CHAPTER XI.

EN ROUTE FOR DAGHESTAN.

Start from Tiflis--My yemstchik--Travelling-carts--Caucasian road-makers--Camel caravans--On the bleak steppe--Persian hawking--Subterranean dwellings--Shooting at Kariur--Elizabetpol--An execrable journey--Hawks and starling--Banditti--Curing official corruption at Tiflis--Goktchai--A wearying day’s sport--Fear of highwaymen--My guide, Allai--Arrival at Gerdaoul--Hospitable Lesghians.

On Saturday morning, December 14, before the first team of sleepy buffaloes had dragged their load of country produce through the streets to the bazaar, before the canine concert which makes the night of Tiflis hideous had calmed down, Ivan had returned from a last farewell to his young wife, and I had put the last thing ready for a start. Early as it was, my friend Lyall and his son were up and ready to speed the parting guest they had welcomed so kindly, and before six o’clock the clattering of their horses and the rattle of my wheels were waking the echoes of the German colony. Dawn was breaking slowly as we dashed over the bridge that spans the Kûr where it passes through the Tartar bazaar. The hills were standing out black and clearly defined against low, fleecy clouds, the golden colour of an English lassie’s hair, while here and there a higher peak caught the bright red glow of the morning.

Our yemstchik had been taking part in a sister’s wedding the day before, and, as he himself said, was devoting himself to getting rid of the headache consequent on the marriage festivities. His remedy was the old-fashioned ‘hair of the dog that bit him.’ But, luckily for travellers in Russia, a yemstchik never drives so well as when drunk, so our ‘troika’ whirled and bumped through the streets, now rapidly filling with their early-rising denizens, in grand style. In and out amongst countless high-wheeled arbas, swearing, shouting, screaming, just grazing one vehicle, slashing the sleepy or sluggish owner of another with Parthian whip, chaffing, chaffed, or cheered, we bowled along at a gallop. How we did not run over foot-passengers or smash some other conveyance I can’t understand, for these yemstchiks turn the sharpest corners at full speed, and apparently reck nothing of life or limb.

Just as we were clearing the bazaar, our kind escort trying, though mounted, in vain to keep pace with us, we met a caravan of the long-eared beast the Brighton cockney loves. Our yemstchik gave a yell, the donkeys stolidly refused to budge, and then followed one of the most brilliant charges on record. The enemy, hampered by the huge packs which they bore, reeled and gave way before our chariot’s furious course, and though a torrent of abuse, no doubt, followed us, the owners of the charged ones were too taken aback by the sudden onset even to make their reproaches reach our rapidly retreating ears.

Before leaving the town we met a party of musicians coming from the night’s debauch which here follows every wedding. These greeted us with musical honours, and altogether our departure from Tiflis was considered full of happy omens. As for me, happy or unhappy omens were much a matter of indifference, for, longing as I did for the chase from which I had been so long debarred by trivial difficulties at Tiflis, I was only full of delight at my tardy freedom.

At the first station on the road we changed horses and drank the stirrup-cup, said good-by to our friends, and settled down to the serious business of travel. To those who have never travelled in Russia by the ordinary travelling-cart it is impossible to give an adequate idea of the miseries the shallow springless carts occasion to their occupants as they jolt over the uneven track that is here dignified by the title of post-road. The traveller’s luggage probably fills the cart, and on this, with knees drawn up, he has to balance himself as well as he can, and continually exercise all the prehensile powers he possesses to retain his precarious position. Many natives never get used to this method of travelling, and suffer a species of _mal de mer_ from the jolting, as well as other inconveniences. But for myself, I had done a good deal of travelling in post-carts, and except for the want of shelter in bad weather minded it very little, being even able to sleep as we drove, although how I ever retained my seat whilst so doing I could never understand.

At the first station from Tiflis we saw beside the Kûr a large congregation of vultures gathered round some carcase which the river had deposited on its banks. Amongst them was one large black vulture, a very rare bird, which I in vain endeavoured to stalk and secure.

After leaving the station of the vultures we drove day and night, sleeping in the cart whenever nature asserted her need of rest, through a plain bounded on the right by mountains, and on the left by a scanty line of trees, which marks the course of the Kûr. All along the route road repairs were going on, bringing together gangs of the most villanous-looking scoundrels the various nationalities of the Caucasus can produce. I take it, many of the highway murders and other outrages one hears of may fairly be ascribed to them. Strings of camels, with solemn tinkling bells, which seemed to stretch from us to the distant horizon, moved mechanically onwards as we passed them, their plumed howdah sticks nodding in time to that slow soft stride, which from its even regularity always impressed me with an idea of perpetual motion. Several times, too, towards evening we came upon large camps near a pool of water, where some hundreds of camels were resting, their huge forms making, as they knelt in line, a four-sided fort, within the walls of which were stored the bales they had brought out of the distant East. Amongst these large camps I noticed a few of those white dromedaries which travellers tell us are so much prized for their speed in the East. Save for these camel caravans, of which we met two or three a day, all bound for Tiflis, a few minor trains of donkeys laden with charcoal, or slow-going fourgons filled with the carpets of Shusha and Shemakha, our first two days’ journey was most uninteresting. Dead bare steppe and barren bleak hillside, with nothing more inspiriting than an apparently deserted Tartar cemetery to break the monotony, with its tall unhewn headstones of white rock. Here and there, as the evening grew into night, the road wound through low hills of such a withered and blasted look that you felt that the memorial stones, which you passed from time to time in dark silent places, were sufficiently suggestive of murder and evil deeds without Ivan’s ghastly narratives. Up to the large station of Akstapha, where several different routes branch off from the main road between Tiflis and Shemakha, we met or passed other travellers by tarantasse occasionally.

Once we had left Akstapha, we appeared to be the only travellers on the road. About three stations from Elizabetpol we came across the first specimen of Persian hawking which I had yet seen. The bird used was a large falcon, belled and jessed, as far as I could tell from a distance, much as an English bird might be if Englishmen still followed the pursuit of falconry. Wherever I came across a Persian dwelling between Tiflis and the Caspian, I invariably found the hawk on his perch by the doorway, and his two comrades in the chase--tall, broken-haired greyhounds--basking somewhere near him. These dogs work with the hawk, run down hares when started, and put up partridges and ‘tooratsh’ (sand-grouse) for the hawk to strike. To these dwellers upon the steppe greyhounds and hawk supply the place of a fowling-piece--an instrument of destruction little used by Tartars and Persians. Each man carries a rifle, an enormously long weapon with a diminutive stock, not nearly as big round as a man’s wrist, with a flint lock, and a back and fore sight, with a small hole in each through which the sportsman peers at his game. Once you can get a view of the antelope through these two sights simultaneously, you are pretty sure to hit him; but the rifle requires a great deal of manipulation (sticks arranged for a rest, &c.) before this desirable result can be attained; and in the meanwhile it is hardly fair to expect your quarry to remain motionless. Moreover, a puff of wind or a drop of moisture will ensure a missfire, and altogether the antelope is very fairly safe.

After passing the Red Bridge--a place famous for many a daring deed of highway robbery--we passed a subterranean village, or what was practically one, the roofs being almost on a level with the ground. Below these roofs are in most instances stables, in which dark and ill-ventilated dens man and horse live together. The atmosphere is worse than a London fog in the East End, and the only reason that these dwellings do not kill those who live in them is that Tartar and steed pass at least eighteen hours of the twenty-four in the pure air of the outside world. Herein lies the secret of the healthy lives and iron muscles of all Nature’s happily uncivilised children. Their houses, it is true, are not such as would meet with the full approval of a sanitary inspector of the nineteenth century; but then, they look upon them as the bear looks on his den--only as a place to retire to for sleep, or to lie down in when sick or wounded. Windows are to them works of supererogation. When they come back to their houses it is only because it is too dark to work or play outside; and never morning sun wastes his life shedding glory on windows which, with frowsy blinds, shut in sloth as they shut out daylight. It often seemed to me that if these half-civilised people only loved pure water as they love the fresh air, they might live to any length of days. But, alas, they don’t. A cold tub never occurs to them, unless it comes accidentally in fording a mountain stream, or, contrary to their expectations, as a shower-bath from heaven.

At Kariur, the last station before Elizabetpol, I stayed for a little rest and sport, to break the monotony of our uneasy drive. Kariur is as bad a station as any one could wish to see--horses and men living, for the most part, together. But it looked a likely place for game; and, indeed, its looks did not belie it. Never in the best preserved parks and woodlands of old England have I seen more hares. They rose and scudded away in all directions, at every stride. Sand-grouse were plentiful, but extremely difficult to flush; although when flushed I thought them very pretty shooting, and when shot very fine for the table. The meat is the whitest of any fowl I know. Bustards we saw, and wild ducks; for the country seemed full of tiny purling streams, which should make agriculture easy and profitable, though these natural advantages are not utilised here. Antelopes were tolerably numerous; and, two or three times, large grey foxes went away in that insolently easy canter peculiar to Reynard when the hounds are not behind him. For nearly a quarter of an hour I tried in vain to stalk a flock of very large reddish birds with a decidedly game look and a shrill pipe, not altogether unlike the curlew’s call. What they were I could not find out, as they were extremely shy, and I never saw any like them again. The Tartars did not know them any more than did my Tiflis gamekeeper, and I much regretted that I was unable to procure a specimen. Kariur would be a splendid place to pitch your tent near, if you wanted to thoroughly sate your appetite for fowling, and vary your experiences with the shot-gun by a day or two spent in antelope-stalking with the rifle; or, in wet weather, when the soil cakes on the flying feet of the antelope, you might join the Tartars in a capital gallop after the greyhounds, with a certainty of a venison supper at the finish.

But much shooting, especially of the antelopes, would, I saw at once, cause great jealousy and unpleasantness amongst your few neighbours; so, having had a capital day, crowned by a varied bag, and, thanks to Ivan’s skill, a savoury supper, I drove off in the dark to finish my last stage to Gungha, as the natives call Elizabetpol. If any Englishman should read what I have written, and, tempted by hope of sport, follow in my track, let him take one piece of advice from me. Never believe any one between the Black Sea and the Caspian; or, at least, never build any hopes on alluring prospects suggested to your mind by the statements of natives. To me Gungha was to be a land of perfect peace, where in a really good hotel I should lay down my weary limbs, and, after a good supper, forget, in clean sheets, the injuries inflicted on me by the merciless bumpings of my travelling-cart. I admit that the vision of clean sheets seemed far too good to be true, but when I found that the occupant of the best inn’s best room could not even get a samovar until the host’s family had finished with it, and no better bed than the floor and his bourka would constitute, I felt, indeed, the vanity of all human hopes.

Gungha is a much better name for the town than Elizabetpol. It has a thoroughly Asiatic sound, as the town has a thoroughly Asiatic aspect: flat-topped houses, thrown pell-mell together, without design or reason in their arrangement; roads that are destitute of trottoirs, full of pitfalls and rocks by turns; at one time dark wildernesses of blinding dust-storms, at another hopeless morasses, in which you sink knee-deep in mud; open sewers by every roadside, and a sufficient quantity of trees scattered throughout to insure fever in its due season; not one decent house in the town, and nothing either of art or nature to attract the traveller, or detain him when there. There is a large bazaar, under a kind of arcade, composed of a succession of dome-like roofs; here Persian work, lambskins, and dried fruit form the staple commodities. Under one dome the bootmakers were busy; in the next your measure was taken, and a sheepskin turban of any hue or shape made for you whilst you waited. Outside, at the street corner, an itinerant barber was shaving the head of a true believer, whose tray of gaudy sweetstuff lay on the ground beside him whilst he submitted to the operation. In the square, near the hotel, a Persian, with his beard and heavy moustache ablaze with henna, was, with bell and voice, advertising the merits of a falcon which he carried on his wrist, whose broad bright eyes were hardly less wild than his own. The man and bird would have been a fine study for an artist’s pencil, so wild and picturesque were they; and, as the bird huddled itself into his open shirt front, against his copper-coloured chest, or struck out with beak and claw from its perch at the incautious hand of any would-be purchaser, I felt sure that the Persian’s pleasure in accepting a good round sum would not be unalloyed by pain at parting from his brave bird. But neither my man nor myself cared to stay longer at Gungha than we were obliged; and, as soon as horses could be procured, we were under way again.

The roads of the Caucasus are always execrable, but there is still a degree of evil of which that traveller knows nothing who has not travelled from Gungha to the next station. The only thing the road can be compared to is the dry bed of a mountain cataract. Huge boulders strew the path incessantly, and the arms of the miserable passenger over it are continually almost wrenched from their sockets by the leaps and bounds of the post-cart, for it is almost needless to say that nothing but a determined grasp of your seat will ensure fixity of tenure for a moment. Across the road at intervals we came upon the beds of those streams whose winter fury had so bestrewn the road with souvenirs of the mountain homes from which they sprung; while right and left of us frequent cornfields showed by their springing crop that the mountain stream brought good as well as evil in its train.

After the second station from our last starting-point, the view became really beautiful. The stony steppe grew narrower, and on either side high mountain ranges showed themselves, snow-capped and bright in the clear atmosphere of what was quite an autumnal morning, though we were now well into December. These distant peaks were those of Shusha and Lesghia respectively.

Every now and then the sand-grouse would tempt me to call a halt; but though the place in which they pitched was marked ever so carefully and beaten as closely as men could beat it, we found it quite impossible to flush the birds without the assistance of a dog. As the light failed, we saw phalanx after phalanx of starlings wheeling, extending, and re-massing themselves in the dusky skies; and as we drew near the reed-beds, towards which their flight tended, we became witnesses of a piece of very interesting bird-life. Near the reed-beds were several trees, say half-a-dozen, and as they were bare of leaves, we could see on every tree some two or three hawks. As the starlings swept down with rushing wings to their nightly abiding-place, the hawks would glide from their perches, and swooping amongst them, break and turn the advancing host. Quick as the marauders were, the starlings did not seem to fare half so badly as might have been expected, and at last all the wanderers were at rest in their reedy home except one small band which, arriving later than the rest, had been terribly harried by the hawks, and seemed almost to have given up all hope of getting safe home. On a tree some distance from the reeds, halfway between the ground and the highest branch, sat in silent state, or gorged apathy, a splendid specimen of the king of birds. Chivied perpetually by the hawks, and fairly scared out of their wits, the little band of starlings swept round this desert throne, and finally settled in a black throng all round the mighty bird himself. To our astonishment he took no notice, never moving a feather; and there we left them, the hawks baffled and afraid to approach the starlings’ sanctuary, and the weary birds too tired to try again for their reed-bed, too scared to mind the monarch in their midst.

At one station we met a party of peasants who had been carrying soldiers’ kits from one village to another, and on their return had been stopped, beaten, and robbed of their wretched little earnings by highwaymen. At another we met an Armenian merchant with a ‘tchapar,’ or armed courier, who was so abominably insolent to me that I was obliged to give him an excessively rough shaking, which cowed him considerably; and on the appearance of my servant, who explained to the postmaster who I was, the fellow became as servile as, owing to my old coat, he had previously been insolent. Here, too, we heard of highwaymen, the post-station having been robbed of some horses, which the postmaster had been lucky enough to recover. The thieves had been caught, but I was assured that would matter little to them, as a trifling tip would set matters right with the local authorities, and they would soon be in a fair way to recoup themselves for their losses.

Later on, we met two of these gentry on the road, armed to the teeth and well mounted; but though they honoured us with a careful scrutiny, our gleaming gun-barrels had a deterrent effect upon them, and we drove on unmolested, though our driver suffered a shock to his nervous system which quite upset his merriment for the rest of the drive. I am told that amongst these Tartar highwaymen revolvers are quite common nowadays, most of them possessing at least one of these dangerous little tools.

The conversation turning on the lawlessness of the Caucasus, elicited from my servant a strange _on dit_ of Tiflis. So utterly corrupt had every branch of the civil service in the Caucasus become some three months previous to my arrival therein, that the Emperor sent down his secret agent, K----, with orders to inspect the state of affairs in disguise, with plenary powers of dismissal and punishment with regard to civil officials. He was to clean the Augean stable of Tiflis. Supported by a band of detectives brought with him from St. Petersburg, he soon became the terror of the town. Common rumour had it that three of the worst in high places died of sheer fright shortly after his advent. This may not have been the cause of their deaths, probably was not, but that they were lucky enough thus to escape punishment by natural deaths is historical. One of K----’s first acts was to try the police. Disguised as moujiks, he and his men went bullying and swaggering through the streets, apparently drunk as lords. The difficulty was to get taken up, but after some time they managed to accomplish even that, and were hauled away to the police-station. Here K---- and his men tried to get off by apologies and excuses, which were naturally vain. Then, turning to his men, he said, ‘Hey brothers, suppose we give the good chief of police a rouble apiece; he will see then that we good Christians cannot be drunk.’ The roubles were paid, the liberty of the pseudo-moujiks obtained, and next day K---- came down and dismissed the chief of police and his whole staff. So through every branch of civic administration, meeting with hindrances at every step, but still steadfastly hunting down corruption wherever he suspected it. Three generals holding civic posts he forced into retirement; then, feeling that the opposition of the military in a town still under military law was too much for him, K---- retired.

But now a bitter white mist comes creeping over the earth, wetting us to the skin in spite of our heavy wraps, and stopping all conversation by the chill discomfort it brings in its train; so for three hours we lie down to rest at the next post-station, rising again at seven to welcome as bright a morning as any I had seen on my long drive. The country was pretty, with here and there a group of trees, and here and there a brook. The sun was bright in the heavens, the hoar frost sparkled on the ground, while every breath of the keen morning breeze brought high spirits and a hunter’s appetite along with it. The country now became hilly, even close by the post-road, and every now and then we saw a covey of red-legged partridges scudding up the bare hillsides at a terrible pace. These birds seemed to have taken the place of the sand-grouse now. A drive of twenty versts from Adji Kabool brought us to Goktchai, and here my post-cart was destined to stay its joltings and bid its jangling bells be still for some little time.

Goktchai is a large village, with one broad main street, beginning at the Tiflis end in a bazaar, passing halfway some barracks, where a few soldiers are quartered, and ending in the ordinary Caucasian village. On the way through the village bazaar my eyes rested on a freshly slain tûr, or mountain sheep, as well as other game; and the sight of the noble head with its grand horns, combined with a distant view of those peaks whence it had so lately come, was too much for my powers of resistance, and I determined then and there that I too would at least try to kill a tûr in the wild mountains of Daghestan.

At the post-station I heard the most glowing accounts of the quantities of game to be met with within two days’ ride of the village; but coupled with this came the news that these mountains were so ill-famed on account of the brigands who haunted them that scarcely any of the villagers had ever been there, and none would go again for any wage I liked to offer. This I received doubtfully, and through my man made many offers, but even ten roubles a day were refused by moujiks to whom a hundred roubles would have been a fortune with which to rest content for life. However, though I began to believe in the reality of the brigands, more especially as a post-cart had during the last few days been carried off bodily in broad daylight, I determined to wait a day and see whether no one would come to accept my liberal offer.

The day of waiting was spent in shooting hares and red-legs on the nearest hills, whose steep sides were simply alive with these swift-footed birds, running like flies on the almost perpendicular faces of the cliffs, or coming like bullets overhead as my man drove them to me. The difficulty of approaching the birds--as, though continually in sight, they would never rise and never stop running--reminded me of other days over the stiff furrows of Northamptonshire; though, even with the help of a sturdy Tartar, I found the bare rocks and mud-faced crumbling hillsides worse going than the wet ridge and furrow. The hills were covered with dwarf larch and pomegranate-trees, the fruit of the latter having, alas, been all culled for this year.

Tired and thirsty, towards three o’clock we saw hanging over a steep cliff above us a large pomegranate-tree, apparently unrobbed as yet. Its bright fruit showed red and yellow through the foliage; so with renewed energy my Tartar and I struggled for a quarter of an hour to reach it. At last we succeeded, and found, to our intense disgust, that each fruit was hollow, a part of the opposite side having been broken away and all the interior taken out by the birds, who had left nothing but the delusive husks which had so cruelly disappointed us. I record this as one of many similar sells inflicted on us whilst in Daghestan.

When we started in pursuit of the red-legs we had with us a dog, but so hard was the work that in about three hours the poor beast refused to come another yard, and lay down resolutely to rest. His example was infectious, and though we kept on for some time longer, we were soon so heartily tired of the goat-like manner of progression necessary in these hills, and the perpetual motion of the partridges, that we gave up the chase and came home. There we found good news awaiting us. One of the Lesghian Tartars, who lived in the second range of mountains from Goktchai, had come in during the day to bring some game to the bazaar, and, hearing of us, volunteered to guide us to the home of the tûr and the chamois for a much smaller sum than that which I had vainly offered to the Russian moujiks. Allai, as he was called, was a man about 6 feet 3 inches in height, hard and wiry in build, who unfortunately spoke no single word of any other language than his own Lesghian Tartar. The ‘starost’ (elder) warned me to beware of him, for, in spite of his gentle ways and guileless manner, Allai was suspected of knowing a great deal more of the brigands than was exactly to his credit. Still, brigand or not, it mattered very little to me, as Allai was evidently the only man who could serve my purpose, and I fancied I saw my way to securing myself and servant from any outrage which our guide could prevent. My plan was simply to arrange with him that for his and his brother’s services, together with the use of two horses for the first day, or for as far as travelling on horseback should be practicable, I was to pay him a certain sum, which sum, together with all my other valuables, having been safely deposited with a friend in the village, would only become his on my safe return from my trip. This agreement, together with the precaution of letting the Russian military authorities quartered in the village know whither I was bound, made me feel tolerably safe, even should Allai be head and chief of all the brigands from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and so, in spite of all the evil predictions of the ‘starost’ and his friends, my man and I, with Allai and his brother, set our faces to the blue mountains and jogged right merrily on our way next morning.

Our first resting-place was to be the Armenian mountain village of Gerdaoul. The road was beautiful in the extreme, though it required much beauty to make amends for its roughness. The greater part of the way our course lay over the bare bed of a mountain torrent, whose tortuous windings were everywhere full of great boulders, over which no beast could move at more than a foot’s pace. The hills, for the most part bare, were boldly broken and ragged in outline; at the top were frequent thickets of small firs and pomegranates, while every here and there small clumps of the same flecked the white hillsides. After surmounting this first range of hills, in which small game seemed to swarm, we came upon a table-land which separated us from the snow-capped range wherein our goal lay. On the very edge of this table-land hangs the village of Gerdaoul. The faces of the cottages composing it open out of the hillside; the roofs, mere white cones, rise out of the table-land above. Far more imposing to the eye appear numbers of haystacks, shaped like sugar-loaves, perched on high wooden scaffolds to save them from marauding buffaloes, or to give shelter to the owner’s cattle in storms or at night. Here, when Allai had made known who and what we were, the village elder came out to welcome me and bid me to his house, where, near a cheery hearth, on which the huge logs glowed, cushions and carpets and slippers invited to repose. Unluckily, none of the good men of the village spoke a word of anything but Tartar, of which Ivan knew but little, and I only the words picked up during the last two days. To the hungry man and the sportsman a knowledge of the native language is not, however, an absolute necessity, though it is an immense advantage. Signs go a long way, and amongst a race who care for sport as the Lesghian Tartars do, sympathy for a brother sportsman does the rest.

It was not long before tea was brought to me, and as one after another the swarthy villagers trooped in, I soon had quite a large assembly round me. Each man as he came in gave me a courteous greeting, and then, crossing his legs or drawing them up under him, so as to squat on his heels, he took up a meditative position on the floor. Amongst themselves they were very taciturn, and never spoke to me unless I made some remark to them. When I did, instead of being amused at my mutilation of their language, they looked grave and did their best to puzzle out my meaning amongst them. In the course of time a bowl of scented water was brought me by my host, and, having washed my hands in it, he and his friends performed their own ablutions, though, their hands being all stained brown with some dye in use amongst them for the purpose, the washing had but little apparent effect. I noticed that all the Tartars and other inhabitants of Lesghia dyed their hands in this manner.

After the bowl had gone its rounds, some game I had shot, together with one of the chickens of Gerdaoul and a huge tray of boiled rice, was brought in. Everything was handed to me by the host himself, and his courtesy went so far that with his brown fingers he dexterously tore the fowl to pieces, and selecting the best, offered them to me. These people employed no table utensils except the silver bowl to wash in and the silver tray on which fowl, rice, and raisins, fried in butter, were all served _en masse_. Every one helped himself in turn from the dish with his fingers, rolling the rice into a neat ball so as to scarcely drop a grain. Gladly would I have done the same, but for the first day or two I fancy more rice went down my neck than down my throat. The meal was followed by some capital native wine, at which my Lesghian guide looked askance, although I found afterwards that his scruples were not troublesome except in public, and his taste for strong drink only strengthened by occasional enforced abstinence.

After another ablution the meats were cleared away and pipes produced, when, to my horror, I found I had lost my tobacco pouch. However, lots of tobacco was soon forthcoming, and next morning a prettily knit purse for the fragrant weed, worked in purple and gold by the nimble fingers of one of the invisible daughters of the house, was presented to me. Anything more luxurious than a lounge on the cushion-covered carpets of Gerdaoul, with a ruddy hearth fire by your side, the good native wine to drink, and the best of tobacco to smoke, with a crowd of picturesquely wild fellows around you, and a distant view of the mountains through the open doorway, it has seldom been my lot to enjoy, and it was far into the night before I could make up my mind to leave it all for the realms of sleep.