Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus

by Clive Phillipps-Wolley

We had not gone far when it seemed to me that I was gradually leaning over more and more towards the sea. I tried to regain an erect position, and then I became aware of my situation. My girths had got slack, and my saddle, with its huge pile of luggage, of which I was the highest point, was gradually turning round under my horse’s belly. Seated as I was, I was utterly helpless; I could not readjust my saddle, and a voluntary descent, except head first, was impossible. So I waited the course of events, and in a few moments lay sprawling on the ground, half buried in pots and pans, bourkas, and other impedimenta.

This was our only misadventure, however, and about four o’clock we came in sight of the watcher’s hut—a two-roomed wooden shanty, knocked up in the roughest way possible, standing on the edge of the shingle, with a big brown bear-skin stretched over the roof to dry. A more utterly miserable-looking hut cannot well be conceived; but the skin on the thatch consoled me, proclaiming as it did the vicinity of the game I was in search of.

After much shouting and hammering at the board that constituted the hut’s one door, a wild Robinson Crusoe-like fellow came shuffling out. Tall and well built, but taciturn and clumsy to a degree, Stepan was not a favourable specimen of the benefits of woodland isolation to mankind. Instead of giving me a kindly welcome as, to do them justice, all Russian peasants had hitherto done, he eyed me in the doubtful manner in which some big dog might eye a too familiar stranger before snapping at the would-be caressing hand. His face was shrivelled and yellow with fever, and a frequent deep cough formed no pleasant accompaniment to our cottage life. Gradually his sullenness gave way to surprise at the presence of an English gentleman in those evil places, for such he evidently deemed Golovinsky; and when I explained to him that I wished to hire his services and the use of his hut, as well as to put all game killed at his disposal, his delight knew no bounds. His terms were a rouble a week, that is about half a crown; but that seemed so unfair to me that I trebled it, and added to it a promise of ten roubles additional for the skinning of the first bear I should kill; and considering that he gave me house-room, black bread, and his whole time, I think 7s. 6d. per week was not an exorbitant charge.

However, he was delighted, and though rather startled to find that his whole larder consisted of some black bread, onions, and pork fat (‘salo’), I consoled myself with the reflection that with the addition of tea and sugar, which I had brought with me, we should be able to hold out for a week at least, in which time I should probably have obtained my coveted bear-skin.

Outside the hut all was beauty. The hut itself was as nearly as possible the centre of a bay of fairly high hills, enclosing a couple of hundred acres or so of plain covered with low shrubs. Beyond the first chain of hills, which was wooded to the top, rose another and a higher chain, and so one after another, in successive semicircles, they rose range above range, until far away in the sapphire sky shone the white glory of the snow-peaks. Out at sea a long line of pelicans lay tossing on the little waves, like a small fleet riding at anchor. Within the hut all was squalor and filth. The place consisted of two rooms, in one of which was a telegraphic apparatus of the simplest kind, with a handle like that of a barrel organ, and a face like the face of a clock with letters in place of numerals. This was the deity of the place and Stepan’s pride and fear. Near it was a camp bedstead, and here the list of the furniture ends. The other room was merely a shed, in which such cooking as we had to do was done; and though the appliances were of the simplest, we never taxed them overmuch. The floors throughout were of mud, and several inches deep in refuse, dating from the time of Stepan’s arrival in his den.

Borrowing a spade and cutting down a large bough for a broom, I soon had a clear floor, and by dint of hard work had in an hour’s time got a fairly clean place to move about in. Stepan retired to the shed, and, in spite of my protestations, took up his abode there. Had it not been for his cough I should have fallen in with this arrangement readily enough; but as it was, I felt he required the best accommodation the shanty afforded. However, in the shed he remained, and for the rest of my stay I had his best room to myself.

There were, besides Stepan and myself, three other residents at the ‘telegraph station,’ as he loved to call it—to wit, Zizda, Lufra, and Orla, three large cross-bred dogs, devoured by mange, with which Stepan hunts the boars that abound in the thicket at the back of his house, killing on an average, so he tells me, half a dozen in the year. In spite of the numbers which inhabit the adjoining forests, this small bag is not very much to be wondered at, when the impenetrable nature of the covert and the almost utter uselessness of Stepan’s gun are taken into consideration.

Russian peasants have amongst them the most wonderful fire-arms in the world, which, as a rule, they buy in the bazaars at from three to five roubles (i.e. 7s. 6d. to 12s. 6d.) each. I have frequently seen the grebe-shooters along the shore at Kertch using old rifle-barrels worn thin, tied on to a rough stock, with flint lock, &c., the whole thing being compounded of the remains of some venerable weapon in use in the Russian army immediately after the invention of gunpowder. Stepan’s was no exception to this rule, and yet I distinctly remember seeing him put in charges which I would not have ventured to put into my high-class breech-loader.

After putting the house in order, Stepan loaded his valuable weapon with a good charge of powder and two bullets, the first in its naturally smooth state, the other chewed into a rough-edged mass. Thus prepared we sallied forth and reconnoitred the little plain within the hills. Everywhere the tracks of bears, boars, wolves, and occasionally roe-deer presented themselves to our eyes, but of the animals themselves we saw nothing. Pheasants rose several times from the bushes at our feet, and Stepan tells me Golovinsky is a favourite abiding place of theirs, in consequence of the quantity of ‘phaisantchik’ growing here, upon the yellow berry of which they feed. The pheasants have no bad taste in berries, for when ripe I know no berry much pleasanter in flavour than that of the ‘phaisantchik,’ in spite of its acidity. The flavour strongly resembles that of the pineapple.