Later on in the day, when, owing to lack of supplies and disaffection amongst my men, I was retracing my steps to the valley, I saw more of these mountain kings. We had stretched ourselves on a ledge of rock on which the sun shone rather warmly, and, weary of climbing, were resting in his cheering beams, when a shadow came between us and him, and looking up, we saw the form of one of these bearded robbers hovering over us. A bullet from my ‘express’ cut out a handful of his pinions; for a moment the great bird staggered as if he was coming down, but, to my chagrin, righted himself and sailed on, steady and calm as ever, to finish his circuit round a neighbouring mountain top, and, crowning insolence, to repass us exactly as he had passed before, except that this time the bullet did not fly so near its mark.

My time was now getting short; so that though I had to leave my mountain home empty-handed, I decided to pocket my failure, and return at once to the post-road, to continue my journey to the Caspian. Had I had a good guide, who was also a keen sportsman, a good stalking glass, and had I come a month earlier, I am sure the result of my visit from a sporting point of view might have been widely different. It is easy to see that game is extremely plentiful, and I still look forward to a good time coming, when, knowing my ground and my men better, I may profit by my past experiences, and make a bag that any sportsman might be proud of. It is, I believe, always very long odds against a man making a large bag in a country utterly strange to him without efficient guides.

My farewell to my Lesghian hosts had in it more of regret than characterised my leave-takings generally in the Caucasus; and my presentiments did not deceive me, for it was long before I met with such a cleanly, hospitable home again. Christmas Day I spent at Gerdaoul, where we had a deer drive among the mountains on a pouring wet day, which made our style of sport peculiarly unpleasant. Unluckily, Ivan shot a doe early in the day, and over the carcass of this the whole band of Armenians—who were to us both beaters and hosts—fought like dogs over a bone. Seeing there was no chance of more sport that day, I left them to stab one another for a half pound more or less of venison if they liked; and feeling a twinge or two of rheumatism, trudged on towards Goktchai, leaving Allai to follow with the horses.

At one of the villages on my way back I was met by a deputation, asking me to sanction the release of a wretched Tartar, who had applied some abusive language to me on my journey to the Lesghian hamlet, of which, in my ignorance of the dialect, I had been utterly unconscious. It seems Allai had found time to send over to the elder of the village, representing me as a prince under the protection of the Russian Government, and on his representations the poor devil had been confined in a miserable dark hut ever since. Of course I gave the necessary sanction, though I felt that it might be as well not to correct Allai’s mistaken notion of my position until I was safe again in Goktchai. I may here mention that, though we luckily escaped without molestation, we were continually advised to take an escort; and even Allai secured one at his own expense to see his brother and horses safe back to the post-road when he left us with the Lesghians. The Lesghians themselves never leave their houses without one well-armed man to protect their goods from the pilfering Tartars, who abound in these little-visited regions. I am thus particular in mentioning these things, in order that no one who may be led to follow in my steps may come to grief through a want of proper caution, induced by my good luck. On our way back to Goktchai I saw one of the beautiful Dalmatian creepers which sometimes occur here, though Allai assured me they are by no means common.

CHAPTER XIII.

FROM GOKTCHAI TO LENKORAN.

The day after our return to the post-road, we found on waking that the change in the weather predicted by our mountain guides had already set in. There was no longer that crisp raciness in the air which carried us through the day’s work with comparative ease and pleasure, but a steady cold rain, with occasional snowstorms, blinded the sun and changed the roads into morasses. The hills were already snow-clad in that one night, and had we not left Gerdaoul when we did, we might have remained for the winter. As it was, the prospect of our journey to Lenkoran was not a bright one. Every rill that crossed the road was fast swelling to a torrent, and the fifty-seven versts which formed our day’s allotted work, and terminated at Aksu, were versts of misery and discomfort hard to bear.

At Aksu the postmaster refused to give us horses, alleging that, in the present state of the weather, to attempt the range of hills between his station and Shemakha would only result in the destruction of the post-cart, loss of horses, and broken limbs for the fares, especially now that the mists and darkness of night were rendering what road there was invisible.

On the road, before reaching Aksu, we came across three of the brigands of whom we have heard so much, in charge of a band of ‘tchapars’ (mounted policemen), who seemed a vast deal more like the highwaymen of romance than their sorry-looking captives did. On the morning of December 28 we left Aksu for Shemakha, a distance of forty versts, over hills whose sides were like wet ploughed fields. Here the post-cart was unable to proceed as fast as we could walk, so that we solaced ourselves by shooting en route, and derived some consolation from the abundance of game which we found on these hillsides. Red-legs, hares, and pheasants swarmed; and what with these, the owls, and other birds of prey with which the hills teemed, we had a very lively time. Wolves, too, have their haunts here, as witness a deserted post-cart, on the horses attached to which a traveller and his yemstchik had escaped during the preceding week, leaving their cart with the baggage to take care of itself.

I used to believe, before I saw Aksu, that nowhere in the world did magpies more abound than in Galway round Loughrea, or in some favoured parts of France; but here in Aksu I counted seventeen of these poaching rascals all together like a flock of sparrows. In the hills halfway between Aksu and Shemakha I saw quite a mob of eagles and hawks, busy, I presume, with the half-frozen smaller birds and hares. Two or three lammergeiers tempted me to a prolonged chase; but though I hit two of them, my number four shot would not bring them down, and I confess to being unable to touch them with my rifle, in spite of their slow wheeling flight.

Shemakha is not a town to detain a weary traveller long. The only inn I could find was an underground ‘duchan,’ to which access was obtained by a flight of stone steps leading from the road above to a kind of vault, in which puddles stood on the floor, drained off from the mud above; and here the cooking and liquor were as infamous as the accommodation. Shemakha is mainly composed of flat-topped Asiatic houses and a few smart new ones of the common Russian stamp, with white plastered sides and green roofs that looked bitterly cold and out of place in their setting of snow and winter storm.

The roads of this town are, without exception, the worst for a town I ever saw; nothing but the bed of a mountain torrent could be worse. The town bore traces of damage done by that volcanic action from which it is a too frequent sufferer. The principal residents are, I believe, Armenian; the principal industry the manufacture of carpets. Shemakha is, I am told, an extremely old town, and was, in days gone by, the capital of a ‘gubernia,’ though before the Russian rule, in the early Persian days, the great town was Aksu, the post-station at the foot of the hills, and not Shemakha. Now Aksu has declined to a very insignificant position; and even should the contemplated railway from Tiflis to Baku ever become a reality, the volcanic spasms from which it so frequently suffers will probably prevent Shemakha ever attaining to any real importance.

After leaving Shemakha the main post-road runs on to Baku, the principal port on this side the Caspian. As, however, my object was to get into Persia, or, at least, so near to Persia as to run a chance of finding tigers, I left the main road at Shemakha, and bore away to the south-east for Lenkoran. The road between Shemakha and Lenkoran being extremely little used, I was destined to see, before I reached the Caspian, the lowest depths of the discomforts of Russian post-travelling. Hitherto there had been at least three ‘troikas’ (teams) kept at each station; now no station had more than two. One of these teams being always retained for emergencies (such as the needs of a special courier), there remained one team to do all the work. Luckily for me, I appeared to be the only traveller; had it been otherwise, I might still be stranded at some post-house on the borders of the Mooghan steppe.

As Shemakha held out no great inducements to me to remain, my man and I were not long in resuming our journey. After a stage of twenty versts through rough hilly country, we put up for the night at a station which I have recorded by name, that I may make it infamous as the very worst post-station in the Russian empire, and, therefore, probably in the world. It seems a great deal for one to say who, after all, has seen only one side of the mighty empire of Russia; but it must be remembered that in speaking thus I am simply relying on the Russians themselves, who assure me that the Russian post-roads in the Caucasus are the worst in the empire, and of these I have had some experience. Though I have carefully examined my map, I cannot find the name of the station of which I am now writing upon it; but then I have had considerable difficulty in recognising many other well-known places, owing to differences in the spelling of the names, and even in the names themselves, since it is no uncommon thing to meet with a village boasting of nearly as many names as inhabitants. Tchaillee is as near the phonetic spelling of the name of this villanous collection of hovels as I can make it.

When we arrived, night had set in, and with it foul weather. We were tired, wet, and hungry. No horses could have been had even if we would have continued our journey that night; so we decided to remain, and asked our way to the traveller’s room. The station is placed on very high ground, and in an exposed position. At the most exposed corner is the room in which we were to pass the night. The floor was literally more wet and filthy than the road without; you could not stand out of a puddle unless you stood on the only piece of furniture in the room—a solitary bench, extremely rickety with old age, and not large enough to hold one man in a recumbent position. The hearth was in ruins, the window blown in, the door off its hinges, the ceiling had partially fallen, and even the coloured print of the Emperor, with which no post-house or public office can ever dispense, hung in wet fragments flapping against the mouldy walls.

We tried to bale the water from the floor, but it was labour wasted; it returned as fast as we expelled it. Do what we would to block out the wind, our barricades were useless against its fury, owing to the many breaches it had already made. We asked for wood or coal—the people had none. We asked for food—they had none. We tried the stables, thinking we might find shelter there. Standing over their fetlocks in filthy slush, in an atmosphere that would stifle an English horse in three minutes, were the few wretched-looking beasts whose lot it was to live and labour at Tchaillee. And yet, in spite of adverse circumstances such as these, in spite of short allowance and no grooming, these hardy brutes, though they look mere bags of bones, do more work than our well-cared-for English horses, never seem to suffer from coughs, colds, mud fever, or any of the hundred and one ailments to which an unnatural amount of coddling makes our animals subject. There is this to be said for the Russian, if he does not provide his beast with good food and comfortable stabling, at least he leaves him the coat that nature gave him.

After trying in vain to find a resting-place elsewhere, Ivan and myself bribed the chief yemstchik (who was also the postmaster) to let us share his one-roomed hovel for the night. The man was a Molochan, and lived with his parents and his children, in a state of slovenly misery, in this one room. The poor wife made the night hideous with a deep racking cough that led one to hope that she would not have to drag out a miserable existence at Tchaillee much longer. The children were dirty, listless skeletons, too lifeless even to quarrel or play. The man seemed to do his work as driver in the apathetic way in which a horse might work in a mill, taking no interest in his task, and feeling no desire to better his condition. The apathy of the Russian moujik is the truly wonderful part of his nature. Here was a man not more than thirty-five, with half his days idle, with his wife and children dying before his eyes for the want of a little comfort, which a week’s work would have given them, and yet he never seemed to dream of mending the windows or roof, of draining the water from the floor, or of doing anything to prevent the stifling inroads of the smoke, any more than his wife dreamt of cleaning or rendering comfortable the inside of her dwelling. And yet these people were Molochans, a religious sect, professing to lead a pure life according to the light of their own reason, disbelieving in fasting as practised by orthodox Russians, and, as a rule, more sturdy, cleanly, and useful than the average Russian moujik. The Russian peasant settlers in the Caucasus struck me everywhere as deteriorating rather than improving with their change of country. Far into the night my man and myself lay unable to sleep, tired though we were, in this miserable den, passing the time by knocking over with our kinjals as many as possible out of the droves of mice who made a playground of our prostrate forms.

After leaving Tchaillee we got down again into the plains, where the weather was much milder, and travelling more interesting to a sportsman, since wild-fowl began to abound by the roadside, owing probably to the proximity of the Kûr. Between the third and fourth station from Shemakha, the names of which were apparently of such a crack-jaw nature as to render all reproduction in English hopeless, we crossed a tract of land covered with mud volcanoes, some of which were as much as fifteen feet in height. Here, too, we saw naphtha welling up from the ground and running across the post-road in large quantities. The yemstchik told me that the whole country for miles round was full of it, but very little was utilised, as the difficulties of transport rendered the working of the oil unprofitable. Should a line of rail ever be opened to Baku from Tiflis, I should imagine that these naphtha springs will become valuable property.

Whilst staying at the next station after the mud volcanoes, I was lucky enough to witness a passage of the strepita or lesser bustard (otis tetrax). These magnificent birds were in millions all over the steppe. The ground was grey with them; the air full of their cries, the sky alive with the movement of their wings. With them were a few small flocks of another bird, which I thought I recognised as the golden plover, but of this I am by no means sure. So much struck was I by the strange sight which this enormous passage presented, that I stayed the greater part of the day to watch it; and when at last I left, the almost inconceivable flood of winged creatures was still rolling on over the steppe from west to east in undiminished numbers. The Russian powder which I bought at Tiflis had turned out so badly, that at this time I had almost given up using it for anything larger than teal, and even then it was necessary to be at very close quarters to bring the bird to bag, so miserably weak was it. Thanks, however, to the dense masses in which the bustards stood and flew, I was enabled to secure sufficient to supply my man and myself with a welcome change of diet, by the expenditure of only two of my treasured ‘express’ cartridges. Judging by what I killed, I should say the birds were only just starting from their summer haunts in the Crimea and Caucasus for their winter quarters in the East. Had it not been so, they would hardly have been as deliciously plump as we found them.

But whilst watching the bustards we had let the day slip through our hands, and to our intense disgust we found we could not reach Salian that night; so we had to content ourselves with the last post-station on the road thither, where we slept. In the early morning I went down to the river, glad to see the Kûr again, if it was only for the sake of its abundance of clear water, offering a bath without stint to the dirty wayfarer, and the promise of caviare almost without cost to the hungry epicure.

Thank heaven, a Russian yemstchik’s toilet does not take long to make. A shake, a yawn, a cigarette, and, if times are good, a glass of neat vodka, and he is ready to face anything, from his sweetheart to a north-easter. Would that his horses’ gear was as speedily arranged as his own; unluckily it is not. Still, in spite of the scores of breakages in the harness of rotten rope and still more rotten thong, our impatient desire to be off was gratified at last, and with glowing visions of at least a clean hut and heaps of good fish and ‘ikra’ at Salian, we bumped all breakfastless along our last stage to the land of promise. All along our route wild-fowl swarmed, and through the low covert we saw numbers of foxes threading their way. All the way from Adji Kabool, a station at the foot of the hills in which Shemakha lies, and of which I can find no trace in my map, any more than I can of the large lake near it, to Salian and thence to Lenkoran, the country is full of ponds, estuaries, and lakelets, which teem with wild-fowl. I stopped the cart once to kill some pochards for dinner, and a couple of beautiful white egrets for preserving.

And now the river came in sight, a broad, imposing stream, with the post-house on this side, that is to say, on the eastern bank. To our disgust, hungry as we were, we were detained at the post-house for an hour, by the rascally Asiatic who presided there, under the pretence that our papers must be first examined by the authorities on the other side before we were allowed to cross. So well did the fellow impose on us, that though both my man and myself were as puzzled as we were angry, we submitted, until a Russian coming upon the scene, informed us that the fellow was only trying to extort black-mail from us for his supposed services in getting our papers in order; and our new acquaintance, having a fellow-feeling for his countryman my servant, took the Asiatic by his beard, spat in his face, and with many abusive epithets ordered him to see to our immediate transport to the other side, unless he wished to be placed in charge of the police. Our courtesy and civil speeches the brute had answered with all possible rudeness, attributing our politeness, as all these people do, to a sense of our own weakness; but to the greater brutality of the Russian the weaker nature of the Asiatic yielded at once, and in a few minutes we were waving adieux to our timely helper from the other side the Kûr.

Our first business was to inquire where the hotel was, and our next where caviare might be bought, resolving mentally to purchase sufficient to feed us all the way to Lenkoran. Of course I might have expected the answers to my questions, after all I had seen of Russian promises and their fulfilment. Of course there was no hotel. There were but six Russian families of any kind in Salian, all the rest were Tartars. Whatever you wanted you might buy from Tartars in the open bazaar, who would not serve you if they could help it; if you wanted to eat, you might eat standing there or in the doorway of the merchant who sold vodka. There was no caviare at Salian to be had for love or money. It was not the right season for fresh ‘ikra,’ and ‘pressed ikra’ (i.e. caviare) could not be bought nearer than Bosghi Promysl, the great fishery, fifteen miles off, where it cost rather more than it does in the Crimea. Even had I been at Salian at the right season, I could only have purchased this luxury, for which it is famous, by stealth, as the whole produce of the fishery is bought up by merchants at a distance, to whom it is sent direct, it being specially provided by contract that they should have an entire monopoly. Thus, though Salian and Bosghi Promysl are the places whence the greater part of the caviare sold in Russia comes, they are the two most difficult places at which to buy it.

Standing moodily in the wine-merchant’s doorway, munching a lump of dry bread, the meagre realisation of all our dreams of luxury and rest, our wayworn looks arrested the attention of a good-natured Russian custom-house officer, one of the few Europeans in Salian. This good Samaritan, when he heard the story of our blighted hopes, took us home to his own house to dinner, and whilst waiting for it a curious thing happened. A messenger arrived from another Russian official, of whom I had never heard, also asking me to dine. Of course, I sent back the most polite answer possible, pleading my previous engagement, and promising to come and thank him for his civility before I left Salian. To my astonishment, the messenger came back in a few minutes to say that I was not to heed Mr. So-and-so—he was only a poor devil of a custom-house officer—but was to come and dine at once with the great man, his master. My host seemed by no means surprised at the message, or even annoyed, though it was delivered, to my intense chagrin, in his presence. There was but one thing to say in answer to this second message of my would-be host; and having said it, I sat down to dine with my first friend, meditating much on the manners and customs of the East. But my astonishment increased when, after dinner, my host entreated me to go with him to his rival’s, that that rival might hear from my own lips that it was no fault of my host that I had dined at his house in preference to that of the greater man. Of course I yielded, and both he and I met with a very favourable reception at the hands of the great man, who produced in my honour, on hearing that I was an Englishman, two bottles labelled beer. These bottles of beer had been the good man’s pride for many a day, and I verily believe it gave him more pleasure to be able to see a real Englishman drinking his beer than it did that Englishman to humour his whim.

In every house in Salian the Asiatic fever seemed to rage; half the inmates of either house in which I was entertained were down with it, and this, too, at the time of year when it is least virulent.

There being no inducement to remain in the place, we walked through it, and having found it destitute of all objects of interest, ordered a fresh team of horses to proceed on our journey to the Caspian. For once the story that there were no horses was found to be a true one, and, unable to find lodging in the town, as we were unwilling to burden either of our hosts with our presence, especially since the fever had deranged both their households, we made energetic endeavours to obtain some conveyance to the next station, which was reported weather-proof, and a capital station for wild-fowling. Whilst thus engaged we came across a Tartar selling foxskins, and were much struck by the enormous quantity, all recently killed, which he had for sale. They were skins of the common fox, shot in the neighbourhood, and were being sold at from 30 to 50 copecks apiece.

Never had we such difficulty in procuring horses as we had now. None of the Tartars or other peasants would take us, late as it was, across this first strip of the Mooghan desert to the next post-station. It seemed that all the steppe was covered by nomad Tartars, who descend every year from the hills and winter in the Mooghan. These men bear (probably with justice) an extremely bad reputation, and, although we at last persuaded a young Tartar of Salian to convey us in his ‘arba,’ it was only after we had spent all our persuasive powers upon him, showing him how well armed we were, and promising that we would keep ourselves out of sight, in order not to excite the cupidity of any of the wandering gentry we might meet; in addition to which he stipulated that a place should be provided for himself and ‘arba’ within the protection of the walls of the post-station until next morning.

Under these conditions we stowed ourselves away in the bottom of his cart, which resembled nothing so much as a huge oblong wicker-basket on solid wooden wheels, some eight feet high. This edifice was drawn by one horse, through rather than over eighteen versts of villanous road, the consequence being that we proceeded at a foot’s pace for the whole distance. Far and near in every direction were the fires of the Tartar encampments. Several times, much to our driver’s disgust, we had to pass within a few hundred yards of their wretched tents, which consist of four sticks stuck in the ground, and a piece of black felt stretched over the top. Under this they rest, the four sides open to every gust of wind, while a large fire close by warms them where they lie, and with its flickering flames lends additional wildness to the scene, as well as to the grim figures passing and repassing before it, and strangely magnifying the group of animals tethered hard by. These nomads must be more than mere gipsies, from the number of horses and cattle which I saw in their encampments. They are a great bore to the sportsman, for, though the Mooghan is alive with antelopes in the summer, these sensible little beasts leave it as soon as the Tartar hordes make their appearance.

As we left Salian the evening was closing in fast, and the whole sky was a vivid stormy crimson, which, being caught by the endless level plain, had a very grand effect. A vast flight of pelicans in marching order, line upon line, came slowly winging their way from the fishery at Bosghi Promysl to their night’s rest in some reed-bed on the Kûr. The solemn even flight of these great birds, their countless numbers, great size, and quaint grave aspect were in wondrous keeping with the scene, and formed with it a tout-ensemble not easily forgotten. Once or twice en route a wild-looking fellow on horseback rode up and inspected us, but, though our driver’s nerves were much upset by these visits of inspection, no evil came of them, our visitors probably thinking one such wretched horse as ours was hardly worth the stealing.

From Salian to Lenkoran would have been an excessively uninteresting drive had it not been for the teeming bird-life on all sides. The nearer we got to the Caspian, the more the fowl increased. At one place we shot splendid Numidian cranes, whose stately forms might frequently be seen. At another flamingoes, white and rosy, tempted us from our tarantasse. In the mist of early morning an eagle, alit by the roadside, almost frightened us by his apparently gigantic proportions; and even when he flew away, unharmed and but little alarmed by our bullets—when, too, we had made all allowance for the exaggerating properties of the mist—we could scarcely believe that he belonged to any known species, so gigantic did he appear.

In those parts of the journey where the post-road ran through sand-hills near the sea, the noise of the fowl was simply deafening. In the Crimea the varieties of wild ducks are extremely numerous, but here it seemed almost as if there were as many different species as there are ducks anywhere else. The most striking, after the flamingoes, swans, and pelicans, were perhaps the bright red duck, called here ‘gagar,’ and the beautiful mandarin duck, which I only saw once at close quarters. But amongst the countless flights there were scores of different plumages, to whose wearers I could give no name; and I feel sure that any ornithologist who is at the present moment looking for some new ground over which to follow up his favourite study, would find ample reward for the journey in a visit to the swamps round Lenkoran in the winter months.

Travelling by night over the steppe, we passed a Tartar village at some little distance, from which came an unwonted glow of red light, and cries as of pandemonium let loose. On asking Ivan what it meant, I was told that it was the Tartar Bairam, or rather the preparation for it. Anxious to see what was doing, I, contrary to my driver’s advice, slipped out of the tarantasse and stole unobserved upon the scene—a scene wilder than the witches’ meeting in Macbeth. Among the huts and hayricks on the wet steppe, a mob of half naked Tartars had erected a post, and on this post had fixed a monster firebrand. From this the light glowed and flickered on the brown limbs and wild faces of an excited band of dancers, who, in perfect time, kept advancing and retreating around it, singing in time to their steps the while. Now and again another band, which formed a chorus to the principal performers, broke in with a chant, of which I could only catch two constantly-repeated words, seeming to my ears to be best represented thus, ‘Shaksay, Maksay.’ The dance, though extremely rude and simple, was effective from the surroundings and the great accuracy with which each performer executed his part; and this was the more remarkable since every male from four to eighty in the village seemed to be taking part. The women only were idle spectators.

After watching them for some time the dance came to an end, and the people began to scatter, a signal for me to get back to my cart before any one caught me intruding. Ivan, my man, told me that in another fortnight they would begin still wilder rites, hacking and mutilating themselves with knives, after the manner of the priests of Baal.

The Russian peasants tell you that the Tartars do this in memory of a certain Lutra, queen and Amazon, erst of Erivan, whom Russian soldiers slew. She, dying, bade the Tartars thus maltreat themselves once a year in memory of her, the which if they did, she on her part would in thirty years’ time rise again, to lead and rule over them in great glory. Many a thirty years has passed since then, and Lutra the queen has not kept her word: through which some of the Tartars have of their own accord ceased to observe these rites; others have yielded to the power of Russian law, which forbids these savage orgies under penalty of very heavy punishment; while still a few practise their rites in the darkness of midnight and in the desolate wild places of the steppeland.

For at least thirty versts of our journey the road was impassable, owing to the overflow of the river; and this necessitated a long circuit extremely unwelcome to us. In the villages that we passed through towards the end of our drive, the people were for the most part Molochans, clean, hard-working peasants compared to those around them, but very objectionable from at least one point of view, as nothing would induce them to cook our game for us for fear of defiling themselves—fifty per cent. of the birds we shot being unclean in their eyes. These Molochans, near Lenkoran, are probably some of the descendants of the 1,500 or 2,000 that the Emperor Nicholas drove out of Russia into the Caucasus.

The country near Lenkoran is in places good meadow land, covered even now with rich young grass; here and there it has been broken up for cultivation, and in such places the soil appears extremely rich.

At last a long line of sordid huts announced themselves as the suburbs of Lenkoran, and the homes of another sect, which the Emperor Nicholas, with greater reason perhaps, expelled from Russia. These are the Skoptsi (eunuchs), or White Doves as they prefer to call themselves. Besides mutilating themselves, these people drink no strong drink, and eat very little of anything beyond bread and oil. The people of Lenkoran say they live a quiet, harmless life. Those I saw of this sect were big bloated men, with faces as devoid of expression as the lives they lead.

Though Lenkoran was of course not the paradise it had been represented to be at Tiflis, it was, however, less disappointing than many of the places I had seen. There were really a few Europeans in the town; there was a fair bazaar where food could be bought; there was a room attached to the establishment which grandiloquently styles itself the Lenkoran Club, in which we could sleep on a wooden floor in comfort; there was a post-office, and (although it took a long time to find him, and when found, he had nothing but a single pair of shears for apparatus) there was a barber. For the rest Lenkoran is at this time of year a sea of mud; in the summer it must be a cloud of dust. The streets are in places paved, though badly; there are no shops outside the bazaar, which is held in an open space without the town, and where most of the traders are Persian or Tartar; the houses are ill-built; and from the dismal, sickly-coloured sea, which lies motionless by the walls of the town, comes an offensive odour which must be unbearable in summer. The officials of the place are almost all Armenian.

Soon after my arrival, I went down to the bazaar to look for a gunsmith, and finding an old Persian cross-legged in a booth hung with ancient arms and dangerous-looking guns, submitted my fowling-piece to him for repairs. The injury he had to set right was a bad dent in one of the barrels, got by a fall from the tarantasse on our road here. The last I saw of him he had the end of something like a poker down the muzzle and was belabouring my luckless gun with a sledge-hammer. I think this must have nearly roused me; but it evidently did not quite, for my next recollection is of waking suddenly in the booth beside the old armourer, who had long ago finished my gun’s repairs, and was now gravely amused at Ivan’s face of surprise at the odd position in which, after half a day’s search, he at last found me. Be it said to the honour of that Persian, when I left the bazaar my gun was fairly mended, and there was nothing missing from my pocket.

During that first day at Lenkoran I had much to do, especially as my man was told by the employés of the local forester that we should not be allowed to shoot without a licence. An interview with the forester himself soon set this right, and in his house I saw the skin of a recently killed leopard, which gave me greater hope of success than I had dared hitherto to indulge in. On the day after my arrival I was lucky enough to make the acquaintance of a German gentleman named Müller, who from the moment he discovered my nationality took me under his especial care. We met first at the house of one of the sportsmen of Lenkoran, who, having heard of my arrival, had arranged a banquet in my honour. Here, after dinner, whilst discussing the chance of seeing a tiger—a chance which grew more and more remote the more I pursued it—one of the guests proposed that I should make a house of his in the neighbouring forest my head centre during my stay. This hut he called the ‘Shabby Shanty,’ and the chance of resting under the roof of a house with an Irish name and an English-speaking master, with capital sport all round, was too good to be refused; so as usual I decided on the spur of the moment to entrust myself to my new friend’s care.

It is only fair to say that wherever I went in Russia, I invariably met with ready hospitality, so much so that my whole journey was little more than a series of expeditions begun, if not finished, under the auspices and at the suggestion of some new-found friend.

CHAPTER XIV.

SHORES OF THE CASPIAN.—RETURN TO TIFLIS.

Lenkoran is almost surrounded by marshes, in which snipe and woodcock, with all manner of long-legged, long-necked strangers to a British eye, together with hundreds of the falcon tribe, disport themselves daily. Here my man and myself spent a day or two shooting specimens of the birds least known to us; but on the third day we took horse and rode to a larger lake, on which we embarked with our friend the German, intending to cross over to the woods which fringed the further side, somewhere in the depths of which the ‘Shabby Shanty’ lay. On this lake were simply myriads of water-hens. The whole surface seemed dark with them, the reeds alive with their ceaseless cries. The sale of these birds is quite a feature in the street life of Lenkoran. The bazaar is full of their carcasses; at every street corner you meet men hawking them for sale; every other peasant you see is carrying two or three home for the pot.

On the lake are many flat-bottomed boats in which the fowlers pole themselves through the mazy waterways in the reed-beds, until at a sudden turn a closely packed bevy of water-hens offers them a remunerative shot. So cheap are the birds in the bazaar, that to kill them singly with the gun would entail absolute loss on the gunner. But besides these wild-fowlers, who are after all but occasionally employed in their pursuit, there are the regular enemies of the poor little fowl, men who have decoys, and nets drawn across certain straits, down which they drive the birds, until in diving to escape they are caught by scores in the submerged net. There are naturally quantities of other fowl on these lakes, but the water-hen seems to thrive and abound most, and is so much more easily taken than the others that it is the staple food of a large number of the inhabitants of Lenkoran.

On our voyage we overhauled one of the regular fowlers, a Tartar, with whom we had a rather hot dispute. As he drew up his net full of struggling or already drowned birds, we were horrified to see that instead of killing outright those which were not yet dead, he took the trouble to break their legs and wings, and so cast them a living, helpless mass of pain and fear into the bottom of his boat, there to live for hours in horrible anguish. We explained to the fellow how much simpler for him, and how much kinder to the birds it would be, to wring their necks outright; but we might have spared ourselves the trouble. The Tartar intellect could not comprehend the beauty of mercy, and all we could get was a grin and the assurance that if he did not break their legs or wings they would escape him; and as he might be out a day or two, if he killed them at once they would not be fresh when taken to market. It was no good arguing any more; so merely insisting on putting all he had so far taken out of their misery with our own hands, we left him, feeling that were we to give way to our own impulses he would have spent the next few hours with four broken limbs in the bottom of his own boat. The water-hens are sold at about fivepence, wild duck at about sixpence a brace.

On the far side of the lake a troop of villagers were waiting to carry our baggage through the swampy forest, where neither horse nor cart could now conveniently travel, to our host’s log hut.

The chief objects of cultivation here were rice and mulberry-trees; and though the wild boars played the deuce with the rice-fields, the mulberry-trees and their devourers the silk-worms throve amazingly. Mr. Müller, our host, had not knocked about in all the odd corners of the earth for nothing, so that when we reached his Shanty, though at a couple of dozen paces or so you might meet with impenetrable jungle, we found it the most comfortable well-built house we had seen since we left Tiflis. In the night wild boars had dug up the small patch of garden by the door; on a little lawn not far off, a badger had turned up all the turf in his nocturnal gambols; while right and left as we approached snipe and cock went off like crackers from under our feet.

During the first three days of our stay at Eryvool, we did nothing but shoot cock and pheasant, or, with a pack of fine dogs, the pride of Mr. Müller’s heart, hunt the wild swine that abounded in the thick places of the forest; while east and west, and south and north, our messengers went forth offering large rewards for tidings of any tiger or leopard within three days’ march.

To those who have not seen the wild-fowl shooting of the Caspian, any account of the swarms of cock and snipe (chiefly jack) at Eryvool in the beginning of the year 1879 would seem overdrawn. We were sick of shooting before the three days were over, though it took more than one day of ceaseless firing to get used to the snap-shooting, which is alone practicable in these dense coverts. Wherever the forest was at all dry—and this was for the most part in fairly open places—the rush and glitter of a pheasant’s noisy wings broke the monotony of cock-shooting. Once, as I snapped at one of the ghost-like little birds flipping over the top of the thick bush with silent wing, that had kept me engaged all the morning, the bushes at my feet were parted with a crash. With an indignant snort, and tail curling crisply over his retreating quarters, the black form of an old boar afforded an excellent mark for my second barrel. Luckily for me he did not charge, or a rent in my waistcoat might have rewarded me for foolishly assaulting so formidable a foe with No. 6.

Everywhere the forest was carpeted with flowers, though the crocuses, of which my English correspondent Mr. Maw was so anxious to obtain specimens, had not unluckily shown their heads as yet. The commonest flower of all was the crimson cyclamen, and next to it its white congener.

Day by day the story was the same. Cock-shooting in the morning, a run with the dogs in the evening, a merry night with Mr. Müller in the Shanty, but still no tidings of a feline foe. Let the history of one day stand for that of many. An hour’s plodding through mud and slush on a bright spring day, with every now and then a snap-shot at a brown flash of light that glides through the trees before us, has at last brought us to that thick covert in which we expect to find the great wild boar. All the dreamy spirit of the young year is abroad; and as we lazily drag our legs over the clinging morass, every briar that winds itself round us almost tempts us to give in and roll over on the soft black mud, rather than resist any longer the sleepy influence of the season and the perpetual assaults of bog and briar. The weight of our rifles has doubled; never before were our coats so thick, never before did an old mossy trunk look so irresistibly tempting; and take it all in all, we begin to think a cigarette and castle-building, with the buzz of the woodland life in our ears and the languor of spring in our blood, would be infinitely better than this ceaseless toil for a boar who as little cares probably to be roused from his deep dreams as we care to rouse him.

Luckily at this moment, when we were all but yielding to the temptations of the sunshine, the deep voice of old Shirka sounded a réveillée: in a second dreaminess had gone, the briars ceased to hold, and if the young wood did swing back and nearly switch our eyes out or break the bridge of that too prominent nose, we heeded it not. For before us, with gruntings and with snortings loud enough to wake the whole drowsy woodland, a great black sow is crashing through the covert, the sable imps, who call her mother, pressing close behind, while the deep voices of Shirka and his mates urge them on to still more desperate endeavour. Each gunner, who up till now has been but half animate, plunges recklessly through the rending thorns to gain some point at which to turn the chase or make that shot which shall render him the after-dinner hero of the day. And now from the deep baying and the cessation of the crashing amongst the scrub, we judge that Shirka and his friends have collared the quarry in the thick thorn yonder; so thick that the light can barely penetrate, and so viciously tenacious and spiteful as to give the invading sportsman an idea of personal malice. From a point of vantage we at last get a glimpse of the fray. There are seven small pigs, and on the flanks of each a dog is hanging, while the great yellow dog Shirka and another are struggling silently with the old sow in the middle of a small pond of black mud and water. But she is too strong for them: we dare not, however, help with our rifles, and cannot get to close quarters in time with our knives; so one by one the little squeakers wriggle themselves away, and the old mother and her litter, after another rapid burst, get clean off, and leave us all lamenting. Had the pigs been of larger growth the dogs would in all probability have concentrated their attentions more upon one object, and so our chase might have had a happier issue.

As it was we pursued our way in crestfallen silence, until Shirka makes a point at a small thorn-bush by our side. ‘Nonsense, old dog, come away; we can see through it.’ Hardly were the words out of our mouth than with more activity than you would give a pig credit for, a huge old boar springs from the very heart of the thicket, and the brave yellow Shirka plunges recklessly at him. The veteran hound is one great record of a thousand fights, his tawny hide seamed and knotted with the marks of many a tusk, but he is as reckless now as he was when a puppy; and dearly as his master loves his old hound’s pluck, he would give a great deal to see a little of that discretion mixed with it which might save his favourite from an untimely end. As the hound closes the boar turns, and in the turning offers a fair mark for the rifle on the other side of the thicket; so once more old Shirka is saved from those gnashing ivory bayonets which he has so often rashly challenged.

After this there is a lull. The hounds’ loud voices have proclaimed to every living thing that death is abroad in the forest, and boar and roe have moved off to some deeper recess, where in shadowy silence they can spend the spring noontide unmolested. One bird the rifle’s reverberating voice has not scared, and as the great eagle comes wheeling over the forest path, he throws quite a shadow on his enemies below. But the voice that stilled the wild boar can still yours, too, poor forest king, and though you come down but slowly, you must rest awhile on that old gnarled oak before your pinions are strong enough to bear you away again, to die in peace. Yet though the blood drops slowly from your beak, you cling fiercely to the tough old oak with iron claws worthy of their perch, and look in silent, wondering rage at the foe scarce thirty feet beneath. Then with one supreme effort you launch yourself on your last voyage: again the leaden hail strikes upward under the now failing pinions, and the great lord of air furls his sails and with a dull thud comes down, eyes still unclosed, talons still drawn back to strike, and the curved beak eager for other blood than the red stream that dyes it now. Peace be with you, brave bird; like many another, when the shot had been fired, I would have given the last rouble in my pocket not to have fired it. Still as a hunter you lived, and, by a just retribution, by a hunter’s hand you died.

After this the handsome form of the great black woodpecker attracted our covetous eyes, and for nearly a couple of hours his delusive whistle lured Ivan and myself from tree to tree, always near us yet never in sight. All things come to those who wait, and at last his crimson crest was added to the scalps of those already slain. During this day, too, we were lucky enough to shoot that rare bird the picus St. John, a woodpecker much resembling our common spotted woodpecker. A propos of woodpeckers, my friend Mr. Müller, who was a keen observer of natural history, assured me that he had frequently observed near his house during the last two years an extremely small woodpecker, in shape like all its congeners, in size if anything slightly less than a sparrow, and in colour brilliant emerald green. Being a zealous preserver of rare birds, he had never attempted to molest the pair, which he assured me built every year near his hut; and I fear that it was my keenness to see the bird and his suspicions of my evil intentions with regard to them, which prevented his ever pointing out to me these specimens of a woodpecker as yet unknown I believe to British ornithologists.

Towards evening, tired with the chase, we would light our cigarettes and make our way home by some well-known track, shooting as we went sufficient cock and pheasants to secure us against the possibility of scarcity during the next few days. Not uncommonly, as we drew near the house, the dogs that for the last quarter of an hour had been wearily following at our heels, with drooping tails, stopping from time to time to lick a lacerated paw, would suddenly erect their hackles, and fresh as ever charge furiously into the home enclosure, where, after the manner of more fashionable beings, the wild swine family had been paying us a visit, having first carefully ascertained that we were sure not to be at home.

The nights sped by blithely enough. The New Year’s festivities, if not of any very formidable pretensions at Eryvool, were at least lovingly protracted, and every night our great-limbed German friend might be seen mixing his loved lint wine for our delectation and his own.

But one night the lint wine was not brewed, not more than ten ‘papiroses’ were smoked, the talk was no longer of Australian gold-diggings or American prairies—for had not the natives brought tidings of the game we had come so far to seek? At some distance from our dwelling two nights before a reiving tiger had struck down a Persian’s cow at a little settlement on the edge of the forest; there was the cow lying still, plain for all eyes to see, and the tiger’s track clearly marked on the sand-bank of the little rivulet hard by. The next night saw an eager trio of sportsmen on the spot. Round the copse where the tiger had been, and to which we hoped he might return, Mr. Müller, Ivan and myself posted ourselves, each perched in a tree, and pledged solemnly to one another to wait there in silence through the livelong night. Their perches I did not see, but my own I have cause to remember. A tall tree-stump, perhaps twenty feet high, had been roughly hewn or broken at the top, the ragged edges of which were terribly apt to break, and pierce the too confiding being who placed his weight upon them. Round this rough throne some small branches made a fairly dense screen; and as some compensation for the deficiencies of my seat, I discovered two deep cavities, into which my long jack-boots fitted admirably. Perched here, I heard the last soft scrunch of my companions’ retreating tread; and then taking a preliminary look at my watch, I fairly settled down to my night’s vigil.

For a time, of course, we could expect nothing. Our passage through the woods was sufficient to have precluded all hope of seeing any game for an hour to come. How still it all seemed. Even the sea is a noisy babbler compared to the depths of a forest at night. What a glorious moon that was that gleamed down through the network of creepers and wild vine above, throwing long shadows on the grassy opening below. But how slowly the moments pass! Is it possible I have only been here a quarter of an hour? I move restlessly, though silently, on my perch, and then the intense cold which is numbing my right leg calls for attention. On withdrawing the suffering limb from its hiding-place the mystery is solved—that comfortable hole, which fitted the foot so excellently, is a natural well, in which the offerings of many forest showers have been carefully stored. No wonder that, as the water soaked through during that frosty night, the unlucky leg grew numb. The change of posture necessitated by this discovery is decidedly a change for the worse, and stronger and stronger grows the conviction in my mind that a fair set-to with Mr. Stripes for a quarter of an hour by broad daylight would be far better than this silent night-watch on a painfully acute tree-stump.

Gradually the inmates of the woods seem to regain confidence. That sharp querulous bark came from a jackal, who is ‘loafing around’ as the Yankees say, just within the shadow of the thicket opposite us. Then there is a whish, whish of whirling wings, and we hear phantom flights of duck come sweeping over the tree-tops close to us, but invisible to our eyes in spite of the bright moonlight. The silence is one moment intense; then, before you have time to blink, the rush of wings is upon you and past you, and the birds are rattling and plopping down into the dark little forest pools, in the soft mossy places, or, best of all, amongst the young wheat of the luckless Persian. What a merry chuckling they make as every fresh flight comes in from its day-dreams and play on the sea. Each batch of new comers takes at least ten minutes to publish its budget of news and arrange for its places at supper.

Again a sudden silence falls on them. Too-whoo-op! too-whoo-op! Ah! you may well crouch trembling under covert now. But as soon as the shadow of the great night-fiend has passed on, the ducks are as merry and noisy as ever. It is well for them that they have no human minds, or the horror of his presence would have stilled their innocent merriment for the night. A more terrible foe than the eagle-owl to all that are too weak to resist him it is hard to conceive. The huge spread of utterly silent wings, the lugubrious cry, the enormous talons, sharper and more tenacious than those of an eagle, and those great fierce eyes, luminous with yellow fire, all contribute to make a tout-ensemble of which a Hindoo devil might be proud. Ghostlike, he glides by close to the earth, a silent cloud in the moonlight, on wings that never seem to stir. Woe to the crouching hare whose ears, quick though they are, have told her nothing of the approach of her mortal foe.

If the Tartars and moujiks of the steppes where the eagle-owl is found are to be believed, once the great bird seizes its prey, it has not itself the power of relaxing its grip immediately. Knowing this, and dreading lest the old grey hare, gaining fresh strength from terror, should in her mad career under thorn-bush and briar tear her unwilling rider to fragments, the owl clutches the ground or some other object with one talon, while with the other she strikes the prey. And now it becomes a tug of war for life and death. If the owl’s muscles are strong enough to hold the prey, well for the owl; but if not, the moujiks tell strange stories of having found half one of these grim birds, one talon still clutching the ground, and the other, with the remainder of the bird’s body, still firmly fixed to the back of its escaped victim.

By-and-by, without even a rustle to announce his approach, a large uncouth beast, like a small bear with extremely bandy legs, is performing strange gambols on the moonlit turf beneath our hiding-place. After watching him long enough to recognise in him a large badger, he catches a glimpse probably of my rifle-barrels, and noiselessly as he came, so noiselessly he melts as it were out of the moonlight into the mysterious shadows beyond. And so, with here and there a glimpse of the private life of its denizens, the long night in the forest passes away, growing colder and colder till near the dawn.

At last there is a sound that startles the whole neighbourhood, and the rustling of retreating feet tells plainly that, though we saw them not, every shadow had its tenant. A crashing of boughs, and a firm, soft tread comes direct to my hiding-place; and with straining eyes I watch, until the outline of the great beast shall slowly emerge from the shadow.

‘Hulloh! are you asleep up there? Come down, and have a pull at my flask. No more chance of a tiger to-night.’

And so the vigil ends. The great beast was our friend M. The night had worn to morning, and, slowly unbending my stiffened limbs, I let myself down to terra firma, glad that the watch was over, even though it ended in nothing better than a nip of eau-de-vie.

Once more after this I watched the stars brighten and fade in the cold grey of morning, waiting alone for a tiger which never came; then, fearful lest the wet season should set in, and prevent our return to Tiflis, I bade adieu to my friends, and on January 11 we started on the return journey to Tiflis.

As soon as our cart came round the sky grew gradually blacker, and with the first jingle of the horses’ bells the patter of the first instalment of the rainy season was mingled. From the time we turned our faces to Tiflis until the moment when Ivan left me in the baths of that city, waiting till he should bring clean clothes in which to attire me for my reappearance in a partially civilised world, the weather went steadily from bad to worse, and discomfort grew to actual misery.

I will not weary my readers with more than a few glimpses of the return journey, of which the first shall be the suburbs of Lenkoran. As we approached them the road became so bad that our horses could barely proceed at a walk; and, looking ahead, we found the street a morass, bridged with planks, through which we could by no means pass. At the sides of the road, where the trottoirs had been, women, with their scanty clothing tucked up round their waists, were taking a mud bath and walking exercise simultaneously, with this trifling drawback, that, should they miss the trottoir, they would probably disappear in the dark profound beyond. This was, of course, an exceptionally bad state of things, and we were told only happened during the first day or two of the rainy season, after which the streets got better, the filth accumulated during the summer having been washed away by the rains.

Wishing the ‘white doves’ a merry time of it, we with great difficulty got our vehicle out of the road on to the steppe; and here, though progress was slow, it was at least better than it had been. Two days spent in alternately being dragged over morasses by our horses, and dragging them and the cart out of the same, did not sweeten our tempers, I presume; and it was perhaps for this that a luckless Persian suffered at Adji Kabool. Here in the early morning I was sitting huddled up in my bourka amongst my luggage in the extremely narrow space allotted to one of two passengers in a Russian post-cart, when a ‘tchapar’ calmly pushed me to one side, and seated himself comfortably beside me, without ceremony or apology. On inquiring what he meant, and explaining that the post-cart was hired by me, paid for by me, and intended only to be tenanted by me and mine, the intruder just deigned to tell me that he was a ‘tchapar,’ had a right to travel in any cart he chose, and meant to travel in mine, whether I liked it or not. Now, if this were true, it would not be an additional attraction in Russian post-travelling; but I fancy it was not: so I requested my would-be fellow-traveller to make himself scarce at once, and as he persisted in refusing, I hoisted him into the mud by the wheels. As soon as he recovered an upright position he clapped his old flint-lock rifle to his shoulder, and putting the muzzle almost into my face, deliberately pulled the trigger. Luckily for me, in his fall all the powder which should have formed the train to the charge had been spilt. Moreover, his barrel was choked with good holding clay, so that, taken all together, had the piece not missed fire, the danger would have been greater to him than to me. After this display of rage and impotence, he turned to the people of the station, and so worked upon them by his arguments that, had I not taken the reins out of my yemstchik’s hands and driven off, whether they would or not, I am persuaded I should have been detained perhaps for days at Adji Kabool, until I could communicate with Tiflis or Lenkoran.

To travel by post-road in this part of the Caucasus, and indeed all over Russia I believe, a man should be as voluble, as loud-tongued, and as profane as the proverbial Billingsgate fisherwoman or a certain English M. F. H. I wot of. The only kind of language a Russian servant, most of all a Russian car-boy, can understand, is loud swearing. From his childhood he has been accustomed to it. His mother’s term of endearment to him as she dandled him on her knees was probably ‘ach te sukin sin’ (ah, you son of a she-dog), about equivalent in English to ‘you little monkey.’ His master’s name for him when good-tempered was ‘rosbolnik’ or ‘mashanik’ (thief or scoundrel), and he himself, in addressing his horses, of which he is often extremely fond, and to which he seldom applies the lash, heaps on them epithets of the fondest endearment and foulest abuse at one and the same time.

Our experiences of post-travel on our return to Tiflis were of the very worst. At Aksu in mid-day we were refused horses on the old plea that there were none—an excuse utterly untrue, as a glance at the interior of the stables assured us. Reiterated demands were met by sulky refusals, and on following the station-master to his own private room I was reminded that the guests’ chamber was my place, whither he would come if sent for. On sending my man he found the door barred, and all further interview denied. This little trick was more than I could stand, so crossing the yard to the fellow’s room I demanded the horses or the complaint-book—a book in which travellers have a right at all times to enter their grievances, which is kept affixed by a seal to the table in the guest-room, and which is the sole check upon the absolute power of a station-master. To remove this or to refuse to produce it, is the greatest crime the station-master can commit, and would, if reported, ensure his eviction from his post. But in this case the man remained firm, being deep in a drinking bout with his yemstchiks, and refused point blank to produce either horses or book, or to let me in. Feeling convinced that I had Russian law on my side, and that the fellow, for his own sake, dare not make any report, I kicked his door down, and taking him by the arm brought him across to the guests’ room, where a couple of Armenian merchants in the same plight as myself were kicking their heels and cursing the cause of their needless delay. Having got my enemy into the room, I had the doors shut, showed him some letters of introduction I had with me, and then telling him I knew to what he was liable if I reported his refusal to produce the complaint-book, I began to solemnly roll up the cuffs of my Tscherkess costume, preparatory, as I informed him, to administering to him severe corporal punishment. The letters, my knowledge of Russian post-road rules, and perhaps a certain air of meaning what I said, had their effect, and in a minute the other side of the Asiatic character was revealed, the insolent brutality giving way to disgusting, fawning complaisance as if by magic. But I knew my man too well to let him go, so that, having made him order two troikas, one for ourselves and one for the Armenians, I kept him a close prisoner until the carts were actually at the door, when, with many thanks from my fellow-travellers, I left Aksu rejoicing.

These fellow-travellers claimed my help again at the next station, alleging that they were co-religionists of mine, being members of the Protestant Church at Shemakha. It seems that forty years ago their sect was founded at Shusha, my informants said, by English missionaries, but the names they gave them, ‘Larambe’ and ‘Fanther,’ sounded very un-English in my ears. Shortly after the founding of the Protestant Church at Shusha, the non-Protestant Armenians rose against their newly-converted brethren, and induced the Czar to have them expelled from Shusha, whence they migrated to Shemakha, and there founded a church, in which they now celebrate five services a week, and number 500 of the richest inhabitants of Shemakha amongst their congregation.

From Shemakha I sent a telegram on to Capt. Lyall or Mr. G——, I forget which, friends of mine at Tiflis, to announce my return, and to prevent my letters being sent on to Lenkoran. To give some idea of the Russian telegraph service between Tiflis and the Caspian I may here mention that, though I took many long days to get from Shemakha to Tiflis, that telegram only arrived simultaneously with me, whilst one sent from Baku, three weeks before, arrived two days after me; and though I travelled by the post-road, and spent some days shooting en route, a letter posted by me in Lenkoran just before I started arrived long after me. So much for internal communication on this side the Caucasus.

Day after day we plodded on, getting dirtier, more starved and ill every day; travelling often as much as sixteen hours in an open cart at a stretch, the best travelling we ever accomplished being 132 versts in that time. At Shemakha we stopped to shoot antelopes, as much for the sake of the pot as for the sport. A day’s rest and a good dinner had become absolutely necessary; and though the accommodation at Shemakha was so bad as to make the rest impossible, we obtained the dinner. Thus refreshed, we turned our faces on Friday morning towards Tiflis, with a fixed resolve to make no further stoppage in the thirty-six hours’ travelling which remained between ourselves and the good things of that place.

For the last ten days my leading idea, my favourite day-dream, the ultima Thule of my ambition, had been a hot tub. To sit and boil in a hot bath of sulphur water and get out a clean man into a clean shirt, had been the one luxury in life to look forward to; and now that it was within thirty-six hours’ travel of me, I felt almost content as I curled myself up in my cart, though snow and rain soaked in through my ragged old clothes, through which the wind cut almost to my backbone, and the red mud splashed up, plastering eyes and mouth, until we had passed beyond all semblance of humanity. But there were to be more trials yet. As we neared Akstapha the night had fallen, and, weary with perpetual motion, I had cowered down under my bourka in a vain endeavour to hide myself from the cold and doze away the tedious hours. The weather was abominably raw; an icy night fog, blown by a cutting breeze that met us in the teeth, wetted and chilled us to the bone. The hour was between nine and ten, the moon had not yet risen, and the night was starless. The road was through the hills, and needless to say heavy and hard to find in the darkness.

Suddenly I was roused by my man’s voice calling me to get out at once. Peeping, half-asleep, from under my rugs, I could see very little of anything except that my man and the yemstchik had both got down and the cart had stopped. ‘What is the matter?’ I asked, feeling for my revolver, and expecting the oft-promised highwaymen. ‘One of the horses has fallen down,’ came the answer. Cross at being disturbed for so little, and not wanting to get my stockinged feet wet in the mud, I was curling myself up again with a sulky injunction to the men to let the horse get up and be hanged to him, when, to my horror, I felt the cart tilting over in a way that threatened soon to reverse our relative positions. In a moment I was wide awake. The cart was already so far over that I was obliged to jump the way it was falling, and my next sensation was that of travelling through space, such as one sometimes experiences in a dream. This came to an end with a jerk, and my next recollection is of being dug out of the mud at the bottom of a considerable precipice from among the débris of boxes, broken cart and horses, which had accompanied me in my fall. By the greatest good luck nothing had struck me, though the heavy built cart had fallen so close as to pin down the corner of my bourka, which was still on my shoulders. Luckily, too, only one of the horses was so far damaged as to be unable to proceed. There was no village within reach. To walk on to Akstapha in the then state of the roads and weather would have been a wearisome trudge, even if we could have persuaded the driver to leave his horses and guide us, or ourselves to leave our belongings in his charge, which we could not do.

Here, then, I had a splendid opportunity of witnessing the really wonderful handiness of Russian peasants in extremities. Thanks to our love of tobacco we had with us a box of brimstone matches; grovelling about by the light of which we retrieved all that was not utterly destroyed of our luggage, and by means of old ropes, pocket-handkerchiefs, and what not, so tied and spliced together the broken harness, that after two hours’ work in that bitter winter night we managed to extricate our cart and make yet another start for Tiflis.

Beyond Akstapha, snow had evidently been falling for some time past, and still continued to fall until we reached Tiflis. Every verst showed us deeper drifts, and at the last station from Tiflis the drivers, in defiance of their master’s orders, refused to get out of their warm corners to drive us through the wintry night to the end of our journey. After many threats and much persuasion one was prevailed on to mount the box, and though we only proceeded at a snail’s pace, we consoled ourselves with the thought that every minute brought us nearer our bourne. At last, when we had got some three versts on the way, the horses were brought to a standstill by their driver, who calmly announced his intention of returning.

We were already half-frozen and irritable from constant mishaps, so that his announcement was not very cheerfully received, and every effort was made to urge him on. Everything else failing, in an evil moment Ivan persuaded me to use the common Russian argument, and, if he would not take copecks, give him stick. He took a very fair thumping as stolidly as an ox, and then utterly nonplussed me by quietly handing me the reins, and decamping into the darkness before I had time to think.