At last the rain ceased towards the end of the third day. A west wind followed it, and dispersed the dark threatening clouds that had so long obscured the sky. Though the weather seemed still unsettled, we determined to make for the Caspian, which lay but thirty versts from us. My husband's anxiety to commence his surveying operations, and our eagerness to quit our detestable abode, gave us courage to risk the chance of another storm in the open steppe.
But a very unexpected incident threw the station into confusion just as we were departing, and delayed us some hours longer. A Kalmuck Cossack, mounted on a camel, arrived in great haste and informed us that the Armenian merchants, who had started the day before, had been attacked some distance from the station by a band of Kalmucks and plundered of the greater part of their merchandise.
Our Cossack officer, after listening with great indignation to this story, asked permission of my husband to pursue the robbers. The whole escort set off with him at a hard gallop, but the pursuit was ineffectual. The robbers, having had some hours' start, had already reached the sedges of the Caspian. In consequence of this delay it was the afternoon before we could make a start, and even then we had great difficulty in getting away, for the terrified postmaster entreated us not to forsake him at a moment so critical. His dismay, for which indeed there was little reason, almost infected me too, and it was not without some apprehension of disaster that I left the station.
The appearance of our caravan was curious and grotesque. Our britchka was drawn by three camels, taken in tow by a man on foot, and several other animals of the same species, besides sumpter-horses, were mounted by Kalmucks and Cossacks. Our escort followed, and all the men composing it, armed with sabres, guns, and pistols, looked martial enough to scare away the most daring thieves. The leader of the troop, the Tatar prince, rode with his falcon on his fist, every now and then showing off his skill in horsemanship and venery. Thinking no more of the morning alarm, I gave myself up to the liveliest anticipations of the extraordinary things which this excursion promised us. At last I was about to behold that Caspian Sea which, ever since men have been engaged with geographical questions, has been the object of their researches and conjectures. Besides, it had a much more potent interest for us, for it was in a manner the sole aim and end of our journey; it was to solve an immemorial question concerning it, that we had abandoned the comforts of civilised life, and encountered so many annoyances and privations. Notwithstanding my ignorance of science, I felt that in sharing my husband's toils, I was in some sort a partner in his learned researches, and that I too, like him, had my claims upon the Caspian. I was, therefore, impatient to see it; but our camels, who had no such motives for hurrying themselves, crawled along at a provokingly slow rate. They did not at all correspond with what we had read of the ships of the desert, creatures insensible to hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and as obedient to the will of man as the dry leaf is to the breath of the wind. In spite of a thick cord passed through one of their nostrils, which caused them sharp pain whenever they were unruly, our camels scarcely marched more than two hours at a stretch without lying down. The men had to battle with them continually to rouse them from their torpor, or hinder them from biting one another. Whenever one of the drivers pulled the halter of his camel roughly, we heard loud cries, the more hideous from their resemblance to the human voice. In short our camels behaved so badly during this short trip, as largely to abate the good opinion of their species, which we had conceived in reading the more poetical than true descriptions of our great naturalist.
At some distance from Houidouk we met two camps of Kalmucks, improperly called Christians. These tribes are reputed to be addicted to theft, and are generally despised by the other Kalmucks. We will speak of them again in another place. This whole region, as far as the Caspian, is extremely arid, with only here and there a few pools of brackish water, the edges of which swarm with countless birds, the most remarkable of which are the white herons, whose plumage forms such beautiful aigrettes. Unfortunately, these birds are so wary, that our companion could not take one of them, notwithstanding all his address and the power of his falcon.
A ludicrous misadventure that befel our dragoman, Anthony, amused us a good deal. Curiosity prompting him to ride a camel, he asked one of the Kalmucks to lend him his beast, and the request being complied with, he bestrode the saddle, pleased with the novelty of the experiment, and quite at a loss to know why the Cossacks and camel-drivers laughed among themselves as he mounted. But as soon as the beast began to move, a change came over his face, and he speedily began to bawl out for help. The fact is, one must be almost a Kalmuck to be able to endure the trotting of a camel; the shaking is so violent as to amount to downright torture for those who are not accustomed to it. The unlucky Anthony, left in the rear of the party, strove in vain to come up with us, and was obliged, in spite of himself, to continue his ride to the Caspian, where we arrived two hours before him. I never saw a man so cut up. He groaned so piteously when he was lifted down, that we began to be really alarmed for him.
There are in nature two opposite types, beauty and ugliness; the elements of which vary infinitely, though imagination always erroneously supposes it can fix their boundaries. How often are we fully persuaded we can never meet again an object so beautiful as that before us; yet no sooner have we lavished all our enthusiasm upon it, than a more charming face, a sublimer landscape, or a more graceful form makes us forget what we had regarded as the model of perfection; and itself is soon, in turn, dethroned by other objects which we declare superior to all our former idols. Just so it is with ugliness. It matters not that we have before us the lowest grade we believe it can attain, we have but to turn our heads another way to be amazed and confounded by new discoveries revealing to us the inexhaustible combinations of nature. These reflections occurred to me more and more strongly as we approached Koumskaia. The aridity of the steppes round Odessa, the wilderness of the Volga, the parched and dismal soil of the environs of Astrakhan, in a word all we had heretofore seen that was least engaging, seemed lovely in comparison with what met our view on the banks of the Caspian.
A grey, sickly sky, crossed from time to time by heavy black clouds, threw an indescribably sad and revolting hue over the lonely, sandy plain, and low, broken shore. The same funereal pall seemed to hang over the wooden houses, the gangs of Turkmans and Kalmucks loading their carts with salt, and the camels that roamed along the shore mingling their dismal cries with the sound of the waves.
Yet hideous as it seemed to us, this part of the coast is not unimportant in a commercial point of view. It supplies large quantities of salt, and has a port where vessels unload their cargoes of corn for the army of the Caucasus. We counted at least a score of vessels which had been driven in there by the late storm.
The population of Koumskaia consists of a Russian functionary, a Cossack post, and a few Kalmuck families, that appear very miserable. The employé gave us the use of his house; that is to say, of two dilapidated rooms without glass windows or furniture. One can scarcely conceive how the mind can have strength to endure so very wretched an existence. An unwholesome climate, brackish water, excessive heat in summer, rigorous cold in winter, huts and kibitkas buried in the sand, the Caspian Sea with its squalls and tempests—all these things combine to make this region the most horrible abode imaginable. The major, who welcomed us to Koumskaia, had a slow fever, which he owed still less perhaps to the insalubrity of the climate than to the hardships and mortal ennui he had endured for eighteen months. His wife, more stout-hearted, and amused in some degree by her household occupations, had still preserved a certain cheerfulness, which was no less than heroic in her situation. Their exile was to last in all two years. The government, perceiving that many employés died in Koumskaia, has limited the time of service there to that short period, and as some compensation for what those suffer who are sent thither, their two years are counted as four of ordinary service.