By Clive Phillipps-Wolley

I. INTRODUCTORY

Although the Caucasus is within a week’s journey of Charing Cross, to the average Englishman it is as little known as Alaska. As a hunting ground for big game it is infinitely less known than Central Africa. The men who have shot in Africa and written of their sport in that country may be counted by the score; but, as far as I know, up to the present moment no book has been written (except my own)[2] upon the sport of the Caucasus, and in this chapter I am obliged to rely upon my own experience and some rough notes sent me by Mr. St. George Littledale. That being so, it may well be that much has been omitted which may hereafter become common knowledge; I can only affirm that the statements made are trustworthy, as being the outcome of actual personal experience, unvarnished and undiluted.

To me the Caucasus is an enchanted land. The spell of its flower-clad steppes, of its dense dreamy forests, of its giant wall of snow peaks, fell upon me whilst I was still a boy, and will be with me all my life through. It was the first country in which I ever hunted, and it may be that I am prejudiced in its favour on that account, or it may be that I am right, that there is no country under heaven so beautiful and none in which the witchery of sport is so strong. Let my confession of prejudice be taken into consideration by all who read this chapter, and with it the verdict of my quondam companion in SvÂnetia: ‘The Caucasus is an accursed country to hunt in, a country of ceaseless climbing and chronic starvation, in which the sport is not nearly worth the candle.’ This was the honest conviction of one who is no mean sportsman, and who since his Caucasian experiences has done exceptionally well in India.

But men define sport differently. To those whose ambition it is to kill really wild game in a wild and savage country in which they will get but little help from any but their own right hands, to them I say, try the high solitudes round Elbruz and the ironstone ridges of SvÂnetia.

The best time for sport in the mountains is the end of June, July, August, and the first week in September, after which another month may be spent profitably hunting bear and boar in the chestnut forests on the Black Sea; for aurochs the hunter should be in the sylvan labyrinths at the head of the Kuban in August.

Taking London as your point of departure, you can reach the Caucasus by four different routes: either by Paris, Marseilles, and thence by one of the boats of the Messageries Maritimes (running once a fortnight) vi Constantinople to Batoum; or by Calais, Cologne, Vienna and Odessa, to Batoum; or by the Oriental Express vi Paris and Constantinople; or by Wilson’s line of boats from Hull to St. Petersburg, and thence by rail vi Moscow and Voroneze to Vladikavkaz.

The first route takes about eleven days, and costs about 16l. 16s.; the second takes (roughly) nine days, and costs about 20l. The third route is, I believe, the quickest and most expensive, but I have not tried it.

My own favourite route is the fourth, by adopting which you gain the advantage of a quiet and untroubled journey, with few vexatious changes, only one custom-house (and that with a consul-general at hand to help you through), and the possibility of alighting from the train within a drive of the outskirts of your hunting ground. The cost of the journey from London to Vladikavkaz by this route is about (including food, &c.) 20l., or as much more as you like to make it. From St. Petersburg to the Don the level lands of Russia glide by your carriage window unbroken by a single hill—I had almost said by a single tree. After Voroneze you enter the steppe country proper, a sea of flowers in spring, a perfect hell of dust, or mud, or wind, for all the rest of the year. From Voroneze these steppes roll right up to the foot of the main chain of the Caucasus, and standing on the plains near Naltchik you may see at a coup d’oeil some hundreds of versts of snow-capped mountains rising like a sheer wall drawn from the north-east to the south-west of the peninsula. These snow-capped mountains and the ‘black hills’ (as the natives call the densely wooded foot-hills) constitute the principal game preserve of the country, and resemble, in their appearance and in the varieties of game with which they abound, the hill country of India, to such an extent that an old friend of mine, whose happiest days had been spent in shikar in the Himalayas, used to allege that all the game beasts found in the Caucasus were mere varieties of the Indian fauna.

Before dealing with the different districts and the game found in each, a few general hints to the traveller may not come amiss.

The Caucasus is the arena of the hardest fight Russia ever fought, and, having partially depopulated the country, she still holds it by force of arms. That being so, the more unpretentious a traveller is, the better is his chance of passing unquestioned about the country. Strong introductions from home and from the Foreign Office are more likely to hamper than to help, and if you want leave to go to any little travelled district, the best way is to take it. If you ask for it you are likely to be refused, but if you go in quietly, with a small outfit, and devote yourself exclusively to hunting, no one is likely to interfere with you.

The best outfit in the Caucasus is that which comes nearest to the hunter’s beau idÉal, i.e. as much as he can carry himself. This of course, like all ideals, is unattainable, but you may come very close to it; and as there are many places in which, when in pursuit of mountain game, you cannot use horses, your baggage must be such as one, or at most two, men can pack in a bad place. Now a man should pack 50 lbs., and if your means are unlimited, your baggage need only be limited by the number of men you can persuade to accompany you; but the more men you have with you the less work you will get done per man, as the chief luxury of the Caucasian is gossip, and with a crowd of followers the temptation to loaf and talk would prove irresistible.

Two men, one as a guide and gillie, and one to leave in camp (both of them taking their share of packing whenever camp is moved), should be sufficient for anyone. Of course, where it is practicable, ponies should be used, as with them a greater weight can be packed, and packed too more expeditiously, than with men; and in most cases it will be found easy enough to take pack ponies to establish your main camp, proceeding from that on foot for short expeditions of three or four days. It is as well to remember that 200 lbs. is a good load for a pony in rough country, more, probably, than he could carry on most of the Caucasian trails, and from 50 lbs. to 60 lbs. quite enough for a man, although I have known one of my own men carry nearly double that weight during an ordinary day’s tramp, arriving at camp towards sundown brimful of spirits and devilment. I remember that when his load was off he stood on his head, and ‘larked’ about with the other fellows to relieve his exuberance of vitality. A tente d’abri, to weigh about 15 lbs., is the best tent for Caucasian travel, because it is the lightest and handiest to carry. My old tent used to weigh about 20 lbs., and this with an express rifle (about 10 lbs.), cartridges, field glasses, a revolver and a few sundries, used to constitute my own ‘pack.’[3]

When travelling with Caucasian porters and hunters it is as well to treat them as comrades and not as servants. Although they work for hire, they do not understand the relation of master and servant, and, though perfectly ready to help you when you need help, expect you to help yourself when you can, whilst in all matters of food and camp comfort they expect to share and share alike with the head of the expedition. May I digress here for a moment to say that this is one of the most important secrets of travel? Never allow yourself any luxuries in a ‘tight place’ which your men have no share in. If you have only one pipeful of tobacco, when provisions are short, share it with your men, and in the Caucasus at any rate you will not lose your reward. It is a good many years ago now, but the memory of one chilly night among the mountains is with me still, when I woke at 3 a.m. to find myself warm and snug under two extra bourkas (native blankets). The owners of the blankets were squatting on their hams, almost in the fire, and talking to pass the long cold hours until dawn. Having rated them for their folly and made them take back their blankets and turn in, I rolled over and slept again. When I next woke—it was 7 a.m. (shamefully late for camp)—the men were still crouching over the embers, helping to cook breakfast, their bourkas having been replaced upon my shoulders. I had paid those men off the day before this happened, and they left me next morning with a hearty ‘God be with you,’ utterly unconscious that they had done anything more than the proper thing towards their employer and companion who, ‘poor devil, could not sleep unless he was warm, and became ill if he did not get a meal every day in the week.’

A sleeping bag such as Alpine Club men use would be an excellent substitute for blankets, and with that, a pipeful of tobacco, a little bread and bacon and a small flask of whiskey, any reasonably keen and hearty sportsman should be able to hold out for a few nights among the mountain-tops in August. Indeed, if this is too much hardship for the would-be ibex hunter, he had better give up ibex hunting.

In all the best districts for mountain game round Elbruz the traveller will find smoke-blackened lairs amongst the rocks, and round beds amongst the fallen pine needles at the base of some great tree just on the timber limit. In these, for generations, the ibex hunters of SvÂnetia have rested from their labours and waited for the dawn.

As to general camp outfit, any light outfit for a hunter’s camp in a temperate region (e.g. Europe or North America) will suffice; extreme portability being the principal thing to aim at, as the trails are infamously bad in the best game districts.

Eschewing luxuries, let the hunter take with him all the flour he can carry, as round Elbruz and in all the best mountain districts the only flour obtainable is of villainous quality, and the bread made from it will damage the most cast-iron digestion.

As to foot-gear, English hobnailed boots may do excellently well for mountaineers, and may be the best possible things on ice. I would as soon wear rings on my fingers and bells on my toes as attempt to hunt in boots. For still hunting of any kind, whether in the mountains or in the forest, moccasins of some sort are essential, whether they be soled with india-rubber like tennis shoes, or simply soled with a double sole of deer’s hide, like those used in North America. For the ‘tender foot’ old tennis shoes are excellent things, but a pair per diem would not be too much to allow for ibex shooting in the Caucasus, the rocks cutting any foot-gear to pieces in the shortest possible time.

The native moccasin is the best after all; a sock of deer skin or some other soft tanned hide, made large and loose, with a split down the middle of the sole from toe to heel, which is laced up with raw hide laces, the laces running across and across each other thus ××××. The moccasin is stuffed with fine mountain grass, and is then put on damp and tightly laced. By these means a comfortable fit is ensured, the tender hollow beneath the instep is protected from sharp rocks, and a firm grip in slippery places is given by the kind of network made by the laces. In boots a man has no chance of using his toes to cling with; even to bend his foot is beyond his powers, and a boot once worn out cannot be repaired in camp, whereas a moccasin may be patched until none of the original article remains.

A sling for your rifle is a necessity in all mountain shooting; so, too, is an alpenstock, which should never be shod with metal, the ring of which against the rocks would proclaim your approach half a mile away. Choose a good stout pole of some hard wood for yourself; harden it (and especially the point) in the fire, and test it carefully before using it, as it may have to carry your weight in awkward places.

Wages in the Caucasus vary according to the amount of travel in the district. If the sportsman is unfortunate enough to run across a district in which foreign tourists are common, the charges made for men and horses will be excessive, but in remote districts, off the main lines of travel, you could (in 1888) hire a man and his horse for 5s. a day, and a porter to carry your food and blankets in the mountains at 1s. a day.

In 1882 I travelled and shot for three months in the Caucasus with a friend. During the whole of that period I carried the money-bags, and at the end of the trip, I believe that I was able to return a little small change to my companion out of the 100l. with which he had entrusted me, as his share of our joint purse. Out of our 200l.. I paid railway fares, hotel bills, and all camp expenses; and it is only fair to add that when in a town the best room in the best hotel, and its best bottle of wine, was only just good enough for us. Luckily, we spent very little time in towns.

Those days, I am afraid, have already passed away, but two roubles a day should still be ample pay for any of the men who accompany a shooting party, and less than that would probably be taken gratefully. The chief difficulty of the Caucasus as a shooting ground for Englishmen lies in the language of the country, which varies in every district. Either Russian or Georgian would probably be sufficient to carry a man through the whole country between the Black Sea and the Caspian, as he would generally find some one who spoke one or other of these tongues in every village he entered, and even if now and again he came to a hamlet where no one could understand his speech, the ordinary Caucasian is wonderfully apt at the language of signs.

An interpreter can be hired at Tiflis or Kutais, but he will be more trouble than a valet and more fastidious, besides doubling the expense of the expedition and causing constant trouble with your men. There may, of course, be good interpreters; if so, I have been unfortunate in never meeting any. My last word of advice shall be, try to do without them, pick up a little Russian for yourself, and then trust to luck and good temper to pull you through.[4]

II. NORTH-WEST CAUCASUS.

The Caucasus includes not only the great range which gives its name to the isthmus, but also a district as large as France, bounded on the north by Russia, on the east by the Caspian, on the south by Armenia and Persia, and on the west by the Black Sea and the Azov.

In any similar area you would expect to find districts varying considerably in their fauna, but in the Caucasus the districts to the north and south of the chain vary to such an extent, that the naturalist Eichwald speaks of the ‘tall peaks of Caucasus,’ as putting the most distinct limits to the fauna of Asia and Europe.

The northern side of the chain, from what is called the Manitch depression to the foot-hills of the main chain, is simply a continuation of the steppes of Russia, a land without trees, and, until you get near the foot-hills, devoid of all game except feathered game and wolves.

To the north-west of the mountains, the great game district is that which lies along the banks of the Kuban, a river rising in the main chain near Elbruz, and flowing thence due north for a space, after which it turns sharply westward, and flows parallel to the main chain, finally emptying itself into the Black Sea. On its road from Elbruz to the sea it receives the waters of every stream which drains to the north-west of the chain; and it is here, between the Kuban and the mountains, and upon the banks and head waters of the Kuban’s tributaries, that the hunting grounds of Northern Caucasus are to be found.

Going east from Taman along the line of the Kuban, the country is broken up by huge beds of a tall reed called kamish by the natives (Arundo phragmites of the naturalists), which grows to such a height as to hide a man riding through it. In places these reed beds stretch for miles, and through them the Kuban runs, a dull sluggish flood, more like a great canal than a mountain-born river.

Its banks of black mud, however, are interesting enough to the sportsman, written over as they are with the ‘sign’ of the beasts which find safe harbour in the adjoining jungles.

Of these beasts the commonest is the wild boar, an animal which I believe grows to larger proportions, and exists in greater numbers, in the Caucasus than anywhere else on earth. A pair of tusks, the tracings of which are before me now (the originals being in the possession of Colonel Veerubof, Governor of Naltchik), measure round the outside edge 11½ ins. and 11¼ ins. respectively.

Like the European wild boar, the Caucasian beast is of a blackish-grey colour, covered with a long coat of stiff bristles, which he erects along his spine when irritated, making him appear some inches taller than he really is. Professor Radde, of the Tiflis Museum, has been kind enough to supply me with the following particulars. ‘The largest solitary boars,’ he says, ‘measured at the shoulder and measured straight, stand about 105 centimeters, and their total weight not dressed rarely exceeds 15 puds (600 lbs.).’ These are undoubtedly big beasts, but in the chestnut forests of Circassia, and in the reed beds of the Kuban, there are such rich feeding grounds that in them even a 600-lb. boar seems possible. In India, I suppose, to shoot a boar is as vile a crime as vulpecide in Leicestershire, but, except on the plains of Kabardah, there is no place in the Caucasus where the boar could be hunted on horseback, and even there the hunting would be but a very short scurry at early dawn from the maize fields to the foot-hills, the shelter of which once gained, the quarry would be absolutely safe from any mounted enemy.

Enormous as their numbers are, wild boars would be even more numerous between the Black Sea and the Caspian, were it not for their nocturnal raids on the maize fields of the natives, most of whom, being Mahommedans, only hunt the marauders in self-defence, not deigning to so much as touch them when dead. The Cossacks, of course, have no such scruples about pork, and the principal object left in life to the old scouts (‘plastouns’), who were wont to keep the Kuban red with Tcherkess blood, is the pursuit of the boar.

In the great reed beds in which they used to lurk waiting until the men of some native ‘aoul’ went out to harvest, that they might give the village to sword and flame, these same scouts wander to-day, grey as the boars they hunt, rough, savage, and uncouth as their quarry, wounded probably in a score of places, but silent-footed, enduring, and as well acquainted with every game path in the reeds as the very beasts which made them. These are the men to obtain for guides if you can get them, but beware of paying them a single kopeck as long as there is a cabak (whisky shop) within a day’s march of you. As a rule the plastoun shoots his game at night, waiting by some wallow or by the side of some swine path leading to water or fruit trees, until he hears a rustling among the reeds, sounding strangely loud in the moonlit August night, and growing nearer and nearer until between the watcher and the skyline comes a great dark bulk. Round the muzzle of his old musket the plastoun ties a white string with a large knot in it, where the foresight should be, and aiming low into the middle of the dark mass, pulls his trigger when the boar is almost on the muzzle of his rifle. My first experience of boar shooting was connected with such a shot as this; but on that occasion the victory rested with the boar. Through a long summer night I waited for my gillie to come back from his vigil by the Kuban, and at dawn he came, four men carrying him. He had wounded the old grey beast on a narrow path through the kamish, and had lain still while the boar gnashed his teeth and glared about for his foe. But the tall reeds hid the hunter, and the boar turning retraced his steps, leaving a broad blood trail as he went. Until the grey dawn the Tcherkess waited, and then, confident that he would find his enemy cold and stiff not far away, he got up and followed the tracks. Before he had gone far, there was a crash among the reeds behind him, followed by a fierce rush along the trail, and as he turned to face his foe, the keen white tusks ripped him from knee to thigh-joint and across and across his stomach, until his bowels rushed out and he lay across the pathway nearer death than the boar.

When his companions found him he had still life enough left to tell the story, and an examination of the scene of the encounter proved the extraordinary cunning of the wounded boar, who, failing to ‘locate’ his enemy when first struck, had retraced his own steps along the trail, had entered the reeds at a point higher up and on the opposite side to that from which the shot had come, and, returning by a line parallel to the trail, had lain in hiding opposite to the ambush of the hunter.

Only once in eighteen years’ wanderings have I seen anything to match this in cunning, and as it was in the same neighbourhood, I may be allowed to allude to it here.

In the Red Forest, near Ekaterinodar, the wood is cut up into square versts, divided by rides. The snow had fallen, and in one of these squares old Colonel Rubashevsky, the forester, showed me where a pack of wolves had surrounded a small band of roe deer, having taken up positions along the four sides of the square, from which, on some preconcerted signal, they appeared to have converged simultaneously upon the centre where the deer lay. They had surprised in this manner four or five roe deer, whose remains we found. But to return to the boar. If anyone should care to hunt this beast specially, the best plan to ensure success is to sit up for him at night when the pears round some Cossack settlement are fresh fallen, or else to hunt him with a small pack of hounds. Half a dozen curs will suffice, and with these, in the chestnut forests on the Black Sea, or in the lovely pheasant-haunted woods near Lenkoran, very good sport may be obtained, for not only will the boar, shifting rapidly from holt to holt in an almost impervious tangle of thorns, tax the endurance of the hunter to the utmost, but should that hunter be tempted to take a snap shot at the black quarters and crisply curling tail of which he gets a glimpse as it vanishes into dense covert, it is a thousand to ten that the next thing which he sees will be the other end of the gallant beast coming straight for him at something less than a hundred miles an hour. There is no beast alive for whose uncalculating courage I have so much admiration as I have for the boar’s. I have seen him scatter a pack of hounds nearly as big as mastiffs (they were mongrel harlequins) and go straight for the hunter. I have seen a sow with her back broken trying to worry with her teeth a hound nearly as big as herself, and fighting till death stiffened her muscles, and I have also seen an old boar, with a bullet in his neck, trying for my wind like a pointer trying for birds, and as angry as a drunken Irishman who can find no one to fight with. Luckily, he gave me a broadside shot at him before he had discovered my whereabouts.

As to a locality suited for hunting boar, it is hard to choose in the Caucasus. Wild swine swarm on the coast of the Caspian; they are the road-makers and chief denizens of the kamish jungles on the Kuban; they abound in all the scrub oak districts among the foot-hills, but perhaps they are most numerous where Circe tended her herds of old, on the wooded slopes near the Phasis, between Sukhoum and Poti. Like most beasts, they are more or less nocturnal in their habits, coming out to feed on the peasants’ crops, wild fruit, oak-mast, chestnuts, or the roots of the common bracken at dusk, and retiring during the day to the densest thorn thickets, where neither sun nor man can molest them, and where the thick black mud is most moist and dank.

A smooth-bore (No. 12), with a round bullet in it, is the handiest weapon for shooting wild boar over hounds, as with it you can make better practice snap shooting in the dense jungle than you could possibly hope to make with a rifle.[5]

But the kamish beds and the foot-hills hold nobler beasts of chase even than the wild boar. Besides the tracks of the roe and the wild swine, the hunter’s eye will be gladdened now and again by the big track of the ollÈn, although the proper habitat of this noble beast is in the foot-hills and the lower ridges of the main chain.

The ollÈn is the red deer of the Caucasus, and is found from the Red Forest (‘Krasnoe Lais’), near Ekaterinodar on the Kuban, to the snows on the mountains of Daghestan. Naturalists may be able to detect some points of difference between this deer and the red deer of Europe and the wapiti of the New World. To the ordinary hunter he is the same beast, only that in size he more nearly resembles the great stag of America than our Scotch red deer.

Mr. St. George Littledale puts the ollÈn midway in size between the bara singh of Cashmere and the wapiti, whilst Dr. Radde, curator of the Tiflis Museum, maintains that the quality of their food makes the only difference (a difference merely of size) between the wapiti, bara singh, ollÈn and red deer. When I hunted the ollÈn I had no notion that I should ever be called upon to carefully discriminate between them and their kin in other countries, so that I am obliged to rely upon my memory for any points of difference, and memory only suggests that whereas the wapiti rarely (if ever) has ‘cups’ on his antlers, the ollÈn royal has the peculiar cup formation as often as the red deer. Again, the call of the Caucasian stag in the rutting season (September) is similar to that of the Scotch stag, and does not resemble the weird whistle of the wapiti. In size both of body and antler the ollÈn comes very near to the great American stag. The dimensions of four heads, obtained by Mr. Littledale at one stalk, will give a very fair idea of the average size of ollÈn heads, and a glance at the illustration taken from a photograph of this gentleman’s bag for 1887 will convey an idea of the general character of ollÈn heads as well as of the sporting capabilities of the Caucasus. In this photograph, to make it a complete record of his year, Mr. Littledale should have included trophies of boar and bear which also fell to his rifle.

On the day upon which Littledale’s four heads were obtained, this fortunate sportsman, lying on a ridge near the summit of the divide, looked down at one coup d’oeil upon a dozen old male tÛr in an unstalkable position, two bears whose skins (it being in August) were not worth having, a chamois scorned as small game, and the stags which he ultimately bagged.

The following are the dimensions of three of the four heads referred to; the fourth, a 12-point head, had some of the velvet still clinging to it in shreds, and the dimensions I see are not given.

Compare these measurements with those of the biggest wapiti exhibited at the American Exhibition of 1887, belonging to Mr. Frank Cooper, of which the length along the curve was 62½ ins., the girth of the beam 8 ins., and the number of points 16, and it will be seen that, given as large a number of picked Caucasian heads to choose from as there were picked American heads in England in 1887, the probability is that the ollÈn would not be very much surpassed by the wapiti.

Like the latter, the ollÈn is daily growing scarcer. In Mingrelia, before the Russian conquest of that province, this grand red deer abounded, and for some time after that date the Russian peddlers did quite a lively trade in antlers, which they obtained by the cartload for a mere song from the natives. But ill-blood arose between the Russian officers and the native princes, which led to a wholesale slaughter of the ollÈn, so that to-day it is comparatively scarce in its old haunts, although on the head-waters of the Kuban and its tributaries, and in Daghestan (where the natives call it ‘maral’), the ollÈn still exists in sufficient numbers to satisfy any honest hunter. The worst characteristic of the beast is that, as a general rule, he is as fond of timber as a wapiti in Oregon.

The Caucasian ollÈn has his antlers clean from about the middle of August, and his rutting season is (in the mountain regions near Naltchik) about the middle of September.

The only other deer in the Caucasus is the roe (Cervus capreolus), a pretty graceful little beast, which is plentiful on the Black Sea coast, amongst the foot-hills, and forms the principal item in the bag made at the big drives in the Imperial and other preserves of the district. The sharp bark of these little bucks, as they bound away unseen from some thicket above you, or a glimpse of a group of roes standing as still as statues, dappled with the shadows of the foliage above them, are incidents in most days’ still hunting in Circassia.

In the Crimea, round Theodosia and Yalta, men may hunt specially for roe, as there is no larger game (except, they say, a few red deer near Yalta), but in the Caucasus he is only looked upon as useful for filling up the void in one’s larder.

After all, in big game hunting half the charm lies in the mystery of the dark silent forests and the mist-hidden mountain peaks. Once well away from the haunts of men, you are in a land of romance, and if you do not actually believe in the eternal bird who broods upon Elbruz, at the sound of whose voice the forest songsters become dumb, and the beasts tremble in their lairs; if you don’t believe, as the natives do, that the tempests are raised by the flapping of her hoary wings; if you scout the camp-fire stories of the tiny race seen riding at night upon the grey steppe hares; you have still some superstitions of your own—you look for some wonder from every fresh ridge you climb, in every dim forest that you enter. In America it is the hope of a 2,000-lb. grizzly or a 20-in. ram which buoys up the hunter; on the head-waters of the Kuban, on the Zelentchuk, on the Urup, on the Laba, and especially upon the Bielaia river beyond Maikop, in the least known and most unfathomable wooded ravines from which the Kuban draws his waters, it is the rumour of a great beast, called zubre by the natives, which draws the hunter on.

If the zubre differs at all from the aurochs,[6] he is the only beast left, now that Mr. Littledale has slain the Ovis poli, of which no specimen has fallen to an Englishman’s rifle.

That a beast nearly allied to the great bull of Bielowicza does exist, and in considerable numbers, in the districts indicated, there can be no doubt. A fine is imposed by the Russian Government upon anyone who slays a zubre, and this in itself goes a long way to prove the beast’s existence; but there is better evidence than this. In 1879 I knew of two which were killed as they came at night to help themselves in winter to a peasant’s haystack, and in 1866 a young zubre was caught alive on the Zelentchuk and sent to the Zoological Gardens of Moscow, where the savants decided that he was identical with the aurochs of Bielowicza. Unfortunately the chance of adding the head of a zubre to the sportsman’s collection is becoming more and more remote, as, in addition to the law protecting the beast, the districts in which he is most common are now included in a preserve set apart for the sons of the Grand Duke, who formerly ruled at Tiflis.

III. SOUTHERN SLOPES OF THE CAUCASUS

The black hills and the pine forests on the northern side of the chain are the favourite haunts of the red deer and the aurochs, as the reedy bed of the Kuban is the favourite home of the boar and the pheasant; but though bears are found on the northern slopes in fair numbers, occurring sometimes even above the snow-line, the true home of Michael Michaelovitch (as the peasants call him) is on the sunny slopes of the southern side of the chain, as for instance in the great wild fruit districts of Radcha, between the Kodor and the Ingur, or in the sweet-chestnut forests and deserted orchards of Circassia.

The change from one side of the main chain to the other is as marked to-day as ancient legend made it It is a change from a northern land of storm and mist and pine forest to a land of tropical luxuriance, of rank vegetation, of enervating sunshine. Vines and clematis, and that accursed thorny creeper which the Russians call ‘wolfs-tooth,’ form impenetrable veils between the trees, while huge flowering weeds, thickets of rhododendron and azalea, and jungles of the umbelliferous angelica pour down dew upon you in the morning until every rag of your clothing is soaked through, or later on in the day impede your progress and render every footstep noisy.

Through all this wild tangle of forest growth run the brown bears’ paths. Down below are tracts of wild currant bushes; in the gullies made by the mountain brooks are patches of raspberry canes, and leading to them, from the cool lairs higher up (which he affects at noontide), are the broad pathways down which the lazy old gourmand half walks, half toboggans, just as the sun goes down, when you can hardly tell the outline of his clumsy bulk from the other great silent shadows which people the gloaming.

The natives of Radcha and the mountain forests to the north-west of that province, having but little arable land, clear small patches in the forests and grow crops of oats amongst the charred stumps. These are the places in which to wait for Bruin at night, and earn the thanks of your neighbours, as well as the brown coat of the old thief himself. I well remember once in Radcha, when the moonlight was so bright that I could read a letter by it, waiting with my Tcherkess until it grew so late that we gave up all hope of a bear that night. Suddenly a bough snapped in the forest above us, and within ten minutes a great brown shadow was biting at a bullet hole near its shoulder, after which it galloped off into the rim of gloom which hedged in our little oat-field. Within half an hour from that time the field seemed full of bears, four or five of which we could distinguish plainly, their backs moving about slowly just above the level of the crop, and all of them as silent as spectres. We got a bear every night we stopped at that camp, and left feeling sorry for the local agriculturists.

Amongst the chestnuts and old orchards between TuapsÈ and Sukhoum bears are as numerous as in Radcha, and I have frequently seen half a dozen in a day’s still hunting. Being undisturbed, they feed or wander almost all day long through the still, shady forests, and though early morning and evening are the best times to look for them, the man who with moccasined feet will ‘loaf’ slowly upward, standing still from time to time to listen and to watch, will rarely go half a day without a shot, at any rate in late autumn.

Still hunting in October is the best way of obtaining game in the forests by the Black Sea; but later on in December, when the berries are over, the fruit rotten and the chestnuts eaten, the bears ‘house up’ (or hibernate), and the only chance of getting any sport at all is with hounds; even then pigs and roe deer will be your only quarry, and nine times out of ten you will waste your day hunting wild cats or jackals, your pack appearing to prefer these beasts to nobler game.

The common bear of the Caucasus is a small brown bear, like, but not as large as, his cousin of Russia, although I have once killed a young specimen (full grown, but with teeth unworn) as light in colour and as large as the ordinary Russian bear. As a rule the Caucasian bear is an inoffensive brute, but, like all his race, he will every now and then turn upon his assailants. I said above ‘the common bear’ of the Caucasus, and I said it advisedly; for, although I am aware that I may meet with contradiction from high authorities, I am myself firmly persuaded that there is another variety of bear found, for the most part in the highlands of Central Caucasus about Radcha, SvÂnetia, and on the uplands of Ossetia, and the head-waters of the Baksan, Tchegem and Tscherek, tributaries of the Terek.

It may well be that these bears occur elsewhere in the isthmus; but I have never seen them or their skins in the lowlands by the Black Sea. The highland bear of the Caucasus, whose tracks I have found over and over again among the snow and ice far above timber level, is called ‘Mouravitchka’ (the ‘little ant-eater’) by the natives, who allege that he is as savage as the common bear is pacific; that he preys upon the flocks and herds, which the ordinary bear never does; that he is much smaller and more active than his fruit-eating cousin of the lowlands, and that his skin is greyish in colour, with a broad white collar round the neck. The coat altogether reminds one rather of the Syrian bear than of any other variety of the tribe.

Unfortunately, I have never killed one of these bears myself. Every man who has shot bears anywhere knows that it is a good deal a matter of chance whether you meet one or not, and with this particular kind of bear chance has been against me; but I have found their tracks above the snow-line; and I have had exactly the same story repeated to me year after year in different villages by the natives. On the Balkar pastures in 1888 the herdsmen told me that they had suffered very severe loss from this beast’s depredations, and sold me a fresh skin of a bear of this kind which they had slain on one of the high passes between SvÂnetia and Balkaria, after putting eleven bullets into him. I have seen some dozens of skins, among them those of bears in every stage from cubhood to toothless old age, and in all the marking was like the marking of the skin I bought in Balkaria, a coat of silvery grey with a broad pure white collar round the neck.

The coats of bears, I know, vary enormously. I have in my own library at this moment skins of the same variety which differ in hue, from a brown which is nearly black to a pale straw colour; but amongst them all the Caucasian mountain bear’s skin looks distinct. The native hunters all believe as firmly in the existence of two distinct varieties of bear in their mountains as Western trappers believe in the grizzly as distinct from the black bear; and I agree with and believe in the hunters.

In a Western camp the tales told at night are invariably of the ‘grizzly.’ He is the devil of the mountains. In the Caucasus and in Russia it is otherwise.

The Russian peasant makes Mishka (a pet name for the bear) the comic character of his stories. The ‘bogey’ of the woods on the Black Sea coast is the ‘barse,’ of whom all sorts of terrible yarns are spun. Most of them, I fear, are lies. In nine cases out of ten the barse is merely a lynx, of which there are very many all along the coast, and in the foot-hills on the southern slope of the Caucasus. Now and again, as you come home late with your hounds, you may be lucky enough to tree one, but you don’t see them often. The tenth time the barse may really be what he is supposed to be, a leopard, but whether this leopard is Felis pardus or Felis panthera, I don’t know.

Professor Radde mentions both in his list of Caucasian mammals. All the skins of barse which I have ever seen were similar to the leopard skins of India and Persia, on the borders of which country, near Lenkoran, the Caucasian barse is most common.

In spite of the stories told in his honour, I am inclined to think the Caucasian leopard as great a cur as the panther of the States, which he resembles a good deal in his habits. My own experience of the beast is, however, limited. In a district which I used to hunt a certain barse had his regular beat, appearing even to have a particular day of each week allotted to each little district in his domains. One moonlight night I was obliged to sleep by myself in a ruined chÂteau, once the property of General Williameenof, standing where the shore and the forest met. The old Caucasian fighter had made no use of the land given him by a grateful government, so the roof had come off the chÂteau, the trees had climbed in through the empty frames of the great low windows, and I flushed a woodcock in the nettles which grew on the hearth.

At midnight I woke, the moonbeams and the shadows of the boughs making quaint traceries on floor and ceiling, whilst underneath the window, a barse was expressing his earnest desire to taste the flesh of an Englishman, in cries in which a baby’s wail and a wolf’s howl were about equally represented.

The brush was too thick for me to be able to get a shot at my visitor that night (though I got a shot on a subsequent occasion), and though I wandered about among the trees looking for him, and went to sleep again lulled by his serenade, he never dared to attack me. Hence I fancy that the Caucasian bogey is as harmless as other bogeys.

Everything on the southern slope of the Caucasus warns you that you have left Europe behind you. It is not only the jackals’ chorus at sundown, or the antelopes’ white sterns bobbing away over the skyline, but now and again a report comes in that somewhere down by the Caspian a man has killed or been killed by the tiger.

I have even seen the tracks of ‘Master Stripes’ myself, and sat up for nights over what a native said was his ‘kill,’ not very far from Lenkoran.

Still tigers are too scarce to take rank amongst the great game of the Caucasus.

IV. PLAINS OF THE CAUCASUS

I have said that the Caucasus is divided by nature into several distinct districts: the plains of the North, the deep forests of the Black Sea coast, the great wild region at the top of the ‘divide,’ and the arid eastern steppes, deserts such as KariÂs and the Mooghan.

Each district has its typical game. On the barren lands outside Tiflis, where nothing will flourish without irrigation, except perhaps brigandage, and on the great wastes through which the KÛr and the Araxes run, there is a short period, between the stormy misery of winter and the parching heat of summer, when the steppe is green with grass and dotted with the flocks of the nomad Tartars.

Later on the sun burns up everything; the Tartars move off to some upland pastures, and the natives of the steppes have the steppes all to themselves. These natives are the wolf, the wild dog, and two kinds of antelope, not to mention the turatch, a sand grouse as fleet-footed as an old cock pheasant and as hard to flush as a French partridge. The two antelopes are Gazella gutturosa and Antilope saiga, of which the former is by far the most plentiful; indeed, in stating that A. saiga is found at all in the Caucasus, I am relying upon the authority of a Russian author (Kolenati), upon whose authority, too, I have enumerated the wild dog (Canis karagan) as among the denizens of the steppe.

Wolves, djerÂn (Gazella gutturosa) and turatch I saw daily in 1878, when I crossed the steppes from Tiflis to Lenkoran, before the Poti-Tiflis line had been extended to Baku. The saiga antelope, unless misrepresented in drawings and badly stuffed in museums, is an ill-shaped beast, with a head as ugly as a moose’s, the ‘mouffle’ being, like that of the moose, abnormally large and malformed. But the djerÂn is a very different creature, built in Nature’s finest mould, with annulated, lyre-shaped horns, coat of a bright bay with white rump, of which the hunter sees more than enough, always on the skyline, receding as the rifle approaches.

A gutturosa