Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/147

 drawing our attention to a sandy spot by the wayside, overgrown here and there with grass.

“Oh, there, there, look—“We looked in the direction which she indicated with her finger, but we could see nothing.

“Well, what has scared you so much, my dear?” Tabunov, who had just galloped up to us with the Colonel, asked of his wife.

“Oh a snake!” announced Anna Kirilovna with a very expressive gesticulation. “A big black ugly snake! It rose up right in front of my horse, ever so high, and how it hissed! Dreadful! Then it darted off like lightning through the grass and disappeared in the thicket over there.”

Tabunov burst into loud laughter at this fearful news, and then exclaimed: “A snake! that is certainly dreadful. You see how right I was when I persuaded you to come on the excursion today. We have benbeen [sic] living for such a long time in this place, and you are still frightened of a snake. Well today, I hope you will make friends with them. Look, there is another one escaping over there, and there again, and yonder, I wager that in each one of these thickets you could find several of their nests. Do you hear that rustling and crackling? They are scuttling away in front of us on all sides. And you are trembling at these poor timid reptiles, even when you are so high up in your saddle? Most of them contain about as much venom as this cigarette of mine, and besides, they haven’t inherited a spark of enterprise from their forefather in Eden.”

In reply to this detailed information Anna Kirilovna could answer nothing, and as she rode on, her expression became more and more vexed as she observed signs of suppressed merriment on the faces of the others.

As a matter of fact, the surrounding brushwood swarmed not only with snakes, but with various other forms of animal life. The sunlit ground between the shrubs was covered with basking snakes of various hues, and beautiful lizards of a glistening green or mottled tint, the greater number of which however, we saw only for a movent like flitting flashes of light, as they vanished with the swiftness of arrows before our caravan into crannies and bushes. Green and brown grasshoppers of various sizes were leaping up high on all sides. Shaggy black spiders, beetles and flies of very beautiful and glistening colors set the grass, the plants and the air astir with their lively movements, while on the ground and in the shrubs could be seen an extraordinary quantity of snails. From time to time a large land-tortoise also came into view, sometimes with an escort of little tortoises, which with their tiny rounded shells beside the huge armor of their male or female parent, afforded a charming and at the same time a comical sight.

But the higher we mounted, the sparser became the bushes and brushwood, until finally the road twined up to the summit of the height only through thick grass. Although we had hitherto ridden only a short part of the journey, and that very much at our ease, yet Anna Kirilovna, at every step taken by her horse, was already complaining of the hardships of the troublesome excursion, and in spite of all the protests of the girls themselves, she announced that these poor creatures could not possibly ride any further without a proper rest. Finally her lips let slip, half to herself, the word “tea”, and the powerful magic of this word can rarely be resisted by the Russian heart.

So we stopped for our rest on a small piece of flat grassy land beneath the top of the mountain, whence a pathway led slopingly to the other side. While Anna Kirilovna attended to the samovar in the centre of this little plain and the horses were grazing round about with the Cossacks in charge of them, we delighted ourselves with the lovely view, which from this spot presented itself to our eyes in all directions. In the west we saw beneath us the blue stretch of the bay merging in the distance with the open sea, and behind it extended a range of green coneshaped peaks, which on the north enclosed a spacious wooded hollow, where could be seen several small villages and a scanty sprinkling of “chutors” (farms). In this valley are to be found the Czech settlements of Kirilovka, Metodějovka and Glěbovka. Directly beneath us at the end of the bay was Novorossijsk.

To the south and the east, the direction in which our journey continued, we could see in front of us a varied and picturesque mountain range, which grew higher and higher in the distance, until, in the background, clouds and mists shut off our view of its highest peaks. The prospect in this direction revealed a glimpse of wildly beautiful and primitive nature. Mountains and hills of varied shapes could be seen there, separated by charming valleys and hollows, nearly all with a dense growth of rank thickets and forests, in some places with dark pine-woods, but for the most part with bright leafage, whose manifold shades of fresh and glittering green were delightfully refreshing to the eyes; in places amid this green, or upon projecting boulders, torrents, and cataracts glittered like silvery flashes, and the mist fluttered here and there through the ravines, or was rended on the sides of the wooded slopes into long trailing girdles and shreds, thus adding to the picturesque and fascinating appearance of the mountains; but nowhere in this broad expanse, as far as we could see, was there any trace of human dwelling or activity; not a single village, not a single farm, not a single cloud of smoke, which would have indicated a solitary hut or a shepherd’s fire. In deep solitude and undisturbed peace rested before our eyes this beautiful mountain region,—the deserted home of the Circassians, who after the Russians had