Once more after this I watched the stars brighten and fade in the cold grey of morning, waiting alone for a tiger which never came; then, fearful lest the wet season should set in, and prevent our return to Tiflis, I bade adieu to my friends, and on January 11 we started on the return journey to Tiflis.
As soon as our cart came round the sky grew gradually blacker, and with the first jingle of the horses’ bells the patter of the first instalment of the rainy season was mingled. From the time we turned our faces to Tiflis until the moment when Ivan left me in the baths of that city, waiting till he should bring clean clothes in which to attire me for my reappearance in a partially civilised world, the weather went steadily from bad to worse, and discomfort grew to actual misery.
I will not weary my readers with more than a few glimpses of the return journey, of which the first shall be the suburbs of Lenkoran. As we approached them the road became so bad that our horses could barely proceed at a walk; and, looking ahead, we found the street a morass, bridged with planks, through which we could by no means pass. At the sides of the road, where the trottoirs had been, women, with their scanty clothing tucked up round their waists, were taking a mud bath and walking exercise simultaneously, with this trifling drawback, that, should they miss the trottoir, they would probably disappear in the dark profound beyond. This was, of course, an exceptionally bad state of things, and we were told only happened during the first day or two of the rainy season, after which the streets got better, the filth accumulated during the summer having been washed away by the rains.
Wishing the ‘white doves’ a merry time of it, we with great difficulty got our vehicle out of the road on to the steppe; and here, though progress was slow, it was at least better than it had been. Two days spent in alternately being dragged over morasses by our horses, and dragging them and the cart out of the same, did not sweeten our tempers, I presume; and it was perhaps for this that a luckless Persian suffered at Adji Kabool. Here in the early morning I was sitting huddled up in my bourka amongst my luggage in the extremely narrow space allotted to one of two passengers in a Russian post-cart, when a ‘tchapar’ calmly pushed me to one side, and seated himself comfortably beside me, without ceremony or apology. On inquiring what he meant, and explaining that the post-cart was hired by me, paid for by me, and intended only to be tenanted by me and mine, the intruder just deigned to tell me that he was a ‘tchapar,’ had a right to travel in any cart he chose, and meant to travel in mine, whether I liked it or not. Now, if this were true, it would not be an additional attraction in Russian post-travelling; but I fancy it was not: so I requested my would-be fellow-traveller to make himself scarce at once, and as he persisted in refusing, I hoisted him into the mud by the wheels. As soon as he recovered an upright position he clapped his old flint-lock rifle to his shoulder, and putting the muzzle almost into my face, deliberately pulled the trigger. Luckily for me, in his fall all the powder which should have formed the train to the charge had been spilt. Moreover, his barrel was choked with good holding clay, so that, taken all together, had the piece not missed fire, the danger would have been greater to him than to me. After this display of rage and impotence, he turned to the people of the station, and so worked upon them by his arguments that, had I not taken the reins out of my yemstchik’s hands and driven off, whether they would or not, I am persuaded I should have been detained perhaps for days at Adji Kabool, until I could communicate with Tiflis or Lenkoran.
To travel by post-road in this part of the Caucasus, and indeed all over Russia I believe, a man should be as voluble, as loud-tongued, and as profane as the proverbial Billingsgate fisherwoman or a certain English M. F. H. I wot of. The only kind of language a Russian servant, most of all a Russian car-boy, can understand, is loud swearing. From his childhood he has been accustomed to it. His mother’s term of endearment to him as she dandled him on her knees was probably ‘ach te sukin sin’ (ah, you son of a she-dog), about equivalent in English to ‘you little monkey.’ His master’s name for him when good-tempered was ‘rosbolnik’ or ‘mashanik’ (thief or scoundrel), and he himself, in addressing his horses, of which he is often extremely fond, and to which he seldom applies the lash, heaps on them epithets of the fondest endearment and foulest abuse at one and the same time.
Our experiences of post-travel on our return to Tiflis were of the very worst. At Aksu in mid-day we were refused horses on the old plea that there were none—an excuse utterly untrue, as a glance at the interior of the stables assured us. Reiterated demands were met by sulky refusals, and on following the station-master to his own private room I was reminded that the guests’ chamber was my place, whither he would come if sent for. On sending my man he found the door barred, and all further interview denied. This little trick was more than I could stand, so crossing the yard to the fellow’s room I demanded the horses or the complaint-book—a book in which travellers have a right at all times to enter their grievances, which is kept affixed by a seal to the table in the guest-room, and which is the sole check upon the absolute power of a station-master. To remove this or to refuse to produce it, is the greatest crime the station-master can commit, and would, if reported, ensure his eviction from his post. But in this case the man remained firm, being deep in a drinking bout with his yemstchiks, and refused point blank to produce either horses or book, or to let me in. Feeling convinced that I had Russian law on my side, and that the fellow, for his own sake, dare not make any report, I kicked his door down, and taking him by the arm brought him across to the guests’ room, where a couple of Armenian merchants in the same plight as myself were kicking their heels and cursing the cause of their needless delay. Having got my enemy into the room, I had the doors shut, showed him some letters of introduction I had with me, and then telling him I knew to what he was liable if I reported his refusal to produce the complaint-book, I began to solemnly roll up the cuffs of my Tscherkess costume, preparatory, as I informed him, to administering to him severe corporal punishment. The letters, my knowledge of Russian post-road rules, and perhaps a certain air of meaning what I said, had their effect, and in a minute the other side of the Asiatic character was revealed, the insolent brutality giving way to disgusting, fawning complaisance as if by magic. But I knew my man too well to let him go, so that, having made him order two troikas, one for ourselves and one for the Armenians, I kept him a close prisoner until the carts were actually at the door, when, with many thanks from my fellow-travellers, I left Aksu rejoicing.
These fellow-travellers claimed my help again at the next station, alleging that they were co-religionists of mine, being members of the Protestant Church at Shemakha. It seems that forty years ago their sect was founded at Shusha, my informants said, by English missionaries, but the names they gave them, ‘Larambe’ and ‘Fanther,’ sounded very un-English in my ears. Shortly after the founding of the Protestant Church at Shusha, the non-Protestant Armenians rose against their newly-converted brethren, and induced the Czar to have them expelled from Shusha, whence they migrated to Shemakha, and there founded a church, in which they now celebrate five services a week, and number 500 of the richest inhabitants of Shemakha amongst their congregation.
From Shemakha I sent a telegram on to Capt. Lyall or Mr. G——, I forget which, friends of mine at Tiflis, to announce my return, and to prevent my letters being sent on to Lenkoran. To give some idea of the Russian telegraph service between Tiflis and the Caspian I may here mention that, though I took many long days to get from Shemakha to Tiflis, that telegram only arrived simultaneously with me, whilst one sent from Baku, three weeks before, arrived two days after me; and though I travelled by the post-road, and spent some days shooting en route, a letter posted by me in Lenkoran just before I started arrived long after me. So much for internal communication on this side the Caucasus.
Day after day we plodded on, getting dirtier, more starved and ill every day; travelling often as much as sixteen hours in an open cart at a stretch, the best travelling we ever accomplished being 132 versts in that time. At Shemakha we stopped to shoot antelopes, as much for the sake of the pot as for the sport. A day’s rest and a good dinner had become absolutely necessary; and though the accommodation at Shemakha was so bad as to make the rest impossible, we obtained the dinner. Thus refreshed, we turned our faces on Friday morning towards Tiflis, with a fixed resolve to make no further stoppage in the thirty-six hours’ travelling which remained between ourselves and the good things of that place.
For the last ten days my leading idea, my favourite day-dream, the ultima Thule of my ambition, had been a hot tub. To sit and boil in a hot bath of sulphur water and get out a clean man into a clean shirt, had been the one luxury in life to look forward to; and now that it was within thirty-six hours’ travel of me, I felt almost content as I curled myself up in my cart, though snow and rain soaked in through my ragged old clothes, through which the wind cut almost to my backbone, and the red mud splashed up, plastering eyes and mouth, until we had passed beyond all semblance of humanity. But there were to be more trials yet. As we neared Akstapha the night had fallen, and, weary with perpetual motion, I had cowered down under my bourka in a vain endeavour to hide myself from the cold and doze away the tedious hours. The weather was abominably raw; an icy night fog, blown by a cutting breeze that met us in the teeth, wetted and chilled us to the bone. The hour was between nine and ten, the moon had not yet risen, and the night was starless. The road was through the hills, and needless to say heavy and hard to find in the darkness.