The Special Correspondent

I

Claudius Bombarnac,
Special Correspondent,
Twentieth Century.
Tiflis, Transcaucasia.

Such is the address of the telegram I found on the 13th of May when I arrived at Tiflis.

This is what the telegram said:

“As the matters in hand will terminate on the 15th instant Claudius Bombarnac will repair to Uzun Ada, a port on the east coast of the Caspian. There he will take the train by the direct Grand Transasiatic between the European frontier and the capital of the Celestial Empire. He will transmit his impressions in the way of news, interviewing remarkable people on the road, and report the most trivial incidents by letter or telegram as necessity dictates. The Twentieth Century trusts to the zeal, intelligence, activity and tact of its correspondent, who can draw on its bankers to any extent he may deem necessary.”

It was the very morning I had arrived at Tiflis with the intention of spending three weeks there in a visit to the Georgian provinces for the benefit of my newspaper, and also, I hoped, for that of its readers.

Here was the unexpected, indeed; the uncertainty of a special correspondent’s life.

At this time the Russian railways had been connected with the line between Poti, Tiflis and Baku. After a long and interesting run through the Southern Russian provinces I had crossed the Caucasus, and imagined I was to have a little rest in the capital of Transcaucasia. And here was the imperious administration of the Twentieth Century giving me only half a day’s halt in this town! I had hardly arrived before I was obliged to be off again without unstrapping my portmanteau! But what would you have? We must bow to the exigencies of special correspondence and the modern interview!

But all the same I had been carefully studying this Transcaucasian district, and was well provided with geographic and ethnologic memoranda. Perhaps it may be as well for you to know that the fur cap, in the shape of a turban, which forms the headgear of the mountaineers and cossacks is called a papakha, that the overcoat gathered in at the waist, over which the cartridge belt is hung, is called a tcherkeska by some and bechmet by others! Be prepared to assert that the Georgians and Armenians wear a sugar-loaf hat, that the merchants wear a touloupa, a sort of sheepskin cape, that the Kurd and Parsee still wear the burka, a cloak in a material something like plush which is always waterproofed.

And of the headgear of the Georgian ladies, the tassakravi, composed of a light ribbon, a woolen veil, or piece of muslin round such lovely faces; and their gowns of startling colors, with the wide open sleeves, their underskirts fitted to the figure, their winter cloak of velvet, trimmed with fur and silver gimp, their summer mantle of white cotton, the tchadre, which they tie tight on the neck—all those fashions in fact so carefully entered in my notebook, what shall I say of them?

Learn, then, that their national orchestras are composed of zournas, which are shrill flutes; salamouris, which are squeaky clarinets; mandolines, with copper strings, twanged with a feather; tchianouris, violins, which are played upright; dimplipitos, a kind of cymbals which rattle like hail on a window pane.

Know that the schaska is a sword hung from a bandolier trimmed with studs and silver embroidery, that the kindjall or kandijar is a dagger worn in the belt, that the armament of the soldiers of the Caucasus is completed by a long Damascus gun ornamented with bands of chiseled metal.

Know that the tarantass is a sort of berline hung on five pieces of rather elastic wood between wheels placed rather wide apart and of moderate height; that this carriage is driven by a yemtchik, on the front seat, who has three horses, to whom is added a postilion, the falétre, when it is necessary to hire a fourth horse from the smatritel, who is the postmaster on the Caucasian roads.

Know, then, that the verst is two-thirds of a mile, that the different nomadic people of the governments of Transcaucasia are composed of Kalmucks, descendants of the Eleuthes, fifteen thousand, Kirghizes of Mussulman origin eight thousand, Koundrof Tartars eleven hundred, Sartof Tartars a hundred and twelve, Nogais eight thousand five hundred, Turkomans nearly four thousand.

And thus, after having so minutely absorbed my Georgia, here was this ukase obliging me to abandon it! And I should not even have time to visit Mount Ararat or publish my impressions of a journey in Transcaucasia, losing a thousand lines of copy at the least, and for which I had at my disposal the 32,000 words of my language actually recognized by the French Academy.

It was hard, but there was no way out of it. And to begin with, at what o’clock did the train for Tiflis start from the Caspian?

The station at Tiflis is the junction of three lines of railway: the western line ending at Poti on the Black Sea, where the passengers land coming from Europe, the eastern line which ends at Baku, where the passengers embark to cross the Caspian, and the line which the Russians have just made for a length of about a hundred miles between Ciscaucasia and Transcaucasia, from Vladikarkaz to Tiflis, crossing the Arkhot range at a height of four thousand five hundred feet, and which connects the Georgian capital with the railways of Southern Russia.

I went to the railway station at a run, and rushed into the departure office.

“When is there a train for Baku?” I asked.

“You are going to Baku?” answered the clerk.

And from his trapdoor he gave me one of those looks more military than civil, which are invariably found under the peak of a Muscovite cap.

“I think so,” said I, perhaps a little sharply, “that is, if it is not forbidden to go to Baku.”

“No,” he replied, dryly, “that is, if you are provided with a proper passport.”

“I will have a proper passport,” I replied to this ferocious functionary, who, like all the others in Holy Russia, seemed to me an intensified gendarme.

Then I again asked what time the train left for Baku.

“Six o’clock tonight.”

“And when does it get there?”

“Seven o’clock in the morning.”

“Is that in time to catch the boat for Uzun Ada?”

“In time.”

And the man at the trapdoor replied to my salute by a salute of mechanical precision.

The question of passport did not trouble me. The French consul would know how to give me all the references required by the Russian administration.

Six o’clock tonight, and it is already nine o’clock in the morning! Bah! When certain guide books tell you how to explore Paris in two days, Rome in three days, and London in four days, it would be rather curious if I could not do Tiflis in a half day. Either one is a correspondent or one is not!