The appearance of our caravan was curious and grotesque. Our britchka was drawn by three camels, taken in tow by a man on foot, and several other animals of the same species, besides sumpter-horses, were mounted by Kalmucks and Cossacks. Our escort followed, and all the men composing it, armed with sabres, guns, and pistols, looked martial enough to scare away the most daring thieves. The leader of the troop, the Tatar prince, rode with his falcon on his fist, every now and then showing off his skill in horsemanship and venery. Thinking no more of the morning alarm, I gave myself up to the liveliest anticipations of the extraordinary things which this excursion promised us. At last I was about to behold that Caspian Sea which, ever since men have been engaged with geographical questions, has been the object of their researches and conjectures. Besides, it had a much more potent interest for us, for it was in a manner the sole aim and end of our journey; it was to solve an immemorial question concerning it, that we had abandoned the comforts of civilised life, and encountered so many annoyances and privations. Notwithstanding my ignorance of science, I felt that in sharing my husband's toils, I was in some sort a partner in his learned researches, and that I too, like him, had my claims upon the Caspian. I was, therefore, impatient to see it; but our camels, who had no such motives for hurrying themselves, crawled along at a provokingly slow rate. They did not at all correspond with what we had read of the ships of the desert, creatures insensible to hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and as obedient to the will of man as the dry leaf is to the breath of the wind. In spite of a thick cord passed through one of their nostrils, which caused them sharp pain whenever they were unruly, our camels scarcely marched more than two hours at a stretch without lying down. The men had to battle with them continually to rouse them from their torpor, or hinder them from biting one another. Whenever one of the drivers pulled the halter of his camel roughly, we heard loud cries, the more hideous from their resemblance to the human voice. In short our camels behaved so badly during this short trip, as largely to abate the good opinion of their species, which we had conceived in reading the more poetical than true descriptions of our great naturalist.
At some distance from Houidouk we met two camps of Kalmucks, improperly called Christians. These tribes are reputed to be addicted to theft, and are generally despised by the other Kalmucks. We will speak of them again in another place. This whole region, as far as the Caspian, is extremely arid, with only here and there a few pools of brackish water, the edges of which swarm with countless birds, the most remarkable of which are the white herons, whose plumage forms such beautiful aigrettes. Unfortunately, these birds are so wary, that our companion could not take one of them, notwithstanding all his address and the power of his falcon.
A ludicrous misadventure that befel our dragoman, Anthony, amused us a good deal. Curiosity prompting him to ride a camel, he asked one of the Kalmucks to lend him his beast, and the request being complied with, he bestrode the saddle, pleased with the novelty of the experiment, and quite at a loss to know why the Cossacks and camel-drivers laughed among themselves as he mounted. But as soon as the beast began to move, a change came over his face, and he speedily began to bawl out for help. The fact is, one must be almost a Kalmuck to be able to endure the trotting of a camel; the shaking is so violent as to amount to downright torture for those who are not accustomed to it. The unlucky Anthony, left in the rear of the party, strove in vain to come up with us, and was obliged, in spite of himself, to continue his ride to the Caspian, where we arrived two hours before him. I never saw a man so cut up. He groaned so piteously when he was lifted down, that we began to be really alarmed for him.