
whole interior as unsavoury as it is ugly.
Gladly, then, we left the village behind us, and drawing up our
droshkies under the lee of a high natural embankment beside the lake,
prepared to pass the night there. A hole was dug in the earth and a
subterranean fire made to cook over. Our bourkas stretched over the
droshky made a kind of refuge between the wheels, into which we could
crawl and sleep in case of rain.
These and other little preparations having been at least started, we
began our shooting. Two guns went round the lake, one on either side;
one worthy sportsman might have been seen arraying himself in Mr.
Cording’s famous hose; another, simpler and perhaps wiser, divesting
himself of all the trammels which civilisation has thrown round the
lower limbs of bipeds. The wading party, Cording’s follower, and ‘the
unadorned,’ made through the shallow lake for the reed beds in the
centre; here carefully concealed to reap the benefit of the stalking
party on either shore. The fifth gunner, a tall thin German from Riga,
the very best of good fellows, with the longest of legs, had taken to
himself a large biscuit-tin, the which he had deposited on a small
sand-bank in the middle of the lake. Seated on this, in his trim
attire, which no campaigning could ever make less natty, with long
limbs overspreading all the surrounding country, our friend B. awaited
the dodgy duck. The men in the reeds had the best of it, though the
shooting was hardest there, and as we had no retrievers we never
got a quarter of the birds we killed. The isolated gentleman on the
biscuit-tin got a few long shots, and as his birds all fell in open
water, got most of what he killed. But, alas, when he attempted to
rise to gather his birds, he was distinctly seen to stick. Vain were
his efforts to rise erect. The misguided biscuit-tin had sunk into the
treacherous mud bank, slowly but surely; the part next upon it had
followed, and the pride of Kertch had apparently taken root in the
wastes of Miskitchee. However, fate was kind, and by the united efforts
of his friends he was rescued from his ignominious position.
The shore shooters came back tired but happy, though their bag of one
cormorant, several red-legged gulls, and a large variety of waders,
with a few duck, was rather ornamental than useful. The man of the
biscuit-tin and ‘the unadorned’ contributed some mallards, teal, and a
couple of pintail, with a few snipe; and after counting out the bag,
all drew round the fire to imbibe the cheering ‘tchai’ (tea). But why
this gap? Our friend in waders is still absent, and yell loud as we
like we get no response from the little reedy island in which he was
last seen. For half an hour we waited, and then we heard a gun fired
right in the middle of the swamp. Again we shouted and fired, and this
time got an answer, but it was not until the sky grew dark and the
smoke from our fire could be plainly seen against it, that our friend
found his way out of the maze of reeds in which he had been wandering
round and round for nearly a couple of hours.
After our pipes had been lighted, the rain came down in torrents,
forcing us all to creep under the droshky, and a very close fit we
found it. However, by curling B.’s legs three or four times round his
waist, we did manage it, and lay there smoking and listening to the old
German jäger’s ghost stories, culled from the forests of Germany and
the plains of Asia, until far into the night. And never had a teller
of weird legends fitter accompaniments than the million voices of the
lake at our feet and the ceaseless pelting and buffeting of the storm
without.
One more shot at the duck in the morning, and then we turned homewards.
My time I felt was getting short, and it was high time that I sailed
for the Black Sea coast, although I was nothing loth to have delayed
these two weeks, feeling that now I was tolerably certain to escape the
Circassian fever which is so prevalent in early autumn.
CHAPTER IV.
THE RED FOREST AND BLACK SEA COAST.
Journey to Taman--Downpour on the steppe--Tscherkess
bourkas--Long-tailed horses--Absence of cultivation--The
Moujiks--Causes of political discontent in
Russia--Veneration for the Czar--Cheapening supplies--A
Russian writer on Englishwomen--Post stations--A terrible
tragedy--Hotels--Ekaterinodar--The fair--Russian
tea--Russian police--Bivouacking with Cossack
foresters--Exciting sport--Shooting a white boar--Sad
disappointment--Pheasant-shooting--A Cossack colonel--An
execrable journey--Caucasian women--Great consumption of
supplies--In a Cossack saddle--Mineral springs--A scorching
bath--Lotus-eaters--Incidents of the road--An insolent
Tartar--Parting.
On Saturday, October 7, I left Kertch for Ekaterinodar, intending
to have a week’s sport at my old quarters in the Crasnoi Lais (Red
Forest), having written to that effect to Colonel R., the forester,
about a week before. My impedimenta were a portmanteau, my gun and
rifle, together with a pointer (Calypso), which I had purchased from
an old shooting companion at Kertch. My intention was to have some
shooting in the Suran district, where bears are said to be plentiful,
to stay a few days at Vladikavkas, thence to pass on to Tiflis, and
from Tiflis across the little known Mooghan Steppe to the Caspian.
But it is hardly worth while to mention my plans, as they nearly all
suffered change, and it would have been better for me if they all had.
At Taman, whilst the horses were being harnessed, I was kindly
entertained by the chief of the Russian Telegraph station, from whom
I gained a good deal of general information. I may say once for all,
that wherever I went I met with the kindest attention from the employés
of the Telegraph Companies, whether Russian or Indo-European, and I
heartily commend to their kindness any one who may be inclined to
follow on my steps. But the jingling bells, whose ceaseless monotony
was to be my only music through many a day to come, warn me to drink up
my coffee, light a pipe for the journey, and be off.
The country round Taman had improved somewhat since I saw it last.
People used to declare nothing would grow there; but now that some
Greeks have settled round the town, fine onions and other garden
produce are daily sent in, grown within a mile of the bazaar.
Once well out on the steppe, in a flat open cart, with no shelter
of any kind and retreat impossible, down came the pitiless rain. No
fitful April shower, but a good conscientious downpour, large drops
and plenty of them, for the rest of the afternoon. Here, then, was my
first omission in fitting out for an expedition. An umbrella would
have looked ridiculous, and been for various reasons useless; but the
umbrella of the country, the Tscherkess bourka, should have been among
the first of my purchases.
This bourka, without which no one thinks of travelling in this country,
is a large piece of felt, of a good quality, extremely light for its
size, and really waterproof. It fastens round the wearer’s neck, and
hangs like a bell-shaped tent from his shoulders to his knees. Bourkas
vary in texture and quality, as well as price; some being white, others
black; some as rough as a Skye terrier, others almost as smooth as a
greyhound. The best are black and almost smooth, and cost as much as
thirty or forty roubles (four or five pounds). After his kinjal and
his horse, I almost think a bourka is the Cossack’s most valuable
possession; and rolled in these things, I have seen the hardy fellows
sleeping placidly on a wet truss of hay in the midst of a perfect
November deluge.
After going for a verst or so, my yemstchik came to his first halt.
The horses here wear their tails, like the ladies’ trains at home,
preposterously long; and a dozen times in our drive of twenty versts,
had we to pull up whilst the driver wrung out the mud from one of
these sweeping appendages, and tied it up into a less comely but
more convenient bob. Without this the horses could not have done the
distance at all. As for myself, I was speedily sodden through, while
my face was like that of a plaster cast with its eyes bunged up.
It is a pitiful thing to see all this useful land untilled, and all
the peasantry and the country itself so poor. My friend the Russian
telegraph clerk told me a few more reasons besides the perpetual
‘prasnik’ for the want of agricultural energy and success in the
Caucasus. The very abundance of land is an evil to the short-sighted
Russian peasant. Here in the Caucasus I am told every ‘soul’ (the
Russian phrase for every male subject) is allowed sixteen dissatines
(acres) free of charge, and he may choose his land pretty well where
he likes. The result is, the moujik argues with himself pretty much
after this fashion: ‘In this particular spot where my cottage is, my
corn won’t grow well, elsewhere it would grow better, and in a third
place another crop would find a fitter soil.’ So on this principle of
not trusting all his ventures to one bottom, he takes a few dissatines
here and another few ten versts off, and still more beyond. In this
way he wastes an infinite amount of time in making perhaps a threshing
floor at each different farm, or in conveying the crop from one farm
to another to be threshed. Add to this that water has often to be
fetched from afar, that his tools are of the rudest, and that his
men are, even if all were workers even in the English sense, far too
small for the acreage, and you have some reasons for the want of
that agricultural wealth which Russia ought to possess. It seems the
greater pity, since the moujik is such a frugal, hard-living man, and
barring vodka and ‘prasniks’ might do wonders. He can turn his hand
to anything, is always cheerful, and almost his only glaring vice is
drunkenness. A peasant family here, I am assured, will live in what is
to them comfort, food and clothes and all included, for from eighteen
to twenty roubles a head, _i.e._ from 2_l._ to 2_l._ 5._s._, per annum.
But then we must bear in mind that meat is a thing a Russian peasant
rarely eats. In spring black bread and an onion; in summer black bread
and arboose (water-melon); in winter black bread and cabbage soup, with
a dry fish now and again as a _bonne bouche_, suffice for his simple
wants. Then, too, his liquor is infinitely cheaper than that of our
beer-drinking peasantry. For three copecks (about a penny) he can get
nearly half an English tumbler of the abominable neat rye spirit, in
which he delights, and some of them will even drink spirits of wine and
petroleum, which, I presume, is even cheaper than vodka.
The proprietor of the oil-wells at Tcheerilek, Mr. Peters--since, I
regret to say, dead--has himself told me that some men working on his
estate thought as little of tossing off a ‘stakan’ (small tumbler) of
petroleum as I would of drinking the like quantity of Bass. In addition
to these things, the moujik’s clothes are as simple and inexpensive
as his diet: in winter a toga of sheepskin, with the woolly side in,
a scarf round his waist and sheepskin hat on his head, a pair of long
boots that cost him more than all the rest of his outfit, but are
unrivalled for their long wearing qualities; in summer a calico shirt;
and summer and winter you may see his wife and brats going about, in
snow or sunshine, with nothing but a single linen garment between them
and the weather. His winter outfit is perhaps a trifle costly, as
compared to the rest of his expenditure, but then it is wonderful how
long one suit of clothes will last a moujik; and like a wise man he
always prefers old clothes to new, so long as they will hold together.
With such a thrifty peasantry, and so much valuable land, surely better
results might be obtained.
I believe that the whole of the misery of Russia, her political
discontent, her Nihilism, and the foul crimes of which it has been
the cause, are due, not to the autocratic form of government under
which she exists, and to which, in spite of the outcry of the few,
the majority of Russians are firmly wedded, but to the utter want
of religious training amongst all classes, and to that widespread
corruption in the official world, from which all who come in contact
with it suffer continually. Were there less compulsory military
service, more religious training, greater encouragement given to
agriculture, and more inducements held out to foreigners to settle in
the waste places of Russia’s vast empire, so that by their example
they might teach her own people how to make the best of the natural
advantages they enjoy, there might then be a chance of happiness and
prosperity for Russia and her people.
There is in every Russian moujik an inherent love of the Czar,
a personal loyalty to him, which deifies and renders its object
infallible in the eyes of his subjects, and this takes much to
eradicate. Could this feeling be fostered rather than destroyed by
the injustices of petty provincial officials, who to the peasant are
the only direct representatives of the supreme power, regicide and
revolution would be things unknown.
The only complaint I ever heard from peasant lips in Russia of the
Great White Czar was, he is too far off, he is deaf, our voices cannot
reach him through the crowd of rascals who hedge him in.
To-day I myself was destined to dine on peasants’ fare; and though
the bread was black and damp, it was wholesome, and hunger gave the
meal the only sauce it needed. My night was passed on a wooden sofa at
Tumerūk, with my pointer for a pillow, a style of repose that at least
ensured early rising.
At 5 A.M. I was in the market chaffering with the peasant women
for supplies for the journey. Ikra (fresh caviare) was nearly two
shillings a pound, and fresh butter tenpence. It is one of the
unpleasant characteristics of the Russian tradesman that you must
always bargain with him for the merest trifle. It is only fair to say
for him that it is the fault rather of his customers than himself; for
in Kertch, where we were known, the tradesmen, knowing that the English
residents did not care to haggle about a bargain, would ask the price
they meant to accept in the first instance, instead of adding on an
extra charge to be gradually taken off to please the customer.
Whilst waiting in the post-station for my horses to be put to, I
chanced on the following passage in a Russian book of travels, by
one Ivan Goutcharoff, which I have taken the liberty of translating
for the benefit of my readers. Speaking of his sojourn in England,
he says: ‘I did not make the acquaintance of any families, so that I
only saw the women in the churches, shops, opera-boxes, streets, &c.,
so that I can only say (and that to prevent your being offended at me
for neglecting this subject) that they are very beautiful, well built,
and of a wondrous complexion, though they eat much meat and sweets
and drink strong wine. Yet in other nations you will not find so much
beauty as among the masses in England. Don’t judge of English beauty
(as Russians too often do) by the red-haired gentlemen and dames who
come out from England under the name of skippers, machinists, tutors,
and governesses, above all governesses. That would be a grand mistake.
Beautiful women don’t leave England for this. Beauty is capital. Women
as a race are worth nothing in England if they have not some special
talent. One foreign language or accomplishment for children is no
great thing, so it only remains to go to Russia. The greater part of
Englishwomen are tall, well built, rather proud and calm; according to
many even cold. The colour of their hair is of never-ending variety.’
Such appears to be the judgment of one who evidently believed himself
a connoisseur, and had had, moreover, an opportunity of studying the
far-famed Circassian belles in their own land.
These Russian post-stations grow worse and worse; what may be the
acme of evil at which I shall arrive before I reach the Caspian, I
dare not fancy. They are bare of all save a wooden couch; no carpets,
no provisions, no anything, except the thirstiest of what Mark Twain
calls ‘seaside chamois.’ We passed to-day a Cossack village on the
border of a large lake surrounded by ‘kamish’ jungles, said to be the
scene of a strange tragedy in the Russo-Tscherkess war. ‘A band of
Tscherkess warriors here met a party of Cossacks, who utterly routed
them, and the wretched natives took refuge in the depths of the
‘kamish’ jungles. Here they stayed till nightfall, when the myriads
of venomous mosquitoes, which make their home amongst these reeds,
drove them out, preferring death at the hands of the Cossacks to slow
torture from their insect foes.’ This is only a tradition, my authority
my yemstchik; but from what I have seen of these pests myself, I have
little doubt of its truth.
The cold is getting quite severe already; all the quail have gone,
and last night there was a full orchestra of wolves outside the
post-station. At the end of three days we pulled up at the St.
Petersburg Hotel, Ekaterinodar, and if anything can be worse than
post-travelling in Russia, it would be the disappointment you suffer
in the so-called hotel accommodation. One of a long corridor in the
stable-yard, with only too ample ventilation, my room stands a whited
sepulchre, with an iron bedstead, a wooden table, a mattress, sheet,
and dirty cushion, no washing utensils of any kind, no bedclothes, a
wicker chair, a broken bottle half full of doubtful water, and bare
boards beneath. Such is the lodging. For attendance, one dirty little
boy about twelve, and a pigmy for his age, waits apparently on every
one in the house. The cooking, though not first-rate, is the hotel’s
greatest attraction. Some one talks about man’s heartiest welcome
being at an inn. If he had ever tried a Russian inn, he would have
reconsidered that statement. Most of the guests at the _table-d’hôte_
are officers, from which one would infer that regimental messes are
not in vogue in Russia.
In the morning after my arrival at Ekaterinodar I was up betimes,
and, with a friend whose acquaintance I had made on my first visit,
proceeded to the fair outside the town to purchase the indispensable
bourka. Thanks to his exertions, I was, in little more than an hour,
the possessor of a good bourka, sheepskin shouba and cap, all purchased
for about 4_l._ Attired in the costume of the country, and speaking
the language fluently, if not well, I am less likely to attract the
attention of the natives, who, I am told, being for the most part
Mussulmen, are bitterly set against the English just now, ascribing, as
they do, the misfortunes of the Turkish Empire to our cold friendship,
for which they have, I fear, a harder name.
Ekaterinodar must be a prospering town, for I am told that seven years
ago there were only five stone houses in the place, and now there are
upwards of a thousand. The old houses were built of reeds washed over
with a kind of cement. The fever, too, I am told, is on the wane, and,
indeed, it had need to be, for some few years ago there was no worse
fever den in the Caucasus. But now as the cart-tracks through the town
begin to look a little like streets (though still of the roughest),
with every here and there in the most fashionable quarters a hundred
yards of uneven pavement, and, by the help of constant pruning and
uprooting, the houses begin to peep less blindly through the trees,
while a tolerably vigorous town government prevents the deposit of
filth in the public thoroughfares, the back of the fever has been
broken.
The wonderful richness of the soil is sufficiently shown by a statement
made to me by a settler here to-day: ‘If I don’t clear my garden three
times a year from new growths, I should be unable to force a way
through it at the end of a twelvemonth.’ It was in his garden that I
saw this afternoon some of the largest gourds I ever set eyes on, some
weighing over eighty pounds, while he assured me that they sometimes
reached as much as 120 or 130 pounds. The people here make a substance
called cassia of them, on which they live, and with which they feed
their pigs.
Trade seemed to be very brisk in the town. The fair was crowded,
the shops full, and the streets alive with conveyances of every
description. The number of military stationed here appears
considerable, and the barracks are fairly imposing edifices.
Ekaterinodar boasts of two cathedrals, of which the old one, now
in disuse, is to my mind the finest. At night I visited the fair
again, and a very lively scene I found it. Out in the open stood
numerous little tables, at which nips of vodka and other liqueurs
were dispensed, for the most part by German Jews, to little crowds of
half-drunk Cossacks. Close by, through the open doorway of a tent, you
caught the glare of a huge fire and your nostrils a savoury smell of
roasting mutton. Feeling hungry, I entered at one of these open doors,
and found myself in a Kalmuck refreshment booth, with two or three dead
sheep hanging round the tent-pole and a big semi-subterranean fire
at the farther end. Here several wild-looking Tartars were devilling
little knobs of mutton on a skewer; and purchasing two or three of
these skewers, with their savoury burden on them all hissing from the
coals, we made the best meal I have yet partaken of in the Caucasus.
To wash this down we ordered Kalmuck tea, evidently quite the thing
to drink here. The tea is pressed in huge cake-like bricks, and is
apparently of no very high quality. A square of this is hacked off,
boiled down in a pot, and the tea served up in one soup-bowl between
two, with a spoon apiece. It is correct to add to it milk, huge lumps
of butter, and pepper and salt to taste, when it resembles soup a good
deal more than tea.
It was not until 3 P.M. next day (Thursday) that I managed to get my
‘podorojna’ (travelling ticket) and other things in order. At that
hour it was really too late to start on my long drive to the Red
Forest, but I was so sick of delays that I determined to get as far
as I could that night, and trust to luck for the rest. My yemstchik,
who had only a misty notion of the whereabouts of our journey’s
end, was a most melancholy fellow, and regaled me for the first hour
or more with stories of horrible murders and atrocities which had
lately taken place in or near Ekaterinodar, and would have made the
fortune of ‘Lloyd’s Weekly.’ They spoke little for the efficiency
of the police in the Caucasus; but then a more miserable lot than
the Russian police generally, I never saw. They are the smallest and
worst men (physically) in the army, and, as such, are drafted into the
police force. They wear a sword which they use to protect themselves
against dogs, attacking small curs with this formidable weapon with
the greatest ferocity. I speak here of what I have seen. If they have
a chance they are, I am assured by Russians, more likely to assist
thieves than to hinder them, and the following true story, which came
under the knowledge of a British Consul, may serve to illustrate their
ordinary conduct when applied to as protectors of person or property:--
‘A certain lady, resident in the Crimea, but not a native, found her
silver forks rapidly disappearing in a manner difficult to explain.
These forks were twelve in number, and marked with a crest or monogram.
One only remained at last, and in despair she searched the box of
a Russian servant in her employ, whom she had reason to suspect of
dishonesty. Here she found the eleven missing forks, and, without
disturbing them, sent for the police, made them search the servant’s
box, and thus the culprit was taken red-handed. The servant was removed
to prison, so were the forks. Time passed, nothing was done. At last,
tired of waiting, the lady applied to know what was to be done in the
matter, and how soon; at least, she pleaded, the forks might now be
returned to her. The answer was, that it was necessary that the police
should have the other fork in order that they might identify the eleven
as her property. In a weak moment she sent her twelfth fork to them.
The set was complete. In a short time the servant was released, and in
spite of all her expostulations this luckless lady never saw her forks
again.’ This occurred in the Crimea; the Caucasus is, I believe, under
military law, yet before I had passed my six months in the country,
I was destined to become so familiar with stories of murders and
atrocities committed here from day to day, as to think little of them.
Meanwhile, thinking and chatting of these things, we had found our way
by 10 P.M. to the forester’s cottage. A huge fire was blazing outside,
at which half a dozen grim-looking Cossacks were smoking and toasting
their toes. Inside the cottage the cigarettes had gone out, and puffing
a last long whiff of smoke through his nostrils, the head-forester
had betaken himself to dreamland. The Cossacks told us he had guests
to-night, and had not expected me. Remembering that a man roused from
his first sleep is not always in his sweetest mood, I determined not
to disturb mine host, but instead took my place amongst the Cossack
guards by the fire, and in spite of their looks of wonder and ridicule,
prepared to be comfortable in my own way. After some delay a kettle
was produced, and taking some tea from my game sack, I soon brewed the
odorous beverage, by sharing which with my rough companions I gained
considerably in their good graces. The night was fearfully cold, and
the stories the Cossacks told almost unintelligible to me, owing to the
patois in which they told them, so that my pipe once out I was ready
to turn in. One thing I ought to say for these men, uncouth as they
appeared. When I knelt for a few minutes before turning in, every one
of them rose, left the vicinity of the fire, and remained respectfully
standing until I was on my legs again; and I may add, that wherever I
have met Cossacks I have found the same outward respect at any rate
for religious observances, and it is my firm belief, that though
prone to many vices, they have more faith and a greater respect for
the nobler qualities of humanity, than most of their more enlightened
fellow-countrymen.
I slept that night in my bourka on the droshky, and when I woke, the
bourka, which was black the night before, was silvery with rime, while
my moustache was quite hard frozen. The forester’s cheery greeting,
and the hot breakfast that followed it, were welcome things indeed
after my hard night’s rest; and on inspection I found that I had as
usual dropped on my legs at the Red Forest. The guest spoken of by the
Cossacks was a certain Colonel H., a German, who had come a long way
for a few days’ sport with my old friend, and great were to be the
drives in his honour.
Our first day was very unproductive, however; for though we got some
red deer on foot in front of the sleuth-hounds, we never saw them.
The second day was as bad, until the afternoon, when, on our way
back, we heard in another quarter of the forest a furious crashing,
accompanied by short fierce snortings. Old R.’s little wiry figure
actually stiffened with excitement, and his eyes became more prominent
even than their wont, as he gripped my arm till it ached. ‘Kabân!’
(boar) was all he seemed able to get out, and, indeed, I was little
less excited myself. Motioning to the German to guard the corner of
the quartal where the rides crossed, he stole stealthily along a ride
towards the sounds, stopping every now and then to listen, but never
letting go my unfortunate arm. The sound was close to us, and now even
my untrained ears told me that the sound was much like that of pigs in
deadly strife. All at once my vivacious little friend dropped my arm
and pointed to something in the dense brush. The trees grew so thick
here, and interlaced their limbs so closely, that the forest shade was
as dark as a summer night, and I could see nothing. My friend gave me
little time to look, for clapping his rifle to his shoulder he seemed
to take a haphazard shot into the thick of it, and let fly. Then there
followed a louder snorting, with the rending of more bushes in hurried
flight, and at last I had a glimpse of three dark forms tearing through
the covert. One seemed much larger than the others, and at him I fired.
To my own astonishment, for the shot was a very hurried one, he lurched
forward, evidently hard hit; but he instantly recovered and went on. I
had a faint idea that some one was calling me back, telling me that I
ought not to follow a wounded boar in thick covert; but as my hackles
were now fairly up, I crept and ran as well as I could after my wounded
game. The other two guns made for various rides to cut off any of the
three boars that might come their way. Once or twice I viewed my beast
for a moment, but never well enough to fire in my cramped position.
Meanwhile, the forester had been making what he called music on his
everlasting horn, and some of his hounds hearing it were soon on the
track of the game. Hot, breathless, and almost in the dark, among the
nearly impenetrable thickets, I was on the point of giving up the
chase when I heard the dogs baying something not far ahead of me. To
creep to within thirty yards or so of them did not take long, and then
crouching behind the bole of a huge oak, I waited for my eyes to get
used to the darkness. Gradually I began to make out the dogs’ sterns
waving eagerly to and fro, and then under a leaning tree-stump, in the
very heart of the shadow, the indistinct outline of their enemy. The
music all this time was maddening. The dogs’ clamour never ceased. The
boar kept half growling, half grunting, while through it all in the
distance came the tootle of our forester’s horn. Suddenly the mass
moved, and a dog went flying belly uppermost, and his yells were added
to the discord. But this movement of the boar’s was fatal to him, as
it brought him into a more open position; and seizing the opportunity,
I rolled him over with my ‘express.’ Rising he tried to charge, but
though I fired again, I believe it was unnecessary, as he was too hard
hit ever to have reached me; still I had seen a man killed by a wounded
boar, and I naturally preferred to keep this one at a distance.
This was the first really large game I had killed, and I rushed up to
him and gloated over him with all the abandon of a boy. I have said I
had seen a man killed by a boar, but I should have added it was his
dead body and not the event which I saw. Moreover, I had never seen
a wild boar before this morning, and now as I contemplated my fallen
foe a strange uneasiness beset me. There was something so homely in
the innocent face of that dead pig, that my heart for a moment misgave
me. But I banished these foolish qualms, the reaction after my triumph
probably; and as I heard the tootle of my friend’s horn approach I
sat myself down on a broad side of bacon and indulged in a victorious
whoo-oop. And now the bushes part asunder, and R., taking in the
position at a glance, bursts into a cheer and loads me with praise.
But, alas! what is this? As my friend approaches, slowly the gay smile
fades, the applauding voice is still; the horn drops from his nerveless
grasp, and the merry little visage lengthens out in a telescopic
fashion truly awful to behold. ‘Moe domaschne kabân!’ Those were the
fatal words that first left his erst joyous lips--‘My own house pig!’
The blow was too awful, too sudden. In my pride I fell. Gradually
the fact was borne in on my already half-awakened mind: ‘wild boars
are black, but this beast was white.’ I had come some thousand miles
to slay a beast which I might have found in any sty at home; I had
accepted my friend’s hospitality, and rewarded it by slaying his one
cherished porker. How I smoothed him down I don’t know, but I did it
somehow. As for myself, I never quite recovered until I had slain a
veritable wild boar long afterwards. The fact was, this wretched animal
had broken out of his sty some months previously, and betaken himself
to the forest to take his fill of love, chestnuts, and other pleasant
things. He had apparently been making too free with the lady friends
of his black-skinned brethren, and at the moment at which we arrived
was doing battle with two of them for his offences. In the dark his own
master had not recognised him, so that there was ample excuse for me,
and there was even a good side to this mishap, inasmuch as we were all
getting very tired of roe-deer’s flesh, and this forest-fed bacon was a
grateful change. Dragging him home with a sapling affixed to his snout,
was the poorest part of the joke.
During the next day I did not recover my spirits sufficiently to
try for big game, so the German colonel and myself devoted it to
pheasant-shooting. The covert consists of thick reed-beds, the birds
are of the original stock from which our English birds are derived,
and in no way differ from them in size or appearance. We killed very
few, my dog proving utterly useless in thick covert, in consequence
of which I gave her away on the first opportunity. I had no right of
course to expect that she as a pointer would be useful in covert, so
as the quails had gone and I should have very little open shooting
for some time, I thought it better to part with her. I am told that
throughout the Kuban district, the tremendous frost of 1876, together
with the floods of the same year, destroyed most of the pheasants. They
certainly seemed scarcer than they were during my previous visit.
At night, sitting up for big game, I saw a few woodcock flitting
bat-like across the rides, but let them alone for fear of disturbing
better game. The night was lovely; the fleecy white clouds, floating
through the network of dark branches, produced a most charming effect.
Of all the bird-mimics I ever met, commend me to the owls you meet with
here. At one moment they bark like a fox; at another, yell like an
evil-minded infant; at another, you hear them grunting like swine, and
creep on noiseless feet towards the spot, rifle ready in hand; and then
the wretches shriek out in eldritch laughter at your mistake, and flap
clumsily off to repeat the trick further on.
My last day in the Red Forest was spent in an ‘ablouva’ (drive), which,
being utterly mismanaged, resulted in nothing but a wild cat and a few
hares. In the evening the German colonel and myself had a very hot
discussion about the habits of the pheasants. He apparently had shot
both the ordinary and the silver pheasant in different parts of Asia,
and stoutly maintained that the pheasant never roosted on a tree or
bush, but invariably on the ground. My own assertion that with us the
pheasant roosts in trees as a rule, and seldom, if ever, on the ground,
was ridiculed by both the German and the forester, which, as both
appeared to be fairly keen observers, would lead one to believe that
the perching of our pheasants is an acquired habit, and not common to
their wild congeners.
As we wended our way homeward, we heard in front of us the bells of
a troika, and on the bridge we overtook it. The horses were stopped,
and a volley of Russian salutations, in a voice that might have shaken
the clouds, greeted us, while slowly from the folds of a dozen or more
wraps, a grim, gaunt figure of an old Cossack colonel, about 6 feet 3
inches in length, unrolled itself. The old gentleman was vociferous
to a degree, and much given to kissing and bebrothering his friends.
Having hugged the forester several times, almost shaken my arm out
of its socket, and given a multitude of directions to the driver,
whom he addressed alternately as ‘son of a dog’ and ‘little dove,’ he
unearthed a quart bottle of vodka, and patting it fondly, conveyed
it to the forester’s hut, there to give his host a drink, and tell
us all about himself. Although very red-faced and very grey-haired,
this veteran was about as fine a Cossack as any I ever saw, with the
boisterous manners of an English schoolboy, added to the peculiarities
natural to a Russian. In about ten minutes he had put me through the
usual catechism, to which time and experience had taught me to submit
with the greatest placidity. Who was my father? What was my trade?
Was I rich? Married? Why did I come here, &c.? To all these questions
I had regular stereotyped answers. But when to the last I answered
that my only object was to kill big game, the old gentleman’s interest
considerably increased. He, too, was a sportsman, and knew the Caucasus
better than any man living, having spent his whole life in fighting
in it. At this very moment he was on his way to an estate of his,
three days’ journey from the Red Forest, on the Black Sea coast, where
bears and boars (if one were to believe him) were so numerous as to
seriously impede one’s movements. Would I come with him and see for
myself? Naturally, as an Englishman I imagined little was meant by
such an off-hand invitation as this; but to my surprise the forester
backed up his suggestion, assuring me that if I did not assent I should
miss a chance I might never get again. Only half credulous, and never
expecting it would come to anything, I assented, and, before I well
knew where I was, my things were bundled into the tarantasse, myself
after them, the old Cossack on top of all, the farewells said, and I
was under way again for Ekaterinodar.
The days of preparation passed in Ekaterinodar had in them nothing
worth recording; I gave up my portmanteau finally and for ever as too
large to travel through the mountains on horseback, and bought myself
instead some Tscherkess saddle-bags, in which I stowed three flannel
shirts and a few other things. My gun, too, I was obliged to leave
behind, and thus on the morning of our departure my entire kit had been
reduced to a rifle and small saddle-bags, half full of cartridges and
gunning implements. We were to have one other travelling companion, an
excessively corpulent cavalry officer; and if I had little luggage,
this worthy made amends for my deficiencies. Pillows innumerable, bags
and food enough to last through a campaign, while, as to bottles, I
really began to think he must be starting as a peddling wine or vodka
merchant. All this, as well as our three selves, had to be piled on one
fourgon, or four-wheeled open cart, and when all the luggage had been
stacked on it, and our hapless selves perched on top, we presented a
picture of about as unlikely a group to travel far without falling out
by the way as could be readily imagined. The old Cossack got wedged
between two of the largest packages, and was thus pretty safe, but
the ‘plunger’ and myself, sitting each on some shifting packages of
loaves, sardine-tins, or what not, had an exceedingly merry time of it.
Briskly our horses trotted along in the keen morning air; the roads
were hard with frost, and as the heavy cart lurched from rut to rut,
and bounded from hole to hole, we two resembled nothing so much as a
pair of erratic human shuttlecocks. As luck would have it, both of us
returned from our aërial flights in time to go on with the cart, but at
what an expense of finger-nails and other bruises none but ourselves
can tell. As for the ‘plunger,’ the exercise acted on him like a rough
sea passage, and before long he was grievously ill, and I frankly admit
that in another hour I should have been as bad.
The road on leaving Ekaterinodar runs through marshes, and has been
raised and constructed by Government engineers, who receive a regular
subsidy to keep it in repair. With the money they apparently do what
they like. The governor has not heard of the state of the road, or
having heard does not interfere; the result is that it is so infamous
that passengers prefer a mere track at the side to the engineers’ road,
which is practically unused. And this seems to me to be the universal
way of doing things out here. The Government seems liberal enough, and
anxious to promote the people’s welfare; more than that, considerable
sums of money are expended to this end, but owing to the vastness of
the territory, difficulty of transit, and want of trustworthiness in
its agents, the good intentions of the Government are too frequently
frustrated.
Never was I more heartily thankful than when we came to what was (for
us) the end of this execrable road; and when at the Tscherkess village
of Enem we saw our horses waiting for us, I felt almost content with
the instruments of torture which Cossacks call saddles upon their
backs. The ‘aoul’ (village) was fenced about with wattled walls,
and seemed a busy, thriving little place, but as far as I could see
contained none of those lovely women of whom one has heard so much in
‘Lalla Rookh’ and elsewhere. And perhaps I may be permitted to say here
that neither at Tiflis nor in Daghestan, nor elsewhere in the Caucasus,
have I seen, either among the peasants or the upper classes, one single
face sufficiently beautiful to attract a second glance in London. I had
heard so much of Georgian beauty that, like the aurochs, it was one
of the things I had come to look for, and, like the aurochs, I never
found it. I have brought back several photographs of typical Caucasian
faces, bought at various photographers, who seem to me to have always
chosen the best-looking people they could find, yet even so they are by
no means strikingly beautiful. The men, if you will, are many of them
magnificent, and as handsome as they are well built; but for the women,
even those who have good features are so totally devoid of expression,
so extremely animal in their appearance, as to almost warrant the
Turks’ conclusion that they possess none but physical properties, and
are as soulless as they are insipid. Moreover, they are most of them so
wonderfully alike that cases of mistaken identity must be common, even
with the most devoted husbands.
By the way, Tscherkess and Cossack are frequently used amongst the
Russians as terms of reproach, equivalent to robber and swashbuckler
respectively, and no Circassian ever calls himself Tscherkess.
Here at Enem I got the first insight into my companions’ ideas of
travelling. We had perhaps been on the road a couple of hours, and
had breakfasted as heartily as men can do, yet here we were doomed to
repeat the process. And to save further reference to it I may say that
our vast supply of stores was by no means unnecessary. Every two hours
throughout those three days we had a grand feed, while in the intervals
the ‘plunger’ nibbled and nipped, the Cossack only nipping and smoking
perpetually. If these fellows require as much food campaigning as they
do travelling, they must be a difficult lot to provide for.
At Enem we hoisted ourselves into our Tartar or Cossack saddles, things
in which you sit as it were in a narrow deep valley between two gables,
your feet thrust into things like a couple of fire-shovels, with the
corners of which you poke up the ribs of your Rosinante if he is tired
or sluggish. Here, too, the English equestrian meets with a novelty in
the pace of his horse, which has been taught to go at a kind of amble
called ‘enokod,’ at which pace the beast travels about twelve miles
an hour with very little fatigue to the rider. Very few of the horses
trot properly, and if they do, and you attempt to rise to the trot as
men do in England, you meet with so much banter that you are inclined
to wish that they did not. The horses are for the most part small, and
possessed of wonderful endurance, but there is one breed of horses
in the Caucasus that looks all over like making into good hunters--I
mean the Khabardine. They are larger, finer, and faster animals
than any others that I have ever seen in Russia, and their price is
proportionately higher. A good Khabardine costs from 200 to 500 roubles.
As we journeyed on from Enem the country became more hilly and more
wooded, and at every turn we encountered the pretty little trout stream
Pscekupz. How often we crossed that stream before we reached the sea I
should be afraid to guess, but it seemed to me that we were almost as
often in the water as out of it, and it is this small stream that when
flooded stops this road to the Black Sea for nearly half the year. We
stayed for the night at some mineral springs about forty versts from
Enem, beautifully situated near the Pscekupz, with high, well-timbered
hills all round. Most of the trees are young oaks, which were now
lovely in their russet robes. But there are, besides, wild pear and
apple, with everywhere a thick undergrowth of hazel. At the mineral
springs is a Russian military hospital, and the doctor in charge was
our host for the night. The hospital is built to hold some 300 people,
and it was believed that this place would in time become a fashionable
bathing-place for the Caucasus. Hitherto, however, the military have
had it all to themselves. There are a few good houses in the place, and
Government is erecting baths over the springs. The springs themselves
are of hot water, strongly impregnated with sulphur, which comes down
from the hills at a temperature of 42° Reaumur. I saw some of the
water, which was colder, of a dull bluish grey, and stank horribly.
These baths are supposed to cure rheumatic affections, and my friend
the Cossack pretended to have obtained great relief from them. Nay,
so enthusiastic was he that, after taking them both internally and
externally, he insisted on my doing the same. Being in extreme need of
a tub, I complied with his whim as far as an external application went,
and was parboiled for my complacency, feeling a good deal worse when I
came out than I did when I went in.
The springs run through a white stone which, though extremely hard
on the surface, pulverises at the touch the moment the outside layer
is removed. I am myself ignorant of geology, but I was assured that
this was quartz of a very high quality, and excellently adapted for
the manufacture of glass. If this be so, a glass factory here would,
one would imagine, be an extremely remunerative speculation, with any
quantity of timber and water-power immediately at hand, and no rival
factory nearer than Moscow, especially as glass is in the Caucasus a
very dear commodity, bad glass bottles costing from ten to fifteen
copecks. In the evening and in the morning we saw the worst side of the
village by the springs; for on both occasions a dense white fog rolled
up from the valley high up the hills, completely hiding them from view,
while the dew lay on the grass like rain after a very severe thunder
shower.
We left the springs early, and shivered in our saddles as we waded
through the rolling fog clouds, although in a few hours’ time the heat
was quite oppressive.
I noticed to-day by the wayside a large quantity of mistletoe, and
have since remarked that its abundance is not restricted to this one
part of the Caucasus. The insects by the wayside were ‘hyale,’ clouded
yellow, red admirals, painted ladies, and several varieties of white
butterflies. I also noticed some large pale yellow butterflies, which
may have been the common brimstone, but I believe were not. I am pretty
sure too that I recognised one ‘comma.’ We passed through one or two
villages inhabited by ‘plastoons’ (Russian settlers), who in spite of
the richness of the soil appeared to be in the most abject poverty. On
every face the fever had set its yellow seal, and all the women over
forty were hideous enough to frighten Macbeth’s witches.
Truly, this Caucasus must be the land of the lotus-eaters, yet what
sorry beings these lotus-eaters are. All round them such beauty as
Tennyson has dreamed of; mountains clothed in gold and purple, with the
sea murmuring round their bases; wealth to be had for the taking, from
the too luxuriant soil; and yet here the peasant smokes and moons away
his life, content to cull in idleness just enough to keep body and soul
together, and only doing just enough work to provide for himself a crop
of that weed in the consumption of which he wastes life and energy, as
well as the money and opportunities that might be his. Each village
where Russians lived seemed to me more wretchedly poor than the last,
and it became a relief to see how few and far between the villages
were. The Tscherkesses, who made a garden of at least some parts of
their native home, might almost feel revenged in contemplating the
utter failure of the race which has supplanted them.
But for us the day was no day of idleness, but rather one of
considerable toil and difficulty. The road grew exceeding steep and
rugged, and the little baggage cart which we had endeavoured to send
on by our men came to grief, and was broken beyond repair. The driver,
who was on the top of the baggage, probably asleep, got a bad fall,
and was rather seriously hurt. The tripod of my photographic apparatus
was broken, and the stock of my rifle snapped short off at the pistol
grip. The ‘plunger’s’ store of eau-de-Cologne, without which this hero
felt it impossible to travel, was also lost in the general disaster,
and he, poor fellow, had very bad times throughout the day, having
had too much to eat and too much shaking up after it. For a cavalry
officer, too, it was somewhat undignified, when ascending one steep
little ravine, to slide off over his horse’s quarters; and for a man of
his weight it must have been as painful as it was ridiculous. Laughter
went a long way towards leaving me as helpless as he was, for a more
ludicrous sight than our gallant companion rolling off behind, it would
be difficult to conceive.
The night was, if anything, worse than the day, for my old friend the
Cossack, having a great deal of pain from an old injury near his spine,
determined to cure it with hard drinking; the result of which was
that he became helplessly drunk, and the ‘plunger’ only irritably so.
In this condition the nature of the man showed itself, and he amused
himself by baiting me, a stranger, and his friend’s guest, for the
amusement of his servants. At last his insolence became so intolerable
that, risking all possible consequences, I got him by the scruff of the
neck and gave him such a shaking as he had not experienced even during
the rough ride of the last few days. It was, of course, extremely
unpleasant for me, but my host was too drunk to interfere, and there
are some things which a man cannot stand.
Next morning, after having spent the night awake in a state of siege,
uncertain what my quondam friend’s servants might think fit to do to
me, I had a wretched ride in my own society to Duapsè, the little
seaport town which was to be the end of our journey. The ‘plunger’
neither apologised nor called me out, as I had thought he might, but
the good old Cossack behaved like a gentleman, and although, of course,
we were glad to say good-by to one another at Duapsè, we parted good
friends, and I believe he exonerated me from all blame in the matter.
CHAPTER V.
HEIMAN’S DATCH.
Duapsè--Tscherkess emigrants--By the sea-shore--Superb
scenery--Drunken guides--A Cossack station--Bears--Take
possession of a ruined villa--Hiding our provisions--Wild
swine--Astray in the jungle--A rough breakfast--Boars
in file--A missfire--Forest fruit--Lose our horses--A
panther--Night-watch--Shooting in the dark--On the
trail--_Barse_--A friendly Cossack--Deserted by my servants.
At Duapsè there is an English (Indo-European) telegraph station, so,
though unexpectedly thrown on my own resources again, I was much
better off than I might otherwise have been. The Englishmen gave me
a cordial welcome, and were very good to me. Duapsè, I am informed,
is built on a graveyard, in which are buried numbers of the victims
of the Russo-Tscherkess war. In 1864, after the final subjugation
of the Caucasus, some 200,000 Circassians left the Caucasus for
Trebizond, at the invitation of their conquerors. They were for the
most part conveyed in small Turkish vessels, in which they were so
crowded, starved, and exposed, that not more than half ever reached
their destination, the others dying _en route_. Of these a very large
proportion died near Duapsè, and were there landed and buried, or left
to bleach, according to the means of their friends. Their graves are
still marked by little mounds and inequalities in the ground throughout
the place. On their miserable journey they sold everything they
possessed, and I have frequently heard in Kertch and in the Caucasus
of girls being sold for a few roubles, and valuable daggers (the last
thing almost that a Tscherkess parts with) for about the same. Now
Duapsè is a vilely squalid hole, with two telegraph stations and a
governor’s house. The steamers from Odessa and Poti touch here, if it
is fine, once a week, but if there is any sea on they cannot come in,
as I was hereafter to learn to my cost. Why Duapsè exists, and still
more why it has a governor, I never could conceive.
It was, then, with a feeling of intense relief that on October 21 I
left Duapsè behind me and turned my horse’s head southwards along the
Black Sea shore. I had managed to engage a couple of Russian peasants,
Ivan and Yepheem, to guide me to some happy hunting-grounds of which
they knew, some fifty versts from Duapsè. Taking three horses, we
loaded each with as much provisions as he could carry, and then climbed
on top ourselves. It was difficult work to so adjust yourself and
baggage, as to keep your seat over the boulders. Grip was, of course,
impossible, and balance, with a shifting basis under you, almost as
much so.
The road lay between the base of the cliffs and the sea, and as these
two were in close juxtaposition, your horse had at one time to wade
and at another to creep from boulder to boulder, in places where
even a goat would have to move with caution. This lasted for fifteen
versts, and these fifteen have in rough weather to be avoided, and a
long circuitous route in the hills substituted for them. After leaving
these stony places, the road winds up into the hills, and here the eye
had a feast indeed. All the way from Ekaterinodar the scenery had been
beautiful, but here it was superb. Range upon range of hills, as far
as the eye could see, one behind another, and each range higher than
the last, until far away one caught the sheen of snow-peaks against
the sky. The autumn foliage was a never-ending glory. One shrub in
particular caught my eye, of stunted growth, with a long oval leaf,
which was now of the most brilliant shades of red. This shrub grew in
immense clumps, and the effect at a short distance was that of vast
beds of scarlet geranium.
But the road in the hills was almost as bad as the road by the sea, and
after having done some twenty-eight versts in the whole day, our horses
were done up, and so were we. Just after noon my men stayed behind for
some time, and I, thinking nothing of it, rode slowly on. In about
half an hour they rejoined, looking mightily pleased with themselves,
and very drunk. They had discovered a large bottle holding about three
pints of vodka, which I had brought with me for our use during the
next fortnight. This they had quietly sat down to the moment my back
was turned, and finished it. It was no good my making a row about it;
I was in their hands, and determined to bear with them, at least until
I found out where game was to be found, after which I could decide
whether to keep them or try alone. Meanwhile they had finished their
grog, and as I did not mean to give up mine, they would be punished by
enforced abstinence for some time to come.
A Cossack station in the Caucasus is about as strange a place to pass
the night in as can well be imagined. Ten or a dozen privates, with
the manners of monkeys in the Zoo, all sleeping in the same room
with yourself and their officer, a youngster generally little better
educated than themselves, and thoroughly hail-fellow with them all.
Such is your company. Your couch the top of the ‘petchka’ (oven), if
you like heat and dirt, and are inclined to pay for the berth; if not,
as much room as you can get on the floor or on a form, with a Cossack’s
boots next your head and a Cossack’s head next to your boots. For
supper we got some barbel, and a fish they called ‘golovin,’ which one
of the soldiers had caught; and though tired enough to turn in gladly
even here, we were, I think, even more glad to turn out again at four
next morning.
On our way we came across signs of bears; in the first instance, in the
face of a Greek settler we met, whose nose and mouth had apparently
got discontented with their original positions, and had altered them
according to their own fancy. On inquiry, we found that two years ago
the Greek had been frightening bears from his orchard, when one of
them had attacked him and, striking him on the head, peeled the face
off his skull almost, and left him still living in this condition. He
was found, and the face replaced as well as possible, but his whole
appearance was hideously distorted.
A mile or two further on we came across fresh tracks of a regular
family of bears, who had been down to the high-water line looking for
waifs and strays whilst we were sleeping at the Cossack station.
Mid-day found us at our camping place--a ruined datch or villa
belonging formerly to General Heiman, built on an estate given him,
I believe, as a reward for his successes against the aborigines. But
the house was never finished and the land never reclaimed. Where once
the Tscherkess had magnificent orchards, nothing now remains save here
and there a fruit-tree, still bearing fruit though sparingly, choked
by the luxuriant growth of forest trees. Through the doorless doorways
and windowless frames of the ruined villa, the big trees branch in,
creepers and blackberry bushes grow merrily inside, while from the very
hearth, disturbed by our intrusion, a scared woodcock bustles away. The
spot had evidently been used as a camping place by drovers before our
day, for all round the white skulls of cattle bleached on the shore and
on the sward, while remains of camp-fires were numerous, although there
were none of recent date. All this warned us to be careful, so that
our first step, after turning out our horses, was to secrete all our
provisions, &c. in a hole beneath the flooring, and to destroy, as far
as possible, all traces of our presence.
Having done this, we turned to the greenwood, and indeed it was not
far to go. Two dozen strides, and we had almost to cut our way through
the dense undergrowth. After a time we forced our way to more open
forest, and here we parted. Not twenty minutes afterwards there was
a report that set the forest shrieking. Something came crashing down
hill past me, and rumbled away into silence down a deep tree-covered
gorge. In a few minutes I arrived on the scene of action, and found
Ivan and his mongrel pointer gloating over a fine sow he had slain.
Having gralloched her, we hoisted her on to the top of a blasted and
broken oak, and, there impaled, she presented to us a ghastly, and to
the jackals who soon arrived a no doubt very tantalising, appearance.
However, we left them to their own devices and, feeling sure of pork
chops for dinner, continued our hunt.
Twice I heard swine close to me, and both my men saw game again during
the afternoon; but the covert was so dense that we none of us got
another shot, and, what was worse, all lost our way. The sun, which
had been our guide, went down all in a moment, and left us in the dark
without a compass to steer by. For two hours and a half I struggled
through jungle that tore me to pieces, and threw me down every few
yards. I climbed out of a ravine up the white face of a cliff, gun in
hand, which cliff I inspected by daylight on another occasion, and
would not climb again for the best day’s shooting that man ever had;
and at last, fagged and bleeding, came upon Ivan resting, with his pig
up aloft keeping watch for him.
After getting the pig down and finding Yepheem, we started on the back
track; but, though the track had been comparatively easy by daylight,
with no pig to drag along, we lost it in about five minutes now. In
another ten minutes we were completely lost, and, realizing the fact,
prepared to meet it. We had, fortunately, between us two boxes of
matches, furnished with which Yepheem gave us an occasional glimmer of
light, by which Ivan hewed away with his kinjal through the tangled
creepers, while I plodded wearily on behind with the pig in tow. Two
hours of this kind of thing, added to the previous day’s work, was
more than I could stand; so we sat down, made a wood fire, and, by its
light, divided the sow longitudinally.
It was no good waiting for the moon to rise, as she was in her last
quarter; so Yepheem shouldering one half, and myself the other, we
floundered on again, to arrive at last at the ruin about midnight, dead
beat and starving, to say nothing of being saturated with the blood
of the pig, and lacerated all over by the thorns of that abominable
creeper the ‘wolf’s tooth.’ Then, after one long pull at the whiskey
bottle, I lay down and slept where I was, too tired to wait for the
chops which the men were frying by my side.
Nor were my men much less tired; for when I woke with a shiver at dawn,
one of them was asleep with his skewer of grilled pork almost untouched
by his side. Of this I speedily relieved him, and, raking together
the embers of the fire, which my men had made under the flooring the
night before, I re-cooked the kabobs, and breakfasted, not perhaps
sumptuously, but with an appetite that made amends for any defects in
the cooking.
Whilst the men still slept, I went down to the sea for a swim and a
look at the country round us. Looking from the sea you saw nothing
but endless hills, growing gradually into mountains, as they receded
farther and farther from the shore. Everywhere they seemed covered with
forest, the greater part of which was composed of Spanish chestnut
trees. Except a solitary eagle, a few porpoises rolling about near in
shore, and one of my men coming down now to collect drift-wood, there
was no sign of life anywhere. After helping to light the fire and brew
the tea, I sent Yepheem to look for the horses, which were nowhere
in sight, and meanwhile Ivan and I took our rifles and tried another
part of the forest. We had gone but a very little way when the dog
gave tongue, and was evidently driving something through the bushes
towards us. Ivan ran in one direction, I in another, to cut off the
game. Standing behind a big tree at the foot of a small hill, covered
with rhododendron clumps, I heard a rustling through the covert, such
as some small animal might make if quietly forcing his way through.
I never dreamed it was our game, but was still intently listening
for the crashing charge I was beginning to know so well. Looking
in the direction of the rustling, I was thunderstruck to see three
magnificent grey old boars following one another in single file down
hill, straight to my tree. The almost cat-like noiselessness with which
large and clumsy animals can move about in thick covert, is almost
more wonderful than the tremendous noise even small ones make when so
minded. I picked out the leading boar, fired, and with a thundering
rush they were gone. How I could have missed him I don’t know, but I
apparently did clean, and for the rest of that day I found it harder
than ever not to speak somewhat unadvisedly with my lips when a long
loop of ‘wolf’s tooth’ caught me up under the nose, or a hazel wand
flew back and cut me over the ear.
Later on in the afternoon we were all three walking abreast, with
perhaps a hundred yards between each gun, when I caught a glimpse
of Ivan stealthily scrambling up an old stump, from which elevated
position he aimed carefully, for what seemed about five minutes, at
something almost under his feet. Then followed the click that denotes
a missfire, and a great crashing amidst the rhododendron bushes, as
a big brown bear scuttled away in undignified flight. Some minutes
afterwards, whilst Ivan with many curses was descending from the stump,
his valuable piece went off, luckily damaging no one.
Except some wild boars seen by Yepheem, this was the last game we saw
during the day, although we came across regular roads made by bears
and swine, and one patch of several acres, which from the broken
fruit-trees and trampled state of the ground appeared to be a regular
bear den. The quantity of fruit one meets with in these Circassian
forests compensates in some measure for persecutions of the ‘wolf’s
tooth’ and other thorny creepers. Large apples, walnuts, grapes,
‘fourmar’ (an edible berry for which I do not know any other name),
medlars, blackberries, dewberries, and a kind of scarlet plum, occur
frequently, and whereever they occur the trees are smashed into ruins
by the bears. You begin to get some notion of the power of a bear when
you have seen the enormous boughs he has broken in his greed for fruit.
To-night the jackals were calling all round us, but the wily little
beasts never gave me a shot.
In the morning Yepheem woke us with the pleasant intelligence that our
horses had been stolen. A drover had passed along the coast whilst we
were shooting the day before, and suspicion immediately settled on his
party. Of course after this news there was no hunting for us to-day,
for while Ivan and Yepheem scoured the country for our missing steeds,
I had to sit at home and watch. At nightfall the best news they could
give me was that the Cossacks on the station at which we had slept on
our way hither had lost six of their horses at the same time.
I had time during the day to examine the insect life about our camp,
and amongst the butterflies I noticed all three meadow browns,
quantities of very large brimstones, a fritillary, and a wood argus,
whilst amongst the moths I recognized quantities of the gamma and the
humming-bird hawk moth.
When we went down to the shore to bathe, huge shoals of what looked
like bass were playing close in shore, but alas we had no means of
securing any, though they would have been a noble addition to our
ill-found larder.
Last night, whilst writing up my journal, with my legs dangling from
a rafter, and a great wood fire burning by my side, by which the men
lay curled in their bourkas, the wind that came moaning through the
open places in the wall brought with it a sound between a child’s
wail and a wolf’s howl, which was so distinct from the jackals’ cries
that it arrested my attention at once. The men sprang to their feet
simultaneously, and with excited faces whispered ‘barse’ (panther).
At our backs was the ruined doorway through which the forest trees
stretched their arms; in our front was the huge empty window place
with thickets of briar and thorn half blinding it, and right under it
the sound seemed. For a moment I believe the same feeling was on all
of us, that the next event would be the entrance of our serenader by
either door or window. However, this wore off at once, and snatching up
my rifle I crept to the window place to try to make out the beast in
the moonlight. But outside all was a maze of shadowy limbs and dark
places, with every here and there a brilliant patchwork of moonshine;
and though I went outside and carefully beat all round our camp I could
not catch sight of the barse.
To-night, having had a lazy day in camp, I was by no means in a hurry
to roll myself up in the least draughty corner, so taking my rifle,
having constructed a night sight for it, I betook myself to the beach
to await our last night’s visitor should he repeat his visit.
The hills near Heiman’s Datch come down almost to the high-water line,
so that sitting hidden under some drift-wood I had the forest close
at my back, and a little above me; so close indeed as to suggest the
possibility of a sudden spring from the bushes to my hiding place if
any beast had the courage to try it. Before me lay some forty yards at
most of strand, and beyond a perfectly calm and silent sea. Far up in
one of the valleys at my back two wolves were answering each other,
and away towards Duapsè I could hear some jackals fighting over some
carrion they had found.
But for a long time nothing happened, except every now and then a
rustle in the forest at my back, that made me start and bring my gun
to bear on its dark fastnesses. I had almost made up my mind to give
up my watch and return to the ruin, when a figure like the grey ghost
of some large hound was just visible against the sky line. It was too
dark to see even the barrels of my rifle, but aiming as best I could, I
fired. The figure bounded forward and trotted briskly along the coast
from me; so pitching my rifle low, and well in front, I fired again.
Then the beast vanished. For a minute or two I waited, expecting to see
it again, or at least hear it making off, and then, loading my rifle, I
went up to the spot at which I had last seen it. But whatever the beast
was, it had vanished, and feeling that I had wasted a couple of hours
and a couple of cartridges in missing a jackal, I went back to my roost
in the ruin.
However, on the morning after my night-watch, when we went down to
bathe and collect drift-wood for our fires, my man Ivan suddenly called
to me to look at something he had found on the stones. On inspection
it proved to be large blood drops, on the very spot, as near as I
could tell, on which my shadowy visitor of the night before had stood.
Following the blood track along the shore, we momentarily expected to
find a dead jackal, as, from the quantity of blood, the beast must have
been very hard hit. Some two hundred yards along the shore the trail
crossed the mouth of a little mountain stream, with a bed of soft clay
on one side of it, and through this the trail went. Our astonishment
may be imagined when along with the blood marks we found the fresh
tracks of a large panther (or more properly leopard), which had
evidently been the beast wounded by me in the dark the night before. Of
course the search was now prosecuted with far greater ardour, at least
on my part. As for the men, they have so many yarns about the much
dreaded barse, that they were not as keen as they might have been; and
when the trail turned from the shore and entered some extremely dense
and dark thickets, they came to a stand, and nothing would induce them
to enter the forest with me. Unfortunately the dog was of their mind,
so that after wandering blindly about for some time, tearing myself to
pieces, and losing my temper terribly, I had to give up my search, with
the conviction strong upon me that a noble and (in this part of the
world) rare quarry was lying dead within a stone’s throw of me.
‘Barse’ is the name given by the peasants on the Black Sea coast, and
in fact generally throughout the Caucasus, to any feline animal larger
than a wild cat; and this indiscriminate use of the word occasioned
me a good deal of trouble. Too often when they tell you of barse, the
animal they refer to is only the lynx, of which there are at least
two varieties in the Caucasus, and which is extremely numerous on
some parts of the Black Sea coast. The natives trap it for its skin,
which is one of the commonest in the furriers’ shops of Tiflis and
Ekaterinodar. But that the leopard or ocelot (the snow leopard of
India) does occur not uncommonly in the Caucasus, even on its western
coast, I was assured by Professor Radde, the courteous director of
the Tiflis Museum, who showed me great kindness in going over his
collections with me during my stay in that town. And even had I had no
further confirmation than the tracks I have above alluded to, I should
feel convinced that the beast I wounded was an unmistakable leopard.
Returning from our tracking operations, we were startled by seeing a
strange figure moving about inside our camp, evidently looking for
anything light enough to carry away. Remembering our horses, we never
for a moment doubted but that this was one of the gentry who had stolen
them, returned possibly for the saddles. Had he been, he would have had
fleet feet to have escaped, for we went for him like terriers for a
rat. But our anger was turned to rejoicing when we recognised the face
of a friendly Cossack from the next station, who had brought our horses
back with him, and was looking for nothing more valuable than a still
smouldering ember to light his cigarette by. Our horses had joined his
‘taboon’ (herd), which had been pasturing in a valley somewhere between
our camp and his station, and he had there found them the night before.
On hearing this good news Ivan and his chum announced to my disgust
their intention of going straight back to Duapsè, before any further
accidents happened, alleging as their reasons that their wives could
not do without them any longer. As a matter of fact, I presume their
own appetite for sport was satiated, and their appetite for vodka
becoming daily more unendurably keen. As no words or promises of
mine could turn them from their resolve I gave in to them, merely
stipulating that they should leave me one of their horses to take
me twelve versts further up the coast, to the hut of a Tscherkess
telegraph watcher, who lived by that irrepressible mountain torrent the
Golovinsk. To this they agreed, and I moreover managed to persuade the
Cossack to accompany me to Golovinsky, as another Cossack station at
which he could rest was not far from the watcher’s hut. So we parted
company, my men and I, and I don’t think I suffered any great loss from
their defection. My reasons for wishing to go to Golovinsky were, that
a report had come down the coast that in the extensive chestnut forest
round the watcher’s hut bears were more than usually numerous, the man
himself having recently killed two by shooting from a platform in a
tree during the night.
CHAPTER VI.
GOLOVINSKY.
Lunch in the forest--Picturesque riding--A spill--Telegraph
shanty at Golovinsky--Robinson Crusoe--Native guns--Tracks
of game--Multitudes of pheasants--Paucity of native
hunters--Tscherkess mocassins--Experiences of forest
life--Killing a bear--Cooking him--Another bag--A lost
chance--Anecdotes of ‘Michael Michaelovitch’--Shooting a boar.
The Cossack and myself, having seen the two Russians round the first
little promontory, unearthed a small quantity of whiskey which I had
managed to save from their insatiable thirst, and with this and a
pork kabob made a very fair lunch, and laid the foundation of a good
understanding between us. Then we piled up a pyramid of odds and ends
on the back of each little horse, and made the whole fast with cords.
The equestrians’ enviable position was astride the summit of the
pyramid of luggage--a position difficult to retain when gained, and
almost impossible to attain unaided. However, after many failures the
Cossack hoisted me on to my place, and providing we never went out of a
walk I felt fairly safe. How the Cossack got up was a miracle, but he
did it somehow; and we proceeded at a walk through the shingle, that
forms the only possible pathway along this part of the shore.
We had not gone far when it seemed to me that I was gradually leaning
over more and more towards the sea. I tried to regain an erect
position, and then I became aware of my situation. My girths had got
slack, and my saddle, with its huge pile of luggage, of which I was
the highest point, was gradually turning round under my horse’s belly.
Seated as I was, I was utterly helpless; I could not readjust my
saddle, and a voluntary descent, except head first, was impossible.
So I waited the course of events, and in a few moments lay sprawling
on the ground, half buried in pots and pans, bourkas, and other
impedimenta.
This was our only misadventure, however, and about four o’clock we came
in sight of the watcher’s hut--a two-roomed wooden shanty, knocked up
in the roughest way possible, standing on the edge of the shingle, with
a big brown bear-skin stretched over the roof to dry. A more utterly
miserable-looking hut cannot well be conceived; but the skin on the
thatch consoled me, proclaiming as it did the vicinity of the game I
was in search of.
After much shouting and hammering at the board that constituted the
hut’s one door, a wild Robinson Crusoe-like fellow came shuffling out.
Tall and well built, but taciturn and clumsy to a degree, Stepan was
not a favourable specimen of the benefits of woodland isolation to
mankind. Instead of giving me a kindly welcome as, to do them justice,
all Russian peasants had hitherto done, he eyed me in the doubtful
manner in which some big dog might eye a too familiar stranger before
snapping at the would-be caressing hand. His face was shrivelled
and yellow with fever, and a frequent deep cough formed no pleasant
accompaniment to our cottage life. Gradually his sullenness gave way to
surprise at the presence of an English gentleman in those evil places,
for such he evidently deemed Golovinsky; and when I explained to him
that I wished to hire his services and the use of his hut, as well as
to put all game killed at his disposal, his delight knew no bounds. His
terms were a rouble a week, that is about half a crown; but that seemed
so unfair to me that I trebled it, and added to it a promise of ten
roubles additional for the skinning of the first bear I should kill;
and considering that he gave me house-room, black bread, and his whole
time, I think 7_s._ 6_d._ per week was not an exorbitant charge.
However, he was delighted, and though rather startled to find that
his whole larder consisted of some black bread, onions, and pork fat
(‘salo’), I consoled myself with the reflection that with the addition
of tea and sugar, which I had brought with me, we should be able to
hold out for a week at least, in which time I should probably have
obtained my coveted bear-skin.
Outside the hut all was beauty. The hut itself was as nearly as
possible the centre of a bay of fairly high hills, enclosing a couple
of hundred acres or so of plain covered with low shrubs. Beyond the
first chain of hills, which was wooded to the top, rose another and
a higher chain, and so one after another, in successive semicircles,
they rose range above range, until far away in the sapphire sky shone
the white glory of the snow-peaks. Out at sea a long line of pelicans
lay tossing on the little waves, like a small fleet riding at anchor.
Within the hut all was squalor and filth. The place consisted of two
rooms, in one of which was a telegraphic apparatus of the simplest
kind, with a handle like that of a barrel organ, and a face like the
face of a clock with letters in place of numerals. This was the deity
of the place and Stepan’s pride and fear. Near it was a camp bedstead,
and here the list of the furniture ends. The other room was merely a
shed, in which such cooking as we had to do was done; and though the
appliances were of the simplest, we never taxed them overmuch. The
floors throughout were of mud, and several inches deep in refuse,
dating from the time of Stepan’s arrival in his den.
Borrowing a spade and cutting down a large bough for a broom, I soon
had a clear floor, and by dint of hard work had in an hour’s time got a
fairly clean place to move about in. Stepan retired to the shed, and,
in spite of my protestations, took up his abode there. Had it not been
for his cough I should have fallen in with this arrangement readily
enough; but as it was, I felt he required the best accommodation the
shanty afforded. However, in the shed he remained, and for the rest of
my stay I had his best room to myself.
There were, besides Stepan and myself, three other residents at the
‘telegraph station,’ as he loved to call it--to wit, Zizda, Lufra, and
Orla, three large cross-bred dogs, devoured by mange, with which Stepan
hunts the boars that abound in the thicket at the back of his house,
killing on an average, so he tells me, half a dozen in the year. In
spite of the numbers which inhabit the adjoining forests, this small
bag is not very much to be wondered at, when the impenetrable nature of
the covert and the almost utter uselessness of Stepan’s gun are taken
into consideration.
Russian peasants have amongst them the most wonderful fire-arms in
the world, which, as a rule, they buy in the bazaars at from three
to five roubles (_i.e._ 7_s._ 6_d._ to 12_s._ 6_d._) each. I have
frequently seen the grebe-shooters along the shore at Kertch using old
rifle-barrels worn thin, tied on to a rough stock, with flint lock,
&c., the whole thing being compounded of the remains of some venerable
weapon in use in the Russian army immediately after the invention of
gunpowder. Stepan’s was no exception to this rule, and yet I distinctly
remember seeing him put in charges which I would not have ventured to
put into my high-class breech-loader.
After putting the house in order, Stepan loaded his valuable weapon
with a good charge of powder and two bullets, the first in its
naturally smooth state, the other chewed into a rough-edged mass. Thus
prepared we sallied forth and reconnoitred the little plain within the
hills. Everywhere the tracks of bears, boars, wolves, and occasionally
roe-deer presented themselves to our eyes, but of the animals
themselves we saw nothing. Pheasants rose several times from the bushes
at our feet, and Stepan tells me Golovinsky is a favourite abiding
place of theirs, in consequence of the quantity of ‘phaisantchik’
growing here, upon the yellow berry of which they feed. The pheasants
have no bad taste in berries, for when ripe I know no berry much
pleasanter in flavour than that of the ‘phaisantchik,’ in spite of its
acidity. The flavour strongly resembles that of the pineapple.
Of course, as pheasants abound here, Stepan has no fowling-piece,
and I have left mine behind at Ekaterinodar. You would imagine that
living as the Cossacks, Stepan and many others, do, in a state of
semi-starvation in the matter of meat from week to week, with an
abundance of game birds round them, they would become good shots and
keen sportsmen, or at the very least turn trappers, and so supply
themselves with food. And yet it is not so. Not one Cossack amongst
the many I have met was a sportsman, and this perhaps their want of
sporting rifles and ammunition may account for; though, if they were
allowed to use them, no better rifle than the Berdianka, with which
they are supplied, could be desired. But that neither they, nor the
settlers and peasants, should have any idea of trapping, is most
strange. In all the Crimea and Caucasus I never saw or heard of snare,
or pitfall, or any of the hundred and one devices for killing game
without fire-arms, which other nations use. The only thing of the kind
I ever heard of, was told me by a German settler, who assured me that
in some places they caught pheasants by inserting small cones of paper,
limed inside, into the earth; in the bottom of each cone a pea is
placed and others strewn around. The pheasant, after finishing the peas
scattered on the surface of the ground, finds the pea at the bottom of
the cone, and, in trying to peck it out, hoodwinks himself with the
limed paper cone, and being blinded becomes frightened, and remains
cowering on the ground, an easy prey to the trapper. But I could never
hear of any one amongst the Tscherkesses, Cossacks, or ‘plastoons’
(settlers), who had either done this or heard of its being done; and I
believe I am right in saying that the Russians, at least in the Crimea
and Caucasus, know very little of trapping, and indeed of woodcraft
generally.
I had passed the first part of this my first night at Golovinsky,
sleeping as well as I could in my only too well ventilated quarters;
and rising while it was still dark, Stepan and I had wiled away the
time in chatting of the snares and traps with which different nations
used to kill their game. As we chatted he busied himself on a pair of
rough sandals or mocassins he was making for me from the skin of a wild
boar he had killed in the spring. As soon as they were finished, he
steeped them in water to soften them, and then, first wrapping my leg
round with canvas, he fastened on the sandals, winding the long laces
round and round the canvas until they fastened just below the knee.
Thus I was booted and gaitered _à la mode Circassienne_ in a very short
time; and as the dawn slowly broke over the mountains, and the stars
grew pale and died in the grey of morning, we left our hut and walked
hard to warm ourselves in the soft rain that began with dawn.
On our way to the forest, which began at the foot of the first range
of hills, we had to ford that turbulent trout stream, the Golovinsk,
and as its waters come straight down from the higher peaks, and are
fed almost entirely by melted snow, right bitterly cold we found it.
Chilled and wet to the waist, we forced our way through a weary half
hour’s work in thorn brake and strangling creeper, while the gathered
rain-drops ran in streams down our necks and up our sleeves from every
bough we touched.
At last we gained the more open chestnut forest, and here we found
how great a boon the rain really was to us. The leaves, which the day
before had sounded like small minute-guns under our feet, firing a
warning to every beast in the forest, were now soft and silent. Arrived
among the chestnuts, Stepan and I separated, he taking a line along the
base of the hill, I choosing a parallel line much higher up. To-day the
dogs had been tied up, and our _modus operandi_ was simply to walk as
silently as possible through the forest, stopping every twelve yards or
so to listen, and trusting at least as much to our ears as to our eyes
to find the game.
For over an hour I stalked noiselessly on, hearing nothing but the
rattle of the falling chestnuts, the patter of the ceaseless rain, and
the screaming of the everlasting jays. It is easy to understand why the
Indian, whose whole life is spent more or less in the chase, becomes
such a silent, self-contained being. The whole chase is a school for
silence and self-restraint. Should you tread carelessly, a twig breaks
and your chance is lost; should a thorn run right up under your nail
from end to end, you must not complain; and should the bitter blows
dealt you in the face by the rebounding twigs, or the tearing and
strangling of the thorny creepers, at last extract an exclamation, your
chance is over for the day.
For over an hour I bore all the malice of the forest fiend silently
and uncomplainingly. But at last, in an evil moment, a long trailing
loop of thorny vine hooked me under the nose, and pulling up that
tender member to an unusual angle, held it firmly hooked in its
painful position. Then I fear the wrath within me boiled over; and as
I released my mutilated proboscis, I spoke unadvisedly with my tongue.
Hardly was the imprecation out of my lips when there was a short sharp
snort, and a black object flashed past me downhill at a hundred miles
an hour. A quick snap-shot failed to stop him, and so I passed on,
reflecting that my little explosion had cost me probably the only game
I was doomed to see that day.
But this lesson taught me caution, and a short half-hour afterwards,
whilst I was creeping noiselessly along a kind of natural cutting, I
was suddenly aware of a big black thing moving in the hazels high
above me. The creature looked as if it was browsing, and might have
been anything from a cow to a rhinoceros, for any distinguishing
feature that I could discern. However, in such a position, I argued,
it must be game of some sort, so, raising my rifle, I aimed as nearly
as possible into the middle of it, and fired. The yells that followed
my shot were proof positive that I had hit something, and before I had
time to turn, an old bear was coming straight down to me through the
brushwood, ‘puffing’ furiously as he came, like an excited locomotive
engine. I had time to notice that his mode of progression was curious
and lopsided, lurching as he did on to his hams at every step, and when
he was almost on top of me, rolling over the cutting in which I stood:
only avoiding me by a few yards, he went crashing downhill, taking
another bullet with him as he went, and lodging under a fallen tree far
down the hillside.
Here for a time I left him, making the woods hideous with his snarling
and moaning; and after some ten minutes’ shouting I managed to get
my guide, Stepan, to come to me, white and shaking with fright. He
explained to me that he thought I had been certainly killed, and in
consequence of this, I suppose, believed I should want his services
no more. Standing in the cutting, I pointed out to him the place
where Bruin lay, far down through an almost impenetrable thicket of
blackberry-bush and wild vine. Stepan did all he knew to induce me to
leave the bear to die by inches, and come for him next day; but this
seemed to me not only unsportsmanlike, but uncertain: so leaving him to
watch Bruin, I crawled into the thicket, and began forcing my way by a
game-track under the bushes to the place where he lay.
It was a difficult path, and the creepers hampered me sadly, so that
it was not without a considerable quickening of the pulse that I heard
Stepan screaming, ‘Look out, Barin (master), for heaven’s sake, here he
comes!’ The bushes parted about ten yards below, and slowly pushing his
way uphill came the bear, swinging his head from side to side, throwing
the blood and foam from his jaws, and moaning and sobbing hideously. As
soon as he caught sight of me he gave his jaws a kind of vicious snap,
and even managed to increase his pace to a trot. It was difficult to
fire in my cramped position, but I managed to do it, and, thanks to his
extreme proximity to my rifle’s muzzle, the ball went right through his
head, passing through a large oak sapling beyond, leaving a hole in it
as clean drilled as if it had been done with a hot iron.
The bear, when we came to examine him, was a very old fellow, quite
black, and with a skin in anything but a good condition. However, being
my first bear, we skinned him with great care and much exultation, and
brought home his head, tired but rejoicing.
It was still early when we got back to our hut, not more than mid-day,
in fact; but the weather was of the roughest, and our uprising had been
an early one, so that we were not sorry to pass the rest of the day in
cleaning our bear’s skin and preparing his flesh for our evening meal.
And fresh-killed bear’s meat takes a considerable time in preparation,
and when the animal happens to be as old and wiry as the beast killed
to-day, not forty cooks with forty rolling-pins could ever beat his
flesh into a reasonable degree of tenderness.
The Cossacks on the station won’t eat bear’s flesh, though they only
get meat once a week here; and partly for that reason, and partly
because with their single-barrelled rifles they consider the risk too
great, they never molest the bears. So little in fact do they know of
their comparative harmlessness, that they gave me quite an ovation when
I came back loaded with spoils to-day, and for the moment I figured as
quite a Nimrod to an admiring audience of eleven semi-savages.
I had heard a great deal in time past about the excellence of bear’s
hams, and the delicacy of bear’s paws stewed, but I felt that another
of the pleasant illusions of my youth had been destroyed when I
encountered to-night the mass of boiled black whipcord, which, in spite
of its unpleasant flavour, was undoubtedly real bear’s ham. As for the
paws, Stepan and myself baked them _à la mode_ in a little subterranean
oven; but on unearthing them we could find nothing but skin and
leather, with bones and bony sinews, and certainly nothing to eat. Even
our dogs did not seem to make much of them.
In spite of the poor quality of our food, we made, however, the
heartiest of suppers, having been strangers to meat for nearly a week;
and with a storm raging outside which seemed to threaten a repetition
of the disastrous flood that swept our cottage away last year, we slept
the sleep of the weary but successful.
The next day, Saturday, was a red-letter day for me. Rising rather
later than usual, we tried the other side of our bay of mountains,
and, in spite of the noisy wind, with great success. Hardly had we
forced our way through the growth of briars at the bottom of the hill
into the chestnuts above when Stepan, turning round, beckoned me to
stop, knelt down, and aiming deliberately, fired at something which
the bushes concealed from me. On going up to him I found that he had
fired at a boar standing end on to him some thirty yards off, and, as
might be expected, with his extraordinary weapon, had only succeeded in
frightening the beast.
Angry at the luck which had given Stepan such a chance to throw away,
I pushed noisily through the thickets, never dreaming of finding any
more game, at any rate for another half mile. Yet hardly had we gone
three dozen paces from the spot whence the last shot was fired, when
our ears caught the sound of a bear’s even step close to us, and
approaching still closer. Slipping silently behind a couple of trees,
we waited with our hearts in our mouths. Softly and deliberately
the steps drew near, with a sound closely resembling the step of a
man slowly picking his way through the forest. Every now and then
the bear paused to give a loud snuff of inquiry, which, luckily
for us, the constant shifting of the wind in these narrow valleys
completely baffled. At last I got a glimpse of her passing slowly
through the bushes, and stopping every now and then to pick up the
fallen chestnuts in a leisurely way as she paced along. I waited for a
minute or two until I could see her grey shoulder plainly through the
rhododendrons. Then I pulled, and wheeling round with a short sharp
cry, she disappeared in the higher covert, followed in her retreat by a
snap-shot from my second barrel, which evidently did not take effect.
Uncertain whether the bear was killed outright or only wounded, Stepan
and myself were somewhat shy of following her into her stronghold. At
first we both tried climbing trees, hoping to get a view of her thus;
but finding that of no avail I persuaded Stepan to follow me at a
distance in a careful survey of the place in which we had last seen
her. Poor beast, she had not gone far; the moment she was out of our
sight her strength failed her, and when we found her she was lying
stone dead, not sixty yards from the spot where the bullet had reached
her.
‘Express’ rifles are terribly destructive little weapons. This second
bear was totally unlike the one killed the day before, at least in
colour: for while he was black, her coat, a very fine one, was of a
soft light brown, so light as to be almost grey.
On examination we found that she was a yearling, and was returning from
her morning’s work, the ruin of half a fine chestnut-tree, when we met
her. Some of the boughs she had managed to break were almost as thick
as a man’s waist. On looking at her fore-arm after Stepan had skinned
her, I could not but reflect that the stories one meets with from time
to time, of hand-to-hand conflicts with bears, require a large grain of
salt for the swallowing.
Leaving Stepan to finish the skinning, I wandered on somewhat higher
up the hillside. I had not left him a quarter of an hour when I again
heard the peculiarly soft regular tread of a bear above me, and after
waiting patiently for about five minutes, I caught a glimpse for a
moment of the head of an exact counterpart of the bear then under
Stepan’s hands. Unluckily for me, she sighted me at the same moment,
and with a loud sniff plunged straight downhill at a pace that, even
had the covert not concealed her, would have rendered my chance of
hitting her extremely problematical. I saw from the direction she had
taken that she would pass almost over Stepan, and I hurried on to be
able to lend him a hand in case he only wounded her. But I waited in
vain for the report of my man’s mighty blunderbuss. Sitting engaged in
the sanguinary task of disrobing our dead bear he had suddenly become
aware of what appeared to him either the shade or the enraged sister
of the deceased charging furiously down upon him; and oppressed with a
consciousness of his guilt, Stepan fled red-handed from the avenger,
leaving his gun to take care of itself.
Poor Stepan, who was originally I believe no coward, but in days past,
according to his own version, a mighty hunter, was an instance of a man
who had suddenly lost all his nerve, and this occurred as follows. One
day, when suffering severely from fever, he was walking along the dried
bed of a mountain torrent, when, on turning a sharp corner, he almost
ran into a large bear. For a moment they stood facing one another.
Stepan, having no weapons, thought his last hour had come. There was an
awful noise, something struck him on the face, and for the time the
hapless Tscherkess passed away from this bear-haunted world to a land
of oblivion. On returning to his senses, he was surprised to find no
bear, and no bloody wound upon his scalp. Further examination showed
him, however, that a bear had stood facing him, and it was probably
the gravel thrown up by its hind feet as it slewed round in headlong
flight, that had struck Stepan, not stunning him as he supposed, but
merely in his weak state frightening him out of his senses. Since then
until now my man had only shot at bears from a platform in a tree at
night--a style of sport extremely free from danger, as, although Bruin
can climb, he very rarely if ever attempts to do so in pursuit of a foe.
Living, as Stepan had lived all his life, in bear-frequented forest
lands, he had many a story to tell of ‘Michael Michaelovitch,’ as the
peasants call him. On one occasion he and a friend had observed an
apple-tree well laden with fruit, some seven or eight versts from their
village in the forest, standing unclaimed of any man, almost sole relic
of some once prosperous Tscherkess village. Stepan and his friend, who
lived at some little distance, arranged to meet at the tree one morning
early, and gather the fruit, to be shared amongst them. Arrived at the
tree, Stepan saw some one already engaged throwing the apples down.
Thinking his friend was trying to steal a march on him, the irate
Stepan heaped all manner of abuse on him, accused him of spoiling the
apples by throwing them down; and, at last, getting no answer, fairly
yelled with rage, and began to throw things into the tree. Then the
shower of apples ceased, and, with a gruff snort, a huge old bear came
tumbling out of the tree, almost on top of the terrified villager. As
usual in these cases, Bruin was just as much frightened as the man, and
shambled off as quickly as possible, leaving the apples to the friends.
All the Russians and Tscherkesses with whom I have talked about bears,
say there are two kinds in the Caucasus--the ordinary big brown bear,
and a smaller one, that lives in the higher ranges, has a kind of white
shirt-front to his coat, and is much fiercer and more carnivorous than
his brown brother. Dr. Radde, however, of the Tiflis Museum, tells me
there is only one kind; and though I have myself seen great variety
in the sizes and coats of different individuals killed on the Black
Sea coast, I can well believe he is right. Still, I fancy the higher
ranges of Transcaucasia are very little known; and it may well be that
a variety of the common bear, differing considerably from the specimens
found on the coast, is to be met with nearer the snow-line. The
peasants tell wonderfully circumstantial stories of their favourite’s
craft (for, in a way, the bear is a great favourite with the moujik,
and hero of many a droll story): how that he lies in ambush for the
unsuspecting roe or wild goat, and pounces on him, or knocks him down
with a log used club-fashion, as he passes. Or, again, that lying hid
on a ledge overlooking some favourite pass of the tûr’s, he rolls huge
stones on his prey as it browses beneath him, and then, having killed
it in this way, climbs down and dines at his leisure.
Of course all these are mere peasants’ stories, but as they have been
told me repeatedly by peasants who have lived amongst the beasts of
which the stories are told all their lives, I give them for what they
are worth. There may be some grains of truth in them.
After putting my bear’s skin out of harm’s way, and leaving the hams to
take their chance till we returned, Stepan and I continued our hunt. In
a deep glade, where no sunlight came to disturb the drowsy stillness,
something bounded to its feet with a great noise, and hurried off
unseen, making the whole forest re-echo with its short sharp barks.
The cry was new to me, and I imagined all manner of grim beasts from
whom the sound might have proceeded, and regretted intensely my evil
luck in not obtaining a shot. Stepan, however, consoled me by telling
me it was only ‘cazeole,’ the roebuck of this part of the world, which
answers--so an old Indian sportsman tells me who has shot many of
these ‘cazeoles,’--to the Indian ‘karkee.’ Indeed, all the game found
in the Caucasus is the same as, or very nearly allied to, species found
throughout the mountains of India.
Later on in the day, whilst exploring a rhododendron thicket at the
very summit of a high hill, shut in and encircled by still higher
eminences, I heard something bolt from me through the rattling covert,
and then pause, and with a loud sniff try to get my wind. Apparently
getting it, the beast changed his course and proceeded at right angles
to the line of his first rush, and then halting, again tried for my
wind. Luckily for me, shut in as we were by the higher peaks, the wind
kept veering round; and, thoroughly puzzled and beaten, the unlucky
beast kept changing his course until at last I, standing behind a tree,
saw a long grey snout and a pair of gleaming white tusks peering out of
a thicket some thirty yards in front of me. The quick eyes sighted me
at once in spite of my tree, and I had hardly time to fire before the
owner of the eyes had retreated out of sight. Quick as the shot had to
be, however, it was wonderfully effective, and the boar went crashing
head over heels from top to bottom of the hill, there to rest still as
sudden death could make it until I could get down to him. The bullet
had gone in at the front of the shoulder, and traversing the whole
length of the spine, had perfectly pulverised it, remaining buried
just under the hide near the root of the tail; whence I extracted it
and still preserve it, smashed and flattened as it is, a memento of the
wonderful force of the ‘express’ (450) rifle.
Laden with spoils, the bear’s skin and head, as well as the tidbits
taken from the boar, we hurried home, to send up the Cossacks for the
rest of the boar, which would be a welcome addition to their perpetual
cabbage soup.
CHAPTER VII.
DENSE COVERTS.
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
invariably got 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 her once 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
little _saurians_ whose 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 were _bonâ fide_ mosquitoes 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 are other
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 not familiar 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 to kill 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. Liv
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