There are in nature two opposite types, beauty and ugliness; the elements of which vary infinitely, though imagination always erroneously supposes it can fix their boundaries. How often are we fully persuaded we can never meet again an object so beautiful as that before us; yet no sooner have we lavished all our enthusiasm upon it, than a more charming face, a sublimer landscape, or a more graceful form makes us forget what we had regarded as the model of perfection; and itself is soon, in turn, dethroned by other objects which we declare superior to all our former idols. Just so it is with ugliness. It matters not that we have before us the lowest grade we believe it can attain, we have but to turn our heads another way to be amazed and confounded by new discoveries revealing to us the inexhaustible combinations of nature. These reflections occurred to me more and more strongly as we approached Koumskaia. The aridity of the steppes round Odessa, the wilderness of the Volga, the parched and dismal soil of the environs of Astrakhan, in a word all we had heretofore seen that was least engaging, seemed lovely in comparison with what met our view on the banks of the Caspian.
A grey, sickly sky, crossed from time to time by heavy black clouds, threw an indescribably sad and revolting hue over the lonely, sandy plain, and low, broken shore. The same funereal pall seemed to hang over the wooden houses, the gangs of Turkmans and Kalmucks loading their carts with salt, and the camels that roamed along the shore mingling their dismal cries with the sound of the waves.
Yet hideous as it seemed to us, this part of the coast is not unimportant in a commercial point of view. It supplies large quantities of salt, and has a port where vessels unload their cargoes of corn for the army of the Caucasus. We counted at least a score of vessels which had been driven in there by the late storm.
The population of Koumskaia consists of a Russian functionary, a Cossack post, and a few Kalmuck families, that appear very miserable. The employe gave us the use of his house; that is to say, of two dilapidated rooms without glass windows or furniture. One can scarcely conceive how the mind can have strength to endure so very wretched an existence. An unwholesome climate, brackish water, excessive heat in summer, rigorous cold in winter, huts and kibitkas buried in the sand, the Caspian Sea with its squalls and tempests--all these things combine to make this region the most horrible abode imaginable. The major, who welcomed us to Koumskaia, had a slow fever, which he owed still less perhaps to the insalubrity of the climate than to the hardships and mortal ennui he had endured for eighteen months. His wife, more stout-hearted, and amused in some degree by her household occupations, had still preserved a certain cheerfulness, which was no less than heroic in her situation. Their exile was to last in all two years. The government, perceiving that many employes died in Koumskaia, has limited the time of service there to that short period, and as some compensation for what those suffer who are sent thither, their two years are counted as four of ordinary service.
The weather had been louring since we left Houidouk, and we had a regular hurricane the evening we reached the Caspian. It lasted four-and-twenty hours, and such was the noise of the wind and waves, that we could hardly hear each other speak in our room. We saw two or three kibitkas blown away into the sea, and we expected every moment to share the same fate, for our frail tenement creaked like the cabin of a ship; the boarded window let in such a current of air, as soon drove into the room all the garments with which we strove to stop the chinks.
But the saddest chapter of our history remains to be narrated. As soon as our servant had prepared the samovar, and lighted the candles, a multitude of black creatures crept out of the chinks of the walls and ceilings, and dropped from all sides like a living rain. Imagine our consternation at the sight of that legion of black demons swarming around us, and leaving us no alternative but to put out the candles that attracted them. These insects, called in the country tarakans, though disgusting in appearance, are very inoffensive, and seldom climb on the person; but they are fond of light and heat, and hence they are a grievous nuisance in these regions, where their number is prodigious. I had already seen them in some post-houses, but in small numbers, and though I had always disliked them, I had never been so horrified by them as in the house of the major, where they kept me awake all night.
Next morning, the wind having fallen somewhat, we went, in spite of the rain, to gather shells on the shore. The vessels in the harbour all showed signs of having suffered severely by the storm. The waters of the Caspian had a livid, muddy colour I never observed in any other sea in the most boisterous weather.
When we returned to our cabin, the Cossack officer presented to us a Tatar, who asserted he had found gold in a spot forty versts from Koumskaia. Having heard of our arrival, he had walked all that horrible night to ask my husband to accompany him to the spot where he had made the discovery. But in spite of the gold ear and finger-rings he exhibited as tokens of his veracity, my husband was not tempted to lose four or five days in a search that would have led to nothing, to judge from the nature of the ground in which the Tatar reported that the precious ore was to be found.