At Houidouk, on the mouth of the Kouma, we found our escort, which had been waiting two days for us. Every thing was ready for our departure, but a violent fall of rain detained us three mortal days in the most detestable cabin we had yet entered. Two rooms, one for travellers, and the other for the master of the station and his family, composed the whole dwelling. We installed ourselves as well as we could in the former, the whole furniture of which consisted of a long table and two benches. The walls of this wretched hole were made of ill-jointed boards, that gave admission to the wind and the rain, and to add to our discomfort, it served as an ante-chamber to the other room, and was thus common to the whole household. Hens, children, and the master of the house, were perpetually passing through it, and left us not a moment's rest. Our situation was intolerable; the violence of the tempest increased at such a rate, that we knew not how the miserable wooden fabric could stand against it. All the elements seemed confounded together; there was no distinguishing earth or sky; but the terrible disorder of nature appeared to me more tolerable than the scene within doors. Outside there was at least something for the imagination; the mind was exalted in contemplating the swelling uproar that threatened a renewal of chaos; but the scene within was enough to drive us to despair--children fighting and screaming, fowls fluttering and perching on the table and benches, squalor all around us, and a frowsy atmosphere! To complete our distress, some Armenian merchants on their way to the fair of Tiflis, finding it impossible to continue their journey, came to share with us the den in which we were already so uncomfortable.
But this new incident was a sort of lesson in philosophy for us. When we saw these men conversing quietly as they smoked their tchibouks, without the least show of impatience, and talking of the heavy losses the unseasonable weather might occasion them, as calmly as if their own interests were not concerned, we could not help envying the stoic resignation of which the men of the East alone possess the secret. There is nothing like their fatalism for enabling one to take all things as they come; is not that the acme of human wisdom?
Our escort passed the three days of this deluge in a corner of the shed adjoining the house. Wrapped up in their sheep-skins, those iron men slept as quietly through wind and rain as if they had been in a snug room. One must have lived among the Russians to have any idea of the apathy with which they bear all kinds of privations. Their bodies, inured to the rigours of their climate, to the coarsest food, and most Spartan habits, grow so hardened, that what would be mortal to others makes no injurious impression on them.
At last the rain ceased towards the end of the third day. A west wind followed it, and dispersed the dark threatening clouds that had so long obscured the sky. Though the weather seemed still unsettled, we determined to make for the Caspian, which lay but thirty versts from us. My husband's anxiety to commence his surveying operations, and our eagerness to quit our detestable abode, gave us courage to risk the chance of another storm in the open steppe.
But a very unexpected incident threw the station into confusion just as we were departing, and delayed us some hours longer. A Kalmuck Cossack, mounted on a camel, arrived in great haste and informed us that the Armenian merchants, who had started the day before, had been attacked some distance from the station by a band of Kalmucks and plundered of the greater part of their merchandise.
Our Cossack officer, after listening with great indignation to this story, asked permission of my husband to pursue the robbers. The whole escort set off with him at a hard gallop, but the pursuit was ineffectual. The robbers, having had some hours' start, had already reached the sedges of the Caspian. In consequence of this delay it was the afternoon before we could make a start, and even then we had great difficulty in getting away, for the terrified postmaster entreated us not to forsake him at a moment so critical. His dismay, for which indeed there was little reason, almost infected me too, and it was not without some apprehension of disaster that I left the station.