In
comparison with what my imagination can give me, all these streams
and rocks are trash, and nothing else."

The carriages now were by the banks of the stream. The high mountain
banks gradually grew closer, the valley shrank together and ended
in a gorge; the rocky mountain round which they were driving had
been piled together by nature out of huge rocks, pressing upon each
other with such terrible weight, that Samoylenko could not help
gasping every time he looked at them. The dark and beautiful mountain
was cleft in places by narrow fissures and gorges from which came
a breath of dewy moisture and mystery; through the gorges could be
seen other mountains, brown, pink, lilac, smoky, or bathed in vivid
sunlight. From time to time as they passed a gorge they caught the
sound of water falling from the heights and splashing on the stones.

"Ach, the damned mountains!" sighed Laevsky. "How sick I am of
them!"

At the place where the Black River falls into the Yellow, and the
water black as ink stains the yellow and struggles with it, stood
the Tatar Kerbalay's _duhan_, with the Russian flag on the roof and
with an inscription written in chalk: "The Pleasant _duhan_." Near
it was a little garden, enclosed in a hurdle fence, with tables and
chairs set out in it, and in the midst of a thicket of wretched
thornbushes stood a single solitary cypress, dark and beautiful.

Kerbalay, a nimble little Tatar in a blue shirt and a white apron,
was standing in the road, and, holding his stomach, he bowed low
to welcome the carriages, and smiled, showing his glistening white
teeth.

"Good-evening, Kerbalay," shouted Samoylenko. "We are driving on a
little further, and you take along the samovar and chairs! Look
sharp!"

Kerbalay nodded his shaven head and muttered something, and only
those sitting in the last carriage could hear: "We've got trout,
your Excellency."

"Bring them, bring them!" said Von Koren.

Five hundred paces from the _duhan_ the carriages stopped. Samoylenko
selected a small meadow round which there were scattered stones
convenient for sitting on, and a fallen tree blown down by the storm
with roots overgrown by moss and dry yellow needles. Here there was
a fragile wooden bridge over the stream, and just opposite on the
other bank there was a little barn for drying maize, standing on
four low piles, and looking like the hut on hen's legs in the fairy
tale; a little ladder sloped from its door.

The fir