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We had to go down the Volga to the Nine Feet Station below Astrakhan, embark there on the Caspian Sea, and cross over either to Baku, whence we could go by post round the mountain-chain at its southern extremity as far as Tiflis; or land at Petrofsk, and travel along the chain to Vladikavkas and the good military road across the chain to Tiflis. We gave our preference to the last-named route.
Andrew Urquhart, a Scotch gentleman, established there with a factory and hydraulic presses for the liquorice-root industry, and from there I entered into telegraphic communication with Tiflis to ascertain if I could get a carriage to Vladikavkas, so as to join the railway and proceed home through Russia.
A great petroleum field is now being developed near Grosnoje, a station on the Petrovsk Vladikavkas railway, north of the main Caucasus range; and an English company has had the good fortune, after venturing much, to find the fountain for which they and others have long looked.
A traveller from the north, bound to the same goal, can take the train at Moscow, and come down by rail, via Rostov-on-the-Don, all the way to Vladikavkas, a distance of 1,803 versts; and about 200 additional versts, by post, over a good military road, and across the main Caucasian chain, will bring him from Vladikavkas to Tiflis. But we had descended the Volga, and were now near its mouth.
Just before we reached Vladikavkas we passed through a Circassian village, where we obtained work in some maize fields. The Circassians spoke very little Russian, and as they constantly laughed at us, and scolded us in their own language, we resolved to leave the village two days after our arrival; their increasing enmity had begun to alarm us.
Cazalet came to see us off at the station, and we began our long journey to Tiflis, but we changed our minds, and took the local train from to Vladikavkas, where we stayed one night rather enjoyably at a smelly hotel, and the following day we got a motor-car and started at 7 a.m. for the pass. The drive did us all good. The great snow peaks were so unlike Petrograd and gossip!
The first service of some 20,000 of those new warrior settlers consisted in barring all egress from the mountains, by means of a "first fortified line" of stations that extended to Vladikavkas, where they united with the descendants of the Grebenski Cossacks, with whom they are not to be confounded.
At length we arrive at Vladikavkas, the end of the railway, and begin our journey of 130 miles over the mountains. My travelling companions hired a carriage, and at every stage we had to change horses. I sat on the box, and at the turns I had to hold on lest I should be thrown off down into the abyss at the side of the road.
There was such a number of passengers detained at Tiflis, en route to Batoum, and all anxious to go to Vladikavkas by road, that I found I should have to wait long for my turn. Accordingly, after six days' stay with my hospitable friend, I went back to Baku and took steamer to Petrovsk, whence I travelled by rail to Moscow and St. Petersburg on my way to England viâ Berlin.
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