CHAPTER XIII.

FROM GOKTCHAI TO LENKORAN.

Rough travelling--Shooting by the way--Shemakha and Aksu--Tarantasses and post-roads--A wretched station--Mud volcanoes and naphtha springs--Bustards--On the road to Salian--Swarms of wild-fowl--A rascally official--Disappointed hopes--A good Samaritan--Rival hosts--Asiatic fever--The Mooghan steppe--Pelicans and myriads of other birds--Tartar orgies--Banished sectaries: the Molochans and Skoptsi--Arrival at Lenkoran--A Persian gunsmith--Fellow-sportsmen.

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.