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.