Truly, this Caucasus must be the land of the lotus-eaters, yet what sorry beings these lotus-eaters are. All round them such beauty as Tennyson has dreamed of; mountains clothed in gold and purple, with the sea murmuring round their bases; wealth to be had for the taking, from the too luxuriant soil; and yet here the peasant smokes and moons away his life, content to cull in idleness just enough to keep body and soul together, and only doing just enough work to provide for himself a crop of that weed in the consumption of which he wastes life and energy, as well as the money and opportunities that might be his. Each village where Russians lived seemed to me more wretchedly poor than the last, and it became a relief to see how few and far between the villages were. The Tscherkesses, who made a garden of at least some parts of their native home, might almost feel revenged in contemplating the utter failure of the race which has supplanted them.
But for us the day was no day of idleness, but rather one of considerable toil and difficulty. The road grew exceeding steep and rugged, and the little baggage cart which we had endeavoured to send on by our men came to grief, and was broken beyond repair. The driver, who was on the top of the baggage, probably asleep, got a bad fall, and was rather seriously hurt. The tripod of my photographic apparatus was broken, and the stock of my rifle snapped short off at the pistol grip. The ‘plunger’s’ store of eau-de-Cologne, without which this hero felt it impossible to travel, was also lost in the general disaster, and he, poor fellow, had very bad times throughout the day, having had too much to eat and too much shaking up after it. For a cavalry officer, too, it was somewhat undignified, when ascending one steep little ravine, to slide off over his horse’s quarters; and for a man of his weight it must have been as painful as it was ridiculous. Laughter went a long way towards leaving me as helpless as he was, for a more ludicrous sight than our gallant companion rolling off behind, it would be difficult to conceive.
The night was, if anything, worse than the day, for my old friend the Cossack, having a great deal of pain from an old injury near his spine, determined to cure it with hard drinking; the result of which was that he became helplessly drunk, and the ‘plunger’ only irritably so. In this condition the nature of the man showed itself, and he amused himself by baiting me, a stranger, and his friend’s guest, for the amusement of his servants. At last his insolence became so intolerable that, risking all possible consequences, I got him by the scruff of the neck and gave him such a shaking as he had not experienced even during the rough ride of the last few days. It was, of course, extremely unpleasant for me, but my host was too drunk to interfere, and there are some things which a man cannot stand.
Next morning, after having spent the night awake in a state of siege, uncertain what my quondam friend’s servants might think fit to do to me, I had a wretched ride in my own society to Duapsè, the little seaport town which was to be the end of our journey. The ‘plunger’ neither apologised nor called me out, as I had thought he might, but the good old Cossack behaved like a gentleman, and although, of course, we were glad to say good-by to one another at Duapsè, we parted good friends, and I believe he exonerated me from all blame in the matter.
CHAPTER V.
HEIMAN’S DATCH.
Duapsè—Tscherkess emigrants—By the sea-shore—Superb scenery—Drunken guides—A Cossack station—Bears—Take possession of a ruined villa—Hiding our provisions—Wild swine—Astray in the jungle—A rough breakfast—Boars in file—A missfire—Forest fruit—Lose our horses—A panther—Night-watch—Shooting in the dark—On the trail—Barse—A friendly Cossack—Deserted by my servants.
At Duapsè there is an English (Indo-European) telegraph station, so, though unexpectedly thrown on my own resources again, I was much better off than I might otherwise have been. The Englishmen gave me a cordial welcome, and were very good to me. Duapsè, I am informed, is built on a graveyard, in which are buried numbers of the victims of the Russo-Tscherkess war. In 1864, after the final subjugation of the Caucasus, some 200,000 Circassians left the Caucasus for Trebizond, at the invitation of their conquerors. They were for the most part conveyed in small Turkish vessels, in which they were so crowded, starved, and exposed, that not more than half ever reached their destination, the others dying en route. Of these a very large proportion died near Duapsè, and were there landed and buried, or left to bleach, according to the means of their friends. Their graves are still marked by little mounds and inequalities in the ground throughout the place. On their miserable journey they sold everything they possessed, and I have frequently heard in Kertch and in the Caucasus of girls being sold for a few roubles, and valuable daggers (the last thing almost that a Tscherkess parts with) for about the same. Now Duapsè is a vilely squalid hole, with two telegraph stations and a governor’s house. The steamers from Odessa and Poti touch here, if it is fine, once a week, but if there is any sea on they cannot come in, as I was hereafter to learn to my cost. Why Duapsè exists, and still more why it has a governor, I never could conceive.
It was, then, with a feeling of intense relief that on October 21 I left Duapsè behind me and turned my horse’s head southwards along the Black Sea shore. I had managed to engage a couple of Russian peasants, Ivan and Yepheem, to guide me to some happy hunting-grounds of which they knew, some fifty versts from Duapsè. Taking three horses, we loaded each with as much provisions as he could carry, and then climbed on top ourselves. It was difficult work to so adjust yourself and baggage, as to keep your seat over the boulders. Grip was, of course, impossible, and balance, with a shifting basis under you, almost as much so.