Clive Phillipps-Wolley

“ The sun was bright in the heavens, the hoar frost sparkled on the ground, while every breath of the keen morning breeze brought high spirits and a hunter’s appetite along with it. The country now became hilly, even close by the post-road, and every now and then we saw a covey of red-legged partridges scudding up the bare hillsides at a terrible pace. These birds seemed to have taken the place of the sand-grouse now. A drive of twenty versts from Adji Kabool brought us to Goktchai, and here my post-cart was destined to stay its joltings and bid its jangling bells be still for some little time. ”

“ As the evening closes in over these wild waste lands, a stillness and peace seem to come with it of which one has no knowledge in the towns. The piping of the quails, the long soft wail of the coolik (curlew) , and even the notes of the German hunting horn on the other droshky far in front, all seem to make fitting music for the hour and scene; and as the stars begin to shine out from a sky of infinite depth and metallic blueness, the oojai domoi (home already) is spoken not without an accent of regret, though limbs are tired and steppe roads rough. ”

“ Tiflis, even by starlight, after a long, dull journey, and seen from a droshky, is a sight not to be forgotten. You feel in a moment that the town you are now in is as distinct from any you have ever seen before as anything well can be. In spite of the Grand Duke’s presence and the sober little German colony, European civilisation is still only a resident stranger in the streets of Tiflis. The Tartar, Georgian, and Persian are all natural, and in keeping with the place, but the occasional high hat of Bond Street persuasion or Russian uniform is entirely out of harmony with the surroundings. ”

“ Heard on the dead leaves, a bear’s step as he moves slowly along, stopping from time to time to feed or listen, is wonderfully like that of a mocassined hunter stalking slowly over the same ground.
And now, day after day, the sport grew worse. Stepan was evidently but a very poor guide. Living, as he had done, for a couple of lonely years in his hut at Golovinsky, his spirit of enterprise had never led him to explore more than the two beats in which we had already been successful. ”

“ Here we came on bear tracks, and heard the cry of the red deer in some beech woods on a neighbouring mountain side. As we peered over an abyss we caught sight of three ‘marral,’ as the natives call them, far out of shot on the other side. To get to them would have been a day’s work; so we could only look and long; while the wild cry of another stag, which we could not see, reverberated through the woods, and made our hearts jump at the sound. Far down in the abyss the wooded tops of smaller mountains rose like islands from a tumbling sea of clouds like those we call woolsacks at home ”

“ Kertch behind us, white with snow, clustering round the hill of Mithridates, a mere skeleton of her former glory in the days of Greek and Persian; Taman, once too a prosperous city, now a few hovels buried in a snowdrift; Yenikale perhaps more dead than either; and all round the long low hills, the rounded tumuli of dead kings; the tall bare masts of the belated ships; a frozen sea beneath and a freezing sky above.
Once in Taman we gave our driver a good tip (‘na tchai’) for the tea as they call it, and betook ourselves to a friend’s house for a few minutes’ rest [Pg 19] before our next start. ”

“ Christmas Day I spent at Gerdaoul, where we had a deer drive among the mountains on a pouring wet day, which made our style of sport peculiarly unpleasant. Unluckily, Ivan shot a doe early in the day, and over the carcass of this the whole band of Armenians—who were to us both beaters and hosts—fought like dogs over a bone. Seeing there was no chance of more sport that day, I left them to stab one another for a half pound more or less of venison if they liked; and feeling a twinge or two of rheumatism, trudged on towards Goktchai, leaving Allai to follow with the horses. ”

“ Shemakha is not a town to detain a weary traveller long. The only inn I could find was an underground ‘duchan,’ to which access was obtained by a flight of stone steps leading from the road above to a kind of vault, in which puddles stood on the floor, drained off from the mud above; and here the cooking and liquor were as infamous as the accommodation. Shemakha is mainly composed of flat-topped Asiatic houses and a few smart new ones of the common Russian stamp, with white plastered sides and green roofs that looked bitterly cold and out of place in their setting of snow and winter storm. ”

“ The silence is one moment intense; then, before you have time to blink, the rush of wings is upon you and past you, and the birds are rattling and plopping down into the dark little forest pools, in the soft mossy places, or, best of all, amongst the young wheat of the luckless Persian. What a merry chuckling they make as every fresh flight comes in from its day-dreams and play on the sea. Each batch of new comers takes at least ten minutes to publish its budget of news and arrange for its places at supper. ”

“ From Kertch to Poti we had a fair and pleasant voyage, over a sea calm and still as an inland lake, past a coast where mountains in the background sink into hills in the foreground, and the hills themselves run right down into the sea; while almost from the point where they touch the waves with their feet the forest starts upwards and clothes them to the very summit. ”

“ The neighbourhood of Poti must at no very distant date have been one of the most favourite habitats of the red-deer in the whole world. The Mingrelian nobles were all staunch preservers of game, and it was not until Russian greed of territory had angered them, that they in revenge for their wrongs, real or fancied, at the hands of their somewhile ally, and to deprive that ally of his favourite recreation, taken with or without their consent, slew all the tall stags and graceful roebucks in their land, whenever they could find them, by foul means or fair. ”

“ Each gunner, who up till now has been but half animate, plunges recklessly through the rending thorns to gain some point at which to turn the chase or make that shot which shall render him the after-dinner hero of the day. And now from the deep baying and the cessation of the crashing amongst the scrub, we judge that Shirka and his friends have collared the quarry in the thick thorn yonder; so thick that the light can barely penetrate, and so viciously tenacious and spiteful as to give the invading sportsman an idea of personal malice. ”

“ Every now and again a dark shadow glided over the snow, and a sound like a devil’s low chuckling laugh told one that the substance of that shadow was the great eagle owl, whose strong silent pinions were creeping, a very shadow of death, over some doomed hare. At one time a company of wolves seemed to have gathered round, for as soon as a long vibrating howl had moaned itself into silence on one side, another took up the strain and startled the forest on the other. ”

“ Even the sea is a noisy babbler compared to the depths of a forest at night. What a glorious moon that was that gleamed down through the network of creepers and wild vine above, throwing long shadows on the grassy opening below. But how slowly the moments pass! Is it possible I have only been here a quarter of an hour? I move restlessly, though silently, on my perch, and then the intense cold which is numbing my right leg calls for attention. ”

“ As the hound closes the boar turns, and in the turning offers a fair mark for the rifle on the other side of the thicket; so once more old Shirka is saved from those gnashing ivory bayonets which he has so often rashly challenged.
After this there is a lull. The hounds’ loud voices have proclaimed to every living thing that death is abroad in the forest, and boar and roe have moved off to some deeper recess, where in shadowy silence they can spend the spring noontide unmolested. ”

“ Englishman should read what I have written, and, tempted by hope of sport, follow in my track, let him take one piece of advice from me. Never believe any one between the Black Sea and the Caspian; or, at least, never build any hopes on alluring prospects suggested to your mind by the statements of natives. To me Gungha was to be a land of perfect peace, where in a really good hotel I should lay down my weary limbs, and, after a good supper, forget, in clean sheets, the injuries inflicted on me by the merciless bumpings of my travelling-cart. ”

“ The roads of the Caucasus are always execrable, but there is still a degree of evil of which that traveller knows nothing who has not travelled from Gungha to the next station. The only thing the road can be compared to is the dry bed of a mountain cataract. Huge boulders strew the path incessantly, and the arms of the miserable passenger over it are continually almost wrenched from their sockets by the leaps and bounds of the post-cart, for it is almost needless to say that nothing but a determined grasp of your seat will ensure fixity of tenure for a moment. ”

“ They live so poorly that an Englishman would die of want of nourishment alone, did he live as they do. They sleep out in mists that soak through and through a man as no rain ever could, and, worse than all, in the chase or on the journey, when heated and over-wrought, they lie down at every rill, and drink like thirsty cattle. I attribute my own freedom from fever to the fact that I never touched the water of the Caucasus for drinking purposes, except in the shape of one cup of tea in the morning and one at night, never drinking at all throughout the day ”

“ Living in this primitive fashion, we passed several days, and enjoyed fair sport; the large supply of meat which we had hung on the beech-tree nearest our tent, attracting nightly bands of jackals, who formed a cordon round us and kept our dogs in a state of excitement the whole twenty-four hours. Apart from the sport, my man Niko was almost sufficient amusement in himself. A wilder, less tutored fellow could not be found, unless it were among savages; full of superstition and stories of the chase, he always kept us amused by the camp-fire. ”

“ Then when a snowstorm has caught the birds hiding in the valleys, and clogged their wings with snow, which a bitter wind still more surely binds about them, these poor denizens of the desert are surrounded and driven like a flock of sheep into the Tartar villages, where they are butchered, and thence sent in cartloads into Kertch, to be sold at a rouble and a half (3s. 6d.) apiece.
After slaying the bustards, having done enough for glory, we have time to remember a thirst that would empty a samovar and an appetite that would astonish a negro. ”

“ 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. ”