Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus

CHAPTER II.. Crasnoi Lais.

CRASNOI LAIS.

A frozen sea--Swarms of wild-fowl--The Indo-European telegraph--Sledging on the Azov--A desolate scene--Taman--Journey inland--Tumerūk--Hotels--A dangerous sleep--Foxes--Wolves--A hasty retreat--Ekaterinodar--Supper in the forest of Crasnoi Lais--An exciting night’s sport--Driving the forest--Cossack beaters--Wild deer--Other game--The bag--Rations of vodka--A Cossack orgy--Vulpine sagacity--Wolf stories--Return to Kertch 15

CHAPTER III.. Odessa and Miskitchee.

ODESSA AND MISKITCHEE.

Mountaineers and Shikaree--Outfit--Journey from London to Odessa--Snipe-shooting on the Dnieper--A drunken yemstchik--A collision--Prince Vorontzoff--Aloupka--Yalta--Livadia and Orianda--Miskitchee lake--A Tartar butcher--Native hovels--A shooting party on the lake--A dreary bivouac 41

CHAPTER IV.. The Red Forest and Black Sea Coast.

THE RED FOREST AND BLACK SEA COAST.

Journey to Taman--Downpour on the steppe--Tscherkess bourkas--Long-tailed horses--Absence of cultivation--The Moujiks--Causes of political discontent in Russia--Veneration for the Czar--Cheapening supplies--A Russian writer on Englishwomen--Post stations--A terrible tragedy--Hotels--Ekaterinodar--The fair--Russian tea--Russian police--Bivouacking with Cossack foresters--Exciting sport--Shooting a white boar--Sad disappointment--Pheasant-shooting--A Cossack colonel--An execrable journey--Caucasian women--Great consumption of supplies--In a Cossack saddle--Mineral springs--A scorching bath--Lotus-eaters--Incidents of the road--An insolent Tartar--Parting 59

CHAPTER V.. Heiman’s Datch.

HEIMAN’S DATCH.

Duapsè--Tscherkess emigrants--By the sea-shore--Superb scenery--Drunken guides--A Cossack station--Bears--Take possession of a ruined villa--Hiding our provisions--Wild swine--Astray in the jungle--A rough breakfast--Boars in file--A missfire--Forest fruit--Lose our horses--A panther--Night-watch--Shooting in the dark--On the trail--Barse--A friendly Cossack--Deserted by my servants 93

CHAPTER VI.. Golovinsky.

GOLOVINSKY.

Lunch in the forest--Picturesque riding--A spill--Telegraph shanty at Golovinsky--Robinson Crusoe--Native guns--Tracks of game--Multitudes of pheasants---Paucity of native hunters--Tscherkess mocassins--Experiences of forest life--Killing a bear--Cooking him--Another bag--A lost chance--Anecdotes of ‘Michael Michaelovitch’--Shooting a boar 110

CHAPTER VII.. Dense Coverts.

DENSE COVERTS.

Unsuccessful sport--Bruin and Stepan--Black bread and onions--Forest music--Mosquitoes--Ticks and other insects--Bruin’s fondness for honey--Butterflies--Our larder--Narrow escape of Stepan--Unlucky days--Watching for swine--Otters--A cold vigil--An exasperating march 132

CHAPTER VIII.. Hunting With Dogs.

HUNTING WITH DOGS.

Refitting--Our mongrels--Shipping our spoils--Visitors--Stepan’s yarns--The hedgehog--Legend of the bracken--The Euxine in a fury--Trebogging--Traces of Tscherkess villages--Enormous boars--Their feeding grounds--Lose a bear--Impenetrable thickets hiding the proximity of big game--A rare day’s sport--Shooting in the moonlight--An expedition--Fever--Precautions against it--Unsuccessful sport and hard fare 145

CHAPTER IX.. Return to Kertch.

RETURN TO KERTCH.

Return to Heiman’s Datch--Bears--Stepan’s shooting apparatus--Journey to Duapsè--A delightful dinner--Interview with the Governor--Insects--German farm--A dangerous adventure--A wedding supper--Leave Duapsè for Ekaterinodar--Krimsky fair--Russian roughs--Peasant women--A show booth--A hazardous road--Inexpensive travelling--Ekaterinodar--Table d’hôte at the Petersburg hotel--The treasury--Droshky-racing--A beaten rival--Caucasian fish--Arrival at Kertch 165

CHAPTER X.. Tiflis.

TIFLIS.

The Russo-Turkish War--Sukhoum--Alleged abundance of game--Poti--My fellow-travellers--Sport in Kutais--Arrival in Tiflis--Hotels and other features of the town--The British Consul--Organ-grinders in request--A ‘happy day’--Drinking habits--Native wines--German settlers--Shooting expedition--A caravan--Kariâs steppe--A lawless country--Fevers--Antelope-hunting--An unpleasant adventure: running for dear life--A wounded antelope--The lions of Tiflis--Museum and bazaar--Schoolboys--Prevalence of uniforms and orders--Phenomena of Russian life--Buying a travelling pass--Professor Bryce’s ascent of Ararat 186

CHAPTER XI.. En Route for Daghestan.

EN ROUTE FOR DAGHESTAN.

Start from Tiflis--My yemstchik--Travelling carts--Caucasian road-makers--Camel caravans--On the bleak steppe--Persian hawking--Subterranean dwellings--Shooting at Kariur--Elizabetpol--An execrable journey--Hawks and starling--Banditti--Curing official corruption at Tiflis--Goktchai--A wearying day’s sport--Fear of highwaymen--My guide, Allai--Arrival at Gerdaoul--Hospitable Lesghians 231

CHAPTER XII.. The Lesghian Mountains.

THE LESGHIAN MOUNTAINS.

Gerdaoul--Shooting partridges--Native wine-vaults--Expedition among the hills--Native houses--An inhospitable village--A dangerous ride--A welcome reception--Shepherd-boys--The Lesghians--Russian love for the Czar--Unsuitable education--Mountain-climbing--Magnificent scenery--Red deer--Vegetation--A chamois--A weary descent--A happy people--Photographing the scenery--A ‘Baboushka’--‘Developing’ our photographs--A mountain châlet--The snow peaks--Wild goats and sheep--Difficult mountaineering--An alluring chase--Suspended over a precipice--A bleak night’s lodging--Mountain turkeys--Black pheasants--Lammergiers--Advice to travellers--Return to Goktchai 255

CHAPTER XIII.. From Goktchai to Lenkoran.

FROM GOKTCHAI TO LENKORAN.

Rough travelling--Shooting by the way--Shemakha and Aksu--Tarantasses and post-roads--A wretched station--Mud volcanoes and naphtha springs--Bustards--On the road to Salian--Swarms of wild-fowl--A rascally official--Disappointed hopes--A good Samaritan--Rival hosts--Asiatic fever--The Mooghan steppe--Pelicans and myriads of other birds--Tartar orgies--Banished secretaries: the Molochans and Skoptsi--Arrival at Lenkoran--A Persian gunsmith--Fellow-sportsmen 287

CHAPTER XIV.. Shores of the Caspian.--Return to Tiflis.

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’ 311

CHAPTER XV.. The Rains.

THE RAINS.

Poti--Chasing wild boar--Red-deer--Turks and Cossacks--Sotcha--Lynxes--Game in the Caucasus--A hunting party--A wounded sow--Beautiful scene--An unexpected bag--Our cuisine--The ‘evil eye’--Overtaken by the rains--Our tent inundated--Surrounded by wolves--Cheerless days--A terrible catastrophe--Welcome help--Golovinsky--A wild scene--Eluding the storm--Fording a torrent--A refuge--Scant supplies--Cossack cradle-song--The Cossacks of to-day--Russian plantations--A terrible ride--Struggling for life--Cossack loafers--Ride to Duapsè--Forlorn days--Mad wolves--Wrestling a Tartar--Laid up with fever--Return to England 340

A verst is equal to three-quarters of an English mile.

SPORT IN THE CRIMEA AND THE CAUCASUS.

CHAPTER I.. Sport in the Crimea.

SPORT IN THE CRIMEA.

Outfit--The droshky--A merry party--The Straits of Kertch--The steppe--Wild-fowl--Crops--The Malos--The ‘Starrie Metchat’--Game--Tscherkess greyhounds--Stalking bustards--A picnic--Night on the steppe.

Scarcely a week’s journey from London, with delicious climates and any quantity of game, it always seemed a marvel to me how few English sportsmen ever found their way to the Crimea or Caucasus. It is now something more than five years ago since I first made myself acquainted with the breezy rosemary-clad steppes of the former, or the low wooded hills on the Black Sea coast of the latter. For nearly three years resident at Kertch, I had ample opportunity of testing all the pleasures of the steppe, and a better shooting-ground for the wild-fowler or man who likes a lot of hard work, with a plentiful and varied bag at the end of his day, could nowhere be found. Of course the sportsman in the Crimea must rough it to a certain extent, but his roughing it, if he only has a civil tongue and cheery manner, will be a good deal of the ‘beer and beefsteak’ order. The Russians are hospitable to all men, especially to the sportsman; and the peasants, even the Tartars, are cordial good fellows if taken the right way.

On the steppes you need rarely want for a roof overhead, if you prefer stuffiness, smoke, and domestic insects to wild ones, with dew and the night air. If you can put up with sour cream (very good food when you are used to it), black bread, an arboose, fresh or half-pickled, with a bumper of fearful unsweetened gin (vodka) to digest the foregoing, you need never suffer hunger long. But for the most part sportsmen take their food with them. Perhaps if my readers will let me, it would be better to take them at once on to the steppe, and tell them all this en route.

Imagine then that for the last two days you have been hard at work out of office hours loading cartridges with every variety of shot, from the small bullets used for the bustard down to the dust-shot for the quail. Here, in Kertch, take a victim’s advice: make your own cartridges, don’t buy them. The month is July; the first of July, with an intensely blue sky, far away above you, giving you an idea of distance and immensity that you could never conceive in England, where the clouds always look as if they would knock your hat off. I should have said the sky will be blue by-and-by, for at present it is too dark to see, and we are carefully tucked away in bed; the impedimenta of the coming journey--cold meats, flasks of shooting powder, and jumping powder; bread, guns, and a huge string of unsavoury onions--all on the floor beside us. Ding, ding, ding! as if the door-bell were in a fit, then a crash and silence. No one ever rang a door-bell as a Russian droshky-driver rings it. He likes the muscular exertion, he loves the noise, and doesn’t in the least mind being sworn at if, as in the present instance, he breaks the bell-wire. A year in Russia has hardened us to all this, so merely speculating as to whether our landlord will pay more for broken bell-wires this half than last, we bundle out of bed and submit meekly to the reproaches of our friends outside on the cart. They, poor fellows, have had half an hour’s less sleep than we have, and it’s only 4 A.M. now, so any little hastiness of speech may be forgiven them.

But on such a morning as this, and on such a conveyance as our droshky, no one could remain sleepy or sulky long. The brisk bright air makes the blood race through your veins, and the terrible bumpings of the droshky on the uneven track, or half-paved streets, keep you fully employed in striving to avoid a spill or a fractured limb. Anything more frightful to a novice in Russia than the droshky I cannot conceive. This instrument of torture is a combination of untrimmed logs and ropes and wheels, with cruelly insinuating iron bands, merciless knots, and ubiquitous splinters. Manage your seat how you will, you are bound to keep bumping up and down, and at each descent you land on something more painful than that you have encountered before.

In spite of all this, as the droshky leaves the town, the old German jäger breaks out into a hunting ditty, and, truth to tell, until the wind is fairly jogged out of us we are a very noisy party. Then we try to light our cigarettes and pipes, and if we are lucky, only have the hot ashes jerked on to our next neighbour’s knee. Gradually the dawning light increases, the clouds of pearly grey are reddening, and the long undulating swell of the steppeland slowly unfolds itself around us. On our left are the Straits of Kertch, the sea looking still and hazy, with some half-dozen English steamers lording it amongst the mosquito fleet of fruiterers and lighters which fills the bay. All round us are chains of those small hills, whose dome-like tops proclaim them tumuli of kings and chiefs who went to rest ages ago, when the town behind us was still a mighty city, rejoicing in the name of Panticapæum.

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