One of these I spent in a visit to a mountain farm belonging to a German baron, and worked by two young Germans, his bailiffs. Here I saw a collection of insects made on the farm, and amongst them recognised, in addition to the species I have mentioned as seen by me before, both the British varieties of the swallow-tailed butterfly, the small wood white, the marbled white, the privet, and the elephant hawk moth, as well as the death’s head, which abounds here. There were also oak-eggers and stag-beetles, as well as another hawk moth of a delicate fawn colour, which was strange to me.
Returning from the hill farm I had an adventure which might have terminated worse. The road from Duapsè to the farm, which is situated at a great height above the sea, winds about the hill in zigzag lines. Over the road, which is steep and rough, hang the edges of the forest, and from time to time it crosses a rough wooden bridge, spanning a chasm of considerable pretensions. By daylight these chasms and their wooden bridges mattered but little, for though the bridge trembled as the droggie passed over it, there was not much chance of an accident so long as you and your horse could see where you were going. After my day’s shooting I stayed late at the young Germans’, waiting to share with them their evening meal, so that it was already dark when I prepared for my ride home. I had calculated on a moon, but, the night being stormy, I was disappointed, and when I did make a start it was on a young horse, in almost utter darkness, and knowing very little of my way. However, the Germans consoled me by telling me that the road to Duapsè was the only road from their farm to anywhere, and it had no roads branching from it—moreover, the horse knew his way.
At supper they had told me that one of them, riding into Duapsè some weeks prior to my visit, had been sprung at by some animal from the trees overhanging the path; and though there was not sufficient light to distinguish the beast by, it was supposed by them to have been a lynx or a leopard. Not much distressed about this danger, but anxious about the bridges, I started on my lonely ride. All went well until I was half way to the river which separates Duapsè from the base of the hill. Then, as we got to the darkest part of the road, where the trees overhung it most, my horse suddenly turned back, and tried to bolt for home. In spite of all my exertions I could not get him beyond a particular point on the road home for some time; and when at last I did drive him past with heels and whip, he dashed away with a sudden plunge, and, catching the bit in his teeth, bolted as hard as he could gallop from that point to Duapsè—or, rather, the river that gives that town its name. It was no good my trying to stop the hard-mouthed little beast with the feeble tackle at my service, and, dashing through the darkness over the roughest of roads, I could only sit still, and hope that the sagacity and keen sight of the horse might save both his neck and my own. I had no time to feel nervous as we crossed the first bridge, which seemed to rock as we dashed over it—a couple of bounds, and we were on the other side—but from that to the next bridge my mind was tortured with visions of the horse’s feet slipping from under him on one of the poles, and the inevitable fall that must follow. But horses have wonderful eyes, and, if left to themselves, see as well in a dark night, I think, as their riders do by day; and, in spite of the rough road and the bridges, we were soon breast deep in the stream, and half swimming, half fording it, came in safety to the other shore.
Amongst other things which served to pass my time whilst waiting for the boat at Duapsè was a peasant’s wedding supper. At the ceremony itself I was not present, but I presume it was like all other weddings in the Greek Church, with its crowns held over the heads of the principal parties, and its symbolical knotting of the handkerchief. But the supper and its ceremonies were strange to me. During it the happy pair came in, not partaking of it with the rest, but merely presenting themselves to perform certain ceremonies. Of these the first was to take a blessing from the old people. This they did, turning in succession to each of the four quarters of the earth. Refreshments having been brought in, and all sitting except the bride and groom, these latter handed to each guest in turn a glass of wine or spirits, a cake and a coloured handkerchief. The cake you eat, the handkerchief you were expected to pocket as a wedding gift from the ‘nouveaux-mariés,’ and the wine you drank; but if in drinking it you were maliciously inclined, it was open to you, without appearing guilty of rudeness, to declare it was sour. At the word ‘gorko’ (sour) the wretched bride and groom were obliged to exchange embraces in public, and this as often as you chose to repeat the sorry joke. In return for the cake, wine, and kerchief, each guest was expected to place some wedding gift on the tray for the young couple, and in this instance the gifts were made in every case in money.
After these ceremonies had been concluded, the chief actors retired, and left the guests to make merry at their leisure. There seemed in this particular instance to be a chorus of old women engaged to sing, dance, and otherwise become objects of ridicule. These hideous old crones gained the goodwill of the guests, as well as innumerable drink-offerings of neat vodka, by singing lugubrious chants, to my uneducated ear more fit for a funeral than a wedding. This they supplemented by indecent antics on their hind legs, and a great deal of coarse buffoonery. The only musical instrument was one in great favour amongst the moujik class—I mean the concertina. As for the other guests (for I presume the old women were invited and not paid jesters), they sat down steadily to gorge and to drink, and so well did they stick to their self-imposed task of making beasts of themselves, that the wedding supper lasted until the morning of the third day, when its drunken harmony was finally marred by one drunkard beating a girl, and another breaking a bottle over the head of the first, at which crisis the law stepped in and took the supper party under its own protecting wing.
On Wednesday, November 13, I gladly shook the dust of Duapsè off my feet, and embarking in one of the Russian Company’s steamers, passed pleasantly thence to Novorossisk. I was obliged to return to Ekaterinodar to recover my luggage and to obtain any letters which might have arrived for me during my absence at Golovinsky; and anxious to see as much of the Caucasus as possible, I arranged to steam to Novorossisk and proceed thence overland to Ekaterinodar. I hardly think I was repaid for my trouble, as the country through which I passed was not of a very interesting nature, and more like the neighbourhood of Tumerūk than of Duapsè. At Novorossisk I hired a cart (fourgon) with two horses and a driver to take me to Ekaterinodar, calling at the Red Forest en route. The distance was 114 versts, and including stoppages, with the heavy cart behind them, the game little horses did the journey in thirty-three hours. It is wonderful what Russian horses will do and on what a little food they do it. Neither of the horses in this instance stood fourteen hands, and they got no corn whatever on the journey.
On our way to Ekaterinodar we stayed at a large village called Krimsky—a Cossack settlement I think it was originally; and here we encountered another of those fairs at which the Russian moujik buys and sells all he wants or wants to part with during the year. I wandered into the fair whilst the horses were being watered, and found it a medley of every race in the Caucasus, distinguished from one another not more by their varied and picturesque costumes than by the endless variety of their conveyances and beasts of burden. Fashionable droshkies, droggies of rough logs tied together with rope, lumbering fourgons, heavy ‘pavoshkas,’ light carts, like huge ozier baskets on wheels, nearly six feet high, and the house on wheels, which the Mingrelian calls his ‘arba,’ were all ranged in rows to form the streets of the fair. Round about them stood the beasts who drew them, varying from a goat to a camel, from a pony to a team of six grey oxen. The shops are simply a sheet of canvas spread on the ground, perhaps under a partially-inverted cart—some few under a more pretentious awning; and here are laid out the trader’s wares, whilst he for the most part sits cross-legged in the midst. The grandest shops, or booths rather, are generally those in which are sold the ‘ikons,’ or holy pictures, for which there is an immense sale amongst the pious Russian peasantry. They are gaudy pictures of the Virgin, or one of the saints, encased in a deep frame of brass, with much tinsel and tawdry ornament about them; but they are to be found in every moujik’s cottage, and before them he pays his simple devotions to his God, night and morning, standing bare-headed with bent head, for barely a minute perhaps, but apparently in earnest during that minute. A little taper is kept always burning before the ‘ikon.’
Next to the ‘ikon’-seller, you detect by your nose, if not by your eyes, the ‘shouba’-seller, for these sheepskin garments are excessively strong-smelling, even in their earliest stages. Close by, in the midst of a crowd of the ugliest old women on earth (and herein I do not malign the Russian ‘baboushka’), is a pedlar selling knitting-needles and other housewife’s gear. They must be hard to please from the noise they make, for the sound of their bargaining would silence the morning babel of Billingsgate.
At the back of the fair is a long row of fires on the plain, whereat the Tartar is cooking the savoury ‘shushlik’ (kabob). This is the refreshment-stall department of the fair, or at least a part of it; the other part is to be found at the little square tables at every corner, on which are a dirty bottle and two dirtier glasses, behind which stands a red-shirted moujik, and around him drunken Ivans and Stepans embrace and fight, or argue and abuse, for a Russian never fights as our English rough does. Never, perhaps, is too strong a word; but in my three or four years in Russia, though I have known men dirked in broad daylight in the bazaar, and have never entered a bazaar without seeing one or two rows going on, I have not seen two real stand-up fights. The Russian rough barks loudly, and possesses a fathomless répertoire of abuse, which he supplements with ready invention, but he rarely goes beyond words. At these tables too, ‘Macha,’ the demure peasant girl, as well as the ‘staruka’ (crone), are frequently to be found; and when they take their glass they take it neat as the men do, and toss it off at one gulp as cleverly. Russian peasant women are hard-working, frugal, and the earliest risers in the world, being generally up before dawn; but they are, alas! too often to be found on their backs dead drunk in the street in the morning. This is at least true of the Crimea and Caucasus. I can only speak of what I have seen.
At the Krimsky fair I discovered a show-booth, and as show-booths are not every day occurrences in such places, I proceeded to investigate it. A rough tent, with strange pictures of beasts roughly painted upon it, formed the abiding place of the show. Round this a red-bearded Persian continually prowled, with a long stick to thump the heads of penniless brats who, unable to pay for admission, kept trying to satisfy their curiosity by furtively lifting a corner of the canvas veil that concealed the mysteries within. Avoiding this functionary’s stick, I paid twenty copecks (about 6d.), and entered. There was one other spectator besides myself, and, satisfied that this was the largest audience he was likely to obtain, the gentleman of the stick kindly followed me in and prepared to perform, leaving the little boys to see as much as they could meanwhile. In the tent, in spite of all its grand advertisements, the whole show consisted only of three small monkeys tied to a box, trying to get at the skins of two maneless (Persian) lions, stretched on upright sticks. These had been the glory of the show, but had recently departed this life, leaving nothing but the foolish-looking hides I now saw, to their bereaved proprietor. After exhibiting some fire-swallowing tricks, and a little serpent-charming, the Persian announced the performance over; and after disgusting him by showing him that I knew all about the manner in which his deadly serpents had been rendered harmless, I left hurriedly, lest a worse thing should befall me.