Clive Phillipps-Wolley was a Canadian/British writer, traveller and avid hunter (for more biographical details see Part 1) who, in the summer of 1882, travelled across Europe to Odessa where he got on a steamer to cross the Black Sea. By August he was already in Kutaisi, where he was invited to join a Georgian prince's shooting party. But before they could go the Canadian and his friend were invited to a Georgian dinner party that lasted late into the night...
Kutais is not a lively place even for the Caucasus, and seen by eyes that no heavy supper overnight has made captious and hard to please in the morning. To us, then, on the morning after the supper of princes, to us who had endured nearly a week by rail and another by sea, to escape from the trammels of civilised life and revel in wild sport, it seemed so unendurably dull that, in spite of a heavy damp heat reminding one of the interior of a Turkish bath, we set to work with a will to get horses and prepare for a start for Svanetia before dusk.
I was up at six, and by seven had managed to rouse a waiter and send him into the bazaar to make inquiries for horses to take us as far as Oni. By ten a very magnificent Jew, in a shiny peaked cap and diamond studs, came to see us. A glance at him sufficed. He was not the man I wanted, but a rascal who, owning no horses himself, offers to supply them to the unwary at twice the bazaar tariff. If a stranger to Kutais closes with him, he of course sublets his job to a regular horseboy and himself pockets half the money. He very soon found his way down stairs, and unfortunately was so much annoyed at not having been able to do the Englishman, that he went straight off to the assemblage of horseboys, and I believe told them of my imperative need of horses at once, and advised them to put the screw on accordingly. However that may be, it was not till late that I managed to find a man who would undertake to bring me four horses on the morrow, and having stipulated that the horses should be ready at the hotel by six, I reconciled myself to this further delay and ordered dinner, feeling limp and hoarse with the trials of voice and temper to which I had been subjected.
Dinner over, Frank and I set to work to prepare cartridges and pack up what few things we meant to take with us on our journey, which done we turned in ready for an early start on the morrow. But with morning came no horses nor any message from their owner. A protracted search resulted in his appearance about lunch time to say that he had changed his mind, and could not undertake the job for less than double the sum he had agreed for the previous evening. He had heard what the other Jews had been asking us, and was ashamed of the modesty of his own demands. He, too, like the Jew of the diamond studs, was sent out of the hotel a trifle faster than he entered it.
Once more the business of finding a horse-boy and making a contract had to be undergone, but with a somewhat better result; for about midday (the fellow having agreed to find four horses and a guide who could speak Russian by 9 A.m.) a Jew, speaking only Georgian, with three (not four) of the sorriest steeds since Rosinante, arrived at our hotel. But we had had enough of bargaining with Jew horse dealers, so we said nothing, but packing ourselves and saddle-bags on the miserable screws, turned our backs on Kutais.
It was a day of insufferable heat, the sun beating down on the low hills round the town in a way that made my head ache in spite of the green leaves inside my helmet and the white towel bound round the outside. The only things with life in them that looked happy were the stolid black buffaloes whose broad backs were just visible above water in some of the shallows of the Rion, and even they were almost too lazy and hot to flap their ears.
For us in our narrow saddles, going at a crawl on animals utterly destitute of any liveliness, always up or down steep inclines, even the beautiful scenery had not much attraction. Sometimes for versts we would wind our way through a succession of straggling villages, half hid in neat well-kept orchards, shut in with wattled fences. The sight of them made our parched lips ache for the fruit which was not yet ripe. The season was not a happy one in some things; too early for fruit and too late to see the dark masses of rhododendron thicket that fringed our path, bright with its yellow blossom. We had been too busy to get anything to eat before starting, so that in spite of the heat, our appetites beganto be troublesome long before our day's work was over; but once having made a start we determined to hold out until night compelled a stoppage. Our horses, too, had nothing all day; but to this they seem used, and their owner laughed at the idea of their wanting food before bedtime.
All along our path we met wayfarers either on foot or horseback, many of them in spite of this heat exposing their bare heads to the sun's rays. One fellow, with a dense mass of black hair, trudged bare-headed and barefooted beside us more than half the day, and by taking short cuts and occasionally trotting, oftener waited for our horses than our horses for him. All the men we met gave us a courteous greeting, and here round Kutais all seemed happy and well-to-do.
At last when the sun had long ago set, and the owls were beginning to make themselves heard along our wooded track, we came to a duchan, that is, an open dram shop, a roughly constructed wooden hut, with an open front, in which were displayed half a dozen dirty white bottles partly filled with villainous watki, a bundle or two of dried fish, and a thing like a defunct pig on its back, legs in air, which constitutes the cellar, and is the skin holding all the wine of the establishment. There is another compartment in which a broad board, covered with matting, offers sleeping accommodation to all and sundry, while through a narrow partition they hear their horses busily munching at their hard-earned food. We have seen better inns than this and tasted better wine than the raw red fluid contained in the pig skin, but no rest was ever much sweeter, no wine more refreshing, than that we obtained at the end of our first day's march from Kutais.
C'est le premier pas qui coute is peculiarly applicable to the first day's ride in Tartar saddles, and we were heartily glad it was over, and the chickens screaming in the hands of the cook. Just as the last sounds of the horses' feeding seemed to have ceased, and the half dozen drunken peasants to have become too drunk to shout any more—just, in fact, as our eyes seemed closing, and we were sailing away into regions of dreamless sleep, our Jew roused us with the intelligence that the horses were ready, and if we wanted to get to Oni that day we must start at once.
It was barely dawn, and neither of us were keen to leave our rest so early; but we did it with a grumble—a grumble which on Frank's part was terribly intensified on hearing we were to have no breakfast before starting; none, in fact, until the end of our first stage. This, I think, was the point at which Frank first began to doubt the pleasures of Caucasian travel.
When you are travelling in this country on horseback, and are told that it will take you a certain number of days to reach a particular spot, you must remember that these 'days' are counted from earliest dawn to an hour or so after dusk, and are not ordinary twelve hour days.
We soon found that our resting-place of last night, Tkiboole [Tkibuli], was situated at the foot of a considerable chain of hills, up whose steep sides we had now to climb. So steep were they, and so weak did our ponies appear, that Frank and I at once dismounted, and began the day with a long stiff climb, to which our only objection was that its labours were not shared by our guide who, utterly careless of his horse, sat where he was, smoking placidly. It is to my mind one of the worst traits in the Caucasian character, that these people care nothing for either horse or dog as friends, regarding them as mere machines, only to be noticed with a kick, and never thanked by a caress.
This little climb from Tkiboole to the crest of Nakerala was the only piece of the road between Oni and Kutais over which a droschky might not safely be driven. At the top of the ridge the road led to a cleft, through which we passed, and as we went we were met full in the face by the delicious free breezes which greet you on every summit, while masses of white mist just tinged with sunlight, came rolling through the pass to meet us. In another minute the whole view burst upon us.
The crest of the ridge is double, and the path winds through a kind of basin between the two ridges, in which grow dense masses of rhododendron thicket, whence rise here and there, tall and gaunt, a few giant pines; one huge white fellow, blasted many a year ago, towering high above the rest. The whole
place was wrapt in mist, through which the faint rays of the newly risen sun were diffused, giving a peculiarly wild look to the whole. Along this double crest runs a stream, the Tchaouri, of deep clear water on a bed of silver sand, with an exceedingly sluggish current, in which we were told large quantities of trout were to be found; trout, too, not such as are generally found in mountain burns, but grand fellows of from four to six pounds' weight. But though I looked carefully, and, thanks to considerable practice on the Colne, am by no means slow to mark a rising fish, I never saw a rise, either here or elsewhere, in the three months I was in the country.
Not very far from where the road crosses it, this stream disappears, and after a subterranean course of several versts again emerges. At either end of the subterranean passage the country folk say the trout swarm.
Beyond this stream the forest gradually became more open and the trees larger, many of them being splendid silver beeches of unusual size; others grand pines hoary with age, and festooned with long tresses of silver-grey beard-moss, which, I believe, like ivy and other parasites, kills as it beautifies.
The day we crossed Nakerala happened to be a holiday, and all the folk of the countryside were out enjoying themselves. Hence it happened that as we came down into the lower land we met frequent groups of bluecoated peasants carrying long poles armed with tiny tridents for the spearing of trout. Every male in the villages we passed through seemed to be bent on fishing, and the trout of the neighbouring burns must have had a rough time of it before nightfall. In the villages we found the idle dames of these anglers, clad in many-coloured garments, and hanging about in groups somewhere on the way to the church. Some few here and there drew their face cloths over their faces, but we found this by no means the rule amongst the people of Radcha.
Sigortsminda is one of the prettiest villages on the road—a busy, prosperous-looking place in a well-cultivated plain, with a large lake in its midst. The golden streaks of cultivated land run out on every side, until they meet and are lost in patches of dark forest pine; while far away to right and left roll long stretches of purple hillside, over which in the far distance loom the beautiful snow-peaks of some of the satellites of Elbruz.
The cottages of the village remind you at once of Switzerland, being like them in everything, even to the roofs of plank kept down by boulders. Here we breakfasted; and here I was almost tempted to stay awhile by the accounts of bears in the immediate neighborhood of Nakerala; and though eventually visions of mountain sheep in the far distant peaks induced me to proceed, I heartily commend Nakerala, with its trout streams and its bears, to any who come after me and don't wish to make too great a toil of their pleasure. From Sigortsminda to Oni was a very weary pilgrimage, our poor little beasts done to a turn, and ourselves tired with much walking, our throats parched with thirst, and our saddles too hot to sit in.
Some of the scenery on the road would amply repay any artist who would visit the country; such views as those of the ruined castles beyond Sigortsminda, and the glimpse of the river Rion as it hurtles along grey and stern between its walls of rugged grey rock at the bridge of Tsess, being hard to beat for beauty in any country. But no one seems to have painted or even photographed the Caucasus, except to such a limited extent as it is seen from the Vladikavkaz road; at least, if they have done so, I have never been lucky enough to come across any of their sketches.
Villages were, luckily for us, of frequent occurrence by the roadside; and in each of these we got a few minutes' rest and a glass of rough wine or water. The heat was at midday almost insufferable, being as much as 160° in the open; and had it not been for these frequent pauses, and the constant recurrence of a kind of plum-tree (Cornus mascula), bearing a small round fruit of a brilliant yellow, with the most exquisite flavour imaginable, I don't think we should have reached Oni that day. As it was, Frank was knocked up for a day or two afterwards by his exertions in the sun, and I was almost as bad.
In some of the stony passes on the banks of the Rion, through which our road lay, were vast numbers of butterflies, almost all of which were new to me. Amongst them were the beautiful swallow tail, a few large copper, and, commonest of all, a very quickwinged vision of loveliness which I have been unable to identify.
Perhaps the prettiest sight which met my eyes all that long summer afternoon was a regular troop of butterflies, swallow tails, and pale clouded yellows, sitting on a small moist patch of ground where a clear little mountain spring fell from the roots of two great ferns into a pool below. The heat was so intense that even these children of the sun had come there, I suppose, for shade and refreshment.
It seemed to me then, and often afterwards, that there is a field open for the entomologist in the Caucasus in which very few have reaped before, and in which a very plentiful harvest is waiting to be gathered in. Herr Radde, the Curator of the Tiflis Museum, has a very good collection of butterflies; but even I, in my two or three visits to the Caucasus, though but a casual student of entomology, feel convinced that I have seen several varieties in my travels of which there are no specimens at Tiflis.
The daylight was fast departing, though the heat was far from going with it, when my poor little screw stumbled along the last half verst to Oni. Somehow or other my friend and the Jew had fallen behind, but before my mental vision was the hope of a steaming samovar and a refreshing wash; so, instead of waiting for them, I pushed on alone into the little medley of roughly built wooden houses, called Oni, the capital of the government of Radcha, perhaps the richest in natural productions of any government in the Caucasus.
The governor's house was not much different to the houses round it, but a glimpse of a cool duck uniform on a verandah inclined me to the belief that I had found the house I sought, and a second glance which descried a couple of ladies sitting sipping their tea confirmed my belief. Without more ado I tied up my steed, and, climbing the stairs, saluted the ladies and presented my letter at the duck uniform. Though surprised at first at the extreme directness of my mode of procedure, Baron Geikin—for it was he—became in a moment the most kindly of hosts, putting his house and all that was in it at our disposal at once. But in spite of the tea and rest my voice would not come back for nearly an hour except in dull, hollow tones, which almost frightened their producer. This was, however, the only effect of the long, hot ride, and wore off before morning.
At Oni we spent the night and part of the next day in engaging horses, and an interpreter, presented to us as a friend by the governor. It was when introducing our interpreter to us that the Baron ventilated a theory, of which we found him very full, that the whole of the tribes of the Caucasus are of Jewish origin, adducing in favour of his theory their personal appearance, the fact that some of the oldest princely families of the Caucasus claim Jewish descent, and that the Jews themselves aver that the Tables of the Law, given to them at Sinai, are now hidden in the Caucasus, three expeditions having been already sent from Amsterdam to seek and recover them. Besides this he alleged that all antique relics found in the Caucasus were Hebrew, and that on every Tcherkess prince's tomb of bygone days you will find the incription, 'Potomka Sudaria Davida'— descendant of the Lord David. Besides this, 'Oori,' which is used in Persian and all Caucasian tongues for Jew, appears constantly in Caucasian names of places, &c, as, for example, 'Gooriel.'
Personally I can vouch for only one of his statements. The inhabitants of the Caucasus are wonderfully Jewish in type, and never more so than when they are beautiful. A beauty of Mingrelia with her raven hair, rather hard black eyes, and aquiline features is as purely Jewish as anything can be in appearance. If they are of Jewish origin, their long sojourn in wild, uncivilised mountain regions has certainly brought out many of the finer traits of the race, which seem to have been lost by the dwellers in towns.
The province of Radcha is, we were told, peculiarly rich in minerals, and efforts are, I believe, being made to attract foreign capitalists to open up mines there. Along our route from Oni, which we left late the following evening, beds of magnificent slate cropped up by the river; while close by the new bridge spanning the Rion where the road to Glola branches off from the main road to Gebi, we found just on the edge of the grand pine forest fringing the river a spring of strongly impregnated iron water. Near Glola itself is another spring which I did not see, but of which the natives had much to say in favour of its wonderful purgative and other medicinal qualities.
We passed one night, en route to Glola, at the little hamlet of Ootsara, although we had to effect a forcible entry at the inhospitable duchan. It was not until the door seemed yielding beneath the sturdy blows of our interpreter, and he seemed every moment likely to be within reach of the innkeeper, whom he was loudly threatening all the while with instant death, that the sleepy old rascal turned out from his lair amongst the pigskins, and let us in.
All the houses in Ootsara are of a temporary character, capable of being transported (i.e. what is perishable of them) to warmer climes for the nine months of snow, during which the village is deserted, and indeed buried. Thanks to its mineral springs and delightfully cool temperature, it is rather a favourite resort during the three hot months of the summer; but ruins of rock, patches of shattered forest, and a huge collection of debris near the river, told a story of the fury of storm and avalanche to which it is subject in winter.
To say that the scenery on the road to Glola is beautiful would be mere repetition. Wherever you have pine forests, mountains, and a rapid mountain river rushing through all, the scenery must necessarily be beautiful, and these elements of natural beauty you have everywhere along the road from Kutais to Gebi. But for all that the village of Glola may vie with any in the Caucasus for picturesqueness, as the natives say it does for wealth.
In all villages in Radcha and Svanetia there is a house set apart for the use of travellers, which goes by the high-sounding title of 'cancellaria.' High-sounding as the title is, the quarters are generally poor enough—a couple of bare rooms, empty of everything save the live stock left starving on the premises by the last sojourner within their walls, the windows glassless portals to let in the cold night air, and, worse than all, no possibility of privacy. Such is the ordinary cancellaria. That at Glola was no exception to the rule, and in five minutes our kit was deposited on the floor, and our horses tied to the supports of the balcony, whither we had also betaken ourselves, because the room indoors was too dark to be in without a candle, and being little after midday we felt disinclined for artificial light as yet. On the balcony there was light and life enough.
On arriving at Glola we had sent at once for the starchina to whom we had a letter; and as a result of our sending, everyone in the village, except the starchina, was at once in attendance, so that the balcony was as noisy as Babel and as crowded as the Army and Navy Co-operative Stores on Saturday morning.
At Oni everyone had told us that Glola was par excellence the home of Bruin; and indeed that they had not altogether lied was evidenced by a couple of fairly fresh skins spread out on a neighbouring cottage; but though there were bears about, we could get no one to guide us to their haunts. Every man in our balcony (and small as it was, it was groaning dangerously under the weight of thirty-one men and a woman) was a hunter; but as they had no dogs to find the bears with, and had had no rain to make the ground sufficiently soft for tracking, and as above all it was for them the only busy part of the year, no one was forthcoming as a guide.
Never having shot bears in any other part of the world I don't know how people manage elsewhere; but for the sake of those who have never seen Bruin at home, I may say here that to go promiscuously into a forest where they are even in large numbers is seldom much good. However quiet you may be, old Michael generally manages to hear you; and big and unwieldy as he looks, a blackbird would make as much noise getting away in the thick bush as he would. Though you almost ran into him, unless he was very much startled, the odds are he would sneak off through the rhododendrons, without your ever suspecting his presence. In places like the forests on the Black Sea coast, where human beings rarely intrude, you may, it is true, catch him making an early breakfast in the chestnut clumps; but in places like Glola, where he is constantly seeing or hearing human beings, he is as hard to get a shot at as the British wood pigeon.
I was the more annoyed at being able to do nothing at Glola, as I knew that in this part of Radcha the bear that occurs most frequently is the species with the collar mark on the neck, of which I was particularly anxious to get a specimen, the more so as I should like to see whether English naturalists would agree with my friend Dr. Radde that this collared bear is a mere variety of the ordinary brown bear. That the collar is distinctly visible in all ages of the animal I am convinced, having seen specimens from earliest cub-hood to downright old age ; and I have the authority of all the Caucasian hunters I ever met for saying that this bear is as different from the ordinary bear in disposition as in coat, being, though a smalleranimal, much more dangerous, invariably charging when molested.
Naturally, on arriving at Glola our first business had been to order refreshment for man and beast, and I know nothing more trying than the difficulty of obtaining the merest necessaries at large and prosperous villages, when they are the end of a long journey. The whole of the last long half of your way—hungry, thirsty, and tired—you have been consoling yourself with the thought that however wearisome those last ten versts may be, there is a fixed time at which, if you only persevere, you may slake your thirst and rest your weary limbs. What is the reality? When you have struggled to your goal, you find no house to take you in for some time, no food to buy, for there are no shops or bazaars, and often even the water is a good long step from the village. Then when you have thrown down your things on the bare floor of the beggarly cancellaria, there is no place indoors clean enough to lie down on; and outside, instead of peace and rest, you are mobbed by a score or two of unclean and inquisitive savages, possessed also of the strongest lungs in the world, who hold long discourses on you, talk to you incessantly, though you don't understand a word, and investigate and play with every article you possess, from your telescope to your toothpick. After enduring this kind of thing for an hour or so, and finding the promises of our numerous friends to bring food unlikely to be fulfilled, I despatched our interpreter to find the starchina, and bring him to me by fair means or foul.
Then I wandered out into the village to see what the peasants' life seemed like here. As it was Sunday, of course all the men were at home and idle, most of them indeed were amusing themselves with a careful investigation of Frank and his belongings on the balcony; and when I came back one of them, a gentleman in a blue shirt, had mounted the table and was delivering a spirited lecture on England and the English, taking my unsuspecting friend for his text. But though none were afield to-day, there was some little work for the women, in the morning and at sundown, to spread out their stores of grain on the threshing floor, casting it like golden motes in the sunbeams, and at night sweeping it up again into its sacks. This done and the cattle tended, the women, like the men, gave themselves to idleness. There was a church in the village, but I saw no one near it, though some grand game heads hung up as votive offerings drew me thither. The whole village indeed, save for our balcony, seemed deserted, and it was not until an hour had slipped away and I went to search for my truant messenger, that I found the reason of this.
A village in Southern Russia is all one long straight street: a village in Radcha or Svanetia has no streets at all, but is a mass of houses huddled together anyhow, between which you squeeze through narrow little alleys, of a thousand windings, over mixens, round the backs of cowsheds, over precipitous stone heaps, to your goal. Winding my way through such a maze as this I came suddenly upon an explanation of the empty houses. At my feet was a boiling little torrent, some twenty or thirty feet wide, with high steep banks, from one to the other of which a single pine trunk formed an uninviting bridge. On the far side a beautiful lawn sloped up into the forest, and half way up it stood a single magnificent walnut tree. Here, with the flickering light and shade playing on them through the leaves overhead, reclined at least half the village, round, alas! a very dirty tablecloth, a heap of cheese, radishes, and chamois flesh, half a dozen great terra cotta jars of wine, and one wine glass. There were all the old grey-beards of the village, including the starchina, a large number of picturesquely untidy women, and at the top of the group, by the tree root, my truant interpreter, and a man and woman in European costume. Though I had no fancy for crossing the bridge, I went across and joined the group, being received with tremendous applause, whilst Platon introduced me to his Russian friends, a soldier and his wife staying at Glola, that the woman might go through a course of water cure at its springs.
As soon as I had been settled down into the best place, fresh jars of wine were brought, and with much unction the speechmaking and toast-drinking began, while as I did not care for the solids, a little Tcherkess girl got up into the tree and shook me down walnuts for my wine.
In spite of all I have heard of Caucasian female beauty, this girl of twelve was the only really lovely Caucasian I remember to have seen, but she was as beautiful as a dream. As a rule the women seemed to me plain, but then the Mingrelians, whose beauty is most talked of in the Caucasus, are of a thoroughly Hebrew type, which I dislike; and for the others I admit to being unable to see loveliness through an inch and a half of dirt. The sight of the bridge which had to be recrossed, and the memory of my Kutais experiences, soon prevailed over the entreaties of my new friends; and after drinking with half a dozen of the ladies, and getting rid of the unpleasant taste of the rough wine with a long draught of the glorious natural soda water that bubbled up without price and without stint not far from our feet, I made my adieux, and carried off my guide with me to the other side of the stream.
To stay in a place where Platon had found friends, and where I could get no hunters and no dogs, was out of the question; so by dint of never losing sight of him for a moment, I made the unwilling Platon obtain horses before nightfall, and long ere the garrulous inhabitants had asked us half the questions they had to ask we were en route for Gebi.
Such a rare night as that on which we rode from Glola to Gebi is enough to soothe even spirits unhinged by haggling with Caucasian horseboys; and though the road was in places dangerously bad, and a puff of hot air like a furnace blast came from time to time from the baked hillsides, marring the evening cool, we still rode on happy through a perfect dream of beauty. For the most part all was dark and wild, like a realisation of one of Dora's pictures ; but now and again the moon would seem to sail up from behind some lower peak than usual, and throw flashes of weird, uncertainlight on the Rion, rock-bound and raging far below, while at the same time she spread the forest lawns with a cloth of silver, and frosted every trembling leaf with silver light.
High up in the mountains on the other side the Rion we saw from time to time a solitary beacon, embosomed in forest, burning like a ruby on the mountain's breast. From this far-away light came now and again faint echoes of wild unearthly cries, whoopings and whistlings, the ringing of bells and beating of gongs, as if gnomes of the mountain and forest were holding midnight revel there. Could we have looked closer we should have found nothing more supernatural than a wakeful Glola husbandman perched on a raised platform in the middle of the growing maize patch, which he had cultivated amongst the great forest trees, whence (were he not there) the long grey form of old Bruin would steal out every night as the gloaming closed in to rob him of his hard-earned crop. As it is, Bruin knows so well how rarely the husbandman's bullets come near enough to do more than startle him, that he is probably even now at work in some corner where the forest trees cast a shadow, and the sound of his devastations do not reach the watcher's platform.
Further on, where the track passes through a scattered wood of box-trees, on a boulder-studded lawn, we saw a deep pit dug back into the face of a hill, which overlooked the site of a now deserted maize field. Here a year ago another peasant passed many a silent hour (while man was at rest, and only the beasts of the forest roamed the moonlit woodland ways), watching with finger on trigger for the four-footed enemies with whom he had to maintain the struggle for existence. There is no lack of excitement for the farmer here, who, when he has cleared his patch and sown the seed, must guard the produce nightly, or lose all guerdon of his labour.
After passing this hill the way wound down into the bed of the Rion, no longer now the broad peaceful stream, that seems to have grown sluggish and stupid ere it pours its full flood into the Black Sea, nor even the angry, energetic torrent that overthrows all obstacles, and boils onward beneath the grey rocks of Tsess, but a company of half a dozen small streams wandering through a ruinous waste of stony river-bed, over which they unite in winter into a swollen cataract. Here, for the first time, our attention was drawn to large sparks of green light that flew glimmering here and there amongst the birch trees, and it was some time before we realised that they were the first and only fire-flies we had yet seen in the Caucasus.
The last step of the night's march was over a log bridge which spanned the broadestlimb of the Rion below Gebi. I venture to think that any English equestrian who was unused to these rough constructions would at first hesitate before crossing at all, and when he did would certainly prefer to cross, if cross he must, on his own feet and not in the saddle. One of our party, Platon, came near to having good cause to regret that he had not done thus ; for in spite of the sure-footedness of Caucasian ponies, the holes in this bridge were in such unfair proportion to the solid parts that the poor little quadruped, putting a fore leg through a wide opening, came on his knees and all but rolled over, horse and rider, into the river below.
Of course there were no lights in Gebi. Men in the Caucasus believe that Nature knows best when it is time to work or play and when to sleep, so that the moment the sun is down, unless they are hunting or acting sentinel in their fields, the villagers lie down and sleep until a new day. Groping our way through the houses, our guide stopped us at last with the welcome announcement that we might dismount. We had reached our sleeping quarters.
A perilous ladder, no bad exercise for young climbers, led to the second storey of the cancellaria, where beyond a balcony were two rooms, one of which had rafters to support a floor, but no floor, and the other a floor, perhaps, if one could find it beneath accumulations of varied dirt. The windows were open to the pure night air, or rather the casements were windowless, and the air and rain when there was any was as much at home indoors as without. But there was a table, and in a few minutes Frank had got the tent-bag laid out for a pillow, whilst I took the saddle ; and head to tail, side by side, with our boots in dangerous proximity to each other's mouths, we were soon ready for sleep and our insect enemies. But we were premature. Though the village was hushed when we entered it, the news of our arrival roused it, and we soon had the ordinary assembly of sheep-skinned savages shouting round us.
Sheepskins themselves, when worn unwashed for more than three years, are not savoury things to poor European nostrils, but why, oh men of Gebi, why overpower that comparatively innocent smell by the strongest and filthiest of garlic?
Through the first half of the night we were forced to make merry with about a dozen of the elders of the village, who ordered wine to entertain us with, and with that fairness for which they are remarkable emptied the jars and left us to pay for them. They told us the country was alive with game; that not a man amongst them but had slain hie thousands and tens of thousands, and the morrow we, too, should kill bears and chamois within a stone's throw of the village. But for all that, when the entertainment was over and our endurance at an end, there was not a single guide forthcoming for the next day, nor even a horse promised to carry our baggage.
The letters which our kind friend, Baron Geikin, had given us to the starchina were, no doubt, powerful and useful in their way, but unluckily there is no law obliging the starchina to keep at home or leave another to perform his duties in his absence, so we never found anyone to present our letters to.
At last, there being no dry place left to expectorate upon, and no more liquor forthcoming, the Elders of Gebi kindly took themselves, their 'makorkha' (a vile kind of rough native tobacco, smoked out of small pipes such as opium-smokers use), and their garlic off to the bosoms of their respective families; and after Platon had cleared decks as well as he was able, we drew our bourkas round us and slept.
When the sun, gleaming in through the roof, woke us out of our heavy slumbers, we entered on another of those vexatious days of bargaining, worry, and procrastination, which take most of the pleasure away from a tour in the Caucasus. Until eleven we could find no one. Then we lost our interpreter, who went to find the starchina. Meanwhile, appetites of English growth began to murmur and rebel at the delay of breakfast, and my half-famished friend and myself made sorties from our stronghold in turn in our endeavours to obtain food.
Unluckily the people of Gebi don't speak Russian, so without Platon we were almost helpless. A quantity of small fowls had an utterly demoralising effect on Frank, and had it not been for extraordinary activity on the part of his intended booty, I am afraid myunfortunate friend would have been guilty of petty larceny at least. But necessity is the mother of invention; and after several abortive attempts, we, by our united efforts, produced an exceedingly striking picture of a cockrel in chalk on a neighbouring wall, after which Frank crowed violently, flapped his coat-tails, went through the pantomime of cutting his own throat, and even of laying an egg; after which he went chuckling about the place like a veritable old hen, until he was purple in the face with his exertions. But our endeavours bore fruit, and before long we had a hatful of eggs, and even a brace and a half of chickens (three for a rouble), and what was even better, learnt the Georgian for these articles of diet for another occasion.
Breakfast over, we got a glimpse at the official life of Gebi. The starchina, accompanied by his secretary, came to visit us, carrying an official document in their hands.
The cancellaria, it seemed, was the starchina's office, in which he transacted all his state affairs. After a considerable search, and some strong language from his chief, who was not quite sober, the secretary managed to find the official seal of the town hidden in a crevice in the wall. From another crevice he produced a tallow candle, a treasure not to be matched this side of Oni, and then came a fierce debate as to where the seal should go. When they had decided that about a dozen impressions should be scattered broadcast over the written part of the document, they appealed to me; and though I daresay they followed out their original plan eventually, for the time being the Elder contented himself by licking paper and seal, holding the latter in the candleflame for a time, and then making an irregular black mark at the foot of the document as directed by me. After this, the seal and candle were returned to their old hiding places, and tired with the duties of office, the great men took themselves off for a drink.
The office of starchina is awarded by election amongst the members of each village, and the duration of office was, I was told, from three to seven years; but on this head my informants disagreed. As a rule, the office is an unimportant one, as its holder has no real authority, and the members of his village community appear to obey or disobey him pretty much as they please. Moreover, the position is one not greatly sought after, and one of our guides assured me that three roubles' worth of watki judiciously distributed would any day secure the election of the man who gave it.
It would be unkind in me to ask my readers to follow me through the hours of weary haggling, under a scorching sun, to which I had to submit, before horses and men were at last hired; making agreements with men who have no notion of sticking to their contracts, and searching for some glimmerings of truth amongst an ocean of lies to guide me in my search for game. At least half a dozen times I had, after waiting patiently for the advent of promised horses, to go in search of their owners, only to find them round the corner, not dreaming about getting the animals, but eagerly debating with their friends how much more they should demand from me on the next interview. Half a dozen times during the day, with my head aching and tongue dry with talking, I had to plunge my fists up to my elbows into my pockets to keep them from dangerous proximity with the rascals' noses; and then when I had almost choked myself with suppressed vexation, my idiotic interpreter would lose his temper on his own account, upset all my negotiations, and give me all the work to do over again.
Still, when a whole day had been wasted, and even the oldest man was tired of talking, I had got two guides, one of whom had been a bearer in Mr. Freshfield's employ in 1869, and who rejoiced in the name of Vassili, and who, had he not been so devoted to garlic, would have been a very good fellow. The other we unanimously and with great justice entitled 'the duffer.'
As we intended only to make a short excursion to begin with to some tur-haunted springs of bitter water in the neighbouring mountains, we left our impedimenta in charge of the village priest, and having had a pair of sandals apiece manufactured by our gillies, and received Platon's assurance that he had laid in all necessary supplies of creature comforts, we left Gebi for the first time about five o'clock on the evening of August 21.
