CHAPTER XIV.
SHORES OF THE CASPIAN.—RETURN TO TIFLIS.
Lenkoran—Abundance of game—Eryvool forest—Native fowlers—A hunting lodge—Swarming coverts—Wild boar—A paradise for sportsmen—Pigs at bay—‘Old Shirka’ and his quarry—A dying eagle—Caspian woodpeckers—Festive nights—Watching for a tiger—Forest life by night—The eagle-owl and his prey—End of a long vigil—The rainy season—The streets of Lenkoran—The return journey to Tiflis—Adventure at Adji Kabool—Experiences of post-travel—Bullying a station-master—Armenian Protestants—Russian telegraph service—In miserable plight—A spill over a precipice—Refitting our tarantasse—Argumentum ad hominem—An awkward predicament—Chasing a yemstchik—Renewed life at Tiflis—Great snowfall—Running down antelope—The ‘black death.’
Lenkoran is almost surrounded by marshes, in which snipe and woodcock, with all manner of long-legged, long-necked strangers to a British eye, together with hundreds of the falcon tribe, disport themselves daily. Here my man and myself spent a day or two shooting specimens of the birds least known to us; but on the third day we took horse and rode to a larger lake, on which we embarked with our friend the German, intending to cross over to the woods which fringed the further side, somewhere in the depths of which the ‘Shabby Shanty’ lay. On this lake were simply myriads of water-hens. The whole surface seemed dark with them, the reeds alive with their ceaseless cries. The sale of these birds is quite a feature in the street life of Lenkoran. The bazaar is full of their carcasses; at every street corner you meet men hawking them for sale; every other peasant you see is carrying two or three home for the pot.
On the lake are many flat-bottomed boats in which the fowlers pole themselves through the mazy waterways in the reed-beds, until at a sudden turn a closely packed bevy of water-hens offers them a remunerative shot. So cheap are the birds in the bazaar, that to kill them singly with the gun would entail absolute loss on the gunner. But besides these wild-fowlers, who are after all but occasionally employed in their pursuit, there are the regular enemies of the poor little fowl, men who have decoys, and nets drawn across certain straits, down which they drive the birds, until in diving to escape they are caught by scores in the submerged net. There are naturally quantities of other fowl on these lakes, but the water-hen seems to thrive and abound most, and is so much more easily taken than the others that it is the staple food of a large number of the inhabitants of Lenkoran.
On our voyage we overhauled one of the regular fowlers, a Tartar, with whom we had a rather hot dispute. As he drew up his net full of struggling or already drowned birds, we were horrified to see that instead of killing outright those which were not yet dead, he took the trouble to break their legs and wings, and so cast them a living, helpless mass of pain and fear into the bottom of his boat, there to live for hours in horrible anguish. We explained to the fellow how much simpler for him, and how much kinder to the birds it would be, to wring their necks outright; but we might have spared ourselves the trouble. The Tartar intellect could not comprehend the beauty of mercy, and all we could get was a grin and the assurance that if he did not break their legs or wings they would escape him; and as he might be out a day or two, if he killed them at once they would not be fresh when taken to market. It was no good arguing any more; so merely insisting on putting all he had so far taken out of their misery with our own hands, we left him, feeling that were we to give way to our own impulses he would have spent the next few hours with four broken limbs in the bottom of his own boat. The water-hens are sold at about fivepence, wild duck at about sixpence a brace.
On the far side of the lake a troop of villagers were waiting to carry our baggage through the swampy forest, where neither horse nor cart could now conveniently travel, to our host’s log hut.
The chief objects of cultivation here were rice and mulberry-trees; and though the wild boars played the deuce with the rice-fields, the mulberry-trees and their devourers the silk-worms throve amazingly. Mr. Müller, our host, had not knocked about in all the odd corners of the earth for nothing, so that when we reached his Shanty, though at a couple of dozen paces or so you might meet with impenetrable jungle, we found it the most comfortable well-built house we had seen since we left Tiflis. In the night wild boars had dug up the small patch of garden by the door; on a little lawn not far off, a badger had turned up all the turf in his nocturnal gambols; while right and left as we approached snipe and cock went off like crackers from under our feet.
During the first three days of our stay at Eryvool, we did nothing but shoot cock and pheasant, or, with a pack of fine dogs, the pride of Mr. Müller’s heart, hunt the wild swine that abounded in the thick places of the forest; while east and west, and south and north, our messengers went forth offering large rewards for tidings of any tiger or leopard within three days’ march.