MORE TUR HUNTING 203 



creatures — we trekked out of grim Daghestan and so 

 to the big military cantonment of Lagodekki, a place 

 of barracks and rampant militarism. Here we lunched 

 in the quaintest half-under-the-street caravanserai of 

 Ali's choosing, on pilav, rice with raisins and other 

 fruits, sugared cucumbers, and caviare, which had seen 

 much better days. 



The great fishing centre for the ubiquitous caviare is 

 Boji Pramysl, on the Caspian at the mouth of the Kura, 

 and all along the coast to the Russian fishing station 

 near Ghazian. 



Lagodekki is amazingly civilized. That is why we 

 resisted the hospitable blandishments of our Russian 

 friends. Our clothes spoke of savagery. 



At night we outspanned in a little place fringing 

 the steppe country, a well-tilled village inhabited by 

 numerous Molokani, or Milk people, so called because 

 they drink milk on fast days. This sect is yet another 

 variety of Russian dissenters, or, as the Muscovite 

 always terms them, heretics. 



If you are lucky enough to be born into a dis- 

 senting Russian family, you are, subject to the most 

 outrageous restrictions, permitted to dissent in peace 

 for the rest of your life, but if you secede from the 

 Orthodox Church once you have been in the grip of its 

 monopolistic arms, woe betide you ! To dissent from 

 anything means that a man is beginning to think for 

 himself, and the Russian Church, with its intolerant, 

 warping influences, does not encourage thinkers of any 

 kind. 



The difference between all the dissenters, freed men, 



