Authors: Claudius Bombarnac
Quick to the grand caravanserai. There you will find the caravans from
all points of the Asiatic continent. Here is one just coming in,
composed of Armenian merchants. There is one going out, formed of
traders in Persia and Russian Turkestan. I should like to arrive with
one and depart with the other. That is not possible, and I am sorry for
it. Since the establishment of the Transasiatic railways, it is not
often that you can meet with those interminable and picturesque lines
of horsemen, pedestrians, horses, camels, asses, carts. Bah! I have no
fear that my journey across Central Asia will fail for want of
interest. A special correspondent of the
Twentieth Century
will know
how to make it interesting.
Here now are the bazaars with the thousand products of Persia, China,
Turkey, Siberia, Mongolia. There is a profusion of the fabrics of
Teheran, Shiraz, Kandahar, Kabul, carpets marvelous in weaving and
colors, silks, which are not worth as much as those of Lyons.
Will I buy any? No; to embarrass oneself with packages on a trip from
the Caspian to the Celestial Empire, never! The little portmanteau I
can carry in my hand, the bag slung across my shoulders, and a
traveling suit will be enough for me. Linen? I will get it on the road,
in English fashion.
Let us stop in front of the famous baths of Tiflis, the thermal waters
of which attain a temperature of 60 degrees centigrade. There you will
find in use the highest development of massage, the suppling of the
spine, the cracking of the joints. I remember what was said by our
great Dumas whose peregrinations were never devoid of incidents; he
invented them when he wanted them, that genial precursor of
high-pressure correspondence! But I have no time to be shampooed, or to
be cracked or suppled.
Stop! The Hôtel de France. Where is there not a Hôtel de France? I
enter, I order breakfast—a Georgian breakfast watered with a certain
Kachelie wine, which is said to never make you drunk, that is, if you
do not sniff up as much as you drink in using the large-necked bottles
into which you dip your nose before your lips. At least that is the
proceeding dear to the natives of Transcaucasia. As to the Russians,
who are generally sober, the infusion of tea is enough for them, not
without a certain addition of vodka, which is the Muscovite brandy.
I, a Frenchman, and even a Gascon, am content to drink my bottle of
Kachelie, as we drank our Château Laffite, in those regretted days,
when the sun still distilled it on the hillsides of Pauillac. In truth
this Caucasian wine, although rather sour, accompanied by the boiled
fowl, known as pilau—has rather a pleasant taste about it.
It is over and paid for. Let us mingle with the sixteen thousand
inhabitants of the Georgian capital. Let us lose ourselves in the
labyrinth of its streets, among its cosmopolitan population. Many Jews
who button their coats from left to right, as they write—the contrary
way to the other Aryan peoples. Perhaps the sons of Israel are not
masters in this country, as in so many others? That is so, undoubtedly;
a local proverb says it takes six Jews to outwit an Armenian, and
Armenians are plentiful in these Transcaucasian provinces.
I reach a sandy square, where camels, with their heads out straight,
and their feet bent under in front, are sitting in hundreds. They used
to be here in thousands, but since the opening of the Transcaspian
railway some years ago now, the number of these humped beasts of burden
has sensibly diminished. Just compare one of these beasts with a goods
truck or a luggage van!
Following the slope of the streets, I come out on the quays by the
Koura, the bed of which divides the town into two unequal parts. On
each side rise the houses, one above the other, each one looking over
the roof of its neighbors. In the neighborhood of the river there is a
good deal of trade. There you will find much moving about of vendors of
wine, with their goatskins bellying out like balloons, and vendors of
water with their buffalo skins, fitted with pipes looking like
elephants' trunks.
Here am I wandering at a venture; but to wander is human, says the
collegians of Bordeaux, as they muse on the quays of the Gironde.
"Sir," says a good little Jew to me, showing me a certain habitation
which seems a very ordinary one, "you are a stranger?"
"Quite."
"Then do not pass this house without stopping a moment to admire it."
"And why?"
"There lived the famous tenor Satar, who sang the
contre-fa
from his
chest. And they paid him for it!"
I told the worthy patriarch that I hoped he would be able to sing a
contre-sol
even better paid for; and I went up the hill to the right
of the Koura, so as to have a view of the whole town.
At the top of the hill, on a little open space where a reciter is
declaiming with vigorous gestures the verses of Saadi, the adorable
Persian poet, I abandon myself to the contemplation of the
Transcaucasian capital. What I am doing here, I propose to do again in
a fortnight at Pekin. But the pagodas and yamens of the Celestial
Empire can wait awhile, here is Tiflis before my eyes; walls of the
citadels, belfries of the temples belonging to the different religions,
a metropolitan church with its double cross, houses of Russian,
Persian, or Armenian construction; a few roofs, but many terraces; a
few ornamental frontages, but many balconies and verandas; then two
well-marked zones, the lower zone remaining Georgian, the higher zone,
more modern, traversed by a long boulevard planted with fine trees,
among which is seen the palace of Prince Bariatinsky, a capricious,
unexpected marvel of irregularity, which the horizon borders with its
grand frontier of mountains.
It is now five o'clock. I have no time to deliver myself in a
remunerative torrent of descriptive phrases. Let us hurry off to the
railway station.
There is a crowd of Armenians, Georgians, Mingrelians, Tartars, Kurds,
Israelites, Russians, from the shores of the Caspian, some taking their
tickets—Oh! the Oriental color—direct for Baku, some for intermediate
stations.
This time I was completely in order. Neither the clerk with the
gendarme's face, nor the gendarmes themselves could hinder my departure.
I take a ticket for Baku, first class. I go down on the platform to the
carriages. According to my custom, I install myself in a comfortable
corner. A few travelers follow me while the cosmopolitan populace
invade the second and third-class carriages. The doors are shut after
the visit of the ticket inspector. A last scream of the whistle
announces that the train is about to start.
Suddenly there is a shout—a shout in which anger is mingled with
despair, and I catch these words in German:
"Stop! Stop!"
I put down the window and look out.
A fat man, bag in hand, traveling cap on head, his legs embarrassed in
the skirts of a huge overcoat, short and breathless. He is late.
The porters try to stop him. Try to stop a bomb in the middle of its
trajectory! Once again has right to give place to might.
The Teuton bomb describes a well-calculated curve, and has just fallen
into the compartment next to ours, through the door a traveler had
obligingly left open.
The train begins to move at the same instant, the engine wheels begin
to slip on the rails, then the speed increases.
We are off.
We were three minutes late in starting; it is well to be precise. A
special correspondent who is not precise is a geometer who neglects to
run out his calculations to the tenth decimal. This delay of three
minutes made the German our traveling companion. I have an idea that
this good man will furnish me with some copy, but it is only a
presentiment.
It is still daylight at six o'clock in the evening in this latitude. I
have bought a time-table and I consult it. The map which accompanies it
shows me station by station the course of the line between Tiflis and
Baku. Not to know the direction taken by the engine, to be ignorant if
the train is going northeast or southeast, would be insupportable to
me, all the more as when night comes, I shall see nothing, for I cannot
see in the dark as if I were an owl or a cat.
My time-table shows me that the railway skirts for a little distance
the carriage road between Tiflis and the Caspian, running through
Saganlong, Poily, Elisabethpol, Karascal, Aliat, to Baku, along the
valley of the Koura. We cannot tolerate a railway which winds about; it
must keep to a straight line as much as possible. And that is what the
Transgeorgian does.
Among the stations there is one I would have gladly stopped at if I had
had time, Elisabethpol. Before I received the telegram from the
Twentieth Century
, I had intended to stay there a week. I had read
such attractive descriptions of it, and I had but a five minutes' stop
there, and that between two and three o'clock in the morning! Instead
of a town resplendent in the rays of the sun, I could only obtain a
view of a vague mass confusedly discoverable in the pale beams of the
moon!
Having ended my careful examination of the time-table, I began to
examine my traveling companions. There were four of us, and I need
scarcely say that we occupied the four corners of the compartment. I
had taken the farthest corner facing the engine. At the two opposite
angles two travelers were seated facing each other. As soon as they got
in they had pulled their caps down on their eyes and wrapped themselves
up in their cloaks—evidently they were Georgians as far as I could
see. But they belonged to that special and privileged race who sleep on
the railway, and they did not wake up until we reached Baku. There was
nothing to be got out of those people; the carriage is not a carriage
for them, it is a bed.
In front of me was quite a different type with nothing of the Oriental
about it; thirty-two to thirty-five years old, face with a reddish
beard, very much alive in look, nose like that of a dog standing at
point, mouth only too glad to talk, hands free and easy, ready for a
shake with anybody; a tall, vigorous, broad-shouldered, powerful man.
By the way in which he settled himself and put down his bag, and
unrolled his traveling rug of bright-hued tartan, I had recognized the
Anglo-Saxon traveler, more accustomed to long journeys by land and sea
than to the comforts of his home, if he had a home. He looked like a
commercial traveler. I noticed that his jewelry was in profusion; rings
on his fingers, pin in his scarf, studs on his cuffs, with photographic
views in them, showy trinkets hanging from the watch-chain across his
waistcoat. Although he had no earrings and did not wear a ring at his
nose I should not have been surprised if he turned out to be an
American—probably a Yankee.
That is my business. To find out who are my traveling companions,
whence they come, where they go, is that not the duty of a special
correspondent in search of interviews? I will begin with my neighbor in
front of me. That will not be difficult, I imagine. He is not dreaming
or sleeping, or looking out on the landscape lighted by the last rays
of the sun. If I am not mistaken he will be just as glad to speak to me
as I am to speak to him—and reciprocally.
I will see. But a fear restrains me. Suppose this American—and I am
sure he is one—should also be a special, perhaps for the
World
or
the
New York Herald
, and suppose he has also been ordered off to do
this Grand Asiatic. That would be most annoying! He would be a rival!
My hesitation is prolonged. Shall I speak, shall I not speak? Already
night has begun to fall. At last I was about to open my mouth when my
companion prevented me.
"You are a Frenchman?" he said in my native tongue.
"Yes, sir," I replied in his.
Evidently we could understand each other.
The ice was broken, and then question followed on question rather
rapidly between us. You know the Oriental proverb:
"A fool asks more questions in an hour than a wise man in a year."
But as neither my companion nor myself had any pretensions to wisdom we
asked away merrily.
"
Wait a bit
," said my American.
I italicize this phrase because it will recur frequently, like the pull
of the rope which gives the impetus to the swing.
"
Wait a bit
! I'll lay ten to one that you are a reporter!"
"And you would win! Yes. I am a reporter sent by the
Twentieth
Century
to do this journey."
"Going all the way to Pekin?"
"To Pekin."
"So am I," replied the Yankee.
And that was what I was afraid of.
"Same trade?" said I indifferently.
"No. You need not excite yourself. We don't sell the same stuff, sir."
"Claudius Bombarnac, of Bordeaux, is delighted to be on the same road
as—"
"Fulk Ephrinell, of the firm of Strong, Bulbul & Co., of New York City,
New York, U.S.A."
And he really added U.S.A.
We were mutually introduced. I a traveler in news, and he a traveler
in—In what? That I had to find out.
The conversation continues. Ephrinell, as may be supposed, has been
everywhere—and even farther, as he observes. He knows both Americas
and almost all Europe. But this is the first time he has set foot in
Asia. He talks and talks, and always jerks in
Wait a bit
, with
inexhaustible loquacity. Has the Hunson the same properties as the
Garonne?
I listen to him for two hours. I have hardly heard the names of the
stations yelled out at each stop, Saganlong, Poily, and the others. And
I really should have liked to examine the landscape in the soft light
of the moon, and made a few notes on the road.
Fortunately my fellow traveler had already crossed these eastern parts
of Georgia. He pointed out the spots of interest, the villages, the
watercourses, the mountains on the horizon. But I hardly saw them.
Confound these railways! You start, you arrive, and you have seen
nothing on the road!