334 SHORES OF THE CASPIAN. 



wanting to get my stockinged feet wet in the mud, I 

 was curling myself up again with a sulky injunc- 

 tion to the men to let the horse get up and be 

 hanged to him, when, to my horror, I felt the cart 

 tilting over in a way that threatened soon to reverse 

 our relative positions. In a moment I was wide 

 awake. The cart was already so far over that I 

 was obliged to jump the way it was falling, and my 

 next sensation was that of travelling through space, 

 such as one sometimes experiences in a dream. 

 This came to an end with a jerk, and my next 

 recollection is of being dug out of the mud at the 

 bottom of a considerable precipice from among the 

 debris of boxes, broken cart and horses, which had 

 accompanied me in my fall. By the greatest good 

 luck nothing had struck me, though the heavy 

 built cart had fallen so close as to pin down the 

 corner of my bourka, which was still on my 

 shoulders. Luckily, too, only one of the horses 

 was so far damaged as to be unable to proceed. 

 There was no village within reach. To walk on to 

 Akstapha in the then state of the ro'ads and weather 

 would have been a wearisome trudge, even if we 

 could have persuaded the driver to leave his horses 

 and guide us, or ourselves to leave our belongings 

 in his charge, which we could not do. 



Here, then, I had a splendid opportunity of 

 witnessing the really wonderful handiness of Rus- 

 sian peasants in extremities. Thanks to our love 



