A. Pushkin
CHAPTER ONE
The steppes. A Kalmuck. Caucassian spa. The Georgian Military Highway. Vladikavkaz. An Ossetian funeral. The Terek. The Darial Goerge. Crossing snow-capped mountians. First sight of Georgia. Watercourses. Khozref-Mirza. The Governor of Dushert.
From Moscow I went to Kaluga, Belev and Oryol, thus making a detour of one hundred and eighteen miles; however, I did see Yermolov.1 He lives in Oryol, close to which his estate is situated. I arrived at his house at eight o’clock in the morning, but he was not at home. My driver told me that Yermolov never visyted anyone besides his father, a simple, pious old man, that the only people he never received were officials from the town, but that everyone else was welcome at any time. I called back on hour later. Yermolov received me with his customary affability. At first glance I did not find in him the least resemblance to those portraits of him that are usually painted in profile. A round face, fiery grey eyes, bristling grey hair. The head of a tiger on a Herculean torso. His smile is unpleasent, since it is not natural. But when he is deep in thought and frowns, he becomes handsome and bears a striking resemblance to the poetic portrait by Dawe.2
He was wearing a green Circassian jacket. Swords and daggers, souvenirs of his command in the Caucasus, hung on the walls of his study. Evidently he finds inactivity difficult to endure. Several times he started speaking about Paskevich – and always sarcastically: he would compare him to Joshua, before whom the walls fell at the sound of a trumpet, and called him the Count of Jericho instead of the Count of Yerevan.3
‘Just let him attack an unintelligent, unskilful pasha – for example, the pasha who was in command at Shumla,’4 said Yermolov, ‘and Paskevich would be finished.’
I told Yermolov of Count Tolstoy’s5 remarks, that Paskevich had performed so well in the Persian campaign that a clever man would have only needed to perform a little worse to distinguish himself from him. Yermolov laughed but he did not agree. ‘Men and expense could have been spared,’ he said. I think that he is writing, or wants to write, his memoirs. He is dissatisfied with Karamzin’s History;6 he would have preferred a fiery pen to have described the transition of the Russian people from insignificance to power and glory. He spoke of Prince Kurbsky’s memoirs7 con amore. The Germans caught it. ‘In about fifty years,’ he said, ‘people will think that in the current campaign there was an auxiliary Prussian or Austrian army, commanded by such-and-such German generals.’ I stayed a couple of hours with him. He was annoyed at not remembering my full name. He apologized by paying me compliments. Several times our conversation touched upon literature. He said that reading Griboyedov’s poetry8 made his cheek-bones ache. He did not speak one word about government or politics.
My route lay via Kursk and Kharkov; but I turned onto the direct road for Tiflis, thus sacrificing a good dinner in a Kursk tavern (no trifling matter on journeys in Russia) and not at all curious about seeing Kharkov University, which could not compare with any eating-house in Kursk.
Up to Yeletz the roads are terrible. Several times my carriage was bogged down in mud fit to be compared with Odessa mud. Often I could travel no more than thirty miles in twenty-four hours. At last I saw the Voronezh steppes and bowled along freely over the green plain. At Novocherkassk I found Count Pushkin9 who was also on his way to Tiflis, and we agreed to travel together.
The transition from Europe to Asia is felt more keenly with every hour that passes: forests disappear, hills level out, grass becomes thicker and grows much more luxuriantly; birds appear that are unknown in our forests; as if on guard, eagles sit on the hummocks marking the highway and proudly look down on travellers; over rich pastures
Herds of indomitable mares
Proudly wander.10
Kalmucks11 settle themselves around the post-stage huts. By their tents graze their ugly, shaggy horses, familiar to you from Orlovsky’s fine sketches.12
One day I visited a Kalmuck tent (a wickerwork frame covered with white felt). The entire family was about to have lunch. A cauldron was boiling in the middle and the smoke escaped through an opening at the top of the tent. A young Kalmuck girl, who was not at all bad-looking, smoked tobacco as she sewed. I sat down beside her. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘* * *.’ ‘How old are you?’ ‘Ten and eight.’ ‘What are you making?’ ‘Trouser.’ ‘For whom?’ ‘Me.’ She handed me her pipe and started eating. Tea was boiling in the cauldron, together with mutton fat and salt. She offered me her ladle. As I did not wish to refuse I took a mouthful, trying to hold my breath. I do not think that any other national cuisine could possibly produce anything more vile. I asked for something to take the taste away. I was given a small piece of dried mare’s flesh: I was glad even of that. Frightened by Kalmuck coquetry I escaped from the tent as quickly as I could and rode away from that Circe of the steppes.13
In Stavropol I saw clouds on the horizon that precisely nine years before14 had so vividly captured my imagination. They were still the same, still in exactly the same place: they were the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus mountains.
From Georgiyevsk I went to visit Goryachiye Vody.15 Here I found a great change: in my time the baths were in hastily constructed shacks. The springs, mainly in their pristine state, gushed, foamed and flowed down from the mountains in various directions, leaving white and reddish traces. We would scoop the seething water with bark ladles or with the bottom of a broken bottle. Now magnificent baths and houses have been built. A boulevard, lined with lindens, runs along the slope of Mount Mashuk. Everywhere are neat little paths, green benches, symmetrical flower-beds, tiny bridges, pavilions. The springs have been refurbished and faced with stone; police notices are nailed to the walls of the baths. Everywhere there is order, cleanliness, prettification…
I must confess that Caucasian spas offer more amenities these days, but I missed their former wild state; I missed the steep stony paths, shrubs and unfenced precipices above which I used to clamber. Sadly I left the spa and started back to Georgiyevsk. Soon night came. The clear sky was studded with millions of stars. I rode along the bank of the Podkumok. It was here that A. Rayevsky16 once used to sit with me, listening to the melody of the waters. Majestic Beshtu stood out darker and darker in the distance, surrounded by other mountains – its vassals – until finally it disappeared in the gloom.
Next day we pressed on until we reached Yekaterinograd, once ruled by a governor-general.
The Georgian military highway starts at Yekaterinograd; the post-road comes to an end. Here one can hire horses for Vladikavkaz. An escort of Cossack riders and infantry and cannon is provided. The mail leaves twice weekly and travellers join up with it: this is called an opportunity.17 We did not have to wait long. The mail arrived the following day, and at nine o’clock on the third morning we were ready to set off. The whole convoy, consisting of five hundred people or thereabouts, gathered at an assembly point. A drum roll sounded. We moved off. The cannon went in front, surrounded by infantry. Behind it stretched barouches, brichkas and covered wagons filled with soldiers’ wives who were moving from one fortress to another; behind them followed a train of creaking two-wheeled bullock-carts. On both sides ran herds of horses and oxen. Around them galloped Nogay18 guides in felt cloaks and with lassos. At first I found all this most agreeable, but it soon bored me. The cannon moved at walking pace, the wick smoked and the soldiers lit their pipes from it. The slow progress of our journey (in the first day we covered only ten miles), the unbearable heat, the lack of provisions, the restless overnight stays and finally the incessant creaking of the Nogay bullock-carts, made me lose all patience. The Tartars pride themselves on the creaking, claiming that they travel like honest people with nothing to hide. On this occasion I would have found it more pleasant to travel in less honourable company.
The route is rather monotonous: a plain with hills on either side. On the horizon are the peaks of the Caucasus, looming higher and higher every day. The fortresses, which are adequate for this region, are surrounded by dit
ches which, in the old days, any one of us could have leapt across from a standing position; there are rusty cannon that have not been fired since the time of Count Gudovich19 and crumbling ramparts along which a garrison of chickens and geese wanders. In the fortresses are a few shacks where, with difficulty, one can obtain a dozen eggs and some sour milk.
The first place of note is the Minaret Fortress. As we approached it our convoy passed through a delightful valley between burial mounds overgrown with lime and plane trees. These were the graves of several thousand plague victims. Here blossomed many-coloured flowers, born of the infested ashes. On the right glittered the snowy Caucasus; ahead of us loomed a huge, wooded mountain; beyond it was the fortress. All around it we could see signs of a ruined village, formerly called Tatartub and once the most important in Great Kabarda.20 A slender, solitary minaret bears witness to the existence of the now vanished settlement. It rises gracefully between piles of stones, on the banks of a dried-up stream. The inner staircase has not collapsedyet.I climbed upto the little platform from which the mullah’s voice no longer rings out. There I found several unfamiliar names scratched on the bricks by travellers hungry for fame.
Our route became picturesque. The mountains towered above us. On their peaks wandered barely visible flocks that resembled insects. We could even make out the shepherd, perhaps a Russian once taken prisoner and now grown old in captivity. We came across more burial mounds, more ruins. Two or three headstones stood at the edge of the road. There, according to Circassian custom, are buried their horsemen. A Tartar inscription, a sword, a brand mark, carved in the stone, have been left by predatory grandsons in memory of their predatory ancestors.
The Circassians hate us. We have forced them out of their wide open pastures; their villages have been destroyed, entire tribes annihilated. They are constantly withdrawing deeper into the mountains, whence they direct their raids. The friendship of pacified Circassians is not to be relied upon: they are always ready to help their unruly fellow tribesmen. The spirit of their wild chivalry has noticeably declined. Rarely do they attack Cossacks of equal numbers, never infantry, and they flee at the sight of a cannon. On the other hand, they never miss an opportunity of attacking a weak detachment or the defenceless. This part of the country is full of talk of their evil deeds. There is practically no way of pacifying them until they are disarmed as the Crimean Tartars were, an exceptionally difficult undertaking by reason of the hereditary feuds and vendettas prevailing among them. The dagger and sword are essentially (bodily) limbs and infants start to use them before they can even babble. With them killing is a simple bodily movement. They keep prisoners in the hope of gaining a ransom for them, but they treat them with dreadful inhumanity, forcing them to work beyond their strength, feeding them on raw dough, beating them when the fancy takes them; to guard them they employ boys who have the right to hack them to pieces with their children’s swords if they utter one wrong word. Recently a pacified Circassian who had fired at a soldier was captured. He tried to defend himself by claiming that his rifle had been undischarged for too long. What can one do with such people? One must hope, however, that the annexation21 of the eastern part of the Black Sea, by cutting off the Circassians’ trade with the Turks, will force them closer to us. The effect of luxury might favour their subjugation: the samovar would be an important innovation in this respect.
But there is a method that is more powerful, more moral, more consistent with our enlightened century: the preaching of the gospels. The Circassians adopted the Mohammedan faith only very recently. They were carried away by the energetic fanaticism of the apostles of the Koran, among whom a certain Mansur22 distinguished himself – an extraordinary man who had long been stirring up the Caucasus against Russian dominion and who was finally captured by us and died in the Solovetsky Monastery. The Caucasus awaits Christian missionaries. But it is easier for us, in our laziness, to pour out dead letters in place of the living word and to send mute books to people who cannot read or write.
We reached Vladikavkaz, formerly Kapkaz, the gateway to the mountains. It is surrounded by Ossetian villages. I visited one of them and happened upon a funeral. People were crowding around a hut. In the yard stood a cart, harnessed with two oxen. Relatives and friends of the deceased rode in from all directions, and with loud lamentations they entered the hut, beating their foreheads with their fists. The women stood submissively. The corpse was carried out on a felt cloak…
…like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him;23
and they laid him in the cart. One of the guests took the deceased’s rifle, blew the powder from the firing pan and placed it beside the body. The oxen moved off; the guests followed. The body was to be buried in the mountains, about twenty miles from the village. Unfortunately no one could explain this ceremony to me.
The Ossetians are the poorest tribe amongst the nations inhabiting the Caucasus; their women are beautiful and, it is said, very well disposed towards travellers. At the fortress gates I met the wife and daughter of an imprisoned Ossetian. They were taking his dinner to him. Both appeared calm and bold. However, when I approached, both of them looked down and covered their faces with their tattered yashmaks. In the fortress I saw Circassian hostages, sprightly and handsome boys. They are constantly getting up to mischief and running out of the fortress. They are kept in a pitiful state, going around in rags, half-naked and disgustingly filthy. On some of them I saw wooden shackles. Probably, once they are released, these hostages have no regrets about their stay in Vladikavkaz.
The cannon left us. We set off with the infantry and the Cossacks. The Caucasus received us into its sanctuary. We heard a dull roar and saw the Terek, flowing in different directions. We rode along its left bank. Its turbulent waves set in motion the wheels of the squat Ossetian mills resembling dog kennels. The further we went into the mountains the narrower the gorge became. The confined Terek tosses its turbid waters over the crags barring its way. The gorge winds its way along the river’s course. The rocky feet of the mountains have been worn smooth by its waves. I made my way on foot, constantly stopping, astounded by the gloomy charms of nature. The weather was overcast; thick banks of cloud hung over the black peaks. As they looked at the Terek, Count Pushkin and Shernvall24 recalled the Imatra25 and accorded superiority to the ‘river thundering in the North’.26 But I found nothing with which I could compare the spectacle that lay ahead.
Before we reached Lars, I dropped behind the convoy, lost in contemplation of the huge cliffs between which the Terek gushes with indescribable fury. Suddenly a soldier came running towards me, shouting from the distance, ‘Don’t stop, Your Honour! They’ll kill you!’ As I was unaccustomed to such warnings, it struck me as extremely strange. The fact is, Ossetian bandits, secure within those narrow confines, fire at travellers across the Terek. The evening before we crossed they had attached General Bekovich,27 who galloped through their fire. On a cliff can be seen the ruins of some castle; clinging all around them like swallows’ nests are the huts of pacified Ossetians.
We stayed the night at Lars. Here we found a French traveller who frightened us with his account of the road ahead. He advised us to leave our carriages at Kobi and proceed on horseback. With him we drank for the first time Kakhetian wine from a stinking goatskin, which reminded me of the carousing in the Iliad:
And in goatskins is wine, our delight!28
Here I found a soiled copy of the Prisoner of the Caucasus29 and, I must confess, read it with great pleasure. It was all so feeble, youthful, incomplete; but much of it was faithfully observed and expressed.
Next morning we pressed on. Turkish prisoners were working on the road. In no way could they accustom themselves to Russian black bread. This reminded me of the words of my friend Sheremetev30 on his return from Paris: ‘It’s rotten living in Paris, my friend: there’s just nothing to eat. You can’t get black bread for love or money!’
About four miles from Lars is the Darial p
ost. The pass bears the same name. Cliffs stand on both sides like parallel walls. Here it is so narrow, so very narrow, writes one traveller, that one not only sees but actually feels the narrowness, it seems. A patch of blue sky appears like a ribbon above one’s head. Streams, falling from the heights of the mountains in thin spurts of spray, reminded me of The Abduction of Ganymede, that strange painting by Rembrandt.31 Moreover, the pass is illuminated entirely in his taste. In some places the Terek is eroding the very feet of the cliffs, and rocks are piled high on the road, like a dam. Not far from the post a small bridge has been boldly thrown across the river. Standing on it is like being on a mill. The whole bridge shakes, while the Terek roars, producing a sound like wheels driving a millstone. Opposite Darial can be seen the ruins of a fortress on a steep cliff face. According to tradition a certain Queen Dariya took refuge there, thus giving her name to the pass: this is a fairy-tale. In ancient Persian darial32 means gates. According to the testimony of Pliny the Caucasian Gates, erroneously called the Caspian Gates, were situated here. The pass was closed with real gates, made of wood and ribbed with iron. Beneath them, writes Pliny, flows the River Diriodoris.33 Here was erected another fortress to resist the raids of wild tribes; and so on. Consult the Journey of Count J. Potocki,34 whose scholarly investigations are as diverting as his Spanish novels.
From Darial we set off for Kazbek. We saw the Trinity Gates (an arch formed in the rock face by a gunpowder explosion) – beneath them the road once ran, but now the Terek flows there, often changing its course.
Tales of Belkin and Other Prose Writings Page 16
