by Lydia Davis
To the Tartar Prince: An Enormous Sturgeon
He proceeds through the desert, which extends to the foot of Mount Caucasus. How different it is from Archangel: terrible heat instead of terrible cold, a plain of sand instead of a plain of snow, herds of camels belonging to the Calmouks instead of flocks of reindeer.
The ground is so flat they have no trouble getting along in their kibitkas. But they are often fooled by the appearance of extensive ranges of hills on the horizons, which are actually merely small inequalities magnified by intervening vapors.
The careless servants lose most of the water they have brought along with them, and then they suffer from extreme thirst, for the pools are as salt as sea water: their bottoms and sides are covered with beautiful crystals exhaling a strong smell of violets.
The plants all taste of salt, the dews are salt, and even some milk he gets from a Tartar is brackish.
Then there are swarms of mosquitoes, and he can’t even talk or eat without having a mouthful of them. Sleeping is out of the question.
They cross a river where the water comes up to the windows of the carriage, which floats. They cross a marsh four miles broad and three or four feet deep.
In Kizliar he sells his kibitka and sends his carriage back to Moscow. He will cross the rest of the desert on horseback.
They spend the night in an encampment of Tartars, who bring them sour mare’s milk. Early in the morning they arrive at the residence of the Tartar Prince. The people of the village bring him an enormous sturgeon that is still alive and lay it at his feet.
In the courtyard he observes a man with long hair, contrary to custom.
Derbend: His Apparent Magnitude Is Directly as his Distance
He sets out for Derbend with an escort. The caravan is very oddly composed: he and his American companion, a Swiss, a Dutchman, a Mulatto, a Tartar of Rezan, a body of Lesgees for escort, two Jews, an envoy from one of the native Princes returning from Petersburg, and three Circassian girls whom one of the guides has bought in the mountains and is taking to sell at Baku.
In Derbend he has lodgings in the home of an absent Persian. He is sent carpets and cushions and inundated with fruits and pilaus. His apparent magnitude is directly as his distance: if he was a great man at Kizliar with one orderly man to wait on him, here he is twice as great, since he has two.
In the evening he rides out with Persian friends on a white horse with its tail dyed scarlet. The Persians amuse themselves trying to unhorse each other, while he himself admires the view of the Caspian Sea, the steep rock on which the town is situated, the gardens surrounding it, and part of the chain of Caucasus rising behind it.
Garden of the World
The Russian commandant has given him an escort of Cossacks and Persians as far as the River Samoor to point out the most fordable parts and help them over.
The merchant of women is still part of the group. Now, because his girls attracted some attention in the earlier part of the journey, he encloses them in great sacks of felt, though the sun is burning hot.
It would be worthwhile for a traveler to enquire into the traditions of a colony of Jews who live in the Dagestan near the Samoor. The groundwork of their language is Hebrew, though apparently not intelligible to the Jews of other countries.
The country from the River Samoor to Baku is fit to be the garden of the world. The crops cultivated seem to be rice, maize, cotton, millet, and a kind of bearded wheat. From the woods come apples, pears, plums, pomegranates, quinces, and white mulberries often covered with pods of silk. Almost every bush and forest tree has a vine creeping up it covered with clusters of very tolerable grapes. The main draft animal is the buffalo, the antelope is the main wild animal, and the howls of the jackals in the mountains would have disturbed their rest if they hadn’t been so tired.
A Large Party of Persians
They are met by a large party of Persians headed by two brothers, who beg them to turn back to visit the Khan of Cuba. They refuse, and one brother declares they will not go farther and must fight their passage through, which they prepare to do. Since they are better armed, they would have been able to go on unmolested, but the merchant of women begs them not to desert him or he will be ruined: they have stolen his horses and say they will put him to death if he does not sell his women at their price. The party of travelers threatens to complain to the Khan at Cuba and the Persians restore the horses.
They rest in the evening at a rock called Beshbarmak, or “the five fingers,” which is a great sea mark on the Caspian. From there to Baku is almost a desert with now and then a ruined caravanserai.
The day after he arrives, he receives a visit from Cassim Elfina Beg, the principal Persian of the place.
All the innumerable arches he has seen have been pointed.
The Famous Sources of Naphtha
General Gurieff, the commandant, has made a party for them to see the famous sources of naphtha, and with him and Beg and several other Persians they ride out to the principal wells. The strong smell is perceptible at a great distance and the ground about appears of the consistency of hardened pitch. One of the wells yields white naphtha; in all the others it is black, but very liquid.
The Everlasting Fire and the Fruits Thereabouts
He rides five miles farther to see the everlasting fire and the adoration of the Magi. For about two miles square, if the earth is turned up and fire applied, the vapor that escapes inflames and burns until extinguished by a violent storm. In this way the peasants calcine their lime.
In the center of this spot of ground is a square building enclosing a court. The building contains a number of cells with separate entrances. The arches of the doors are pointed, and over each is a tablet with an inscription, in characters unknown to him. In one of the cells is a small platform of clay with two pipes conveying the vapor, one of which is kept constantly burning. The inhabitant of the cell says he is a Parsee from Hindostan, the building was paid for by his countrymen, and a certain number of persons were sent from India and remained until relieved. When asked why they were sent, he answered: To venerate and adore that flame. In the center of the quadrangle is a tumulus, from an opening in which blazes out the eternal fire, surrounded by smaller spiracles of flame.
The fruits thereabout come spontaneously to perfection.
Across the Desert: A Large Panther
From Baku he sets off across the desert to Shamachee. After seventy versts they stop at a stream of water and scare up a large panther that escapes into the mountains. Early the next morning they come to old Baku, now in ruins, and in the evening to Shamachee. Here he sleeps in one of the cells of a ruined caravanserai. The poor peasants who live in the ruins have been ordered by Mustapha Khan to give the travelers provisions.
The Town of Fettag
The next day he travels over hills covered with fruit trees, down into a valley, and up a very steep mountain near the summit of which he enters the town of Fettag, residence of Mustapha the Khan of Shirvaun. The Khan lives entirely in tents and appears to be the most unpolished, ignorant, and stupid of any of the native Princes so far.
The Khan gives them a feast where the precepts of Mohammed are totally disregarded; at the conclusion, singing and dancing girls are introduced according to the Persian custom. The Khan makes them a present of horses, carpets, etc.
Fettag to Teflis: The Secretary Falls Ill
In the evening of the next day they come to a camp occupied by Azai Sultan, who is gleeful because he has won a fight over stolen cattle with some mountain people belonging to the next Sultan. The following day they are received by Giafar Kouli Khan, who gives him a long account of the way he beat the Shach’s troops with an inferior number. There are puzzling things about his story but they ask no questions because it is dangerous to puzzle a potentate.
Two nights later he sleeps on the banks of the River Koor, the Cyrus of the ancients. On the road from Ganja to Teflis, his secretary Pauwells falls ill with a putrid fever. There is no
cart to be procured and they are given false information that causes them to lie out for three nights exposed to the unwholesome dews of the Koor. They then reach a Cossack station, where they leave the secretary. They ride on to Teflis and send back a cart for him, but though he has medical attention he dies within four or five days.
In Teflis: One of the Best Cities
He is glad to be at Teflis, one of the best cities in this part of Asia. The baths are supplied by a fine natural warm spring. The women deserve their reputation for beauty. Those that are sold for slaves to the Mohammedans are those that are called Circassians, for the Circassians or Tcherkesses who are themselves Mohammedans seldom sell their children.
He has a letter of introduction to the Queen of Imiretia in her capital on the banks of the Phasis. She is in fact merely a nominal sovereign. She does not live in a cave, as he had been told, but receives them in her house, in a room fitted with sofas, ornamented with looking glasses, and hung round with pictures of the imperial family.
The climate here, however, is unwholesome, singularly prejudicial to strangers, and he and his companion Poinsett go to bed with violent attacks of fever. The other three servants are ill, too.
He decides that Ispahan can’t any longer be considered the capital of Persia.
He learns that Count Gudovitch has obtained a victory near Cars over Yussuff Pacha.
He hears that there are rumors of peace between France and Russia; nobody knows if England is included.
With the Help of Some Bark: Over the Caucasus
As soon as he can sit a horse he takes leave of his Georgian friends, and rides out of the town. The snow and ice on Mount Caucasus, along with the help of some bark he gets from a Roman Catholic missionary, restore him to perfect health and strength as soon as he begins ascending the mountain.
The Caucasus is inhabited by about twenty nations, most of them speaking distinct languages, so that the inhabitants of one valley, insulated from the rest of the world, often can’t make themselves understood if they cross the mountain.
They have purchased a tent and thus avoid stopping in towns where there is plague. On this side of the Russian frontier, it almost threatens to wipe out some of the Mohammedan nations. In some of the villages he passes, all the people have died, other villages are completely deserted, they scarcely see one man in the whole country and the few they see they carefully avoid.
Some people of the tribe of the Caftouras intend to attack them but by mistake attack some Cossacks instead. One Cossack is left dead and one mortally wounded.
They make thirty-six versts to Kobia, pass by Kazbek, the highest part of the Caucasus, make twenty-eight versts in the rocky valley of Dagran, then leave the mountain and advance to the fortress of Vladi Caveass. They cross the little Cabarda entirely depopulated by the plague. On the road he sees the dead bodies of Cossacks and fragments of their lances strewn about.
Here in Mozdok, they are in quarantine.
Mozdok to Taman: Fevers
The ground has recently been overflowed by the Terek, his tent is not waterproof and the country is famous for fevers. He lies several days on the earth with a violent fever, surrounded by basins to catch the rain, which does not stop him from being drenched by it.
A change of situation and a thorough tanning of bark make him well again, but he is detained at Georgievsk by the illness of his fellow traveler.
They will go along the Cuban to Taman, the site of the Greek colony Phanagoria, and so over the Cimmerian Bosphorus to Kerch, the ancient Panticapaeum.
Taman: In the European Manner
At Stauropol he has a third fever that reduces him so low he cannot stand without fainting away. His optic nerves become so relaxed as to make him blind; with his right eye he can scarcely distinguish at night the flame of a candle. As he regains strength, his vision returns.
He recovers from the fever by using James’s Powder in very large doses, but remains some time very deaf, subject to alarming palpitations of the heart, and so weak that he cannot stand long.
At Taman, they are detained some time by their interpreter falling ill. They are determined to wait there for his recovery, but he grows weaker rather than stronger, being housed in a damp lodging. Fellow traveler Poinsett suffers so severely from a bilious fever and becomes so weak they are very apprehensive for him, but then all rapidly regain strength, due to some light frost, to living in the European manner, and to the great attention of General Fanshaw, the Governor of the Crimea, who is an Englishman.
Back to Moscow: A Scotch Physician
They stop off in Kiev, the third city in Russia. Here the language is more Polish than Russian.
He loses another servant. The man is lethargic, refuses to exercise, secretly throws away his medicine, grows worse, is brought along lying on a bed in a kibitka toward the house of an English merchant, halfway there gets out, with the help of another servant gets in again, falls into a lethargic sleep, and on their arrival at the inn in Moscow is found dead.
Thus, of four servants who left this city with them, only one has returned, a stout Negro of Poinsett’s, who has borne the climate better than any of them.
Of his wardrobe, all he has left now is one coat and a pair of pantaloons.
He hopes to sail directly from Petersburg to Harwich. In the meantime, here in Moscow, he has put himself under the direction of a Scotch physician, Dr. Keir, who prescribes absolute repose for the next four months and has ordered a course of bark and vitriolic acid, beef, mutton, and claret.
Improved Health: A Gentlemanlike Slimness
His health has improved quickly, he has lost every bad symptom: his dropsical legs have reduced to a gentlemanlike slimness, a fair round belly swelled and as hard as a board has shrunk to its former insignificance, and he is no longer annoyed by palpitations of the heart and pulsations of the head.
Within the past three days he has recovered his voice, which he had lost for two months. He is leading the life of a monk.
Poinsett leaves soon. Then he will set about writing a journal of the tour, though the mode of traveling during the first part of the journey, and the scarcity of chairs and tables, as well as the illness of the second part, have been very unfavorable to journalizing. In addition, the few notes he had taken were rendered illegible by crossing a torrent.
The End of the Tour: Shipwreck
He goes to Petersburg and finds his friends Colonel and Mrs. Pollen. Together they will go to Liebau in the Dutchy of Courland and try to sail to England by way of Sweden. He is suffering from the shock his constitution received in the south of Russia. He has frequent attacks of fever and ague and is nursed by the Colonel and his wife.
After three weeks in Liebau they engage a passage to Carlscrona on the ship Agatha, embarking on April 2. They sail, the weather is fine, the ice lies close about a mile from shore, they get through it at the rate of two miles an hour and are in clear water by 3 p.m. All that day and the next they have light breezes from the southeast. On the fourth, at about 2 p.m., they sight the Island of Oeland at a distance of eight or nine miles. It is blowing very hard: in an hour they get close in and see the ice about a mile from the shore.
Colonel Pollen wonders if they can anchor under Oeland, and another passenger, an English seaman by the name of Mr. Smith, thinks not, as the ice would drift off and cut the cables. The captain says he will stand on to the southward till eight o’clock, then return to the island, but at eight and at twelve he will not go back: now it blows a gale of wind from the westward with a very heavy sea. The vessel makes much water and the pumps are choked with ballast. The crew will bail very little; the water gains fast.
On the fifth they run the whole day before the wind. At noon on the sixth, Colonel Pollen wonders if the vessel can keep the sea. The English seaman says that unless the sailors make more efforts to bail she can’t live long, since they already have three feet of water in the hold and it is gaining on them. The best way to save themselves is to steer for some po
rt in Prussia. The Colonel agrees and tells the captain. The captain agrees and recommends Liebau, but the Colonel objects on account of the English seaman and a certain Mr. Renny, who have both escaped from Russia without passports. The captain agrees to go to Memel, but says he has never been there in his life: if the English seaman will take the ship in, he will give it over into his charge when they come to the bar. The seaman agrees because he knows the harbor perfectly well.
At two o’clock in the morning on the seventh they sight land to the southward about fifteen miles from Memel. They are close in to a lee shore because of the captain’s ignorance and carelessness in running so far in the dark. They haul the ship to by the wind on the larboard tack, and at four o’clock get sight of Memel, which the captain takes for Liebau until he is told otherwise, when he is very surprised. Colonel Pollen and the other gentlemen come on deck and tell the captain to give the charge to the English seaman, which he does.
At six they come to the bar, the tide running very high, with two men at the helm. The passengers are pressing around the helm in a way that is dangerous to themselves and prevents the helmsmen from seeing ahead very well, so the English seaman asks them to go below. But now, unfortunately, the captain sees the sea breaking over the bar and becomes so frightened that he runs immediately to the helm and with the help of his people puts it hard-a-port. Though the English seaman strives against this, in ten minutes they are on the Southlands.
The third time the ship strikes, she grounds and fills with water. They are about a mile and a half from shore.
There is a small roundhouse on deck and Mrs. Pollen, Mrs. Barnes, her three children, two gentlemen, a man and a maidservant get into this to save themselves from the sea. Colonel Pollen and the English seaman begin to clear the boats out; the sailors will not help. They get the small one out and three sailors get into it with the captain. Lord Royston, who is in a very weak state of health, tries to follow them but the English seaman prevents him, telling him it is not safe. When the captain hears this, he gets out. When the boat leaves the ship’s side it turns over and the three men drown.
