by Lydia Davis
The mayor comes in during the evening and makes a speech to him in Russian three-quarters of an hour long.
The temperature in Archangel is fifty-one degrees below freezing, both his hands are frozen, and Pauwells has a foot frozen. He goes northeast of Archangel, procures three sledges and twelve reindeer, and sets out over the unbeaten snow in search of a horde of Samoyeds. He finds them exactly on the Arctic Circle in an immense plain of snow surrounded by several hundred reindeer. They are Pagans.
Back in Archangel, the cold has increased, and he is forced to bake his Madeira in an oven to get at it, and to carve his meat with an axe. It is nearly seventy degrees below freezing, barely three points above the point of congelation of mercury.
Moscow Is Immense and Extraordinary
Moscow is immense and extraordinary, after a journey over the worst road he has ever traveled in his life through a forest which scarcely ever suffered any interruption but continued with dreary uniformity from one capital to another.
He begins to be able to read Russian fairly easily, and speak it sufficiently. Poole has also picked up enough.
He sends his younger brother a Samoyed sledge and three reindeer cut out of the teeth of a seahorse by a peasant at Archangel.
The extent of Moscow is prodigious despite its small population because in no quarter of the city do the houses stand contiguous. The Kremlin is certainly the most striking quarter, and nearly thirty gilt domes give it a most peculiar appearance.
He is much interested by the passage of regiments composed of some of the wandering nations. One day there passed two thousand Bashkirs from the Oremburg frontiers on their lean desert horses, armed with lances and bows, some clothed in complete armor, some with the twisted coat of mail or hauberk, some with grotesque caps, others with iron helmets. These people are Mohammedans. Their chief is dressed in a scarlet caftan, their music is a species of flute which they place in the corner of their mouths, singing at the same time. They are almost always at war with the Kirghese.
A regiment of Calmucs passes through. Their features are scarcely human. They worship the Dalai Lama. He also sees a number of Kirghese of the lesser and middle hordes.
He continues his study of Russian, finds the language sonorous, but thinks it hardly repays anyone the trouble of learning it, because there are so few original authors—upon the introduction of literature it was found much easier to translate. The national epic poem, however, about the conquest of the Tartars of Casan, would be good if it weren’t for the insufferable monotony of the meter.
Another Trip to Petersburg
Proceeding along the frozen river, the postilions missed their road, came to a soft place on the ice, and the horses broke through. The kibitka in which he lay could not be opened from the inside and the postilions paid no attention to him, being concerned only with trying to save their horses. One of them woke Poole in his sledge to request an axe. Poole saw the vehicle half-floating in the water and had just time to open the leather covering. He jumped out upon the ice with his writing desk and the carriage went down to the bottom. One horse drowned.
In Petersburg, the Carnival was taking place: theaters erected on the river, ice-hills, long processions of sledges, multitudes of people, and public masquerades given morning and evening.
In Moscow Again, He Plans the Continuation of His Tour
Now Moscow is very dull during the fast.
He plans to get a large boat, embark at Casan, and float down the Volga to Astracan sitting on a sofa. He will reach the banks of the Caspian.
The carriages he will use have not a particle of iron in their whole composition.
There is a sect of Eunuchs who do this to themselves for the kingdom of heaven. They had at one time propagated their doctrines to such an extent that the government was forced to interfere, afraid of depopulation. It seized a number of them and sent them to the mines of Siberia.
He is preparing for his journey, and he will be accompanied as far as Astracan by an American of South Carolina, Mr. Poinsett, one of the few liberal and literary and gentlemanlike men he has seen emerge from the forests of the New World.
He has hired a Tartar interpreter, whom his valet de chambre is somewhat afraid of and calls “Monsieur le Tartare.”
He is waiting for letters from Casan about the condition of the roads, but because it is spring and travel by both sledge and carriage is precarious, there is almost no communication between towns.
An edict has appeared forbidding conversation on political subjects.
In the Russian Empire, where perhaps of three men whom you meet, one comes from China, another from Persia, and the third from Lapland, you lose your ideas of distance.
Foreign newspapers are prohibited.
He has gone up to the top of a high tower at one in the morning to see the spectacle of Moscow with its hundreds of churches illuminated on Easter Eve.
Then he has been very surprised to see all the females of the family run up to him and cry out, “Christ is risen from the dead!”
When he sets out he and Mr. Poinsett will each be armed with a double-barreled gun, a brace of pistols, a dagger, and a Persian saber; each of the four servants also will have his pistols and cutlass. He will be sorry to leave Moscow.
Casan: No Man Could Suppose Himself to Be in Europe
The accommodations along the way are as they have been all over Muscovy: one room, in which you sleep with the whole family in the midst of a suffocating heat and smell; no furniture to be found but a bench and table; and an absolute dearth of provisions.
As he proceeds he finds the Tartars in the villages increasing in numbers, and the Russian fur cap giving way to the Mohammedan turban or the small embroidered coif of the Chinese.
He sleeps in the cottage of a Tcheremisse, with neither chimney nor window. The women have their petticoats only to the knee and braid their hair in long tresses, to which are tied a number of brass cylinders.
No man could suppose himself to be in Europe—though by courtesy Casan is in Europe—when he contemplates the Tartar fortifications, the singular architecture of the churches and shops, and the groups of Tartars, Tcheremesses, Tchouasses, Bashkirs, and Armenians.
An Armenian merchant promises to have a boat ready in two or three days.
To the Quarantine Grounds Near the Astracan
The beauty of the scenery on the Volga is gratifying, the right bank mountainous and well wooded. After passing Tsauritzin, where both banks were in Asia, there is nothing on either side but vast deserts of sand.
He sees great numbers of pelicans. Islands are white with them. He sees prodigious quantities of eagles, too. He and the others eat well on sterlet and its caviar. The number of fish in the Volga is astounding. The Russian peasants won’t eat some of them for reasons of superstition. For example, he had too much of a sort of fish like the chad, and offered them to the boat’s crew, but they refused them, saying that the fish swam round and round, and were insane, and if they ate them they, too, would become insane.
There is some reason for refusing pigeons, too, and also hares.
Samara is the winter home of a number of Calmouks. Only during the summer do they wander with their flocks in the vast steppes on the Asiatic side and encamp in their circular tents of felt. The heat of the Steppe is suffocating. The blasts of wind during the summer immediately destroy the flocks exposed to them, which instantly rot. The Tartars and Calmouks make every species of laitage known in Europe and also ardent spirits they distill from cow’s and mare’s milk.
He comes upon a village as distinguished for the excessive cleanliness of the houses and the neatness of the gardens as the Russian habitations are for their dirt and filth.
The town of Astracan is inhabited by thirteen or fourteen different nations, each description of merchants in a separate caravanserai.
His next excursion before he proceeds to the northern provinces of Persia will be a short distance into the desert to the habitation of a Calmouk P
rince. He wants to go hawking with his daughter the Princess, who with her pipe at her mouth hunts on the unbroken horses of the desert.
Solianka: Banners in the Wind
He is staying in a village inhabited exclusively by Tartars. He visits a Calmouk camp and enters the tent of the chief Lama. It is very neat and covered with white felt, the floor matted and strewn with rose leaves. The priest shows the idols and sacred books. He brings out the banner of silk painted with the twelve signs of the zodiac. Some banners are inscribed with prayers. These are placed at the door of the tent, in the wind: letting them flutter about is supposed to be equivalent to saying the prayers. The Lama orders tea: the leaves and stalks are pressed into a large square cake and this is boiled up with butter and salt in the Mongol manner. It forms a nauseous mixture, but he drinks it and then takes his leave, all the village coming out of their tents and going down with him to the waterside. At least a third of the men in the village are priests.
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.