We left Astrakhan at eight in the evening, and were ferried across the Volga in a four-oared boat. It took us more than an hour to cross the river, its breadth opposite the town being more than 2000 yards. When we reached the opposite bank we might have fancied ourselves transported suddenly to a distance of a hundred versts from Astrakhan. Kalmucks, sand, felt tents, camels, in a word, the desert and its tenants were all that now met our view. We found our britchka waiting for us; our officer and the dragoman got into a telega or post chariot, and the bells began their merry jingling.
Nothing can be more dismal than the route from Astrakhan to Kisliar. For two days and two nights our journey lay through a horrid tract of loose sand, with nothing to be seen but some half-buried Kalmuck kibitkas, serving for post stations, and a few patches of wormwood, the melancholy foliage of which was in perfect harmony with the desolate aspect of the landscape. The heaps of sand we passed between exhibited the most capricious mimicry of natural scenery. We had before our eyes hills, ravines, cascades, narrow valleys, and tumuli; but nothing remained in its place; an invisible power was ceaselessly at work, changing every shape too quickly for the eye to follow the rapid transformation.
On the evening of the day after our departure, we had an opportunity of testing the prowess of our travelling companion, the hawk. The first theatre of his exploits was a little pond covered with wild ducks and geese, that promised a rich booty.
At a signal from my husband the Tatar officer unhooded the bird, and cast him off. Instantly the hawk darted off like an arrow, close along the surface of the ground, towards the pond, and was soon hidden from us among the reeds, where his presence was saluted with a deafening clamour, and a scared multitude of wild geese rose up out of the sedges. Their screams of rage and terror, and their bewildered flight backwards and forwards, and in all directions, were utterly indescribable, until the arrival of the officer put them to the route, and delivered their assailant from their obstreperous resentment. The moment the hawk flew off, the Tatar followed him at a gallop, all the while beating a small drum that was fastened to his saddle. When he reached the pond he found the bird planted stoutly on the back of a most insubmissive victim, and waiting with philosophic patience until his master should come and release him from his critical position.
The officer told us, that but for his presence, and the noise of the drum, the geese would in all probability have pummelled the hawk to death with their beaks, in order to rescue their companion. In such cases, however, the hawk braves the storm with imperturbable coolness, and adopts a curious expedient when the attacks are too violent, and his master is too slow in appearing. Without quitting hold of his victim, he slips himself under the broad wings of the goose, which then become his buckler. Once in that position he is invincible, and the blows aimed at him fall only on the poor prisoner, whose cruel fate it is to be forced to protect its mortal enemy. When the falconer comes up, the first thing he does is to cut off its head and give the brains to the hawk. Until that operation is completed, the latter keeps fast hold on the quarry, and no efforts of its master can induce it to relax its gripe.
The hawk made two or three more successful flights before we reached Houidouk, and supplied us with a good stock of provisions, which were not a little needful to us in that miserable post station.
During this journey we passed several times very close to the Caspian, but without perceiving it.
At Houidouk, on the mouth of the Kouma, we found our escort, which had been waiting two days for us. Every thing was ready for our departure, but a violent fall of rain detained us three mortal days in the most detestable cabin we had yet entered. Two rooms, one for travellers, and the other for the master of the station and his family, composed the whole dwelling. We installed ourselves as well as we could in the former, the whole furniture of which consisted of a long table and two benches. The walls of this wretched hole were made of ill-jointed boards, that gave admission to the wind and the rain, and to add to our discomfort, it served as an ante-chamber to the other room, and was thus common to the whole household. Hens, children, and the master of the house, were perpetually passing through it, and left us not a moment's rest. Our situation was intolerable; the violence of the tempest increased at such a rate, that we knew not how the miserable wooden fabric could stand against it. All the elements seemed confounded together; there was no distinguishing earth or sky; but the terrible disorder of nature appeared to me more tolerable than the scene within doors. Outside there was at least something for the imagination; the mind was exalted in contemplating the swelling uproar that threatened a renewal of chaos; but the scene within was enough to drive us to despair—children fighting and screaming, fowls fluttering and perching on the table and benches, squalor all around us, and a frowsy atmosphere! To complete our distress, some Armenian merchants on their way to the fair of Tiflis, finding it impossible to continue their journey, came to share with us the den in which we were already so uncomfortable.
But this new incident was a sort of lesson in philosophy for us. When we saw these men conversing quietly as they smoked their tchibouks, without the least show of impatience, and talking of the heavy losses the unseasonable weather might occasion them, as calmly as if their own interests were not concerned, we could not help envying the stoic resignation of which the men of the East alone possess the secret. There is nothing like their fatalism for enabling one to take all things as they come; is not that the acme of human wisdom?
Our escort passed the three days of this deluge in a corner of the shed adjoining the house. Wrapped up in their sheep-skins, those iron men slept as quietly through wind and rain as if they had been in a snug room. One must have lived among the Russians to have any idea of the apathy with which they bear all kinds of privations. Their bodies, inured to the rigours of their climate, to the coarsest food, and most Spartan habits, grow so hardened, that what would be mortal to others makes no injurious impression on them.