244 EN ROUTE FOR DAGHESTAN. 



fairly scared out of their wits, the little band of 

 starlings swept round this desert throne, and 

 finally settled in a black throng all round the 

 mighty bird himself. To our astonishment he 

 took no notice, never moving a feather ; and there 

 we left them, the hawks baffled and afraid to ap- 

 proach the starlings' sanctuary, and the weary 

 birds too tired to try again for their reed-bed, too 

 scared to mind the monarch in their midst. 



At one station we met a party of peasants who 

 had been carrying soldiers' kits from one village 

 to another, and on their return had been stopped, 

 beaten, and robbed of their wretched little earnings 

 by highwaymen. At another we met an Armenian 

 merchant with a ' tchapar,' or armed courier, who 

 was so abominably insolent to me that I was 

 obliged to give him an excessively rough shaking, 

 which cowed him considerably ; and on the appear- 

 ance of my servant, who explained to the post- 

 master who I was, the fellow became as servile as, 

 owing to my old coat, he had previously been inso- 

 lent. Here, too, we heard of highwaymen, the 

 post-station having been robbed of some horses, 

 which the postmaster had been lucky enough to 

 recover. The thieves had been caught, but I was 

 assured that would matter little to them, as a 

 trifling tip would set matters right with the local 

 authorities, and they would soon be in a fair way 

 to recoup themselves for their losses. 



