THE LIBRARY

OF

THE

OF

LOS

UNIVERSITY
CALIFORNIA
ANGELES

SAVAGE SVANETIA

VOL. 11.

LOSDOS : PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AKD CO., NEW-STKEET SQUARE

ASD PARUAMENT STREET

SAVAGE SVANETIA

BY

CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY, F.R.G.S.

AUTHOR OF ' SPORT IN' THE CRIMEA AND CAUCASUS '

IN TWO VOLUMES— VOL. IL

LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET

pnblisbcrs in ©rbinarn lo ^tr ^ajestij tl^c Qutcn
1883

{All rights rese fved]

511

CONTENTS

OF

THE SECOND VOLUME.

CHAPTER I'AGE

VIII. USHKUL ....... 1

IX. ZASKOOKA . . . . . . 31

X. AT THE RECTORY, LSHKUL .... 72

XI. A SV.iNETIAN COURT . . . . . 101

XII. .SNOWED UP . . . . . . .143

XIII. AT THE EDGE OF THE FOREST. . . . 165

XIV. KERAR . . . . . . .190

XV. DJUARIA . . . . . . . . 212

XVI. WITH THE SUKHOUM BOAR HOUNDS . . 232

ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II.

VILLAGES OF MULACH AND MUGAL . . Frontispiece

WARRIORS OF GOOBI AXD LESGHIA - . To face page 78

VILLAGE OF MESTIA . . . . ,. 114

VILLAGE OF MOULAHI AND OUJBA MOUNTAIN ,. 226

-i^ *.

CHAPTER VIII.

USHKUL.

Until we reached the long tableland, be-
yond which lay Mookraer and Ushkul, our
road, ever since we left Kiitais, had wound
through a densely wooded countiy, a land
of boulder- strewn ravines and rapid moun-
tain torrents, lying dark and cool in the
shadow of dense forests. Now all this was

VOL. IL B

'\7

2 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

chano-ed. We were on the crest of a liio-h
tableland, sloping gradually away towards
and beyond Uslikul. Round us stretched
great fells of short grass, studded with a small
orano-e-coloured crocus, and trees for the time
ceased to be a feature in the landscape.

Having passed the round hill which seems
to block the road to Mookmer, and its two
blackened towers (the first Svanetian build-
ings we had seen), we came suddenly upon
the river Ingour, still small and brook-like,
not having long left the side of its parent
mountain, Kamquam.

Alono; the bank of the Ino-our stretch
the three hamlets which compose Mookmer ;
villages at first sight composed not of huts
or houses, but of half-ruined factory chim-
neys,— factory chimneys without smoke and
without ugliness ; straight square towers
standing each by itself, without order or any
regard to symmetry. Round the base of each

ENTER MOOKMER. 3

tower grows, fungus-like, a low stone shed
or two. In the village there were no roads,
scarcely any tracks. The bridge across the In-
gour was too bad for our beasts to cross, though
a little barrier across the middle would seem
to imply that truant goats and pigs still at-
tempted the passage. But the river was shal-
low still, so the men found a ford close at hand.
As usual on enterino- a villao-e, we asked
for the priest, knowing that here, as else-
where, comfort other than spiritual is gener-
ally to be found with the clergy. But there
was only one priest in Mookmer, and he
lived three versts away, at the other end of
the chain of hamlets. One glance at the
place we were entering was enough to con-
vince us that most of our dreams of comfort
indulged in e7i route would neve'* be realised
here. Still we did expect when Simon II.
offered to house us and take care of us that
we should at least have a roof over our heads.

B 2

4 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

At the far end of Ushkul, having
climbed through heaps of boulders and waded
little streams to get from house to house, we
found Simon's paternal mansion. From the
midst of two or three irregular heaps of un-
mortised stones, varying in height from four
to seven feet, rose one of the characteristic
towers of Svanetia. On the face of one of the
low huts were fastened about fifty of the oiF
fore-paws of bears in varying stages of decom-
position, some bleached and white with long
exposure, some green with damp, others (one
or two) looking as if they had been added
during the present season. A low doorway
(made by the removal of a dozen stones or
so), destitute of any door, opened on a heap
of refuse, the collection of years. Mercifully
for these filthy householders, the snow that
buries their villages for nine months in the
year carries away most of the refuse which
they neglect to remove, purifying and saving

FIKST IMPRESSIONS. 5

them from the results of their disorderly
sloth. Opposite this doorway was a heap
of big boulders, and under these Simon II.
spread my bourka, and politely requested
our party to wait whilst he went to see his
father and consult with him as to the pro-
priety of receiving us into their den.

It was now about three ; there was still
no immediate prospect of breaking our fast,
and hope deferred was not the only thing that
made our hearts sick. A thin, spiteful rain
began to fall, so that as we drew our bourkas
round us, and crouched up against the boul-
ders, our first impressions of Svanetia were
anything but rose -coloured.

After over an hour of this miserable wait-
ing, a loan-looking heifer strolled casually
out of the bear- slayer's doorway and took
stock of us from the top of the family mixen.
A few bundles of rags, accompanied by half
a dozen brats, came round the corner and

0 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

looked at us. From the way the bundles
slapped the brats we thought they must have
been mothers, but as they stayed for a quarter
of an hour and never spoke, of course they
could not have been anything so feminine.

An old man with a very white beard,
and beyond comparison the dirtiest thing in
nature, was the next to ascend the mixen.
This was the mighty bear-slayer ; and as one
looked at the poor shrunken old wretch, it
was hard to believe that he had ever been
the Nimrod men reported him. But dirty or
clean, he was the master of the only hovel
we were likely to get housed in that night ;
so that I at once went to him on his duns;-
hill as courteously as I would have done to
a prince on his throne, and tried to make
him understand all the respect that we ought
to have felt for him as a master of the craft
of which we were only humble 'prentices.

1 don't think he understood much of what I

A PIJIMITIVE STAIRWAY. 7

said to him, bat he shook hands suspiciously,
looked with a good deal of contempt at my
' Express ' rifle, satisfied himself that the bear-
skins were fresh, laughed grimly at the partly
stuffed chamois head, which I had carried
with much care from Lapur, and then shuffled
off again into his den. But the insj^ection
had been satisfactory, and about 3.30 we
were taken round to another door, and
ushered into the best room in Ushkul, which
Simon II. had been preparing for us.

Three rough blocks of stone piled together
made a primitive stairway out of the deep
mud outside to the level of the room. A kind
of shutter, now withdrawn, closed the door-
way at night. Withm was an irregular mud-
floor about twelve paces square. In a slight
depression in the middle of it stood a table
of slate on three leg's for bakino" maize-cakes
on, while under it were the red ashes of a
wood-fire. There was no chimney to let the

8 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

smoke out nor any window ; but the wide
crevices between the stone slabs of which the
walls were built were wide enough to remedy
both defects ; while light, as well as wind
and weather, found free access to the interior
through the roof of smoke-blackened hazel-
wands, overlaid with rough stones and slates.
The uncertain light and smoke hid all
details from our eyes for a while, but grad-
ually, as we got more accustomed to our sur-
roundings, we saw that we shared our apart-
ment with about half a dozen men ; an old
crone busy over a corn-bin, getting out maize
to grind for our long-delayed meal ; a young-
girl (her satellite, and Simon II. 's wife),
and several varieties of the lower order of
animals. Besides the corn-bin, there was an
extraordinary piece of furniture, which looked
like a coffin on four legs. This was the
pride of the house, the family four-poster,
the nuptial couch to which Simon II. had

STEANGE SURROUNDINGS. 9

recently brought his young wife ; but it was
so small that I should think it would only
hold one at a time. On its head a cockerel
was sitting, while his family pecked about the
floor and quarrelled with two half- starved curs
for the crumbs. The Svans (indeed, Cau-
casians generally, I think) are no dog-lovers ;
all the poor brutes we saw of the canine race
being timid as jackals, and as ravenous.

From under our feet every now and then
came strange sounds, which we found to pro-
ceed from a cow-shed, in which the cattle and
the old man lived.

Close against the front door was the tower
of defence, an extremely solid building of
large rough stones, with tin\^ slits in it at
every story, built not for light, but for loop-
holes, through which the defenders could fire
upon their foes. A little rickety ladder hung
against its wall, by which to ascend to the
only means of entrance into the tower ; and

10 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

as the mutton for wliich we were waiting was
still alive, Frank and I persuaded our host to
take us up to see the interior of his fortress.

With some difficulty we scrambled up to
the entrance, and with bent heads crept in.
Once in, we were told not to move for a
while until Simon got us a light, and we did
not reo'ret our obedience when the light of his
pine torch showed us a floor of holes, with
here and there a rafter. From the floor
above hung a quantity of game skins, prin-
cipally chamois and ibex, whilst in a corner
was a great pile of their bleached bones. On
the next floor was a collection of horns which
made our mouths water. Everywhere long
strings of chamois and ibex horns were
arranged in rows, and on the next floor the
same sight met our eyes. Here and there,
too, hung the gall bladders of bears and ibex,
the former almost the only horse medicine
these people use, the latter being kept for all

TEOPHIES OF THE CHASE. 11

manner of stomach complaints amongst them-
selves.

The Svans are very particular about their
trophies of the chase, and, dearly as they love
money, don't seem to care much about parting
with any considerable quantity of the horns in
their possession. Once a year, each of the
hunters who goes mto Kutais takes vdih him
a few of the best of his ibex horns, for which
he gets a fair price from the cup -makers and
Asiatic merchants of that town ; but if you
want to see his collection of horns at home,
you must go with him wp into his tower, for
the Svan has a superstition that if his trophies
are seen by daylight outside his own walls, his
luck in the chase will cease.

When we came down from Simon's
museum, that little savage had gone up con-
siderably in our estimation, and our spmts
rose in spite of our hunger at what we now
looked on as the sure prospect of good sport.

12 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

In our absence the old man of the house had
got a shake-down of hay ready, and Platon
had bought a young pig, the sheep of the
village being exorbitantly dear.

It seemed a long time to dinner still, so
Frank lay down on the hay and tried to sleep
away evil hours of waiting, and I was about
to follow his example when an apparition in a
gaudy red shirt came to see us. This was
Georgi, to whom we had irreverently given
the name of Irving, when we first met him
on the way to Mookmer. He, it seemed, had
been christened originally by our interpreter's
father, who was a priest of Radcha, and for
that reason was anxious to entertam us and
show us his house. Frank wouldn't come,
but as I could not sleep, Platon and I fol-
lowed our friend to his house.

On the edge of a little precipice of perhaps
one hundred feet, looking down on the Ingour,
was a threshmg floor, surrounded by the usual

AN ACCEPTABLE REPAST. 13"

stone hovels and tower. Here our friend got
us a couple of boulders and a bit of a sledge,
and made a seat for us. Then he went to
ground in one of the stone heaps. As he
didn't come out for some time, I suggested to
Platon that as it was excessively cold, we had
better follow him indoors, but was mformed
that such a course would give great offence,
as we were already in what constituted the
reception-room, and when you came to look
at a Svan's house it was, as a rule, only the
outside that you saw. I didn't see much to
admire in the outside, but when our friend
reappeared with three large bowls full of
fragments of cream cheese, a handful of salt,
and half a dozen hot maize cakes, I felt that
there were compensations in this world for
most things. By-and-bye ajar of sour spirit
made from rye was added, and then our host
and Platon talked as only Caucasians can
talk over a square meal, while I thanked

14 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

heaven devoutly that I didn't know a word
of their language, and so in diligent silence
managed to put away two bowls of cream
cheese to their one. The whole thing seemed
to me a good arrangement ; for when the edge
of my ap]3etite was somewhat blunted, and
Platon and Georgi had talked themselves
nearly hoarse, I was able over a pipe to glean
a little of the pith of the conversation from my
interpreter. Like all conversations in Russia
and the Caucasus, it had commenced with,
' Are you married ? ' ' How many children
have you ? ' ' What are you worth ? ' &c.,
questions all of a practical nature and going
straight to the point at once.

As Georgi was the richest man in Ushkul,
his answers may be worth recording. Bap-
tized and brought up in a village of Radcha,
he had come back like a true Svan to his
mountains, with their jDoverty and hardships,
as soon as he could. He had married when

A TRUE SVAN. 15

he Tvas thirty, and built him a hut. His wife,
of whom we caught a glimpse, was no beauty.
I don't think any of the Svan women are ;
but she seemed well dressed for one of her
race, and in her ears were earrings of silver,
as laro;e as Eno;lish bracelets, throuo-h which
the plaits of her hair were drawn.

In the early summer, before the snow had
left the land round his home sufficiently free
from snow, for agricultural purposes, Georgi
was in the habit of crossing by one of the
passes which mountaineers alone know, and
can travel, into the neighbouring and com-
paratively lowland region of Radcha. Here
he got a little work and picked up a few
roubles until the snow had so far gone that
his eleven dissatines of land at home were
again bare and fit to work upon. Then he
returned to Ushkul ; and when after four or
five months' time he threshed out his barley
on an already frozen threshing floor, he had

16 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

on an average some 450 pouds of barley to
show for his year's farming. This he kept
for home use and ground as he wanted it. If
there should by any chance be more than was
required for home use he made a kind of
vodka out of it ; and as no licence is required
for the sale of spirits, and there are few rivals
in Ushkul, he made it pay handsomely.
Besides his fields, he owned nine diminutive
cows, six bullocks, and three horses. He and
his lived for the most part on oat cake or
rye bread and fresh cheeses. As Georgi was
a good hunter, this diet was sometimes supple-
mented by a chamois or ibex from the moun-
tains ; but when this occurred there were so
many to share the feast that the meat did not
last long. A little coarse tobacco grown by
himself in good years, and bought from
Radcha in other, together with the red linen
shirt in which he received us and his wife's
silver earrings, were his household luxuries ;

SELF-INVITED GUESTS. 17

and with these Georgi was the richest man in
Ushkiil, and more contented than many of
the sons of civilisation on 10,000/. per annum.
When we went back to Simon's, the bear-
slayer's, we found a large party gathered
together ; the youthful porker slain ; and in-
side the hut a number of wild-looking; forms
flitting about in the firelight, busy with the
preparations for the feast. It was no new
thmg to us to find that having bought our
pig at a high price, and after much haggling,
the very fellows who had sold it to us had
now invited themselves to supper to eat it.
No matter how big a beast you kill or buy,
there is never anything left for the morrow,
and long before morning that pig was a thing
of the past. How late our guests stayed I
don't know ; but though letter-writing on the
floor, with an inquisitive Svan to hold a torch
for you to write by, rather handicaps the pen
of the readiest writer, my home budget was

VOL. II. C

18 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

linished and Frank in dreamland, whitlier I
speedily followed, when the little supper
party was still in full swing.

Poor Platon, our interpreter, never re-
covered from that supper ; and having suffered
ao;onies of indio^estion durino- the rest of our
travels, almost his last words to me were on
parting at Sukhoum, ' We did have hard
times, sir, but except for that pig of Ushkul
I wouldn't mind going through it all again ! '
A bed of Svanetian hay, on the mud floor of
a Svanetian bedroom, after a supper of Svane-
tian pork, is not productive of prolonged
slumbers, so that even if the family chanti-
cleer had not greeted us with a shrill good
morrow from his perch at the foot of the four-
poster, we should probably still have been
early risers.

The morning had hardly broken when
with soap leaves in our hands we wandered
out hot and feverish in search of a tub : but

EARLY ARMING. 19

early though we were, we seemed to be the
List astir. Out over the bridge going up into
the hills were half a dozen herds of goats,
each herd tended by small boys, of from six
to ten years old. Babies almost though
they were, each of these little goatherds
carried a long kinjal (Caucasian dagger) at
his waist, and when I lauo-hed at their beino;
armed beyond then- years, I was told in all
seriousness that the weapons were carried for
use and not for show, that not a boy that
wore the kinjal but was skilled in its use and
ready and willing to show his skill. Thanks
to the custom of the blood feud, every man
who strays beyond the limits of his own
village must learn how to keep himself with
his own hands from dano-er.

Along the roads round the base of the

hill that backs Ushkul, three or four sledo-es

were being dragged by bullocks to the owner's

farm. In front strode the owner himself,

c 2

20 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

guiding and urging the clumsy and stupid
brutes along the rugged track. On the sledge,
in a single shift and no shoes, poised on
the bare framework of poles which made the
sledge, was in every case a wee boy, son of
the farmer probably, who, balancing himself as
the crazy vehicle bumped over the uneven
places, shrilled at the beasts in his childish
treble, and during the day lived with them
and watched them while the father was at
other work.

A young Svan begins life early, and has to
make himself of use almost as soon as he can
talk. Though never so hard worked as our
English peasant, he begins life earlier and
works to the end, from the days of infancy
when his father first takes him to mind the
bullocks, to those last days, when too old
almost to stand upright, he lies all day in the
sun on the threshing floor, and earns his share
of the rye-cake by plucking up the blades of

A SORROWFUL PARTING. 21

grass that have sprung up through the
hardened soiL This was how our old friend
the bear-slayer passed his days.

But Ushkul is not a place to spend much
time in, and when we had made out that the
little birds which built in every roof were
redstarts ; that they and the grey wagtail
divided the whole of the bird life of the place
between them ; when Frank had won the
villagers' esteem by some capital practice at a
mark high up the hillside, we began to he
very weary of our resting-place, and long
anxiously for our horses and guides.

Simon and Yassili, men of Radcha, had left
us in sorrow the night before, not considering
themselves safe among the Svans, thinking
that they ought to be back with their families
and flocks, and hankering not a little, I fancy,
for the comparative comfort of Gebi. But they
left us with regret, and I don't hesitate to say
that any Englishman who follows in our steps

22 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

will only have to declare his nationality to
find in them ready and excellent servants.
Of course Platon quarrelled with them before
starting, but then that was his way ; and to
me the marvel of our travels was that one
of the many he rated like hounds did not
turn and give him the thrashing he often
deserved.

About midday, I think it must have been,
when Frank and I managed to get breakfast,
and soon after that the horses were brought
— two sorry-looking screws, but reputed to
be wonderful mountaineers, and able to travel
the difficult road before us, or rather behind
us ; for, much against the grain, we found
that we had to return on our tracks to the
debatable land between Radcha and Svanetia
to find tur.

Platon we decided to leave behind us to
guard our property, and, if possible, get it
housed at the priest's at the other end of the

SORRY STEEDS. S3

villaofe. For his maintenance we left him
three roubles — not a great sum for a week's
sojourn in a strange place, but still more than
he managed to spend.

Our hunters were Simon the Second, clad
in a goatskin and an old pair of flannel
drawers of mine, and a big black-bearded
Svan, the roughest fellow and best sportsman
I have yet seen in the Caucasus. To his
tender mercy Frank was committed.

I hate a man who beats a horse, but I
own it to my shame, I could find no twig-
tough enough for my chestnut that day, and
there was just this excuse for me, that, though
persistent thrashing could only get a crawl
out of him, the moment you ceased to shout
or use your stick he would stop. Frank's
horse was a little better, but there was not a
great deal to choose between them, and, though
once his pipe was lighted Frank was much
more cheery and patient than I was, like

24 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

myself he soon took to walking in preference
to riding. No wonder !

Once, going up a bank, under some thick
overhanging trees, he saw that his long rifle
slung across his shoulders was bound to catch,
but it was too late to save himself, as his mount
had no mouth, and the harder he pulled at
it the more obstinately it forced him into the
trees. So he was ' Absalomed ' by his rifle.

Not long after this his horse stuck hope-
lessly in a bog, whereupon its rider had to be
helped out first, and then we all four lent a
hand in extricating the beast. But when,
after this, my mare, who was in front, put
her hind leg over the edge of the mountain
path, and it seemed for several miserable
seconds that she could not possibly recover
herself, Frank wisely followed my example,
and gave up all idea of riding.

From that time forward such paths as the
two horses were driven along had, I verily

A DIFFICULT PATH. 25

believe, never been traversed by horses before.
In vain I begged the men to leave the horses
or send them back. They were too lazy to
carry the blankets themselves, and preferred
to risk their animals. Along some of the
grass slopes — slopes too steep to stop on, if
you were once off the track — the way was
so narrow that with alpenstocks to help us
the journey was a difficult and nervous one
for pedestrians. The poor brutes were trem-
bling: with frig-ht, and that to such an ex-
tent that in itself made an accident almost
certain.

Along the very worst part of the path
while we held one horse the men took the
other, one man leadino- and two holdino; it
up or easing its descent by hauling on its
tail.

In this way the second day passed, the
first having brought us but a very little way
on our road, thanks to a heavy rauistorm,

26 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

which kept us wet and miserable, shivering
in wet blankets under a big stone on the hill-
side, within a dozen versts of our starting-
2:)oint.

That was a wretched night and a cold
one, though we were so near the fire that my
blanket was burnt in two places, and the
crown of my cap the same. But about four
o'clock the second day, what I had foreseen
overtook us. As we were crossing through a
thin forest on a frightfully steep mountain
side, where there was no sign even of a track,
the chestnut made a mistake. Simon, its
owner, had the poor beast by the head and
another fellow was clinging to its tail.
Several . efforts the old horse made to right
herself, and Simon clung gallantly to her
head, but she had got her quarters down hill,
and the saddle-bags, light though they were,
having slidden down over her quarters, over-
weighted the mare. For a moment she went

AN EQUINE STUMBLE. 27

staa'D'erino; back, Simon at e'reat risk still
holding on, then with a heavy lurch she lost
her footing ; Simon barely let go in time to
save himself, and the poor old slave went
crashing througli the scrub, in bounds like
those of a big pebble thrown down hill. I
never expected to see anything resembling
that horse again, and yet when it lodged
against some fallen timber between the pine
trees, and we had crept carefully down to
where it was lying, the poor beast was not
only still alive, but the only apparent injury
it had received was a broken shoulder. Of
course death would have lieen no worse, but
it seemed incredible that such a fall should
have left so many bones intact ; and as if to
make the thing more wonderful, though all
the stronger things in the saddle-bags were
broken, a bottle of native whisky had escaped
contact with everything in the descent, and
was still unbroken.

28 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

Poor little Simon sat dowD by his horse
and cried, and though when we had got the
poor beast a little lower down into a small
basin where, in long lush grass, it could lie
within reach of water, he seemed to hope and
believe it would recover, he was too incon-
solable even to drink vodka.

As the horse could by no means follow
us, nor indeed ever recover, Frank and I
wanted to shoot it and put it out of its
misery. Of this the Svans would not hear,
so very unwillingly we had to leave it where
it lay, and with heavy hearts and loads not
the lighter for our loss, we finished the day's
tramp in moody silence. Bears' tracks were
all round us, and if her fall did not kill the
chestnut I confidently expected the bears
would.

As we subsequently discovered, I was
wrong ; for four days the old horse was still
alive, and thousjh the shoulder was unmis-

A GLOOMY EVENING. 29

takably broken, she looked certainly none the
worse for her four days' desertion. I fancy
that, though the Caucasian bear certainly does
eat flesh occasionally, he is not carnivorous
from choice ; and Avhere berries and fruit are
as plentiful as they were round Zaskoora,
animal food has no charms for him.

Our camp that night was in one of the
nests at the foot of a big pine tree, of which
you see so many in the forests at the foot of
the Svanetian mountains.

It was a gloomy evenmg for us, as in
addition to our being without an interj)reter,
and not speaking a dozen words of the Svan
tongue, the men were rough, brutal, not
civil to us, and quarrelsome and depressed
amongst themselves. There certainly was
not much pleasure in this part of our travels,
but having wasted so much time in a fruitless
pursuit of tur, I had come to that state of
mind when a man will suffer anything rather

30 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

than give in, and one single tiir's head ftiirly
obtained would have sent Frank and myself
back to Ushkul happy and contented, and
anxious only to find the nearest road out of
Svanetia.

31

CHAPTER IX.

ZASKOOEA.

With afternoon sunlight on the pines be-
neath ; with the long day's climb behind you.
and your hardly earned game at your feet,
nothing looks more lovely than the snow
peaks, their belts of pine forest, and the
thickly wooded foothills from which the white
column of your camp-fire's smoke ascends.
But when a man, with limbs of iron and
leathern lungs, wakes you about midnight ;
when the fire has gone out, and the chill of
morning has got hold of your half-rested
body, the ragged white peaks look cruel and
far off against the sky-line ; and cursing your

32 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

folly you begin to wonder why you could not
have bought your tur's head in Regent Street
and only left your snug bedroom for a good
English breakfast at 8.30 a.m.

Luckily the hardships of sport are like
the chill of the morning tub, only to be
dreaded so long as you linger on the brink,
but full of fresh life the moment you make
the first plunge, and resulting in a glorious
glow and a healthy appetite for the comforts
of life and breakfast when the hardships or
the tub have been endured. The first foot-
ball match of the season, when you have once
passed five-and-twenty, is something of a
trial ; a course of training under Messrs. Ned
Donelly and ' Bat ' Mullins, with a likelihood
of a severe hiding from a thirteen stone man
in public to wind up with, is not quite the
form of amusement that a sybarite would
choose ; but a really hard day's mountaineering
on bread and water, beginning at midnight

FIRST MORNING AT ZASKOORA. 33

or thereabouts, and ending at dark, is a
rougher form of pleasure and comes much
nearer the point where pain and pleasure
meet, than either football or boxmg.

A Svan has no idea of waking you by
degrees. It is not as it is at home, first your
shaving water, then a younger sister and her
scales — finally, the effective summons of the
breakfast bell, by which time you have come
back by easy stages from dreamland ; but
here a rough hand shakes you out of your
blanket almost into the wood ashes, and in
five minutes from your waking start and
shiver you must be en ruute, with all your
stiffened muscles on the stretch.

The ten roubles I had promised Simon, if
I should be lucky enough to secure a good
ram, made him terribly wide-awake and eager
that first morning at Zaskoora ; so though it
was still dark night, with as yet no pretence
of approaching dawn, I had to sit up and

VOL. II. D

34 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

change my flannels for my shooting coat
in the raw night air, shuddering as I put
on the wet stockings and mocassins of the
day before. This done, the rifles unslung
from the boughs above, and the candle end
we had dressed by stowed away with the
provisions under a pine root, we took two
dampers each from the goodly pile of maize
cakes which the third man had made while we
slept, and were ready to begin the day's work.
Whilst I was shaking myself into my
things, Georgi, the other Svan hunter, was
trying to wake Frank, but that usually best-
tempered of Britons having with great diffi-
culty been persuaded to open his eyes, saw
that it was still night, whereupon he rapped
out such a rattling broadside of monosyllables
that Georgi fairly bolted. The last glimpse I
got of camp, my chum's wrathful visage was
again growing placid among the pine roots,
his two months' beard bristling defiance from

WE START FOE THE PEAKS. 35

the entouragfe of flannel under-o-arments
which he used as a nightcap, while the cook
and Georgi, sitting up on their hams on the
other side the fire, smoked and watched
him in silence as they might watch a bomb-
shell likely to burst at any moment m their
midst.

No wonder Simon was anxious to make
an early start for the peaks, if he meant us to
be there by dawn, as, so far were we from the
main mountain, and so dense was the forest
on the foot-hills, that two good hours' hard
work barely carried us to the beginning of our
climb. To my mind this blundering in the
dark, amongst the dense vegetation, wet and
slippery with chilly night dew, is the worst
part of the day's work, and I felt compara-
tively content when we had gained the short
grass of the higher ridges still white with
hoar frost.

As usual the dense thickets of angelica

D 2

36 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

were beaten down and traversed in all direc-
tions by bear slides, and on our way np
through the woods on the lower hills we
frequently came on spots where chamois had
taken their afternoon siesta. But we saw
neither bear nor chamois ; and Simon, agreeing
in this with all my other guides, assured me
that in the region haunted by tur you never
find chamois.

Our way lay along the edge of a great
wall of rock, rising higher and higher until it
reached the base of the highest crags. Below
us, between our precipice and another, a
glacier rolled its frozen waves down to the
distant valley.

Just as the first dawning light crept over
the snows above us, we gained the furthest
edge of brushwood, and from almost the last
rhododendron bush we passed I flushed one
of the black mountain pheasants which I saw
years ago in Daghestan.

CAUCASIAN SNOW PARTRIDGES. 37

As we got among the barren stony slopes
and beneath the snow peaks, the familiar
whistle of the Caucasian snow jiartridge caught
the ear from tune to time. These birds are
smaller than the snow partridge of Daghestan,
and are, so my friend Mr. Seebohm tells me,
found only in the Caucasus, for which reason,
and because they live only at great heights,
but little is known of them and their habits.
Had they lived in any other place but the
favourite haunts of the mountain goat I might
have spent some time in pursuit of them for
the pot, and so learnt more of them ; as it was,
though they were round me in numbers every
early morning which I passed on the peaks,
fear of alarming better game kept my fingers
off the trigger, and I never killed a single
bird. They seem to live wherever the tiir do,
in places barren of all vegetation, never show-
ing themselves much after dawn, though in
that respect their habits are not so marked as

38 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

those of their cousins in Daghestan, but this
is probably owing to the comparative scarcity
of the lammero;eier and other biof birds of
prey in Svanetia and their great numbers in
Daghestan.

The snow partridge never seems even in
winter to come much below the level of the
wood Ime ; the lowest elevation at which I
ever saw one beino; about four thousand feet.
At Lapur in August I saw several coveys of
young birds, strong, and well able to fly,
clucking and chattering on the moraine, from
which you could hardly distinguish them.
Their cry when disturbed is a kind of whistle,
and this too seems to be their call note, but
they have another note, used apparently for
conversational purposes amongst themselves
when excited or feeding. The cock bird has
a habit of spreading his tail, fan-shaped, over
his back, and executing a kind of step dance
like the old black cock, but I was rather sur-

SNOW PARTRIDGES— STYLE OF FLIGHT. 39

prised to see him performing this spring love
dance so late as the end of August.

I know no part of the Caucasus where
this bird is so abundant as in the ranges
between Svanetia and Kadcha, and as neither
man nor beast seems to prey on them to any
considerable extent they are not likely to
decrease. Tlie Svans say the birds feed on
the droppmgs of the dhEFerent kmds of moun-
tam goat, but this can only form a small
item of their diet, although wherever the tur
have been feeding, the hollows where the
partridge has been dusting will not be far off.
The birds' flight reminded me of that of the
lesser bustard, only that if anything it is more
steady and a great deal stronger. They run
like French partridges, and seem from the
way they sometimes drop and lie flat amongst
the debris to trust not a little to the similarity
of colouring existing between them and the
rocks around for concealment. The Svans

40 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

account them the most delicate eating in the
world, but then I have heard them say the
same of an old buck chamois, so that I don't
think their opinion would weigh with an
epicure.

At last, when we had gained the highest
point in our ridge, Simon made signs to me
to lie down. Be sure I did not fail to under-
stand him at once ; an hour or two ago I
wanted to call a halt, but seeing how the
light was increasing had not ventured to sug-
gest such a thing.

Taking the telescope my guide began to
survey the few green spots amongst the snow
and rock around us. What you say when
you feel angry in Svanetian I don't know,
but whatever it is that was what Simon said
pretty often and with a great deal of genuine
feeling as soon as he looked through the
glass.

Here had we been toiling for nearly five

A WROXG ROUTE. 41

hours up the side of the glacier farthest from
camp to get to a point from which through
the glass we could get an excellent view of
about sixteen tur feeding in a hollow where a
schoolboy could have stalked them, but to get
to which now would have taken us nearly all
day, and yet was only two hours' climb from
camp. Of course it was no good thinking of
it, as these beasts invariably feed up into the
highest summits before midday. So we sat
and watched them for a while, eating our
breakfast of maize-cake, and restino; ourselves
in wind and hmb as we did so, and lamenting
the luck which had led us up the wrong side
of the ravine. Then, again, for about an hour
we kept still upwards, climbing amongst a
very chaos of mountain ruins and sharp-
edged strata, until we were tired of trying any
longer to patch up our worn-out sandals.

All at once from the mountains the other
side the camp a shot rang out as clear and

42 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

distinct as if it had been fired not many
hundred yards from where we stood. ' Thank
goodness, Frank is amongst them,' I muttered,
' I wish I was with him.' Again and again
the rifle woke the echoes until I began to
think the camp must have been attacked.
When at last the shooting ceased Simon and
I jumped up and recommenced our climb as
if we had only just started. The others were
having sport — our turn could not be far
distant.

About nine our turn came. We were
peeping over a ridge into the gorge beneath
when Simon's quick eye caught sight of a
herd crossing a moraine below us. One by
one they came upon the scene, following each
other slowly in our direction, three and
twenty of them in all. The sight of them,
after all my weary climbs and vigils, made
me more shaky than I ever remember to have
felt before, and I think I had then for the

RUN TO A STANDSTILL. 43

first time an attack of tliat ' buck fever,' which
men generally suffer from on being first
entered to biof irame. But from the line the
tur were taking it was evident that if I meant
to do any good I must not lie where I was
watching them any longer ; and, indeed,
snatching up his gun, Simon bolted down our
side of the rido^e as hard as he could run.

Keeping under cover of the boulders, and
making wide circles round several small hills
and peaks, he ran me to a standstill over a
course that I could not walk on, alpenstock
in hand, without stumbling. Time after time
my foot went over the edge and sent the
stones clattering down below. But stones are
always falling here from natural causes, so
that unless the goats either see or wind you,
a displaced stone more or less matters little.

Twice I came down, catching my kneecap
a blow that made me sick, on an old wound
caused by collision with a gate in the hunting

44 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

field. The palms of my hands, hard as they
were, were torn and bleeding ; and though I
was willing in spirit I had to come to a crawl
at last utterly done, faint and trembling like
a girl. Simon turned and saw me, and I
never saw a man's face so lighted up by ex-
citement as his was in my life. He dared not
speak ; all he could do, though beside himself
with the desire to get me on, was to wave his
arms about, frantically kissing his hand to me,
and with eyes and gestures imploring me to
make another effort.

How I got another run out of myself I
don't know. If I had stumbled in that last
hundred yards I must have gone altogether, I
felt too weak to cling to anything for a
moment. Dropping beside Simon I lay still
for a few seconds, and then creeping a foot or
two higher, peered over the edge of the little
snow slope on which we lay.

About eighty yards from me was a rock

A SUCCESSFUL SHOT. 45

some thirty feet high, and round this one by
one the whole herd was coming at a slow trot
across the flat pass which our position com-
manded. I waited for a bigger beast than the
rest to come in sight, and then resting my
elbows on the snow took careful aim. But it
was no use. My sights rocked like aspen
boughs, and the back sight was so blurred
that I could barely see it. Putting my rifle
down, I dropped my face in my hands,
shutting my eyes and trying to recover steadi-
ness and sight. ^Yhen I tried to draw a bead
again the last of the herd was passing me so
that though my hand still shook wofully I
was obliged to fire.

The first shot missed altogether, sending
the goats' heads into the air for a moment and
nothing more. But my second barrel was
fired with greater steadiness, and a fine old
ram dropped, trying to drag his quarters after
the now flying herd in vain. Slipping in a

46 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

third cartridge I thought my ram needed no
coup de grace, so I took one of the last of the
herd as he gazed back from an eminence about
two hundred yards away, and hit him well
forward but evidently too high up. He
vanished over the brow of the hill, and I rose
to finish my first victim.

Unluckily, just at that moment, another
herd of tur, disturbed by my shots from a
neighbouring valley, sprang up the face of the
cliff above into sight. I think there were
about ten of them, not like our first herd com-
posed only of young bucks and does, but
every one of them big old bucks with splendid
horns. They were too far to shoot and too
thoroughly well aware of our proximity for us
to hope to stalk them, besides which, they
were going best pace up an incline which
would beat most mountaineers, to the un-
attainable crags above.

When we turned to pick up our wounded I

SEARCH FOR MY TUR. 47

found to my vexation that Simon had not
seen my first tiir fall, and as the place where
he fell was difficult to get at, refused for some
time to accompany me, being bent rather on
following the second, which I knew was hit
only very slightly. So I went alone, but when,
though my tur was no longer there, I showed
Simon the great gouts of blood which covered
the stones, and he himself afterwards picked
up a piece of bone half the size of my little
finger which my bullet had knocked out of
the poor beast, he was keen enough in pur-
suit. From the look of the bone I fancied
the bullet had broken a hind leg, thus laming,
and for the moment paralysing, the tur
by the shock. Like all these goats when
wounded our tiir had gone straight upwards,
and though the great drops of blood made
tracking him easy, the path that was easy for
him on three legs was too difficult for us on
two.

48 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

There was still a kind of needle which
rose sheer above us, and to the summit of
which there could be but one way up or down.
Up here the tur had but just climbed, and up
this Simon fairly refused to follow him. I
make no pretension to great skill as a rock
climber, but I could not give up my ibex like
this, so I left Simon, and using my hands
more than my feet crawled a little higher.

There comes a point though when the ^^dll
to do is useless if the flesh is weak, and beins;
utterly unable to make a spring that this
three-legged dying goat had made, leaving a
great splash of blood on the rock from which
he had sprung, I sat down, and half sitting,
half clinging, passed as wretched an half hour
as need be while the shiftins^ armies of mist
swept between myself and my hunter, makmg
my way down too difficult to attempt. When
they had cleared away and I had got back
asrain to Simon, we searched in vain for some

TICKLISH WORK. 49

other way up, and in vain for my other tiir.
Luck in the matter of tur seemed against me,
and it was with little hope that I consented to a
further exploration of the range on the chance
that some herd which might have been feed-
ing far below was still unscared by my shots.

Two or three ridges had been crossed and
a deep gully lay between us and the next. To
cross this gully there were two ways open to
us, either to make a circuit of a couple of
versts, or nearly that, over a moraine below,
or else to ascend to the top of the ridge and
creep across a difficult expanse of steep bare
rock. We chose the latter, as being much the
shorter of the two.

Across the rock, though it was ticklish
work, all went well, but when we were half
way over, what we thought had been soft
snow proved to be a little snow-field, hanging
almost perpendicularly against the wall of the
rock and as hard as ice on the surface. Simon

VOL. II. E

50 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

suggested turning back, and did all in his
power to dissuade me from crossing it, but as
he expressed his own ability to cross I made
up my mmd to folloAv him rather than make
the long journey round. So digging foot-
holds with his alpenstock as he went, Simon
led the way until we were half across.

Here one of my feet slipped, and before I
knew what had happened I heard a scream
from the Svan and found myself gliding
easily but at an awful pace down the slope.
In a moment I knew all was over with me,
and in that moment I learnt how man's mind
can work when it is wound up to its full
power of concentration. I saw the whole
shape of the slope like a man's legs with the
left one cut off at the knee, and there an end,
with a drop of jDerhaps 500 feet on to the iron
edges of the rocks beneath. The other limb
of the snow slope was too long for me to know
what was at its end, but it could be no worse

A DATsGEROUS SITUATION. 51

than the shorter one. Every story of Swiss
mountaineering which I had ever read flashed
through my brain, and sticking to my alpen-
stock I drove the point with both hands into
the snow between my legs in front of me.
But thouo:h the haft was of seasoned box-
wood, it snapped so short and suddenly that I
never felt the shock of it. Clinging to w^hat
was left, I now saw just at the crutch of the
two leo-s a bio^ stone welded into the snow.

Using my broken stick with all my might
as a pole, I tried to punt myself away from the
short road to destruction towards which I was
rushing headlong, and so succeeded that get-
ting my foot against the stone, before I could
draw another breath I was whirling oiF the
end of the longer limb into a bed of snow
beneath.

Clean out of sight I sank, but though
breathless, shaken, and blinded, I crawled out
again in a few moments practically unhurt,
E 2

52 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

and deeply grateful to the Providence that
had saved me.

The story of such a slip takes a long
time telling, but though my slide was perhaps
a hundred yards long, from the time I knew I
was underway to the time I reappeared from
my snow covering could not have been more
than a matter of moments. And yet with
the fear of death before me, my mind could
not only provide what was best for my own
safety, but review my past and thmk of the
future of those at home. After that it did
not seem hard to me to understand the possi-
bility of that Mind of the universe, which
knows all our thoughts and at one moment of
time has in Its infinite grasp what was, and
what is, and what is to come.

Singing out to the Svan not to come down
I proceeded to climb up the edge of my
enemy the snow slope, .and having got to the
place where we had begun our line of foot

A HEART-SICK RETURN. 53

holds, crossed again and this time in safety,
though the entreaties of my frightened guide
worried me enough all the way across to have
made a second slip quite a possible con-
tingency.

We saw no more game that day ; and
weary and heart sick, though not with my
tail between my legs, since I left most of that
on the snow slope, I got back to camp just as
Frank and Georgi were finishing their first
instalment of mutton chops and maize cakes.

Frank, it seemed, had only gone as far as
the top of some high grass bluffs, three hours'
climb perhaps from camp, where he and
Georgi sighted a herd of tur about 200 yards
off in a hollow below them. Xot bemo^ used
to ills rifle, and being shaky from the fact that
during his climb he had put his shoulder out
and had some difficulty in gettmg it in again,
Frank had not done well in his shooting-, but
at any rate he had beaten me ; and though his

54 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

tur was too small to make the horns worth
keeping, for that very reason it furnished us
with an excellent supper, which we both
greatly needed.

Alas ! the supper was all too good for the
interests of sport, and next morning nothing
would induce Simon to stir before dawn, in
consequence of which we missed the morning
chance at tur on the high peaks. The only
signs of our game which we could find for
some time were the horns of a grand old ram,
visible to Simon (and Simon only) over the
top of a boulder about half a mile off, roughly
speaking. But though I spent a quarter of
'an hour trying to make the beast or his horns
out with my telescope I failed, though by that
time we had found another herd sleeping on a
ledge in a very exposed and unapproachable
place, some half a day's climb from where we
were.

To attempt to stalk either the single beast

A FRESH SEARCH. 55

seen by Simon or the herd would be, so Simon
said, waste of time and worse ; but as he knew
the only feeding ground on this side the peak
on which we happened to be, he had strong
hopes of our getting a shot if we waited near
the only approach to that ground until even-
ing, when the herds come down from their
resting places to feed.

The way to our place of vantage lay over
what I may fau'ly describe as a flight of stone
heaps, looking as if half an hour's climb would
more than suffice to get to the top of them. Not
for the first time did I find appearances de-
ceptive in these high places. At the end of a
couple of hours we were still some distance
from the top of the last stone heap, and we
had been going steadily, without lingering,
ever since we started.

When at last we reached the end of our
ascent, we proceeded to make ourselves as
comfortable as possible for the day, but when

56 SAVAGE SVANETIA,

once tlie glow induced by the climb had
worn off, the wind from the snowfields almost
cut us in halves.

The tur were in sio-ht of us whenever we
chose to peep over the ridge at the back of
which we lay, and though their path to the
feeding grounds lay right past us, they were
so far oiF and the wind so much m our favour,
that we could smoke and talk in safety.

Just below us lay a patch of snow of some
few acres in extent, and here about mid-day
I noticed a couple of small butterflies playing
in the sunlight, where it shone brightest on
the snow. As I used as a boy to collect
butterflies, I was very interested in these
little creatures, so at variance with all their
surroundings. I don't think there was a
flower of any kind within half an hour's climb
of where we were ; from the snow over which
they were disporting there was hardly a
blade of grass in sight, and yet they seemed

UNLOOKED-FOR BUTTERFLIES. 57

as merry in the cold gleam on the snow as if
they had been in a land of summer flowers.
Try as I would, I could not catch either of
them, and though I got a good look at them
now and then, I was unable to identify them
as anything I had seen before. They ap-
peared to be about the size of a large skipper,
whose flight theirs resembled, and their wings
on the upper side were a kind of rose-brown
(if there be such a colour), marked and spot-
ted with some darker shade. I was sorry I
had not a net with me, but who could expect
to meet with butterflies where we were ?

However, about mid-day, their gambols and
our comfort were brought to an end simulta-
neously by the descent of a storm of sleet which
had been gradually creeping within range of us
foF some time past. This made everythmg as
miserable as }X)ssible, so when we could see
our way down, Simon and I descended into a
gorge where we and our doings should be well

58 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

out of sight of our game ; and having collected
as many bits of dead rhododendron scrub as we
could find, we made ourselves a tiny fire. But
though what we found had evidently given up
all idea of living at such a height many years
ago, we found so little, and it burnt so badly,
that the fire only served to warm the stones
we sat on, and the little flames seemed fright-
ened of the cold and gloom all round.

A good wrestling bout and other athletic
amusements, such as putting the stone,
jumping and leapfrog, warmed us more ; but
Simon, being a little man, got the worst of it,
and not seeing the fun of always coming first
in contact with the stony places, refused to
play any more. So once more we sat and
waited.

After a while Simon said that in another
hour we might expect the beasts to come
down ; so putting out our fire, we climbed
back to our ambuscade. Peering through

FURTHER ILL-LUCK. 59

the stones, we satisfied ourselves that our fire
had not been seen, the tur were still at rest
on their ledge.

After half an hour's watching, there
seemed to be a stir amongst the herd ; one by
one they got on to their feet ; surely now
they were coming our way. But Simon, who
knew more of tur than I did, did not like the
look of things, and Simon was right ; for in
another minute, after all staring down on to
the glacier below, up went their heads, and
away they went higher and higher to the
very top of the ridge, and so over to safer
resting-places out of our sight and reach.
We could not explain their conduct, but we
could curse our luck, and as we clambered
down mto the valley of the glacier we did so
heartily.

To see a Ions; vio-il such as ours robbed of
its reward so unexpectedly is exasperating in
the extreme. Moreover, we had waited so

60 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

long for the tur to come down, that the
evening mists were already making our de-
scent unusually difficult. Worse than that,
Simon lost his way, and in a really thick
darkness we now found ourselves on a set of
bare rocks, overhanging the glacier, rocks
which the rain had made doubly slippery and
the darkness doubly dangerous.

Simon, good mountameer as he was, could
not always keep his feet, and unable to see a
step before me, with nothing to hold on to,
and the memory of yesterday's slide fresh in
my mind, I began to feel horribly shaky.

Every now and then I lost sight of Simon
altogether, and had to blunder on and trust to
luck to lead me in the ris^ht direction. When
I found him again, I don't know that things
mended much, for if anything he was in a
worse ' funk ' than myself Altogether, when
we at last gained the glacier — hot, bruised, and
awfully ill-tempered — 'I felt convinced that I

INURED TO PAIN. 61

knew something of the worst side of hunting
mountain game.

A long tramp down the gentle slope of
the glacier brought us to a point where the
comparatively good going on the ice was
changed for a steeper descent amongst big
boulders and rocks which filled up the channel
worn by the glacier and its streams down to
the valley below.

As it was quite dark now, every step was
taken at hazard, and about every sixth step
brought a little toe in collision with a sharp -
edged rock, twisted an ankle more or less, or
sent the whole man on his face. But though
one-half the least of the raps dealt our shins,
knee caps, or funny bones would have elicited
some very nervous English or Svan at
another time, we were now so savage and
inured to pain that we took our punishment
in silence.

By-and-bye a light gleamed from amongst

62 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

the ragged rocks in front, and Simon looked a
little anxious until I slipped a couple of cart-
ridges into my ' Express.' Then we went
forward and found the cause of our second
day's failure.

Just as we were hoping for the tur to come
down in our direction, two Svans from some
other village than Ushkiil had arrived at the
bottom of the glacier, and lighted their camp
fire in a little tumbledown shed in full view of
the herd we were watching. Hence their
flight and our disappointment.

It was very late that night when Simon and
I dragged our weary limbs into camp, and so
disgusted with our failures were our guides,
that I was obliged to yield to the pressure
of public opinion and consent to return to
XJshkul on the morrow.

As for Frank, I owe him thanks for
having stuck to me so long as he did, for no
man ever hated anything more heartily than

WINTER OX THE MOL'NTAIXS. G3

he did the hardships of mountaineering; and I
don't think he would have given much for the
finest ram in the Elbruz mountains if it had
to be procured at the expense of so much hard
fare and hard work as we went througfh for
nothing. But if their hunters' life is a hard
one, what a terribly hard life must the moun-
tain goats' be, high up in the utter barrenness
of the most inaccessible peaks, alone with the
ice and snow, winds and tempests !

The Svans tell you that in the winter the
tur is so starved that he eats his own lono-
coat off Ms back, and comes down in the spri no-
gaunt, starved, and bald. In stormy weather,
when the mountains are hidden in snow or
.sleet, instead of coming down to the warmer
valleys, the tur goes straight away to his lair
on the very highest peak of his native moun-
tain, where, safe from the approach of his
enemies, he is content to face the bitter-
ness of the weather close huddled with his

64

SAVAGE SVANETIA.

comrades under the lee of some sheltering
rock.

Over the camp fire on Friday night, it was
agreed that Simon and I should be off early
next morning, and making a wide detour
amongst the hills where Frank had killed his
tur the day before, cross a range of pine-clad
ridges, and so strike the trail to Ushkul
along which Frank and Georgi would proceed
at leisure.

That night, in «pite of the work of the day
before, Simon and I slept little. Simon
wanted his ten roubles and I wanted my tur.
The rest of our party were sleeping sound and
well, when we threw on another log or two to
keep the fire up for them, ere my guide and I
started on our last tramp at Zaskoora.

Twice or three times we came on the fresh
track of bears ; once we cut the trail of a
whole family party, which had been supping
on black currants in the valley; but though we

A LOFTY PINE FOREST. 65

went very silently we never saw anything of
the bears themselves.

Hill after hill we climbed, never speaking,
both determined to succeed if success was to
be won by continued endeavour ; but every
new view that opened before us was void of
the only thing that could have made it look
beautiful in our sioiit. About ten o'clock
Simon lay down and said he could not go any
further, and must rest. So we rested and ate
our last maize-cake in silence and sulldness.
Another long tramp took us off these high
grass hills (where at an elevation of I should
thmk about 5,000 feet, I found a little willow
wren, dead apparently from cold), and brought
us into the most beautiful mountain pine forest
imaginable.

Everywhere thick soft moss grew on
narrow step-hke ledges, from which rose tall,
shady pines, under which the chamois might
rest during the heat of the day. Tiny cas-

VOL. II. F

66 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

cades and mountain streams shone here and
there, splashing over the ledges or welling up
through the deep dark moss.

The whole place seemed made as a noon-
day paradise for chamois, and that it was
haunted by those for whom it was so fit
innumerable paths and deserted forms on the
ledges bore ample testimony. As we peeped
over into a little gorge, whose sides were of
white gravel, the sullen look vanished from
Simon's face, and beckoning to me to follow he
began to crawl cautiously back from the edge.
His quick eyes had noticed fresh tracks made
in the earlier morning by a herd of chamois
at play on the gravel slope, and he guessed
rightly that they would be asleep not far from
their playground.

Creeping on hands and knees from ledge
to ledge, Simon leading the way, and using his
eyes for both of us, we proceeded for several
hundred yards round the face of the rocks.

' TEEBOGGING.' 67

By the way he suddenly flattened himself
behmd a projecting rock, I knew he had
sighted the game ; but as any advance on my
part would have caused some slight noise, I
denied myself the pleasure of a peep at them,
and followed Simon back to a bear slide
through the pine trees, down which we ' tre-
bogged ' on our backs with considerable silent
rapidity.

Another peep, in which again I had no
share, resulted in a second shorter slide, and
then creeping along a fallen pine tree, which
lay at right angles to the slope, my leader
made sims for me to come alonofside.

On a steep slope, shut in and shaded by
pines, and not twenty-five yards from where
we crouched, stood a young chamois, not a
fawn, but a yearling buck, I should think, the
last of the herd, which we caught glimpses of
as they moved slowly away from the open
through the pines on the opposite side.

F 2

68 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

Raising my rifle I took a quiet aim,
intending to kill my beast as neatly as possible,
but before I could pull trigger or even align
my sights, another report startled the chamois,
and sent him in a couple of bounds out of
sight. My first impulse was to send Simon
after the chamois he had missed, and I col-
lared him in the first moments of my rage,
with that intention. But second thouo;hts
were best ; to thrash a Svan may not be diffi-
cult at the moment, but unfortunately you are
never safe from his bullet for the rest of your
life, after you have thrashed him ; besides,
without Simon I could never have found my
way back to Ushkul. So in bitterness of
spirit I ordered him to take the shortest road
to the village, stubbornly refusing to accede
to his request that I would say nothing of his
escapade to the other Svans.

When we struck the home road, it was
about two o'clock, and we had not gone far

A THOROUGH SOAKING. 69

before we came upon three human forms prone
on their backs in the sunniest spot they could
find. The unbroken musical accompaniment
to which they were sleeping testified to our
silent approach and the soundness of their
slumbers, but failed to soften our hearts to-
wards them. When we were once more en
route, the sleepers wakened, and our burdens
shouldered ; the sunshine left us, and the
whole sky having turned black, and the wind
chill enough to freeze our fingers to our rifle-
barrels, a regular deluge came down upon us.
For awhile we crouched under bushes
trying to keep dry, and believe the storm
would soon be over, but as cloud after cloud
swept up from behind the hills, we gave up
hope and dry clothes in fovour of a thorougli
soaking and a forced march to a certain hut
of Georsd's on the wav to Ushkid. Here we
stripped and dried ourselves as well as we
could, and were considerably astonished to

70 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

find in this half-built and deserted place, half
a day's march from any other habitation, quite
a fine lot of fowls and an abundance of rustic
tools left to take care of themselves. But
towards one another the Svans are marvel-
lously honest, and though many a tired and
starving Svan camps at this hut for the night,
it never occurs to him to help himself to
the tools or kill a fowl and say the foxes
did it.

Next day, Sunday, we sneaked back into
Ushkul, crestfallen and hungry, to find Platon
installed in the priest's house in the first of
the hamlets of Mookmer, where we hastened
to join him.

My thoughts were gloomy ones as I lay
resting on the priest's floor that night, for I
had done all I knew to deserve success, and
my tur's head was still as distant as ever. As
for Frank, I dare not for the present mention
the detested beast in his hearing. All I could

A REMINDER 71

get out of him was an entreaty to leave
Svanetia as speedily as possible, and a re-
minder that I was pledged to see him safely
back in Berkshire by November 1st.

72 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

CHAPTER X.

AT THE EECTORY, USHKUL.

It was not only because he was a priest's son
that our wily interpreter, Platon, always made
straight for the house of the holy man in
every village that he entered. Though in
the wilds of Svanetia the officers of the
church are not so well cared for as they are
elsewhere, still even here a very marked dif-
ference exists between the utter barbarism of
the flock and the comparative comfort of its
pastors.

The priest of Mookmer was a very fine
fellow, and he must have been a man of
considerable nerve and self-control to have

USHKUL RECTORY. 73

existed so long as he had done in the position
he held when we knew him. His house was
built like the houses of Radcha (or most of
them) of a lower storey of rough stones, used
for the cattle or horses for the most part, and
above that a timber edifice with a balcony
outside, approached by a rough external
ladder.

As we got off our horses, and scrambled
down the hill to his house, the priest and
Platon came to meet us, and give us a cheery
welcome — a welcome which perhaps lost just a
little of its effusiveness when it became
apparent that we brought no meat with us,
except such scraps as might still be clinging
to the hide of Frank's mountain kid. The
priest was the biggest man we had yet seen,
and stood, I should think, a good six feet
four or five in his leather socks, and was,
moreover, an extremely heavily-built man
even for his height.

74 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

There were two rooms at the back of the
balcony, one (the front one) used generally
for the whole needs of the priest, his friends,
and his family, and the other, a little den into
which we did not penetrate. In the big room
a row of boards on trestles, covered with
rough matting and a patch- work feather mat-
tress of great antiquity and doubtful cleanli-
ness, offered repose to all and sundr3\

At the farther end of the room was an
open stove where all the cooking was done,
and to the right of it a small cupboard in
which the priest kept all his treasures and the
insignia of his office, i.e., a book of services
and a Bible, two tumblers and a teapot, a pen
and ink and a pipe. We soon had the teapot
and the tumblers out, and as we still had a
little tea left, we invited the Rector and his
wife to partake with us. Of course the lady
refused, and the priest himself only agreed to
take what we left ; but meanwhile he and his

A GEAND SUPPER. 75

wife set to work to prepare maize cakes for us,
and it was quite an open question whether
the big man six feet five or his little wife was
most nimble or at home in the house work.
Thanks to their joint endeavours our tea was
soon ready, and once we were well at work on
that meal, the priest went out to procure
the means of giving a grand supper of meat
and vodka to ourselves and any of the Svans
who considered themselves invited. Of course
we paid for the provisions, and we used in-
variably to ask our host and his family to
share whatever we had ; but we always found,
in addition to the somewhat large families
which assembled round our hosts, a crowd of
other visitors of whom we knew nothing, who
invited themselves to these suppers of ours.
In fact, our party was only limited by the
quantity of meat to consume.

Now, in the priest's house, at any rate,
you would imagine that beyond the curious

76 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

among the inmates of the house, you Avould find
no one to molest you. On the contrary, here
in Mookmer, we were no more safe from the
molestations of the crowd than we should
have been had we camped m the main
thorouo-hfare outside our host's door. We
literally could not get room to clean our guns,
so great was the crush round us, and when
the priest's wife av anted to get to the door of
her husband's house that she might go out
and get water, she had to creep along over
the beds, because there was no room for her to
pass out elsewhere. Once or twice the priest
expostulated, but very feebly, as if he knew it
to be utterly useless, and when I suggested
that he should at the very least order the chil-
dren and young lads out, he explained to me
that these Svans had no notion that they
were intruding ; everybody's house in the vil-
lage was public property in some sort ; no one
dreamed of such a thing as privacy at Mook-

SVANETIAN LAWLESSNESS. 77

mer ; and if he attempted to turn out the
invaders vi et armis, as he was very well quali-
fied to do, he would probably be shot for his
pains.

I never m my life saw a place in which
there was such an utter absence of all autho-
rity and discipline as in these Svanetian vil-
lages. The priest seemed to have no power
at all over the people ; when I talked to some
of them, through our interpreter, of the
Russian authorities, they laughed them to
scorn ; once only, in Simon's case, I saw
some deference paid to a father" s authority,
but that, I fancy, was only a blind to empty
our purses from two sides at the same time,
by paying father and son for the same ser-
vices ; and to counterbalance this I saw a day
after, a boy about ten turn on his mother
with curses, and a hand on his kmjal, and so
drive her away, triumphing m his disobedience.
As to their reputed loyalty and obedience to

78 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

their own princes, my readers can judge of
that for themselves when I describe our stay
at Betcho.

The uncivilised Svans seem to me to have
already got what the Nihilists are seeking for,
a democracy in which no man is greater than
another ; no man fears or worships a God, but
each is a law unto himself ; all m.en are equally
rich or rather equally poor, and no one either
wields or submits to authority.

When our pipes were lighted after supper,
I pulled out my note -book, and began to try
to draw out our host. He was a man of
Eadcha, the next province, and consequently
one who had once lived a life much more
nearly resembling the life of civilised humanity
than that he was now leading. He had
already passed, I think he said, eleven years of
his life in Svanetia, and meant to pass a good
many more there, until indeed his two boys
should have ceased to be an expense to him.

WARRIOR OP GOORI.

WARRIOR OF LESGHIA.

I

OUR HOST. 79

It gives yon an idea of the kind of man
yon may often meet in Russia, when yon con-
sider that the sons of our worthy host, born
among these savage Svans, having passed
their childhood amongst the hardships and
poverty of the village life of Mookmer, were
then, the one a young officer of artillery, and
the other studying for some profession at one
of the ffreat Russian universities. What
wonder that men whose lives are so full of
such starthng contrasts, and whose purses are
of necessity too empty to enable them to lead
the new life into which they are plunged, lose
their heads and become crazy with the follies
of Nihilism or any other violent and revolu-
tionary gospel which they encounter on the
' threshold of their new lives !

As our host seemed a man of considerable
education for a Caucasian village priest, and
as he had had ample opportunities of judging
of the people amongst whom his lot was cast,

80 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

I shall take the liberty of narratmg all he told
me of the Svaiis and Svanetia, without at-
tempting to correct any mistakes he may have
made, since I know of no one who can be
considered a much better authority than my
informant.

That Svanetia is so wonderfully un-
civilised still is due, he said, to its geogra-
phical position, hemmed in on all sides by
mountains, the passes over which are few and
difficult, and indeed only available for three
months in the year. When these three
months are over those who are in Svanetia
when the snow falls must stay there for nine
months, until the snow has thawed again,
and even then the roads are very bad indeed.

Moreover, most of Svanetia lies at such a
heio-ht that the winters are lono; and severe,
and very little indeed will grow in the land.
Down the Ingour, through the district of
Lekera, Nature is a little more bountiful, but

ISOLATION OF VILLAGERS. 81

where we now were, in Mookmer, neither
wheat nor wine nor tobacco, nor any other
thing which can make gLad the heart of man,
can be induced to grow. So there are no
traders to introduce civilisation or spread the
news. Once in Lachmul I met a pedlar from
far-away Djuaria, and he, so the people said,
was the only merchant of any sort who
visited them.

I found villagers in my travels who had
hardly heard the rumour yet that the late
Czar had been foully murdered, and refused
to believe that another Czar already filled his
place. Throughout Svanetia the villages are
small and for the most part far away from
each other ; in many cases so placed that in
' winter they become isolated, not only from
the rest of the world but from each other also.
As for the influences of religion upon the people
they are limited in the extreme, and schools
they have none.

VOL. II. G

82 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

Money is hardly ever used by the Svans,
and many were our trouhles from the im-
possibility of changing the three rouble notes
(in which our order on the Kutais bank had
been paid) into smaller money. All their
payments amongst themselves are made in
kind, and they are so suspicious of paper
money that they will refuse a note if it be at
all torn or old.

In each long straggling series of hamlets
there is a priest of the Greek Church, and a
very small square building of stone and
plaster, which would perhaps hold two dozen
people, does service for a church. Small as
it is, it is ample for the congregations which
attend it. My friend the priest attributed the
building of all the churches throughout
Sv^netia to Queen Tamara, before whose time
nothing certain seems to have been known of
Svanetia. When Tamara appeared on the
scene Svanetia voluntarily adopted her as its

I

SVAN PRIESTS. 83

queen, and she first sent priests into the land,
built churches and a number of small fortresses
at such places as Glola in Radcha and Ushkul
in Svanetia, where their rains still remam.
But when Tamara died Svanetia severed itself
from Georgia ; the priests died out or were
killed, and as no more came from the outer
world Svanetia went for a while priestless.

But in time another race of priests arose
from amongst the Svans themselves, appa-
rently self-elected, or at anj^ rate chosen only
for their external fitness for the office. The
Svans had observed that in most cases the
salient points in the person of a priest of the
Greek Church of Russia were a fine voice, a
fine beard, and lono' hair, worn as in most of
the old paintings of our Lord. Hence it
happened that any fellow who had a longer
Ijcard or a louder voice than his neisrhbour

o

was chosen priest, and conducted the services

of the church as well as his memory of old

G 2

84 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

times enabled him to. Of this order were
the priests found in the land when Sv^netia,
at a comparatively recent date, became subject
to Russia.

No wonder that in these times of amateur
clergy strange and barbarous customs crept
into the church of Svanetia, many of which
still remain, in spite of the fresh importation
of properly qualified priests from other parts
of the Caucasus and Russia. For instance,
our host told me that the Svans allow no
women to enter their churches ; that if they
should do so they are liable to be stoned,
unless they are willing to pay a heavy fine
instead. The Svans believe that Providence
will resent the presence of women m churches,
and visit the villages in which the offenders
dwell with plagues of rain and other mis-
fortunes.

The men of the villages are allowed to
go to church twice a year — on Easter Day

CHURCH SERVICES. 85

and on the Xrestchenia (i.e., the sixth day
after New Year's Day) ; if they go oftener
than that it is only for a funeral or at the
peril of being stoned or fined for their indis-
cretion. Moreover, no man may go unless he
has a good coat on his back ; and as a matter
of fact every feast day and every Sunday the
priest has the church to himself. Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday are kept as holidays,
no work being done by any of the community
from Thursday at sunset to Monday at sun-
rise.

But the priest is far from having whole
control over the church. On the contrary,
he can only go thither on certain occasions,
and cannot admit any stranger. The key of
the church is kept by a body of six selected
villagers, and whenever the priest wants to
hold a service he has to get one or more of
the church-guard to accompany him and let
him in. Once in, the key- bearer shuts the

86 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

door on the priest and keeps guard over the
door nntil the service is over. Then the guard
lets the priest out, locks the door behind him,
pockets the key, and goes home.

Sitting by the fire turning over the maize
cakes, as the priest told me of the ways of his
flock, was a young Svan girl of about twelve,
whose face of mute wonder as she kept a timid
but watchful eye on the strangers was intelli-
gent and interesting, even if not absolutely
pretty. Seeing that 1 was noticing the child
the old priest told me that she was no
daughter of his, but a hand-maiden and
protege, who had entered his service until she
should be old enough to marry her fiancee.

Marriao;e in Ushkiil is not as a rule an
event in the early life of either men or maidens.
Having a hard life before them in a stern and
unfruitful country, the natives seldom incur
the responsibilities of married life before they
have reached the comparatively ripe age of

MATRIMONIAL CUSTOMS. 87

thirty. Herein they differ widely from their
neighbours of Georgia and Armenia, whose
maidens are often given in marriage before
they are fourteen, and sometimes as young as
twelve. But if the Svans do not marry
young they do not lose much time in be-
trothing themselves.

As soon as it is known that a girl has
been born to any one in the village, any
young man who as yet has no affianced wife
may go in person or send his father for him
to the hut of the girl's parents. As there is
rarely more than one room in a S van's
hut, and possibly no other piece of furniture
besides the heavy wooden cradle, there is no
difficulty in finding the baby. Entering the
room and approaching the child, without stay-
ing to parley with the parents, the suitor or
his proxy takes from his breast one of the
little figured bullets used by these people for
their rifles, and either fastens it with a string

88 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

round the child's neck or merely drops it into
the cradle alongside the little one. From
this moment, whether she will or no, whether
her parents consent to or disapprove of the
match, the giver of the bullet has a claim on
the child's hand when she attains a proper
age ; and should the parents make any resist-
ance to that claim they become liable to pay
an excessively heavy fine to the bridegroom,
or render themselves legitimate objects for the
blood feud at the hands of the young man and.
all his belongings.

The earliest age at which Svan girls are
allowed by their people to marry is fifteen.
But all the matrimonial arrangements in
Ushkul seem to be of the most irregular cha-
racter. Bigamy is common. Two of the men
in the group round the old priest and myself
were guilty of this offence, and both cases were
similar. As children the two men had been
engaged by their parents to women already

MATRIMONIAL CUSTOMS. 89

grown up. The women had waited for their
baby bridegrooms and grown old in waiting.
When the bridegroom was old enough to marry
the woman of his father's choice he had done
so, rather than incur his father's displeasure
and the risk of being shot or fined by his
wife's relatives. Thus havino- been considerate

o

of other people's feelings in the first place, he
thereafter held himself free to consider his
own, and immediately added to the wife
chosen for him by his elders another and a
younger one of his own choice.

Sometimes, too, a Svan indulges in what
may be called a probationary marriage — that
is to say, he falls half in love with some village
lassie, but not feeling quite sure of her temper
or the durability of his affection, he takes her
on a year's trial ; and if at the end of that time
she has made him the father of a fine boy and
never mdul^'ed in ' nao;o:in2: ' or curtain lee-
tureSj he on his part makes the matrimonial

90 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

arrangement a permanent one. But should
she show temper, cease to take the trouble to
make herself attractive, or burden the would-be
father of stalwart sons with a useless daughter,
then the partnership is dissolved, the young
lady looks out for another husband, and her
father, brothers and cousins derive a good deal
of excitement and exercise from the chase of
the quondam husband with rifles, kinjals, and
other deadly weapons. For in spite of all that
Russia has done and can do, the old custom
of the blood feud, if not as lively as ever, is
still very for from extinct. Hardly a guide
engaged by us during our stay in Sv^netia but
had some villa2;e which was forbidden around
to him, some family or other that was lying
in wait for a quiet shot at him. Generally
our guide had carried off somebody else's wife,
and the somebody else naturally resented the
affront.

Sv^ns do not seem to approve of open

FAMILY JARS. 91

violence — hand to hand fights are not their
strong points ; but a quiet shot at an nnsns-
pecting enemy has great attractions for them.
Still the rifle is not the only weapon nsed in
these family jars, as we saw when a little later
we met our hunter Georgi's brother, a fine-
lookino; mountaineer, whose rio-ht hand had
been cut off at the wrist by a blow from
a kinjal in a free fight at Ushkul about
a month before onr arrival. Thouo-h there
are no doctors in Ushkul, the loss of his hand
had had no evil effect on the man's o-eneral
health — the stump seemed in good condition ;
and as he had received a compensation in
cattle and money from the aggressor, as well
as the woman the theft of whom had been the
casus belli, Georgi's brother seemed happy and
contented.

In every other province in the Caucasus
Russia has appointed foresters, men whose
duty it is, amougst other things, to levy a kind

92 SAVAGE SYANETIA.

of game licence on the natives. In Svanetia
as yet no forester has been able to estab-
lish himself, and I don't envy the first half
dozen men who undertake the unpopular
office.

But though the Svans still practise the
blood feud and refuse to recognise any autho-
rity which presumes to interfere with their
sporting rights, they have given up some of
the worst of their old evil ways. For in-
stance, in the memory of men still living
they were in the habit of saving themselves
any little trouble or expense incidental to the
maintenance of female children by filling the
mouths of all their hungry girl babies with n.
handful of liot ashes. One meal of this kind
was generally found to suffice for the strongest
infantine constitution ; and thus when the
Svans grew up and wanted a wife or a house-
keeper, they just slipped over into Radcha or
some other neighbouring district and carried

CROWN TAX. m

off the first young woman who suited their
fancy and came in their way.

At the present day the Svans pay a tax
to Russia of one rouble thirty kopecks per
annum for each family — a tax excessively light
when compared to the eight roubles per
annum levied on every family, rich and poor
alike, in the neighbouring government of
Radcha. But in Radcha the government
does something in return for the tax levied ;
the roads are kept in excellent repair, and the
laws are so enforced as to be strictly respected
throughout the province. As there are no
roads worthy the name in Svanetia, and no one
seems to believe in the existence of laws, I am
bound to confess that, light as it is, the Crown
tax of one rouble thirty kopecks is quite as
much as the Svans ought to be expected to
pay for the privilege of being governed.

The family circle in Svanetia is in most
cases a large one for a single home, as, until

94 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

the head of the family dies, it never resoltes
itself into fresh groups on the marriage of the
sons. Honesty is the chief virtue of the
Svans — honesty, that is, in small things. It
may well be that to carry off a flock of sheep
from Radcha, leaving the shepherds dead at
the foot of the pass, would seem a virtuous
act to any native of Mookmer, but petty
larceny is not among their vices. Careless as
Frank and I were, we never had any single
thing; stolen durino; the whole time we were
in Svanetia. As for morality amongst the
women, that is a thing little known in the
Caucasus, and less likely to be met with in
Svanetia than elsewhere.

The Svans have no games, no mental
culture, to all intent and purpose no religion,
no houses better than dens ; they don't work
much when they can, and there are at least
nine months of the year when they cannot
work if they would. They have no strong

DECEASE OF A SVAN. 95

drinks, and tobacco is hard to get, so that
except for their hunting they can only fill up
their time by sleeping, indiscriminate love-
making, and the blood fends consequent
thereon. A man who has had no share in a
blood feud is as little thought of as an un-
scarred student at Heidelberg, and they are
perfectly careless of the wrath of Russia, con-
sequent on any fatal results from their favourite
pastime, well knowing that it would not be
worth the while of the Government to pursue
a single Svan in his native mountains, and
perfectly useless even if attempted.

When at last death overtakes a Svan, the
women of his village make moan for him,
weepmg and wailing like the mourners at an
Irish funeral 5 but amongst the men tears
are held dishonourable, so that the men of his
kindred or acquaintance only show their sorrow
by accompanying the corpse from the door
of the dead man's house to the church or

96 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

grave. Forming a procession of from twenty
to thirty, his companions follow their dead
fellow, carrying their alpenstocks over their
left shoulders, and keeping up a chorus of
'wai ! wai ! ' as they march. I never happened
to see a graveyard in Svanetia that I remem-
ber ; but often and often came on a cairn on
the hillside or in the forest where a bullet
or a false step hod put an end to some moun-
taineer's life. A short prayer and a tiny pine
tree torn up in passing was left by each of
my native followers at these cairns whenever
we passed them.

Unfortunately before I had elicited half
the information which I wanted, my inter-
preter and the priest of Ushkul had got into
a deep argument on the subject of the future
of the Caucasus and Russia itself. Amongst
other things I learnt that my interpreter was
one of a set of young men, natives of the
Caucasus, who, having themselves tasted of

EDUCATING THE PEASANT CHILDREN. 97

the good fruit of education, had formed a
society and raised a fund for educating a few
of the peasant children of their country, in
the hope that by this means civilisation might
spread among the mountain villages. They
had achieved no great things as yet, but still
it was something to boast of, that ten children
every year had a good education given them
by this little band of intelligent patriots. Of
Russia they had much to say, but most of it
was of the same kind that we hear every day
and read in every paper. One thing only
struck me. These men, not very learned men
possibly, but still men who knew Russia
better at any rate than we English do, laid
the blame of most of Russia's misery and
political agitation not to her want of a con-
stitutional government, but to the want of
home life among the Russians ; not to the
corruption of the official classes, but to the
infidelity of Russian women. Though I have
VOL. II. I'

98 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

heard the story repeated wherever I have
been, I can only hope it is over-coloured ;
but if it should be true, it is little wonder that
men who can have no trust in their wives,
can feel no safety in their home relations, and
have but little faith in the showy religion of
their own church, become discontented and
dangerous members of society.

In the Caucasus before the war, Caucasian
women were as famed for their purity as for
their beauty, and the erring maid or faithless
wife when detected, lost friends and relatives,
was hunted from her native village, and had
to hide her shame amono;st strano-ers, even if
her life was spared to her. Now if the natives
are to be believed all this is changed, and if
two married women fall out, the chances are
that the first taunt hurled from one at the
other will be, ' Why, you ugly shrew, you've
got a husband, poor fellow, but not a single
lover to your name.'

A MIDNIGHT CHAT. 99

But the iiiliabitants of the Caucasus at
the present day are no longer pure Caucasians
for the most part, and the fragments of
conquered races are perhaps more apt to imi-
tate the vices than the virtues of their con-
querors.

Whether the priest or Platon had the lasc
word in that lono- midnio-ht chat I never

o o

learnt ; my allowance of tobacco had long
been exceeded, and the nio-ht was more than
half spent when I left them still talking, as
only Caucasians can talk, every limb keeping
time to their tongues in the excitement of the
discussion, and joined my feeble note to the
deep chorus that had for a long time past
proclaimed the restful slumbers of the other
inmates of the room. Before I turned in I
went out on the balcony to satisfy myself
about the weather ; and as the sky was clear,
and in the shed below three horses were
already tied up, waiting to carry us on our
H 2

100 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

journey at daybreak, I closed my eyes with
the conviction that for once there would be
no hitch in our arrangements, no delay at
starting.

101

CHAPTER XL

A SVANETIAN COURT.

The first glance at the outside world when I
woke from my lah' on the floor of the priest's
house at UshkuL dissipated half my rosy
hopes of the night before. AVhen they were
discussing Ushkul, the natives had claimed for
their village that it lay higher above the sea-
level than any village in Svanetia, if not in
the entire Caucasus, hence the winter came
upon them sooner than on their neighbours.
Now, as I looked from the balcony across the
patches where the uncut crops still stood, the
snow fell thick and fast ; and though it was
only the 18th of September, all the country

102 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

was already white with the first fall of winter.
This was bad enough, and made us doubly
anxious to get away from bleak, miserable
Mookmer to Betcho, where the Svanetian
prince held his court, and thence to the lower
country by the Ingour, where there would
still be some few more weeks of hunting ; but
when we endeavoured to hasten our departure
we were told that the owners of the horses
had determined to cry off their bargain, and
would not let their horses go. The impudent
rascal who owned two of the beasts came up
at the moment, took no notice of our pro-
testations, but having under false pretences
fed and housed his cattle at our host's for the
nio'ht, now mounted one of them and rode
coolly away, laughing at our impotent rage.

After he had gone Simon, the son of the
bear- slayer, arrived with his white-headed old
father, who, having been led up to me, fell on
his knees, and, embracing my legs, began to

AN APPEAL TO OUR GENEROSITY. 108

kiss them with much energy. Xot being-
used to this sort of thins;, I remonstrated with
the old fellow, and found that he had come to
appeal to our generosity to compensate him
for the loss of the horse which had fallen
down the cliff at Zaskoora. He admitted that
the fault was not ours, that we had advised
his son not to take the horse on ; but for all
that, as we had brought misfortune on him
and bad weather on the village by hunting,
unclean strangers that we were, in the ]\Iook-
mer huntin" fields, he beo'o:ed us to o-ive him
something to buy another horse with. AVe
could not help feelmg sorry for the old fellow,
so though we made a good deal of the
extravagance of his demands, Frank and I
gave him about double what he expected, and
sent him away, praying probably that he
might always find Englishmen to hire his old
screws. But it was not the old bear-slayer
alone who attributed the bad weather to us ;

104 SAVAGE SYANETIA.

and after what I had heard of stonmg and
fines the night before, a glance at the scowling
faces crowding about us made me additionally
anxious to get away. The priest did all he
could. No man ever worked harder for
strangers than he did for us, and when the
horses had been obtained, and he had with his
own hands tied on the last of our bundles, we
drank m our stirrup cup the health of one of
the best friends we met in Svanetia.

In cases like this, where we had been
staying in the house of a priest or other
educated person, we found that though our
host would be offended at the offer of any
remuneration, a present made to his wife
would never be refused, even if couched in the
simple form of rouble notes. Throughout the
Caucasus, the wife never seemed to me on the
same social level as her husband, but looked
on herself and was by others regarded rather
as we should regard a housekeeper.

WE LEAVE MOOKMEE. 105

It took half a day to obtain horses for us
and to convmce the native horseboys that
they had at last reached the utmost bounds of
our patience and our paying powers. On
such occasions as these, when Platon and I
were busy haranguing the obstinate and
attempting to wheedle the relentmg, Frank,
being unable to understand the conversation,
generally performed the rule of sleepmg
partner to perfection, and in so doing showed
his wisdom. But neither of us fared sump-
tuously at such times ; indeed, it was always
from one discomfort to another, and our
spirits were none of the highest when we
started from Mookmer, the snow fallinof
rapidly and melting as it fell, our black
bourkas gripped tightly under our chins, and
the screws beneath us left to take care of
themselves as best they could. The road was
vile, but beautiful. Lovely scenery and good
roads never seem to exist naturally together.

106 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

For some hours our road lay along the
sides of hills almost worthy the name of
mountains, which overlooked the course of the
Ingour, after which we got down lower into a
region of pine belts, where for the present no
snow had made the landscape miserable.
Every now and again we came upon a log
hut, better built than any houses we had yet
seen, and like in shape to the chalets of
Switzerland. These were the scattered houses
of a riverside hamlet called Kala.

If ever I travel throuo;h S vanetia ao^ain , I
am resolved that though a horse may carry
my packs, no legs but my own shall be
trusted to carry my person. I don't think
I am a nervous horseman, but the inclines,
bestrewn with rocks and slippery with melt-
ing snow, down which we were expected to
ride on weak-kneed beasts, tried me sorely.

Once, in a river bed amongst boulders as
high as my nag's shoulder, I got a really bad

BREAK-NECK EOADS. 107

spill in the dark, my rifle going one way, and
all my other impedimenta going other ways,
leavmg me, with knees and fanny bones
numbed with pain, to grope about and collect
my belongings as best I could. The men
were too far ahead in the dark to call to them
for assistance, so I had to help myself and
trudge on uncomplainingly, and I still pray,
as I prayed then, that those Russians who
have the charge of the roads in Svanetia, and
into whose pockets the Crown money goes,
may be condemned to ride through eternity
in Tartar saddles on Svanstian nao-s, over the
break-neck ways they have been paid to
neglect.

Just before my tumble we had passed the
important village of Ipari, built, as these
villages all seemed to be, in detachments.
The first storey of the village, some eight or
ten towers and their surroundin«x huts, was
built rifrht on the ed^-e of the Ino;our. The

n O O

108 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

next storey and largest of the three was a
quarter of an hour's climb up the hill,
and apparently half an hour's climb above
that, on the very summit of the range, was
a third small collection of houses, which
completed the village called collectively
Ipari.

Once during the day we stopped in a
clearing on the mountain side to eat a crust of
bread and turn our animals loose to forage for
themselves. No Svan thinks of giving his
horse a feed during the day's journey, so it is
little to be wondered at that the poor beasts
insist on feeding at every step on whatever
chance herbage comes handy. Having
crossed the hills of Ipari, we looked into a
valley through which ran a small river,
to which our horseboys gave the name of
Tchala. At the northern end of the valley
were the peaks and glaciers whence the
stream issued, and grim mountam giants,

AN EXTENSIVE TABLELAND. 109

hoary with ice fields and glaciers, domi-
nated and saddened the whole view.

On the opposite side of the river to that
on which we stood the banks sloped gradually
up for about a third of a mile, until they
reached a tableland which, with a few unim-
portant breaks, continued the whole leng-th of
the valley. On this tableland were a suc-
cession of hamlets all built of grey stone and
protected by tall white towers, much battered
by private feuds or the later inroads of the
Russian. The tableland had been cultivated
too, but for the most part the crops were
down now, and anything more grim and grey
than the whole scene it would be hard to
conceive.

What the land must be like when the
stream is frozen and every village cut off
from its neighbour by snowdrifts ; when
winter takes all the cheeriness out of the sky,
and hides every vestige of vegetation, buries

110 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

half the huts and makes escape hopeless, and
life devoid of occupation, with fuel hard to
get and food scarce, is known providentially
only to the dwellers in the land. The scene
was cheerless enough now as the dusk set in,
though Mugal and Mulach were still in their
summer days of comfort and plenty.

Rosemary and juniper bashes were the
most noticeable of the plants which grew by
our roadside, and a prickly bush covered
with berries of a bright rose red colour, very
beautiful to the eye and very acid to the
tongue. ' Kvadzakoori,' the natives called it,
and they told us it was greatly prized for
making mto liqueurs. By the time we had
reached the last of the hamlets of Mulach it
was dark, and there were but few lights in
huts.

It was too late to go further, and we were
tired and hungry, but when we sought for a
roof to shelter us or food to eat, we were once

A SORRY PLIGHT. Ill

more painfully reminded that we were in
Svanetia.

An unpleasant kind of moisture — half rain,
half snow — was falling, our weary horses
stumbled at every step, our limbs were sore
and ached, and as for our appetites, I know of
no word strong enough to use in describing
them. In this plight we rode into a kind of
yard amongst the houses of Mulach, and sent
out a messenger with our letters of intro-
duction to find us shelter and a dinner ; but
the Elder was away from the village — Elders
in Svanetia always are ; no one else could
read, and the only two houses which still con-
tained a light and waking inhabitants showed
anything but a hospitable or friendly spirit
towards us.

So we stood, the centre of a hungry pack

of dogs, who kept skirmishmg round our

' calves in a way to make us shudder, while

lirst one messenger then another came back to

112 SAVAGE SYANETIA.

US with the cheerless story of no food, no fire,
no shelter to be obtained for that night. The
faint-hearted amongst us suggested a night,
suh Jove frigido, and as it had to be done,
proposed that we should begin at once ; but
a lively opposition, whose imagination dwelt
fondly on the flesh-pots of Svanetia, held out
against this heresy.

All things come to those who know how to
wait, and in the end a man of Mulach, the
secretary of the village Elder, adorned with a
brass medal as big as a cheese-plate, came all
unwillingly to us. The sight of a real three
rouble note brought him back to comparative
liveliness ; and before we had had time to
completely freeze in the courtyard, we were
led into a long low shed, in which a fire, fed
by fragments of the rafters from the roof, i^c,
burned merrily on the floor. Here we supped
somewhat meagrely ; but if we did not feed
well, no one could have taken exception to our

TUMBLE-DOWN HOVELS. 113

slumbers ; and when we woke and shook our-
selves clear of the dust of Mulach, w^e forgot
our troubles in the anticipation of reaching
Betcho before nio-htfall.

The second day of our journey from
Ushkul to Betcho was much like our first. A
couple of ridges surmounted and a few villages
passed through, all so much alike that in
describing one you describe them all. ]Mestia,
Nenjar, and Latali were the names of them,
and the general character of all tliree was that
of a village of tumble- down hovels of grey-
stone, interspersed with tall white watch
towers, battered and ruined by internecine
wars and the more recent attacks of Russia,
built on the most level part of the slope of
some hill at whose foot the shallow stream of
some small glacier-born river rolls its grey
waters.

All round the immediate vicinity of the
village the poor soil of the hillside is portioned

VOL. II. I

114

SAVAGE BVANETIA.

out into little square plots, yielding a scanty
supply of rye or barley to the villagers, and
all round roll range upon range of barren hills,
while at the end of the glen towers the white
mass of some giant snow peak.

In summer the scenery is so stern and
wild that its beauty hardly impresses you so
much as its savage sense of desolation. But
what the lives of these villagers must be like
when winter has shut them away from the
world, and a black wintry sky frowns down on
the silent waste of snow-shrouded mountains,
it is difficult indeed to conceive. Often in
such glens fuel is not near at hand, and food
is always scarce.

Wine or spirits, to cheer the heart of
man, they have none ; books there are none ;
and for at least eight months no news
can come to them from the world without.
Lucky for the men if they are hunters, for
then they at least may while away a few of the

"msm!.^'

A SMALL CHURCH. 115

dreary days of winter, but for the rest it
must be a terrible time.

At Xenjar we saw a rather interesting
church, built of stone and plaster. It was so
small that if it would hold a score of people
standino; it could do little more. On three
sides of it were windows, lono- and narrow,
set in what somewhat resembled the Xorman
arch, familiar in England. All round the
exterior of the building ran a kind of cornice
of mural painting, fairly well preserved and
originally well executed. On the side most
worn by weather was a half obliterated design,
which may have been originally meant for
the Virgin, with on her left a picture of a
saint of the masculine o-ender mounted on a
red deer rampant. Another of the designs
represents a fight between a knight on horse-
back and the devil. The devil is distinctly
coming by the worst of it, for his head is
bleeding from a sabre stroke just dealt by the
I 2

116 SAVAGE SVANEITA.

knight, and moreover one of the devil's horns
has got knocked off. He is depicted as
retaliating by thrusting a torch into the eye
of the kniofht's destrier. Behind the knight
are three Red -cross brethren in full armour,
such as was worn by the Crusaders, with
shields on their arms and swords over their
right shoulders. The devil has for second a
single knight armed with a scimitar. Another
painting represents the hero of the three
pictures with a monster at his feet, supposed
to be a whale, and in his hand this time the
knight wields a scimitar in place of his good
sword. It was explained to us that the
pictures all represented the life and history of
Amuran or Job, and the three knights were
his three companions in arms, of whom the
principal was Osib. One of the pictures
looked to me a great deal more like the old
story of St. George and the dragon. No one
in the village knew whom the pictures were

LATALI. 117

painted by or when they were painted, except
in a general way that the chapel was probably
built in the time of Queen Tamara, and by her
orders. We were refused admission to the
interior, but a glance through the windows
from an extemporised platform on Platon's
shoulders convinced me that we lost little by
this.

The last big village passed by us on our
way to Betclio was Latal, or Latali as the
natives call it, a rather pretty and verj' ancient
village, which seems to centre round a gigantic
walnut tree. All the world of Latali seemed
busy thrashing out the newly-gathered grain,
and in every compound at the back of each
villaofer's hut, the solemn oxen were drao:o;inor
the wooden sledge over the ears of corn, while
father or mother led the patient beasts, and a
half naked youngster screamed to them orders
and encouragements from his perch on the
sledge behind. But though the village seemed

118 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

rich and busy, it was only after a protracted
search and a liberal promise of reward, that we
managed to collect a few moist and indigestible
dampers made from rye and sand in equal
proportions, apparently relics of the villagers'
early breakfasts.

At Latali we saw the first instances of
Sfoitre which we had met with in the Caucasus,
though from that date until we left the course
of the Ingour the occurrence of this hideous
malady was not infrequent. The natives
ascribe the disease to the evil effects of snow
and snow water, partaken of too freely by the
hot and thirsty amongst the mountains.

From Latali to Betcho there was little
to vary the monotony of our route. Of course
we had another chain of hills to ascend and
descend, but by this time, except as an excuse
for five minutes' breathing space, we rarely
stopped to admire the view.

We had got rid of all the troubles of

BETCHO. 119

mendino; and re-stuffino- our sandals with
mountain grass, for our sandals had long
since left us shred by shred, until none
remained, nor any leather to make more with.
My feet were cut and bleedmg, and in places
festered ; so that never did pilgrim long for
the shrine which was to be the goal of his
journey more ardently than I did for Betcho.
And there at last it lay, this summer residence
of the prince of this land of wearying mountams,
not a grand place as the simple Svans had
painted it to us, in which their prince lived in
feudal state, but a collection of miserable
wooden shanties, most of them with the roofs
off, built on an uneven little plain where
grass and boulders struggled for predominance,
and neither roads nor walls marked out
too plainly where man might or might not
wander.

At the entrance to the village, which had
won itself a name as a wateiing-place, whose

120 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

mineral waters possessed all manner of curative
properties, was a well, full of water, whose
stencil was bad enough to support its claims to
any degree of medicinal excellence ; but though
the water was there and a bucket for the sick
man to help himself out of, the bucket was
rusted with disuse, and over the surface of the
healing pool had grown a scum so thick that
we did not care to break throu2:h it.

Betcho itself lies on the banks of an affluent
of the Ingour, or more properly speaking,
perhaps, on the banks of one of the sources of
that river. The part of the town in which we
first entered was of a temporaiy nature in a
measure, being set apart for the residence of
the Russian judge, who resides here in the
summer, and for the visits of the prince of the
country. In the winter both these magnates
betake themselves to warmer and more
hospitable climes.

But up a glen to our right front as we

A HIGH PEAK. 121

entered Betcho lay a village large in compa-
rison to most of those we had hitherto met
with. Here the inhabitants were permanent
settlers, and not mere migrants like those
who lived in the wooden shanties . romid the
court-house.

But there is one monarch who always
looks down on Betcho, whiter and summer,
with unchanging fidelity, and lends a beauty
to the miserable collection of hovels, for which
their inhabitants may well be grateful. I
have seen in my time many mountains, but
to my mind none can compare to glorious
Ushtba, the highest peak save Elbruz in
Svanetia, and like Elbruz, hardly within that
province though just on its confines. The
peak rises clean and steep, not losing much of
its height of 17,500 feet by a gradual ascent,
and when I first saw it, with the rose lio-hts
of declining day on its masses of snow,
towering right over the squalor and insig-

122 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

nificance of Betclio, it looked to me a type of
the country whose loveliness is almost beyond
compare, while its denizens are incomparably
the most destitute of culture amono-st men.
The Russian ao;ronome, whom I afterwards
met in Betcho, informed me that the whole
of the cone of Ushtba is composed of granite
and granolite.

But bsautiful as Ushtba is in the glory of
an autumn sunset, it was not a prince of
mountains that we sou^-ht at Betcho, but a
prince of mountaineers, whose tall form we
now discerned in the distance, the centre of
as motley a group of retainers as ever thronged
around their chief.

The prince's house was a trifle better than
the rest in Betcho, a one- storied wooden
building with a balcony round it, and here
the prince and a kind of deputy-governor
lived together, and day and night a mob of
rough retainers thronged in the balcony or

A SVANETIAN PRINCE. 123

slept in and about the base. As we looked
the sittino; came to an end, and the crowd
parting gave place to the prince and his court,
who slowly made their way from the balcony
to the judge's house.

Platon, our interpreter, had been at school
with the judge, so that meeting the group en
route we got presented there and then to the
prince as English strangers wandering in
Svanetia for sport. Nor were we unkindly
received, although the hour of our presenta-
tion was ill chosen, the prince being just then
on his way to dinner.

In person this gentleman, who alone seems
to possess the respect and fear of his people,
is tall, beyond the average, almost six feet
three or four, I should think, and must, when
younger and in good training, have been a
very fine man. But, like so many of the
richer Caucasians, he cares nothing at all for
sport, and as there is little else to live for in

124 SAVAGE SVANETIA,

the Caucasus, I should fancy his tmie must
hang heavy on his hands. He was dressed
in the long toga of the country, a kind of
skull cap on his head, and soft leather
slippers pointed and upturned on his feet.
His court consisted of the judge, a clever,
good-natured little Caucasian from Radcha,
more Russian than Caucasian, in the oldest
frock coat in the world, a battered billycock
hat, and an old towel tied round his neck,
and some half-dozen other minor officials, paid
but poorly, I fear, to drag out their existence
in exile at Betcho.

The prince, after a few minutes spent in
catechising Platon, called one of his numerous
henchmen, a wild, handsome ragamuffin, all
red shirt and brass medals, with a moustache
which he might easily have tied round his
neck had he been so inclined, and bade him
take us in charge and find quarters for us.
Then we made our adieux and left the great

NEW-FOUND QUARTERS. 125

man to dine, rather envying him his good
luck in having a dinner to go to.

Our quarters, when found, were not
perhaps as luxurious as those which we had
pictured, thanks to the force of contrast, when
bivouacking on the bare hillside ; but though
our windows only contained a couple of panes
apiece, and the deficiencies m glass were
hardly made up in boards ; though the floor
was too filthy to tread on, and the shelf
which formed our bedstead somewhat of the
narrowest, we were consoled by the thought
that the roof was weatherproof, and there
was a fireplace if only we could collect
fuel.

For a long time the crowd released from
attendance on the prmce thronged us to such
an extent that we could do nothing more
than submit to sit still and be stared at ; but
at last a chans^e came, and with it a messagfe
that the prince, having dmed, felt rather un-

126 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

well, and could not give us an audience until
next day.

For a couple of hours Platon had been
away foraging for food and firewood, and
though between us we did manage to get up
a fire, no food could be obtained for love or
money. In despair we were contemplating
a supperless retirement to bed when notice
reached us of an improvement m the prince's
health and a request that we would waive
ceremony, excuse his calling on us, and come
over to his house to see him. Nothing loth
we put on our best clothes {i.e. changed our
mocassins for boots, and washed our faces),
and walked over to the balcony, where we
found our host ready to receive us. All round
him and in his courtyard thronged about
a hundred of the most unsafe-looking savages
eyes ever beheld. No fear of royalty kept
their tongues from wagging freely, nor any
sense of decency restrained their hands from

SATISFYING THE PANGS OF HUNGER. 127

molesting each other. Only in the balcony
itself they took then' caps off and spoke softly,
until they lost their tempers, when they
shouted as freely at their prince as he at
them.

How we thanked heaven that amono;st the
ceremonies of visitino; in Svanetia it is held
necessary to set some slight refreshment
before your guest I need hardly say, when it
is remembered that we had not had a square
meal for a couple of days I It was not a
grand repast, but cheese and claret are things
not to be despised by the starving, and the
way I treated that light refreshment would
have made anyone less kindly disposed than
the prince, determine that my first meal at
his table should be my last. When the
pangs of hunger had been somewhat allayed,
we fell to talking, but protest as I would
nothing could convince my new friends
that love of sport alone had brought me to

128 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

Svanetia. But then there were no sportsmen
amongst my questioners.

When the prince's mother died, and he
wanted meat to feast the funeral party, he
had chosen our friend of the red shirt and
two others, and sent them into the mountains
to sLay tiir and chamois for his guests, and in
due course they had come back bringing three
tur with them. These men he now assigned
to us, and promised that the day after the
morrow they should conduct us to a place
where tur were plenty, and whence we should,
bring back at least a couple of the heads we
were seeking. This sounded well, but the
sportsmen's tongues seemed to me too fluent
to belong to men of the right sort, and I was
not mistaken.

Whilst we sat talking and smoking in the
balcony the crowd outside acted as the chorus
in a Greek play, and from time to time com-
mented on or confirmed every remark the
prince made.

THE ROYAL KITCHEN. 129

Though I fancy the prince is mainly de-
pendent on a tithe of the flocks and herds in
his kingdom — a tithe only paid in kind — for
his subsistence, he yet feeds daily at his table
at least a hundred and fifty retainers, who do
little to earn their food, save by swelling the
train which lends an air of importance to
their lord's progress from place to place.
The tithe of cattle is collected in a very rough
and ready way by agents of the prince's, and
I should think that many a chamois was not
more difficult to obtain than the sheep or
goat with which the mountain shepherd pays
for the privilege of being governed.

Whilst we sat in the balcony we com-
manded an excellent view of the royal kitchen,
built gipsy fashion on the lawn at the back of
the house, and saw many of the items which
went to form the morrow's dinner arrive.
From somewhere beyond the hills a peasant
and his wife would trudge into sight. By-

VOL. II. K

130 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

and-bye they would join tlie crowd outside,
and then some one of the retainers shouted
out that So-and-So wanted to speak with the
prince. The prince shouted his wiUingness
to receive his visitor, whereupon the woman
forced her way into the balcony, while her
husband, cap in hand, stood without. Rising,
the prince gave her his hand to kiss, and put
a great deal of real grace and majesty of
manner into his simple reception of his sub-
ject. Then, after a few minutes' converse, he
would accept her offering of a basket of cream
cheese or a couple of chickens, say half a
dozen words to her good man, and so dismiss
them.

Twice during our stay greater guests
arrived, ladies of neiojhbourino- mao;nates,
riding on ambling steeds, and protecting,
somewhat needlessly, their sun-proof com-
plexions by the use of enormous gingham
umbrellas.

A HAPPY NIGHT. 131

When we left the pruice it was only with
a promise that after breakfast next day we
would come to him and match our rifles
against a beautiful little Berdianka of which
he was justly proud, and after our shooting-
match dine with him at the judge's at 2 p.m.,
the fashionable hour in this part of the world.
As we had secured some native whiskey and
tobacco, and screwed up courage to kick all
but about half a dozen of the o-reatest amono-st
our uninvited visitors out of our tiny room,
we spent a fairly happy night.

Moreover, our reception by the prince had
exercised a favourable influence on Platon,
thanks to which, after a very serious and
quarrelsome argument, we managed to restrict
his expectorations and those of his friends to
our outer chamber. This beastly habit of the
Caucasus, and, indeed, of Russia too, as far
as I have seen, caused us more unpleasant-
ness than all our hardships put together, and

K 2

1.32 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

the worst of it was that to remonstrate with
the offender invariably meant to hurt his feel-
ings and make an enemy of him.

When the morning came and the sun
looked in through our one pane of glass,
happy Frank only acknowledged his arrival by
turnino- his back on the window and rollins;
off into further fields of peaceful slumber, but
for my unluckily constituted nature this was
out of the question, so I made my way through
half a dozen sleepers to the outside of the
house.

Though it was not very early no one was
stirring in the village, and though I wasted a
couple of hours in a visit to the river, in
collecting fuel and washing some of my linen,
there was no further sign of waking life either
within the house or without at eight o'clock.
At nine, as all still slept, hmiger overcame
my sympathy for my happier fellows, so that
poor Platon got turned out of his blanket and

MEALS IN BETCHO. 133

sent to look for food. At eleven none had
been procured. None was to be had in the
village, and the bread for the prince's house-
hold had not yet been made. The judge sent
us one damper, his last before dinner-time,
and shortly after passed our hut with a friend
or two, stretchino; his lee's before ffoino- to
work for the day

Breakfast is a meal that no one eats in
Betcho, for if he is a great man a cup of tea,
if a poor man a nip of vodka is luxury
enough for a Svan. At two he feeds for the
first, and except in some cases where cards
necessitate late hours, and a supper at mid-
night, for the last time in the day. Shops of
course there are none, either at Betcho or any
other village in Svfmetia, and everyone is so
entirely self-dependent that no one makes any
more bread than will just suffice for the im-
mediate needs of his own famity. So, though
we got at about eleven thirty eggs and a couple

134 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

of fowls for rather less than two shillings the
lot, weY\"ere obhgecl to make one small damper
provided by the good-natured judge appease
the hunger of three men.

How we envied the prince who, they tell
us, whenever he deigns to walk through a
village in Svanetia, is assaulted by the dam-
sels of the place, whose custom it is, coming
behind him, to embrace his neck and atone for
their assault by presents of creature comforts
of bread and wine, cheese, fowls, &c.

About twelve o'clock a messa2:e came to
us, that the prince was ready to receive us on
his verandah, and begged us to bring our rifles,
revolvers, and any other curiosities of civilisa-
tion which we might happen to possess.
Arrived in the verandah, the prince seized on
the bourka (blanket) of one of his hapless
retainers, and sent the owner off to the hillside
opposite the house to put up the blanket as a
mark for our rifles.

RIFLE SHOOTING. 1:35

The prince had a good supply of ammuni-
tion and no use for it, so I determined not to
attempt to compete with him as a marksman,
as my five and twenty rounds had to last me
back to Kutais. When the bourka had been
arranged to the prince's satisfaction one of
the gentlemen in goatskins approached from
the courtyard, and drivmg his dagger into one
of the pillars of the verandah, made a rough
and ready rest for the prince's Berdianka.
Considering that he knew the range and his
weapon, our host did not make very wonderful
practice, but after about a dozen shots he
made a hole in the bourka which I failed to do
with the two cartridges which I consented to
waste, shooting with a rifle sighted for 250
yards, at a mark about 500 yards distant.
Frank's ' Peabody ' made better shooting than
my ' Express ' at this long range, and I had to be
content to let them think the little ' Express ' a
useless tool, trusting that a reasonable shot at

136 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

game within the little rifle's range would ere
long alter their opinions.

One custom about this primitive court
struck Frank and myself as full of a provident
care for the wants of frail human nature.
Two tall fellows, in rough goatskin garments,
with peculiarly prominent tails to them,
followed the prince indefatigably wherever he
went, and one bore in his hand a bottle of red
wine and a tumbler, while the other carried
all the material necessary for the making and
li o^htin o^ of cigarettes . These two court officers ,
held no sinecure, ought not to be abolished,
and deserved their salary. I feel pretty sure
these officers will not be considered unneces-
sary during the present prince's lifetime.

In the intervals of our shooting match the
bearers of presents were received and dis-
missed ; once or twice people arrived who
had causes of complaint against each other,
and when this was the case their dispute was

SOCIETY OF BETCHO. 137

referred to the prince, who decided between
the disputants, and in all cases his decisions
seemed to be accepted as final. When angry,
or obliged to administer punishment to any of
his subjects, one of his court told me that the
prince just cuffed the offender as a father
would his child, and though a Svan would
not stand a blow from the Czar, he would
make no resistance to and feel no humiliation
at receiving a score of blows in public from
his own prince.

The prince, together with the judge and
all the members of Betcho society, dined to-
gether at the judge's house, a Government
building, which being somewhat better than
its neighbours, was raised to the honour of
club-house, as well as being the seat of justice.
Here Frank and I dined well for the first time
since we had left Kutais, and met, moreover, a
very pleasant set of people in the members of
the Government Expedition sent from Tiflis,

138 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

for the purpose of reporting on the agricul-
tural capabilities of Svanetia.

Having seen perhaps more than my share
of the results of card-playing years ago in
Southern Russia, I never care to take a hand
at ' preference ' or any other of their games, so
whilst the princes and mighty ones grew
hilarious over their successes, or unbecomingly
savage over their losses, I retired to a corner
with a Monsieur Schemanovsky, agronome
to the Government of the Caucasus, from
whom I elicited, over a glass of tea and a
multitude of cigarettes, some scraps of infor-
mation regarding the products of the country.

Even the Government at Tiflis seems to
know but little of this its last acquired province
of the Caucasus. Poor and inaccessible as it is,
it has never seemed to the conquerors worth
while to take much notice of it. Now and again
it has given them serious trouble, as when the
thirty-five Svans of one of the villages near

AGRICULTUEAL PURSUITS. 139

Ushkiil held 10.000 Russians at bay until
artillery tumbled their little castles about their
ears ; but Svanetia yields nothing worth taking-
out of the country, barely enough to keep its
scanty population from starvation through the
long winter. The people themselves too are
very nearly useless for military purposes : for
in addition to being difficult beyond measure
to bring into that discipline necessary for
soldiers, these mountaineers, hardy though
they are at home, die off with terrible rapidity
if brought down to any of the military stations
in the lowlands or on the Black Sea coast.

From Ushkul to Lachamul the crops are
wheat, grown in very small quantities, oats
and barley being the chief objects of the
agriculturist's care. Millet is grown, and
small crops of peas and beans, with a little
flax, are sometimes found in favoured spots.
Tobacco of a very coarse kind is grown in the
smallest possible quantities with much diffi-

140 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

culty, but cannot be grown from seed of plants
produced in Svanetia. Pears and apples of
a dwarf and almost worthless kind are also
grown, but not being in great request go for
the most part to feed the bears.

In the forests grow the pine (^Pinus silves-
tris), a tree which the people call ' pixta,'
translated by my dictionary, Siberian silver
fir, and, according to my friend, ' Abies ' of
botanists ; the red fir (Pi?iea e.vcelsa), and the
juniper. Beech, maple, ash, aspen, silver
birch, walnut, and hazel form the main part
of the low-lying woods, in which raspberry
canes and currant bushes provided refresh-
ment for us and for Bruin. Amongst the
flowers we noticed three varieties of crocus,
some white campanulas, a beautiful kind of
daisy like that which English children call
the 'ox eye,' save that the petals surround-
ing its yellow centre are pink instead of
white, wild scabious, lilies, whose flowers had

mNERALS. 141

fallen before our arrival, and vast quantities of
larkspur and blue gentian. Wherever there
was room for it on the lower slopes of the hills,
a plant with huge hollow stems and broad
leaves [Angelica officinalis) blocked the way and
poured its gathered dewdrops down our necks,
while higher up rhododendron thickets and
bilberries had the ground to themselves. Of
ferns we saw very few, the commonest being
trichomanes.

In variety of minerals Svanetia is rich,
though none of the mines would pa}^ for the
working, they saj^ The ordinary rocks are
argillaceous schist, but granite occurs in places.
Copper is found near Betcho ; a little silver
and lead is distributed all over the district ;
near Ushkiil there is a small quantity of tin
and a considerable amount of serpentine and
porphyry. Gold is said to be found in the
mountains between Mulach and Ushkul, and
also by the course of the Ingour below

142 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

Lachamul, but there is no coal in Svanetia.
You will be told probably at Tiflis and Kutais
that valuable jewels are to be picked up, set
in the roug-h rino-s of the Svans of Ushkiil,
Lachamul, and other remote villages ; but
though Frank and I urged Platon to bring to
us all people possessed of jewellery of any de-
scription, we never saw anything more like a
a precious stone than a few beautiful rock
crystals, which the owners did not care to
part with, believing them to be diamonds of
immense value.

Really so far as I could ascertain the only
exports of Svanetia are the grand horns of
the tur, which are made into drinking cups at
Kutais, and a large number of marten skins,
taken for the most part in the forest of Lekera
during the winter.

143

CHAPTER XII.

SNOWED UP.

Wb were to have started from Betcho at dawn,
for what both had agreed was to be positively
Frank's last hunt for tur in the mountains he
so heartily hated. The prince had been con-
fident in his auguries of success at the card
party of the night before, and as he was every-
where looked on as the one man to whom all
things were possible in Svanetia, and had
ordered his best hunters to escort us to the
best hunting ground of which they knew, even
my scepticism had m some measure given
way to hope. But disappointments began
early. First, neither horses nor men were

144 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

ready, when, long after dawn, my own party
was ready for them had they been in waiting,
and we were unable to bring the prince's in-
fluence to bear on his sluggish followers, until
about eleven o'clock he was himself up and
about. AVhen at last we had manag^ed to
interest him in our behalf, he could not under-
stand my impatience, and it was long ere I
could bring him to see that to-morrow morn-
ing would not do every bit as well as to-day.
And when he did bestir himself, not all his
power, showing itself outwardly in loud and
unmitigated abuse of his phlegmatic following,
managed to procure horses for us before sun-
down. Then of course no one wanted to
start, but seeing how delays were natural
attendants at a court, I would not be let or
hindered, and left Betcho hurriedly, deter-
mined to sleep at a village called Latali on the
other side one of the ranges which hemmed in
Betcho.

A WEIRD EIDE. 145

It was a steep ride, and a toilsome one up
the long slope which led to the summit, but
though the men were silent and sulky, the
scene was one which silence suited well. The
tall trees, straight and white in the moonlight,
seemed climbing the mountain side in closely
serried ranks, their upturned roots half
wrenched from the scanty soil here and there
by wind and tempest, twisting and writhing
throuo'h white lio'ht and half shadow like the
serpentine growths in Dore's weird pictures,
while every here and there a gap m tlieir ranks
gave us a glimpse of the moonlit majesty of
Ushtba's cold beauty.

When we wound our way down a water-
course mto Latali the villao-e was dark and
silent, so that we found our way into the open
court -yard set apart for travellers, unannounced
and unwelcomed. There were four walls
round a small square of bare earth, with
no roof save an awning at one corner, and

VOL. TI. L

146 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

here we kindled oiir fire and tethered our
horses.

In a few mmutes our men had unearthed
some of the denizens of Latali, and one of
them, a handsome old village Elder, asked me
to come into his house, which opened out of
the yard, and see the tiir horns collected by his
sons, while his wife cooked a supply of bread
for our expedition. In a low cave-like dwel-
ling, lit by the brilliant but uncertain flicker
of a. wood fire on the floor, sat the handsomest
woman (by firelight) I think I ever saw.
Anything more beautiful than those dark eyes,
lit by an occasional flash from the embers, I
never beheld ; and though her occupation was
the humble one of bread -making, she did it
gracefully and nimbly, as the ninety odd
loaves made and baked for our consumption
before daybreak amply testified. For these
and a flask of native whiskey, the flask a kind
of terra- cotta jar so large that one man could

VARIETY OF TUR. 147

carry notliing besides it, we paid not quite ten
shillings ; and though daylight on a subsequent
occasion showed us that our patriarch was
very dirty, and our lady-baker sallow and
growing an enormous goitre, nothing could
efface the memory of their ready service and
the romantic picture man and wife presented,
when the goitre was hidden and the kindly
flames showed only what was comely in that
dark interior. On a rafter above the flames
were about a dozen pairs of tiir horns, black-
ened with the deposit from the smoke of many
wood fires, but when cleaned the handsomest
horns I had yet seen.

There are it seems two kinds of tur in the
Caucasus, as indeed Mons. Radde afterwards
informed me, and the horns we saw here
belonged to the second and rarer kind, whose
horns bear deep indentations at regular inter-
vals all along the upper surface, like those in
the horns of an ibex. The ordinary tur's
L 2

148 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

horn is nearly smooth. When we had seen
all he had to show us we took the old man
to our camp fire and gave him and our men
some whisky to put them in good temper for
the morrow, and then rolling ourselves in our
rugs prepared for an early start next morning,
as our men vowed that unless we could oret

o

out of the village without meeting anyone we
should have no luck in our hunting.

Our party consisted of three guides and our
three selves, the guides being Red Shirt, the
hunter of the prince, and two local men picked
up at Latali. Before the men slept, however,
they went away somewhere to make a contract
amongst themselves as to the division of the
blood money they were to receive in case Frank
or myself killed a tur, and having made their
contract deposited their prayers and a half
kopeck (not quite a halfpenny) between them,
in front of an eikon at the village Elder's. A
four hours' climb in the mornino- took us out

DIFFICULTY WITH OUR HORSES. 149

of sight of Latali, and brought us to the hast
rivulet we were likely to see for several hours,
so here we sat down, loosed our horses, and
breakfasted. Alas ! that Svans consider
whiskey is as suitable for breakfast as for
supper. They did not drink much of it, but
what they did bore very unpleasant fruit
before long.

Horses were really more trouble to us than
help after breakfast, and only Platon — who
hated to use his own legs and had no mercy
on his beast — attempted to keep his seat.
Frank, who always thought of his horse as
soon as he did of himself, walked the whole
way, though no one loathed that long climb
as he did. Weary, and heartily sick of the
whole expedition, he kept plodding mechani-
cally up hill, so that when we all sat down to
light our pipes and get our breath on a huge
fir which barred our progress up hill, he, not
noticing the halt, kept on and was lost to

150 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

sight. He was thus saved a row wliicli very
nearly ended in murder.

Ever since he had taken that morning nip
at breakfast Red Shirt had been very bump-
tious and intractable, and now entered on a
very hot discussion with one of the hunters of
Latali anent the geography of the place whither
we were going. The man of Latali havmg
been born in the neighbourhood ventured to
say that as a native he ought to know more
about these mountains than Red Shirt. Red
Shirt at once losing his temper called Biasir a
liar, and Biasir nothmg loth returned the
epithet. Till then I had listened lazily,
only thinking the two ill-tempered fools were
indulgmg in that wordy war common to all
Eastern races, but to my horror no sooner
were the words out of Biasir' s moutli than
Red Shirt's kinjal was out of its sheath, and
flashing under his enemy's arm tore through
his shirt, missing his chest by what must

I

A TBIELY INTEEPOSITION. 151

have been the least possible fraction of an
inch.

I had seen Caucasians angry before, but
these two fellows, now their blood was up,
seemed in a very different mood, and I rea-
lised that their prince was right when he
told me they were the most recklessly irri-
table of men.

With a look that was full of the devil,
Biasir stepped back, and, putting up his rifle,
would have shot his man at half a dozen
paces, and so added another to the list of
blood feuds with which he and his fellow
villagers are busied ; but luckily I was in
time to wrench the weapon from him, while
the little Georoi from Latali fluno- his arms
round Red Shirt and kept him quiet.

There were two others with us at the time,
but they seemed either too startled or too
indifferent to render any assistance. As I
had possessed myself of Biasir's rifle, I felt

152 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

pretty safe about him, but Red Shirt still
kept raving and handling his knife.

Threatening to shoot any one who at-
tempted to offer violence, I now tried to
frighten the men mto a more peaceful mood ;
and, ordermg Platon to bring me the whiskey
jar, proceeded to pour out its contents on the
ground. If this course had no other eflFect, it
diverted the thoughts of the belligerents
momentarily from their quarrel, and all parties
were loud in their prayers that I should not
waste the precious fluid. But I was firm,
reserving only just enough for myself and
friend. Then I set the party in motion
ao;ain, and thouo^h there were evil looks and a
great deal of muttered thunder all that day and
the next, there was no further open outbreak
between our hunters during the expedition.
Perhaps the threat that I would refer the
case to the prince on my return to Betcho
kept the fellows quiet.

AN UXCOjMFORTABLE BED. 153

Durino; the clay Biasir and I, partly for
the sake of sport, and partly to keep liim out
of harm's way, made a long detour ; but
though Tre saw one chamois, we got no shot.
Frank's party saw a bear movmg through
the scrub in front of them, but never got a
good view of him.

That night we slept curled up most un-
comfortably amongst the roots of a huge
pme-tree, whose boughs were so thick and so
weather proof, that though the rain came
down in earnest during the night, none
touched us. On the third day we reached
our camj)ing-place at the foot of the snow
peaks, wherein the tilr were said to dwell.

Our den was in a small cave some four
feet hio-h, the blackened roof of which o;ave
signs that it had often been used by hunters
before. Besides the traces of fire, there were
other proofs of prior occupation by man in
the shape of the bones and head of a tur, a

1-54 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

birch-bark tray for kneadiiig bread in, and
a rustic pipe cut out of hazel, and furnished
with a stem of currant wood. These and
such like necessaries are to be found in almost
every considerable cave about these moun-
tains ; and having been made b}?- hunters
when usino' the caves, the various utensils are
looked on as sacred, and left as public pro-
perty for the use of all sportsmen who may
succeed the makers of them ; and however
hardly pushed a Svan may be for a pipe,
nothing will ever induce him to annex one
which forms part of this cave property.

As Frank did not feel inclined for hard
work, the arrangement for the first day's hunt
was that Red Shirt and I should attempt to
gain the top of the ridge at about its centre
(it was shaped like a bay), while the best
climber amongst our guides tried to gain
the same point by starting at the extremity
of one end of the bay, his object being to

A HARD day's WORK. 155

drive any tur along the top of the ridge, so as
to pass me when I should have attained my
position in the centre.

We left the cave at 3.30, and it was not
really broad daylight when we got on to the
snow. I never had a harder day than that
was. The snow was so soft and so deep, that
it was almost impossible to force one's way
upward. At every stride you sank over your
knees mto the drift, and no step seemed to
take you further. Besides, the position was
not free from danger, for every now and then
we sank almost out of sight ; and it seemed
that it required very little to bring down the
cliffs of soft feathery snow that frequently
hung right over us in a sudden avalanche,
from which there could be no escape.

When at length we gained the top, we
all lay down in the snow, too spent to do
anything for some time to come ; but the
biting wind soon took out of us the glow

156 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

earned by severe toil, and added freezing cold
to the miseries of onr watch.

Meanwhile, our companion on the lower
spurs had been busy, and we could hear from
time to time his rifle echoins: amon2:st the
peaks, as he tried to drive the game our way.
But save for one far-off view of a very
large tur making for the topmost crags half
a mile away, we could not get a glimpse of
anything even with a telescope. We heard
afterwards that though the driver had seen
no less than three distinct herds, they had all
eluded us both by taking to the toj^ of an
isolated peak between us and him, where,
though he had them in full view, and cut off
from retreat on all sides, he had been utterly
unable to approach within range, and equally
unable to stir the wily beasts from their
sanctuary either by cries or firing at them.

And now the question with us was
whether we should return as we had come,

THE DESCENT. 157

or descend on the other side of the rano-e,
followmg the new track of a herd in the
snow, with the chance of coming upon them
lower down, and tlie certainty of food and
fire in a village at the mountain's foot. The
rapidly thickening clouds gave us our answer.
If we did not mean to be cut off from Frank
and the rest of our party for days, and per-
haps weeks, it behoved us at once to return
as we had come before the snow made the
road back impracticable. It was a disap-
pointment to leave the fair land before us
unexplored ; but as those below could not
come to us, we were bound to go to them,
and we went.

The road down snow-fields is pleasant
enough, and the pace at which we were
enabled to go without any fear of a slip was
exhilarating. Once down there was daylight
enough for another essay ; so, tired though
we were, we climbed, counting our steps as

158 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

we went for very weariness, to the top of a
lower spur of the ridge.

I never saw a more quaint formation than
that of the rocks at the top of this ridge,
all of them huge slabs of stone set on edge,
until they resembled nothing so much as a
vast series of gravestones. Clear of this
cheerless track, we descended into a series of
slopes on which rhododendron bushes grew,
and here just at dusk a rush in a thicket of
angelica drew my attention, and next minute
I sighted a chamois at gaze at us from the
top of a small eminence two hundred yards
away. The darkness and the distance re-
quired a careful aim ; and I was doing my
best to make sure of meat for supper, when
Biasir, unable to restrain his impatience, fired
from behind me, missed, and gave my chamois
the signal for instantaneous flight. And this
was all my reward for a frightfully hard
day's work. Nor was it over yet.

I

IN THE DARK, 169

By the time we reached the river at the
mountain's base it was quite dark, so that
we could not find our way through the woods
of the foot-hills to our cave, which lay just
above the tree line. The men wanted to lie
down where we were, but I was too hungry
to listen to them ; and, tired as I was, felt
ready to make another effort for food, fire,
and a blanket. So, striking a watercourse,
we blundered up it, fighting our way in the
dark through thick overhanging boughs, until
I regretted that I had not yielded to my
men's suo-o-estions. But at the end of two
hours an opening was gained, and another
thirty minutes brought me my reward — two
dampers of maize- bread, a pipe, and leave to
roll myself in my blanket, amongst the rocks
and rocklets, as near the embers as I dare
lie.

The next day was Sunday, I think, but
whether or not, it was a day of rest and re-

IGO SAVAGE SVANETIA.

pentance, as were two other clays thereafter,
for when we looked out from our hole in the
rocks ail nature was hid in a shiftins: veil,
snow on the peaks, and heavy drenching rain
in the valley.

So here we were mewed np, on a short
allowance of bread, with nothing to read,
little to talk about, nothing to do, and not
room by two feet to stand upright in. If we
would not be frozen we must keep up a fire,
and if we would not be blinded by wood-
smoke we must let the fire out and submit
to be frozen. As we had no chano-es of gar-
ments, when we wanted to go out we took off
our clothes and stood outside to wash in the
considerable stream which ran down over the
roof of our prison. Frank amused himself
making pipes, I learnt bread-making until
the maize was all gone ; the men for the most
part smoked or slept, and to eke out our
rations ate very sparingly.

I

IN SEARCH OF FOOD. IGl

But at the end of the second day it was
decided that an effort must be made, and
early next morning the rain having a little
abated, two of our men started for a neio'h-
bouring village for food. The next day we
too made an effort, and met our messengers
on the road back, to Betcho, not far from the
place at which we had camped on our way
up. So great was our joy at our release from
the cave, that thouo;h our bed was under a
great pine, through whose glorious branches
the red sparks went roaring up to mingle with
the snowflakes that fell to meet them, we spent
quite a merry night of it, and thanks to that
grand old tree, woke warm and dry in the
mornino;.

The mountain slopes being too slippery
to ascend, some demon put it into Biasir's head
to say that he knew a track which followed
the river's course round the foot of the ridge,
which, though longer than that over the

VOL. II. M

162 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

summit, was much easier and would bring us
back to Betcho almost as soon. Unluckily
we listened to him, and if we reached Latali
that night it was only by the last effort of
desperation. As for path, of course there
was none. Eventually we got on to a very
narrow chamois track over the slippery steep
sides of the mountain, strewn with an un-
stable carpeting of pine-needles. Every step
was made in fear and trembling, and when
about once every half mile we came to a bare
and precipitous surface of black rock rendered
slippery by the still falling rain, our hearts
were in our mouths until we got off the
dangerous spot again. Every now and then
too we had to wade waist deep through the
cold waters of the rapid stream below, or
break our shins over a hundred yards of
boulders. It was the last straw that broke
the camel's back, and I don't think that the
offer of the best hunter man ever crossed

PERSISTENT ILL-LUCK. 163

would have induced Frank to make another
expedition into tur- haunted mountains.

Wherever we went we saw traces of game.
Bears had been before us all up the bed of the
river ; chamois evidently abounded on the
hillsides ; round the outskirts of a village
which we gained before reaching Latali, the
pear trees even in sight and liail of the houses
had been stripped by Bruin ; and yet with
persistent ill-luck Ave never came across a
single head of game, though we were all far
too dispirited to be a loquacious or noisy
party.

When, after a week's absence, we crept
back into Betcho. having after much toil and
privation obtained one day's unsuccessful
stalk, I agreed with Frank in thinking the
pursuit of the tiir a somewhat overrated
amusement, and set to work at once to secure
an escort to take my companion back to a
region of comparative peace and plenty, in
M 2

164 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

which he might await me, whilst I attempted
to do what I had come for, viz., penetrate the
forest of Lekera, going from Lachamul to
Djuaria, and so home by Siigdidi.

1G5

CHAPTER XIII.

AT THE EDGE OF THE FOKEST.

' Now, old feUow,' quoth Frank after a some-
what prolonged sleep on the morning after our
short cut back to Betcho, ' I'll just ask you to
do about half an hour's work for me this
morning, as I can't make these idiots under-
stand, then I won't bother you any more for
some time to come. Thank the Lord, I've
done with tur and mountaineering ! ' So
Platon and I went out among the people,
and bargained for horses and convoy to take
Frank back to Kutais.

The prince was going to Kutais himself
shortly, and offered kindly enough to see my

166 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

friend back safely. But he was not ready to
start for a day or two, and Frank stoutly
refused to pass one hour more in Betcho than
he was absolutely obliged. I believe in very
truth he was more than half afraid that m a
weak moment I might again tempt him into
those mountain miseries he had learned so
thoroughly to hate.

With some little trouble we found men
and horses — men, moreover, of a somewhat
better class than the rest — who knew Kutais
well, and having made them thoroughly
understand, at Frank's urgent request, that he
was to be fed e7i route three times a day at least,
and always to have meat at two meals out
of the three, we felt fairly comfortable on
his account, and began to look after our own
affairs.

Our first difficulty appeared the most
serious one. For the second time we had run
short of money, and how we were to fill our

SHORTNESS OF MONEY. 167

purses again at Betcho was a problem not easy
I of solution. But my kind friend the agro-
nome came to my rescue, and though he had
nothing but my own account of myself and
my promise of payuient to rely upon, offered
unasked to lend me about an eighth of the
whole coined wealth then in Betcho.

Don't be alarmed at my extravagant needs,
kind reader! at that moment I don't fancy
Betcho could have produced fifty pounds
between prince and population combined.
You see, as the Sv^ns pay in kind for most
of their purchases, money is in little request
amongst them, and what the richer residents
mis^ht own was safe in the banks at Tiflis
and Kutais.

This is the second time in my travels in
the Caucasus tliat, being short of money, I
have had considerable sums lent me by men
whose acquaintance with me dated back only
a few da3^s. I think this says much for tlie

168 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

generous confidence of the people, and their
appreciation of English honesty.

As I write, it occurs to me that though
the money was repaid by me to the gentleman
indicated by my friend as his banker in
Kutais, whose receipt I still hold, I have
never since heard from this friend in need, and
if he should ever read these lines, I should be
glad to hear that he got his own again in
safety.

Having thus obtained the sinews of war,
Frank and I parted the same evening,
Platon and I turning our heads to the forest,
towards which we intended to ride one stage
by moonlight before resting for the night,
and Frank prepared to start next morning for
Kutais.

The road chosen by my companion's guides
was an easier and more direct one than that by
which we had come to Betcho ; but in spite of
all I had said to them they did not spoil their

FRANK'S LOG. 169

charge's appreciation of the comparative civi-
lisation of Kutais by too much luxury en
route.

Though they passed daily through villages
these fellows never managed to reach them at
such time as to enable them to pass the night
under a roof, and for the most part Frank
had to camp out. Besides this, taking advan-
tao-e of his ignorance of the lano;uao;e, the
guides continually extorted from him money
for food and whiskey, so that from the time he
and his party started until they reached the
goal of their journey, a large proportion of
his followers were generally drunk — so much
so indeed that in crossing one river, one or
more of these drunken horsemen rolled help-
lessly from their saddles into the cool flood at
their feet.

Glancing through Frank's rough log, I
find that the instructions as to food resulted
in menus such as this : — ' Tuesday, 5.30 a.m.

170 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

" Got lip early, because it was so beastly cold
and uncomfortable on the stony bank where
we slept. The chalk stones seemed to find out
every soft place in your body, and if you shifted
your position down you rolled off the bank alto-
gether. Rained too all night. Breakfasted
on white cheese, walnuts, unripe pears, and a
pipe. No bread this morning." '

At other times the party seems to have
made short work of a sheep and several gal-
lons of whiskey. But in course of time they
reached Kutais, Frank leading by several
hours, I believe, having grown sick of the
way the men dawdled by the roadside, and
trusting to his own bump of topography to
lead him safely back. At Kutais he found
friends who could speak English ; and there
for the present, in a clean shirt, with clean
shaven chin, regular meals, and no confounded
companion to break in upon his little naps
at all unseasonable hours, let us leave him.

A KIND HOSTESS. 171

The road from Betcho to Etseri, the royal
village of Svanetia, at U'hich the prince has
his regular home, is perhaps the worst and
most beautiful four hours' ride in this country
of beauty and discomfort combined. By
moonlight the scenery was lovely in the ex-
treme ; but three falls, horse and man together,
during the ride made me see more stars than
I thought necessary to complete the perfect
beauty of the heavens.

At Etseri we (Platon and I) had a kind
hostess waiting to receive us, in the person of
the priest's wife, an aunt of my interpreter, and
a very loving one I should say from the warm
greeting she gave us. The priest was away,
but he must be a man far better off than his
brethren in this part of the Caucasus, for
nowhere else had we seen such comfort as
in the neat log hut, with its trim garden,
wherein we lodo:ed that ni"'ht.

Etseri is far and away the richest and l)est

172 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

placed village which I met with between Oni
and Djuaria, being on a very gradual slope on
th^ hillside, having a good southern aspect, and
being less shut in hj the neighbouring moun-
tains than most of its fellows. At Etseri there
are as many as two hundred and twenty houses,
and as the families are not split into different
households, at any rate until the death of the
head, each house may at a moderate compu-
tation be considered to hold fifteen people.
This would give a population of considerably
over three thousand, as against about one
thousand at Betcho.

In vegetable produce Etseri stands alone
amongst the villages of the country side, a
very marvel of fertility, producing carrots,
cucumbers, and even melons and tomatoes.

Needless to say, the inhabitants of Etseri
think no little of their village and themselves
as dwellers therein-. Customs they have, too,
peculiar to the royal village I am told, as for

A FERTILE \T:LLAGE. 173

instance, that from earliest infancy no chil-
dren born in it are ever allowed to go barefoot,
and they are more strict than the rest of the
world in other matters of etiquette, such as
their resolute refusal to incur disgrace by
riding a bare-backed horse. As producers
the Etseri people beat all their rivals, and
really manage to manufacture a very good
kind of cloth, not unlike flannel, some toler-
able felt, excellent soap (from grease and
wood ashes), abominable bees'- wax candles,
and worse vodka.

Etseri is a place of considerable antiquity
too, having been for many hundred years the
place of burial for the reigning princes of the
province. Amongst other relics we were
shown a tiny toy telescope, with plam glass
lens, and an engraved brass cup, said to be
two hundred years old, found in a leaden
coffin, containing also a quantity of silken
women's garments, which had been accident

174 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

ally discovered at the burial of the present
prince's wife.

Having rested well and thoroughly at
Etseri, we started at about nine next morning
with our kind hostess's good wishes thick
upon us, and a very substantial souvenir of
Etseri cheer ready in our pockets for future
consumption. Fortune had made up her
mind to smile on us again, so that riding
easily along in the sunshine by a compara-
tively good road, I was not a bit surprised to
find the g-ame we had souo-ht under all manner
of difficulties come now to meet us on the
high road.

We were rounding the corner of a pme-
covered precipice about two miles from the
village of Lachamul when Platon, all excite-
ment, whispered, ' A bear, sir, a bear ! ' For
a moment I did not see her, but dismounting,
I peered over the edge of the path into the
valley between our hill and the next.

A GOOD SHOT. 175

There, at the bottom, ran a swift moun-
tain stream, over which the men of Lachamul
had built a rough log bridge, and across this,
with all the air of peaceable pedestrians by the
king's highway, an old she- bear, grim and
gaunt, was leisurely walking, accompanied by
two strapping sons very nearly as big as her-
self, and dressed in the deep brown fur of a
yearling's coat. I envied those cubs their
jackets and meant to have them, but my first
business was with the old lady now leading
back her sons from the pillage of some
wretched S van's maize field to fancied security
in the rocks.

It was a long shot, quite the full range of
my ' Express ' I fancy, as the old bear climbed
slowly up the face of the opposite rock, but
the bullet told hard on her, and I was foolish
to waste a second shot on her ; but then
I could not see, as my men did, that I
had caught her clean behind the shoulder.

176 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

But for all that she struggled gamely up hill,
growling and looking angrily about her.

The next bullet broke her spine and
brought her by a succession of tremendous
somersaults mto the stream beneath, where
she stuck under the bridge, temporarily
damming the current with her body.

But the cubs had got too far before I could
get another sight of them as they dodged
amongst the timber, and not having on my
sandals, my attempts to get near them
amongst the slippery rocks were lamentable
failures. As they were left together, the
youngsters would take very good care of
themselves and get clear away ; but had I had
the luck to have used my second barrel on
one of them, the other would in all proba-
bility have lost his head and taken to a tree,
where we could have added him to the num-
ber of the slain.

Two woodmen, attracted by the shots,

A DESERTED VILLAGE. 177

came to our assistance in the operation of
skinning, so that Platon and myself entered
Lachamul not long after mid-day, carrying
our spoils with us. Lachamul is the last
village before you enter upon the forest dis-
trict of Lekera, and it is from Lachamul, the
Ultima Thule of Svanetia, that the few hunters
and o;roTrers of maize who venture into the
forest go down.

When we reached the villao;e, it was
empty and silent. The houses were closed
and scarcely a cur barked at us as we passed
through its streets. All the men were afield
and most of the women with them, busily
utilising what remained to them of open
weather. Trophies of the chase adorned the
plaster which covered the walls of one or two
of the best huts m the place. Here and
there a fine tiir's horn stood out from one of
the crevices in the "\vall, and here and there a
bear's paw nailed to the doorway bore testi-

VOL. II. N

178 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

mony to the powers of the Nimrod who dwelt
within. But at present, inhabitants Lachamul
had none, so that we were fated to waste half
a day waiting in this deserted village until
those from whom we might obtain guides and
horses, to say nothing of food, should return
from their labours.

Like all other villages, Lachamul had its
lout, a good-looking ne'er do weel, who
presently appeared on the scene, gossiping and
loafing in the sun with a couple of idle
women. From none of these could we get
the least help or information, and being per-
fectly idle himself, our useless efforts to be up
and doing roused much merriment in the
loafer's mind. This he proceeded to display
by caricaturing all my gestures, and at last
became so intolerably offensive that I fairly
lost my temper, and as I could not catch the
brute, picked up a good- sized rock and heaved
it at him. As it only just uiissed him, he

AX AT^^B:WARD PREDICAMENT. 179

took the salutation in very bad part, and with
quite a changed face came straight at me with
his knife out. I began to think I was in for
an awkward business, but the sight of my
revolver kept him off for a time, and when the
rest of the men came back, he was cowed and
cooled down. If there had been a few of his
companions near when the quarrel took place,
I should probably never have come back to
tell the tale, and it would have served me very
well right. I have no sympathy with people
who can't keep their tempers and put up with
the rough manners of uncivilised men. I
suppose the supper with the priest's wife at
Etseri had disagreed with me. Biliousness and
irritability are generally synonymous terms.

Towards evening; the villas^ers be2:an to
return, and I soon had men enough around
me and my bearskin. The letter from their
prince was a good introduction to them, but
the fresh trophy and the story of the two long
N 2

180 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

shots as told by the woodcutters was a vast
deal more useful to me.

The villagers had most of them come
down from the pine forests, where they had
been hewins; wood, or from their fields be-
tween Lachamul and Etseri ; but by-and-bye,
as we all stood gossiping in the twilight, a
long file of weather-stained men, white with
the dust of travel, came plodding silently up
the course of the valley of the Ingour from
the opposite direction.

Each man's back was bent beneath a heavy
load, and each seemed to follow mechanically
in the other's steps, too tired to so much as
look around until his course was completed
and his burden tossed off his shoulders in the
midst of the gossiping group.

The news soon spread that some of the
men from Lekera had come in, and friends
flocked out to welcome them home. These
were the chief workers of the Lachamul hive,

HOSPITABLY ENTERTAINED. 181

and many were the wives, daughters, and
female friends who offered their cheeks to the
weary ones, and many the men who wrung
them by the hand.

One old fellow who seemed to have more
face-cloths to lift {i.e. faces to kiss) than any
of the rest, took a particular interest in our
party, and after he had got a draught of
mineral water he disappeared into his house
for a few minutes, after which he returned to
us, bearing a small melon and a gourd full of
a pleasant flavoured liqueur made from a little
black berry like the elder berry, which grows
in this neighbourhood.

From this time until we reached Djuaria,
Keesermann, for so our friend was called, took
entire charo-e of me, and seemed to resfard me
as his special property. Indeed, I grew to
have quite a filial regard for the little old
man of the hills, with his keen eyes, grey
beard, and wonderful voice.

1J<2 SAVAGE SVANETLl.

Keesermann's voice was the quaintest part
of him. A very small man, his voice was
preternaturally gruff and deep ; a kind of
growl, indeed, but so low that unless you
were very near him you had to listen keenly
to catch his words. But he was the most
wonderful walker ; his bright eyes guessed
your wishes ere they were half formed, and a
smile twitched at the corners of his mouth as
legularly in bad times as in good. Alto-
gether, Keesermann is the first person I
should recommend a traveller to ask for at
Lachamul.

When Ave had been installed in that well-
ventilated abode of dirt and darkness called
the ' cancellaria ' (in Lachamul a mere loft
over a cattle shed, without windows or door) ;
when the great jar of whiskey had been
brought and a fire lighted on the floor, our
guests began to troop in. The first to smell
the tempting spoil from afar was that hoary

SEEKING INFORMATION. 183

elder, the ' starchina ' of the village, who,
when he had been wanted eight hours before
to transact a little business was declared to be
at Betcho. But the spu'it jar brought him
back at once.

A circle having been formed round the
fire, we began to seek for information, to
make inquiries about horses, and arrange about
guides. After the cup had been round the
cu'cle twice, guides were promised and horses
offered almost for nothing, while tur were
declared to exist in numbers about three
versts off, and to furnish the staple food of
the village. But when the jar was empty,
and no full one appeared likely to replace it,
truth began to creep out by degrees.

Keesermann alone volunteered to accom-
pany us to Djuaria ; mules could not travel
the road between that village and Lachamul,
much less horses ; and as for tur, there were
lots at Xanskera, four days' marching from

184 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

the village in a direction at right angles to
our route, but nearer than that no man knew
where we were likely to find any. As for
deer and l^oar, with which we had heard that
the forest teemed, it was quite true that when
the snow lay deep in the very middle of
winter many were tracked and killed, but
whither they went or where they hid them-
selves in summer no one knew.

A good many of our dreams of sport were
dispelled that night, but in the morning,
lia\ ing a definite end in view, Platon, Keeser-
mann and I shouldered our loads — blankets,
rifles, change of clothes, food, &c. — dividmg
the things equally amongst us, and started
down the Ingour like men who, having far to
travel, are not so foolish as to start fiist.

Considering that the road through the
forest of Lekera is almost if not absolutely the
only way into Svanetia from the outside world
which is at all practicable in winter, it is

SCAECITY OF ROADS. 185

inconceivable that neither the natives nor the
Russians should have taken the trouble to
make that road fit to travel upon.

The Svans at Lachamul, believing me to
be a man of influence, instead of a mere
traveller, begged me to represent to the
government at Tiflis that for a thousand
roubles the road might be made such that
horses could travel on it ; that this thousand
roubles would confer inestimable benefits on
the whole of Svanetia, and that without this
road .the inhabitants, at any rate of Lachamul,
were often in sore dano;er of starvino-.

Everytliing that the Svans require beyond
the coarsest of bread they must carry on their
own shoulders from Djuaria to Lachamul.
Salt, without which man cannot live, is one
of their heaviest burdens and sorest needs.
It is not too much to say that unloaded any
man must be in good condition, and at least a
fair mountaineer, with a steady head, to in

180 SAVAGE SVAJsETIA.

any sort compass that walk in three days ;
loaded these men do the distance in about
five, but a life spent in such walks would not
be a very long one.

Still as I tried to make the Svans under-
stand, they have little right to ask for help
from others if they will make no effort for
themselves. If for a couple of months the men
of Lachamul and the villages round it would
devote the three days of the week they now
keep as idle, listless holidays to road-making,
they would require no help from outsiders.
But this they will never do.

The way from Lachamul through the
forest follows the course of the Ingour, keep-
ing for the most part to its left hand bank
down stream. Just below the villa2:e we
crossed the river, now far different from the
small stream at Ushkul. For the whole of
that day and several other days its waters of
dark sea green, boiled and fretted beneath our

' TCHA lashes; 187

path, hemmed in, angry, deep and narrow
between two ranges of high grey crags,
densely covered with forests of the noblest
pines, merging near the margm of the stream
into a border of tamer-looking forest trees.

Now and again the rocks that imprison
the fretting river withdraw, and for a few
hundred yards the green waters roll out in a
broad and comparatively peaceful flood, while
on either side some few acres of land lie
on a gentle slope not far above the river's
brim.

Here you find the maize ' tchalashes,' as
the Svans call them ; villa residences of
adventurous settlers from Lachamul, who,
having built themselves good log huts of the
pine trees round, plant all the level land with
maize and spend their whole summer with
theh families in guarding their little crop
from that great thief. Bruin.

Such a tchalash we reached late on Friday

188 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

night, and right glad were we to see the roof
of the hut just showing above the tall spear-
like heads of a luxuriant maize crop. No-
where, I should think, does the maize grow
finer than on the Ingour, and not the worst
dish in the world for a hungry man is a green
head of this corn baked amono-st the wood
embers. At least so we thouoht when we
followed Imat the settler into his tent and
accepted a head apiece to stay our stomachs
until dinner time.

These summer settlers on the Ingour
have a far better life of it than their brethren
of the villages. Their houses are not,
properly speaking, habitable, but they are
wind and rain proof ; and after living amongst
the stone heaps of Ushkul, these wooden huts
look quite couifortable by comparison. We
had arrived at Imat's hut in the very nick of
time too, for only now was he returning from
offering the head of a chamois killed yester-

AN INGOUR HUT. 189

day, before the praying place of his little
settlement.

In the hut we found Mrs. Imat preparing
venison for her lord and for us, and I'm not
quite sure that the cook of the hut on the
Ingour was not fairer than our pretty baker
at Latali. Mrs, Imat was a real Circassian,
not a Svan, and one of the few of that much-
praised race whom it has been my luck to see.
I should think she stood over six feet (she
certainly seemed to tower over my head), was
blue-eyed and ruddy, with regular features,
but a voice, alas ! so harsh and loud that it
seemed to go through you.

190 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

CHAPTER XIY.

KERAR.

That night at Imat's hut, on the Ingour,
when our pipes were lit, the talk turned on
chamois and tiir as usual. The reward I had
been offering to the guide who should be
lucky enough to conduct me on a successful
hunt made Imat prick his ears at once. ' Ten
roubles if I can take him to within one hun-
dred yards of a tur, and twejity if he kills a
big one ; why, I'll take him to a place where
he can kill half a dozen to-morrow,' exclaimed
our host, letting his pipe tumble into the
ashes in his excitement.

It was not Imat's assurances of success —
I had had for too many of those already — it

i EXPLOEATIOX FOR GAME. 191

was not even the fresli venison I had just
eaten, but it was the last despairing effort of
I hope almost extinguished that made me re-
solve once more to turn away from my path,
and once more to submit to the hardships of
tiir hunting, if haply I might at the eleventh
hour crown my efforts with success.

Platon was anxious to get back to Kutais
and comfort, and, sooth to say, my weary
limbs and sore feet pleaded strongly on his
side ; but for all that it was decided to start
on Saturday morning on ' absolutely the very
last ' wild goat chase.

Keesermann, our guide from Lachamiil,
was to precede us along the forest route to
Djuaria, awaiting us at his own little settle-
ment, a day's journey further on. When
Saturday morning broke, of course the rain
was falling. Rain invariably did begin to
fall in Svanetia when I wanted fine weather
for a wild goat hunt.

192 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

In spite of the rain, Platon, Imat, and
myself started for Kerar, up the course of a
mountain stream, which had cut for itself a
deep bed in one of the gorges which ran at
rio'ht anofles to the main chain of mountains
on the rio'ht bank of the Ino-our. Two

o o

months' use had taught us to look on the bed
of a stream some two to three feet deep as
the natural substitute for a highway in this
part of the world, nor did constant rain incom-
mode us much. Perhaps, if you are wet
at all, it is better to be wet all over. It was
rather annoying though, that when we reached
a point in the gorge which commanded a
good view of likely spots for chamois or other
game, a cold blast of wind invariably swept
huge volumes of thick mist into the pass,
which rolling over us in great white waves
effectually hid the view.

About mid-day we had reached a point at
which our watery pathway had become a

A GOOD RUNNER. 193

very tiny rill, and the forest trees still round
us were the last of their kind on the moun-
tain side. Above us o-reat ffrass bluffs rolled
up to the foot of the peaks, now hidden from
view in a snowstorm.

Just within the edge of the forest Imat
found us a skeleton hut, and a large pile of
rough planks, which we very soon slipped
into their places, and in hnlf an hour's time
had our house built, our fire burning, and
breakfast ready. Although the rain kept
falling, and it was too late in the day to do
much, Imat and m3^self decided to make an
effort to procure meat for our Sunday dinner.

A couple of hours on those grass bluffs
at Kerar taught me that for pace Imiit was
about the best man I had yet seen on a hill-
side. AVhilst he and I lay panting near the
top. a stone came rattling down on the other
side of the bluff. Crawling up quite to the
top. we peered over at the other side where,

VOL. II. 0

194 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

about two hundred yards below us, a herd of
some seventeen chamois were standing like
statues, ready to bolt at the next alarm.
Before I could raise my rifle the whole herd
was in full flight, but a breathless run gave
me a second chance at them lower down.

Though only one of my two shots told, I
was comforted by seeing that though tho-
roughly frightened the chamois had not yet
seen me even when I fired at them. Guessing
the point they were making for, and running
doubled up across the top of the ridge, I
suddenly came face to face with the whole
herd.

It was a quaint sight, the row of white
faces and sharp ears staring silently at me
over the top of the ridge. So still were they
all for the moment, and their bodies ^o com-
pletely hidden, that for a second I scarcely
believed my eyes. Then the line broke up
and wheeled agam into headlong flight, which

A LOVELY MARK. 195

made nothing of boulders and precipices.
But curiosity is not the weakness of woman
only, and the frightened beasts could not
resist the temptation to take one look back at
the strange creature that had so terrified
them.

What a lovely mark that chamois made,
standing just a few feet above the rest of the
herd, feet all together and head turned back
over his shoulder to gaze. Xot a broadside
shot, nor offering too large a mark, but show-
ing just the right part of his body to the
sportsman and standing out in such bold
relief against the sky that a miss at one hun-
dred and fifty yards would have been im-
possible. Imat set up a shout like a fool,
when the buck pitched right through the
herd below, and went rolling half a day's
march down the hill at a pace which looked
dangerous for the integrity of his horns.
After this, by still following the herd, I got

o -2

196 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

another very long shot, at about four or five
hundred yards, and, to my own surprise,
wounded a third chamois. But though
wounded the little beast was far from bagged,
and it took Imat and myself over an hour to
stalk within range of him.

When we had made our point, we had
a small piece of swelling ground between us
and our game. Taking my rifle I proceeded
to worm my way to the point from which I
expected to get my shot, but though I knew
I must be quite close to him, I could not see
the chamois anywhere. So I crept on and on
down hill through the thin grey grass, won-
dering where the little beast had got to and
what was the matter with Imat, whose
grimaces and contortions suggested an im-
pending attack of convulsions.

The next moment a pair of black and
grey ears rose about six feet in front of me,
and a pair of frightened brown eyes looked

CLOSE QUARTERS. 197

right into my face. A trifling irregularity
in the ground had so far hidden the uncon-
scious animal from me in my prostrate posi-
tion, but Imat had had a full view of it ever
since I started on my crawl ; and knowing I
was well within range, and fearing some mis-
chance if I insisted on orettino; too close, had
almost incurred a fit in the struggle between
his desire to warn me of the chamois proxi-
mity and his fear of alarming game. But
when with a rush that chamois was on its
leo's and round the corner of a rock on which
my harmless bullet flattened, I felt glad that
I did not understand Svanetian.

A second shot, at a longer range, again
wounded the chamois, and then followed the
most exciting chase I have ever had. I had
so few cartridges now left that I wanted to
save those I had as much as possible, and I
fully believed that my last shot would be
sufficient. But though Imat and I could

198 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

always get to within two hundred yards, we
were unable to approach any closer, and at
last I had to make up my mind to waste
another cartridge. This time my bullet took
effect behind the shoulder, and the chamois
rolled over, apparently dead at last.

Imat and I scampered over the rocks to
lay hold of him, when, to our intense disgust,
he got up again and commenced a rapid flight
down hill. Up hill even he could travel no
longer, but by means of one sound hind leg,
and a number of involuntary somersaults,
he still got down hill too fast for the now
reckless Imat.

The way we ran and tumbled amongst
those rocks, now getting so much way on
that we could not stop ourselves, then coming
down all in a heap and sliding bear fashion
on our sterns, nearly rivalled the extra-
ordinary progress of our game, and had it not
been for a well-aimed boulder, hurled by

COLLECT OUR GAME. 199

Im^t, some of the bones of that chamois
would probably still be hopping down hill,
with what was left of his hunters' somer-
saulting and tumbling after him.

' There, sir ; now that he is dead you'd
better take him on your shoulders and go on
to camp. I'll try to bring in the others,
said Im^t, so we tied up the legs which had
so long set us at defiance, and I began my
climb home.

Those who have killed chamois and car-
ried them home for themselves know what a
difference the weight of the game on your
back makes in the difficulties of the way, how
if you get your shoulders the least bit too far
back their weight is too much for your knees,
and down you come on your spine.

It was getting very dark indeed when I
got to the last slope above the camp, and I
had once or twice been very near leaving my
game behind me. In front lay a long stretch

200 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

of weed-covered steeps, down which 1 thought
my burden might very well precede me. So
1 put him down and set him going, carefully
marking the spot at which he stopped. Then I
followed him at my leisure ; but though I
thought I went straight to him I searched for
half an hour before I could find him, and then
it was only thanks to Imat's keener eyes that
the beast who had nearly beaten us on one leg
did not elude me altogether when dead.

There was great triumph in camp that
night when we towed in our game, and Platon
had plenty to do that Sunday cleaning the
heads, on my account, and the other chamois'
bones on his own.

On Sunday the floodgates of heaven were
opened, and the rain poured down upon us in
good earnest. Our hut, which did very well
in fine weather, was no more watertight than
a sieve, and the rain had moreover dislodged a
large clan of black ants, two-thirds of an inch

I

A DAY OF STOEMS. 201

or more in length, who, leaving their hollow
tree, swarmed unwelcome guests into our
circle, biting us fiercely whenever we ventured
to resent the intrusion. So we deserted the hut
towards evening, and sought a cave higher up
the mountain, where at least we could keep
dry and should be nearer the haunts of the
tiir if a change in the weather should favour
our plans on the morrow.

The cave was one through which a swollen
little mountain stream gurgled, and though
the music of the water lulled you to sleep
there was always a danger, owing to the slop-
ing nature of your bed, lest m your dreams
you should become too nearly acquainted with
those melodious waves. Personally, I erected
a small barricade between myself and the
water, and I fancy the others followed my
example.

Monday was a day of storms. Howling
wind and incessant rain made sport an ini-

202 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

possibility, and our Svan (like all his people
skilled in the signs of the sky) declared that
we should have no more open weather for a
week at least. So, sorrowfully, I gave up my
last hope of killing a tur, and ordered a return
to Ipar, if possible, before our watery highway
grew too large and wild for us to follow.

On our way back we had a rather startling
example of the changes wrought by atmo-
spheric agency on the rocks around us, for
whilst we were scrambling down the little
torrent in the narrowest part of the gorge, a
tremendous crash behind made us all start in-
voluntarily, while a shower of spray went up
as if a shell had burst in the water near us. A
second glance showed us a great mass of rock
which had yielded at last to the undermining
powers of the rain, and leaving its position
amonffst the cras-s overhead had fallen into
the bed of the torrent, blocking up its channel
and diverting its course.

PAYING TRIBUTE. 203

About half a minute sooner and the piece
of rock would have stopped our course quite
as effectually as it had done that of the moun-
tain stream.

After this little incident we all three made
the best use of our legs in our anxiety to get
away from those beautiful rain-drowned crags.

At the mouth of the glen we sta3^ed to pay
tribute to the owner of the grazing and sport-
ino; rio-hts of this district, and in answer to
Imat's shrill jodel, a wild-looking ruffian in a
linen shirt, no hat or boots, but hair and
beard enough to make amends for any small
deficiencies in dress, came bounding down the
rocks and through the stream as if he was
as much at home among the mountains as a
chamois.

He was an old savage, too, but age did not
seem to have made him afraid of sharp rocks
or wet feet, and he was so grateful for the
quarter of venison which we gave him, that I

2C4 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

suspected his rights as owner of the property
were not always respected. He told me that
he paid a few roubles a year to the Tiflis
Government for the sole rio-ht of orrazino- his
cattle and felling timber in this valley, and
as nobody else wanted to fell the timber
or had cattle here to graze — as, moreover, he
seemed to fell no timber himself — I fancy the
Government got the best of the bargain.

At Imat's hut we rested awhile, and then
as the weather seemed settled for at least a
week's steady rain, Platon and I abandoned
all idea of keeping ourselves dry, and simply
set our whole hearts on getting to Djuaria as
quickly as possible.

Englishmen in the last seven years have
learnt a good deal about ram, but for all that
to know what the skies are really capable of,
they should see a good steady storm on the
Ingour. The showers were so heavy that
they seemed to form thick veils of shifting

SUPERB SCENERY. 205

water, tlirongb wliich for a time nothing at
a distance was visible. When the veil occa-
sionally parted the scenery was superb, the
Ingour rushing between such narrow limits
that, thouo-h we were folio winii a track several
hundred feet above the dark green flood, we
could toss a pebble from one precipitous rocky
wall to the other.

On either side the ranges of forest-clad
mountains stretched awav rido-e behind rido-e
to an apparently infinite distance, whilst every
now and then from amongst the pines high up
on the mountain side, a shaft of grey rock,
taking often the outlines of some ruined keep
of bygone days, would shoot up many hundred
feet above the forest ; so high indeed were
some of these isolated spires of rock, that the
one or two pines upon their crest looked
merely like a bunch of ostrich plumes.

On our way we saw a strange group
of human beino-s on the farther side of the

206 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

river. A column of smoke first drew our
attention, and when we got closer we could
see a man and woman with some three or four
half-naked children bivouacking in a tree by
the edge of the stream. I don't know what
kind of tree it was, but the branches all
divided near the root, forming a sort of cup in
which these people had kindled a fire. The
branches they had drawn together again above
them, and overlaid them with an old bourka,
which formed a more or less waterproof roof
for their quaint cage.

The man came out when he saw us, and
with the generosity of the poor, took one of
the ears of maize from his little hoard, and
roasting it while we chatted, waded waist deep
into the stream, unusually broad just here, and
threw it across to us. I was sorry I couldn't
make him some return, but there was no way
from us to him for many a verst.

I think we only passed one little maize

A NARROW ESCAPE. 207

clearing all that day, and that apparently
deserted.

I had very nearly an end put to my
travellmg before I finished this day's work,
thanks to the never-ceasing rain. About a
hundred yards of our path lay across the face
of an extremely steep bed of slate, where at
some earlier day a landshp had taken place,
clearmg a bare track right through the forest
down to the river's brim.

It was an ugly rumous-looking piece of
hillside, and the pathway was about as bad as
it could be, a mere succession of narrow foot-
holds on the steep and slippery slate. When
I was half way across this, and heartily thank-
ful I had got so far ^dthout making a false
step, a big stone came skipping past me, and
as I looked up to see where it came from there
was a roar and a rattle, and showers of stones
of all sizes, from respectable pebbles to things
as large as millstones, came hurtling round

208 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

my head. Far away above me a miniature
landslip had taken place, and for a moment it
rained boulders all round me.

I fairly lost my head and thought it was
all over with me, for if one of the stones had
touched me I should next moment have been
racing the boulders in frantic leaps to the
river below. For a single breathing space I
stood with my head tucked in and my muscles
knit, in, I presume, the vain hope that if hit,
I might be able to keep my place. Then I
turned and bolted, first one leg slipping oif
the path — then the other ; but thanks to the
pace and to the Providence that had kept the
stones from hitting me, managed to reach the
other side of the bare patch in safety.

When, I got to the other side and saw the
showers of stones still racing down in great
leaps to the river I could not understand
how I had escaped, and sincerely felt for poor
Platon, who, with hat off, was saying un-

MAIZE FIELDS. 209

wonted prayers and looking forward dismally
to his own turn to cross. However, the stone
shower was soon over, and in spite of the
difficulties of the path so was Platon.

Just before dusk a jodel from, the other
side called our attention to a clearing, in the
midst of which, on a platform erected to shoot
bears from at night, stood our old friend
Keesermann. Of course he wanted us to come
to him, but as there was said to be another
maize patch within a mile of where we were,
and as it was five miles round by the bridge
to Keesermann's, we decided to stay at the
nearer shelter and let Keesermann, who had
not done so much walking as we had that
day, come to us.

The maize field at which we stayed was
the least pretentious of any of the farms we
passed in the Ingour valley. High up
amongst the forest trees there happened
to be a tableland of twenty acres or so.

VOL. II. P

210 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

Here, amongst the charred stumps of the trees,
grew the finest crop of maize I have ever seen ;
and after much shouting a handsome young
fellow came along through the tall shafts of
the maize, his long locks of black hair hanging
wet and heavy on his bare shoulders, and only
a pair of loose linen trowsers reaching to his
knee to redeem him from the charge of
nakedness.

To our inquiry as to shelter he gave but
a doubtful answer, offering, however, to show
us where he lived. In and out amongst his
crop he led us until we came to a tiny shed
roughly thatched with timber, in one compart-
ment of which dwelt a goat, and in the other
himself and his sister, a beautiful child of
about twelve.

The shed was entirely open on one side,
and more or less so all round, but better
shelter was not to be had, so we secured it
gladly. He and his sister contentedly shared

A HAPPY SUPPER 211

the goat's quarters, and the girl busied herself
roasting maize, while I stripped and got into
some tolerably dry flannels which I had kept
rolled up in my bourka.

Platon simply wrung what water he could
out of his garments, and then sat in his wet
shirt as near the fire as possible, and let his
clothes dry on him.

By-and-bye Keesermann arrived with the
heartiest welcomes and a biocg-er bundle than
ever on his back, wherein he had stowed away
cheeses, capsicums, bread, and all manner of
good things, as well as a big gourd of home-
made liqueur, for our supper. What with
Keesermann's supplies and a haunch of cha-
mois, we gave our host and ourselves quite a
banquet, and laughed at the rain.

P 2

.'12 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

CHAPTER XV.

DJUARIA.

In spite of our good supper we did not let the
grass grow under our feet next morning, and
were out in the soaking rain again at dawn.
For rain of course it still did, and if anything
more heavily than ever. Our clothes were
beginning to follow the example of the hills,
and slowly to break up under the influence of
constant soaking. Sandals we had none now,
but we bandaged our feet up in rags of some
kind. I know the last of Frank's two towels
(used to carry our tea about in as long as we
had any) was worn out on my feet in those
last two days to Djuaria.

At the bridge which crosses to Keeser-

TEACES OF BRUIN. 213

mann's abode his whole family was awaiting
his distinguished foreign friends, and came
np to kiss my hands and present baskets of
cheese and grapes, apples, and a great box of
birch bark full of beautiful white honeycomb.
Altogether they brought us of their best, and
gave us ample proof that Nature is more
kindly to man along these lower reaches of
the Ingour than she is higher up near dreary
Mookmer and Lachamul.

Wherever we went to-day we found traces
of Bruin ; his tracks were along the soft sands
of the river-bed ; no one used the paths we
were on with such frequency as he did, and
at every maize-field bells, clappers, and other
musical instruments, worked for the most part
by water, kept up a constant din to warn him
off. By the ravage he had committed on all
sides I should guess that he had learned to
look on the bells with indifference if not with
absolute affection, as guiding him to his supper.

214 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

At the bridge too we were joined by
another party of wayfarers, bound Hke our-
selves for Djuaria — of which town every day
brought us some fresh news. Above all
thmgs it was the great wine market of the
counti'y side, and nowhere was such wine
made as there. Altogether it was a town to
be thankful for.

Our new companions were two fine-looking
men and a little girl of about nine, who was
going from her native valley of the Ingour to
pay her first visit to civilisation at the home
of her aunt, near Kutais, and the poor little
maid would have to do the whole distance on
foot. But she was quite equal to the position,
and with the exception that her father carried
her over one or two of the worst places, and
over the dizziest of the rickety log bridges
which we came upon en route, the child did
the journey as well as any of us.

The road had now become a much better

A PARTY OF SVANS. 215

one than heretofore, and ran much nearer the
river, which was rapidly widening into a very
considerable stream, its waters having been
reinforced by those of the Nanskera, which
flows into it from the southern slopes of
Elbruz.

The event of the day was our meeting
with a p'arty of Svans going back to Svanetia
from the neighbourhood of Sugdidi. We
found them huddled under a stone by the
roadside ; eleven as miserably destitute mortals
as you could find anywhere. They had none
of them any sandals ; they had barely a gar-
ment a piece of any kind to wear ; they were
emaciated by fever and hunger, and yet, as
they smoked the only two pipes they possessed
in turn, they seemed fairly cheerful still.

Poor devils ! They were all of them young-
sters under twenty, and were just going back
to their native land, after having learnt their
first lesson in the ways of civilisation. They

210 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

had, it seems, gone down to Sugdidi early in
the spring, and sold all the marten skins which
they had collected in the forest of Lekera
during the winter. Anxious to add to their
earnings before returning to their villages they
had engaged themselves to a contractor near
Sugdidi, who had set them to work digging
out the foundations of a road he was making
through a marsh there. They told us that as
from the first they were entirely in his hands
he had worked them as he dared not work
the natives of the place, keeping them em-
ployed waist deep in muddy trenches until all
had fever, and some died of it. Then, after
six weeks' work, they were obliged to give up
the job before it should kill them all, and on
some excuse or another this brutal task-
master had dismissed them without a kopeck
of their pay.

Possibly, by some legal quibble the con-
tractor was justified in refusing to pay these

A TIMELY GIFT. 217

men for their labours, but whether that were
so or not these poor untaught Svans had no
notion how to obtain justice even if obtainable.
So, with their winter's gains gone, and their
constitutions shaken by six weeks' unrequited
labour, they were on their way home to tell
of the glories of civilisation, and spread the
gospel of honesty as taught them by the
Russian contractor.

We offered to try to get justice for them
if they cared to come back with us. but
luckily probably for all parties they had had
enough of the towns, and preferred to starve
at home for the future. We gave them
roubles enough to keep them at any rate in
bread until they reached their homes, and
earned their thanks and the unremittinor at-
tention of their fellow-countrymen who were
with us for the rest of our journey by so
doino".

That night we stopped at a tchalash,

218 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

called, I think, Totan, where bears were said
to be so numerous as to seriously threaten the
entire destruction of the maize crops.

The old settler, who was most heart-
broken about his farm, had unluckily nearly
blown his eye out in attempting to guard his
property, his gun having burst in his hands
when firing at a bear. His whole face was
horribly mangled, but beyond an application
of bears' grease he did nothing to his wounds.

In our character of sportsmen anxious to
slay those ' who wrought him such annoy ' the
old man gave us a very hearty welcome, and
for the night stopped the working of his bells,
clappers, the mouths of his two sons, and all
other musical instruments about the place.

Unluckily the rain kept on, the sky was
covered with clouds, there was no moon, and
altogether we should have had to be very close
indeed to hit a bear that night. But as the
old fellow evidently thought our courage was

IN SEARCH OF BRUIX. 219

on the wane, when towards midnight we could
hear the dry maize stalks by the edge of the
forest being slowly scrunched by a party of
bears, the father of the little girl and myself
turned out.

The Svan had on a cap of white canvas,
such as the Russian soldier wears, but though
I kept almost on his heels, as he led the way
amongst the maize, I could not always keep
him in sight. If I had lost hun I should have
had to make a night of it in the maize field,
for it was too dark to find one's way un-
assisted through a labyrinth of maize stalks,
where any step might lead you over the edge
of a precipice into a river a hundred feet below,
or at the very least send you on your head
over a tree which, thougli felled, the farmer
had been too lazy to remove.

There were, so far as we could tell, three
bears together at the point whither we were
directing our steps, and an examination next

220 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

morning showed that our guess was accurate
— an old bear and two small cubs having
formed the party.

At last we were so near the brutes that I
began to expect we should run into them in
real earnest, and in the stillness of the night
we could hear every sound they made. But
try as we would we could not distinguish any
outline against the tall crops beyond.

We tried everything we knew to get a
view of the marauders, and if the Svan with
me believed in half the stories he told me of a
bear's comparative fearlessness and ferocity on
a dark nio;ht, he showed a great deal more
foolhardy courage than I would have cared
to show had I been imbued with a like
belief.

But I confess to an honest contempt for
Mr. Bruin, so far as his fighting goes. In
himself, as he really is, I love the old forest
droll, with his little round ears, comic good-

USELESS EFFORTS. 221

natured face, and cunning ways. The fashion
in which he robs the maize fields is funny.
First he sneaks down in the dusk to the point
furthest from the hut, and then encirchns:
the stalks with his sturdy arms gathers
regular sheaves of maize and piles all his
harvest m a heap in the middle. When he
thinks he has made a large enough pile he
lies down on the heap and eats his supper at
leisure.

We interfered no doubt a good deal with
the movements of Mrs. B. and her family
that night, and several times we heard them
sniff their contempt and move off a Httle way
from our neighbourhood, but they certainly
did not seem so anxious to get away from us
as they would have done had we met them by
daylight.

Finding all our efforts useless we gave up
the attempt, and returnmg to the hut set the
bells, boys, clappers, &c. all in motion again,

222 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

and no doubt Bruin finished his night more
pleasantly than he began it.

Though we lay down to rest late that
night we were up betimes in the morning,
for through the drenching rain fancy vouch-
safed us a rosy vision of comfort and plenty,
clean clothes, and toil ended at Djuaria ere
niofhtfall. So incessant had the rain been for
the last week that our clothes were absolutely
rotten from damp, and our whole bodies had
the soft sodden look of washerwomen's hands.
It was no use to try any longer to keep any-
thing dry, for even my bourka had succumbed,
and was no longer waterproof

But as we neared the end of our journey
the settlers' houses grew more numerous, maize
gave place in some measure to other crops,
and several times during the day we passed
regular bee farms, where the whole of the
enclosures round the houses were full of big
black thatched hives.

THE CITY OF OUR LONGINGS. 223

All our spirits began to rise as our enemies,
the mountains, dwindled around us, until at
last the great river at our feet had spread to
a quarter of a mile in width and the last low
hills had run down into the flat ; another
mile and a half would take us round the low
headland in front, and at last give to our
grateful eyes a vision of Djuaria, the city of our
longings, the land of oil and wine, writ in such
large and hope- inspiring letters on our maps.

So we quickened our pace almost to a
trot, and Platon was singing a song for very
merriness of heart ; the child too was full of
laughter and high spirits, and we all raced for
the first view of Djuaria. But surely there
was some mistake ?

From the low wooded hill on which we
stood we gained a view of a flat low-lying
country, covered with thickets of scrub and
small woods, through which ran a broad,
untidy-looking river in three or four great

224 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

arms, coverino; and wastins; for UOTicultural
purposes over a verst and a half of land from
bank to bank.

For five or six versts the view was un-
broken, but save for four small houses and a
few ragged-looking maize fields, there was no
visible sign of Djuaria. Still our friend the
Svan kept assuring us that we were within a
verst of the centre of the great town, and a
wayfarer who met us at this point confirmed
the statement. This wayfarer, bare-footed
and bare-headed, in rags for clothes, was the
last of the swindled Svans who, in the vain
hope of recovermg something from the wreck
of his year's work and hopes, had stayed be-
hind his comrades to seek the help of the law ;
and now, poor wretch, bankrupt of wealth,
hope, and faith was following his comrades
back to Lachamul. As I watched his figure
disappear, plodding dejectedly oif into the
land of forest and mountain, rain, and semi-

TAKEN FOR BRIGAXDS. 225

starvation, I turned my back on Svanetia
with a shudder, determined to make the best
of Djuaria, and be content.

^Ye found a cancellaria on the further side
the river, in crossing which, on an infamous
bridge, I nearly lost my worthy interpreter,
and here we threw down our burdens and
began to inquire for the town. Poor Platon
was too ni from the exposure of the last few
days to be much good, and men seemed as
scarce as their habitations. The starchina of
course was away, so our letters were useless,
and everyone else seemed in hiding from
the rain.

The only house we could find contained
a widow, who took us for brigands or some
such evil characters, and no amount of per-
suasion would gain us admission to her fire-
side. We were beginning seriously to think
that we should have to pass our night in the
balcony of the cancellaria, when a man we had

VOL. II. 0,

226 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

bribed to help ns came with a message from
the chief peasant of the neighbourhood, inviting
us to his house.

Thouo'h no villao-e was in sio:ht, our o-uide
tohl ns to pick up our things and follow him.
The hut was only a few hundred yards away,
and in another ten minutes we were entering
one of the thickest of the little coverts which
were scattered over the plain. Once inside
the limits of the covert, we found ourselves in
a good- sized village, in which trees and houses
kept up a perpetual struggle for the mastery,
and subsequent investigation taught us that
every covert and thicket in the plain round us
concealed its little group of human habitations;
so that though from the hill above only five
houses are visible in the five versts of country
round the river's l>rim, there are in Djuaria,
within two or three versts of the hill, at least one
hundred houses. That in which we nowfoulid
ourselves was a solid well-built place, belong-

CONSIDERATE TREATMENT. 227

ing to a "wealthy peasant, whose daughters
came and brought me a bowl of hot water,
took the sandals off my lacerated feet and
washed and anointed them with bears' fat. I
don't think even the dry clothes and good
food which followed were more welcome than
this considerate attention.

AYe had still two or three days' travelling
before us, but of this we made lio'ht. for all
the remaining miles that lay between us and
the railway at Xovo Senachi were to be done
either on a horse or on wheels. Our hard
times were over, and we rejoiced in the fact.

From Djuaria to Sugdidi, a capital horse-
road takes you over a country flat and unin-
teresting at the best of times, and when we
did the journey next day we could hardly see
before us for the rain that beat all day into
our faces.

At Suo;didi, thouo-h there are fine houses
and even palaces, that of the Prince of
Q 2

228 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

Mingrelia being really an important building,
there is not a decent chop-house or eating den
of any kind in the place. The officials who do
the Government work are apparently always
out of town or asleep, and may not be roused ;
so that it takes almost as long to get
podaroznas and other necessaries for leaving
Sugdidi as it takes to get there.

When we did effect our exit from this
torpid town, where fever has turned at least
every other man to a yellow, shrivelled, and
shivering mummy, it was already dark, but
spite of darkness and rain, to be endured in
an open cart, we turned a deaf ear to the
protestations of our driver, and hurried on to
Novo Senachi, where we had determined to
catch the nine o'clock train up to Kutais
next day

At midnight a broken bridge stopped our
way, but at four next morning we found
means of continuing our journey, and at nine

HEARTY GREETINGS. 229

the same day threw ourselves into a first -
chiss carriage on the Poti-Tiflis line. I admit
as a rule I consider second or third-class
carriages quite good enough for me, and much
better suited to the capacity of my pocket
than the o'oro;eous and becushioned firsts, iDut
on this occasion the cravino; for comfort was
so strong on me that I plunged to the extent
of a first-class ticket to Kutais.

At Rionski, the junction for Kutais, the
first person I met was Prince A., chief of
the jeunesse doree of Kutais, on liis way up
to Tiflis with his bride. His hearty greetings
made the officials stare a good deal, and
secured me more civility than my rags would
otherwise have commanded. And I was
indeed no fitting inmate for a first-class
carriage. My feet I had vainly tried to get
into a pair of shoes, and failing that had to
content myself with ragged sandals and Imen
swathings. My stockings had no calves to

230 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

them, and an old pair of hunting cords I wore
were hardly decent. Two flannel jerseys of
doubtful character showed through the rents
and over the collar of my ragged Norfolk
jacket, and my cap was so burnt that it was a
question whether the holes or the cloth covered
the largest space. My beard was ragged and
unkempt like my hair, and my skin roughened
and stained by constant exposure. I hope
Prince A. explained to his charming bride that
all Englishmen are not in ordinary life of the
same stamp as the ragged vagabond at
Rionski.

At Kutais the hotel-keeper and his friends
turned out to welcome me back, but even
their sense of courtesy could not restrain the
laugh that rose to everyone's lips at my
woe -begone aspect ; and when (anxious to get
a change of clothes and a razor) I sought my
room, I found Frank had taken the key from
the landlord, who had kept it for us for two

EXTRA CAREFUL. 231

months, had then carefully locked our room,
pocketed the key, and gone off snipe- shooting
to Poti.

I hope I may be forgiven the short
anathema which I uttered when, having kicked
the door open, I found Frank had been equally
careful with regard to the locks and keys of
the cupboards and drawers within the room.

But by the time I had taken a Turkish
bath — an operation which, if the subject
thereof likes it, may be drawn out to any
extent — and had found a hair-cutter willing to
cut my hair for double the ordinary price,
which was not exorbitant, considering the
amount he had to remove, Frank and the keys
were hurrying to join me in answer to my
telegram.

232 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

CHAPTER XVL

WITH THE SUKHOUM BOAE HOUNDS.

As there seemed no likeliiiood. of hearino-
from the Prince of Mingreha for some little
time, Frank and I determined to run up to
Tiflis for a few days' shopping and sight-
seeing, leaving our Tiflis address with the
jolly old innkeeper of Kutais. As I have in
another book described Tiflis, I don't intend
to devote any time to an account of our stay
in that town.

Our days were spent in hunting up the
best amber and Astrachan sheepskins which
we could find in the different shops and
bazaars, and probably after a great deal of

SHOPPING AND SIGHT-SEEING. 233

bargaining we paid more for our purchases
there than we should have done at home.

The Viceroy, to whom I had a letter of
introduction, was especially kind to me, and
the three or four days of comparatively civi-
lised life after our evil times in Svanetia
were very welcome.

When our purchases had been made, and
our purses nearly emptied, we returned to
Kutais, where we found a very kind letter
from the Prince, in which he resetted that
the recent heavy falls of snow had rendered
all sporting operations in his mountain pre-
serves impossible.

So now we knew definitely that we must
give up all idea of securing a tur before our
return to England ; and though I was quite
ready to make another effort to bring my
pursuit to a successful issue, it was no small
consolation to know that we had not once
more to harden our hearts, and o^o throuii-h

234 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

another course of monntaineermg and semi-
starvation.

The remaining week or two of our stay
we hoped to spend at Golovinsky, and then,
one of us at least looked longingly forward to
a speedy return to the cheery hunting fields
of the O.B.H. As soon as, we could, we o-ot
down to Poti, where much against our will
bad weather kept us prisoners for a day or two.

But at Poti there is some very fair snipe -
shootmg, so Frank and I spent our time
pretty merrily on the swamps round the old
lake which joins the Kion. The worst part
of these expeditions was the difficulty of
getting to our ground, the only way being
by water, and the only conveyance a long
narrow canoe, made of a single log, scooped
out like a trough and propelled by a paddle.

The natives all swim like fish at Poti,
and as they wear very little clothing, they
care nothing for an upset, but for us, with

SNIPE-SHOOTING. 235

our guns and ammunition, an accident had
more terrors. I frankly confess that I passed
a very mauvais quart cVheure, sitting tight in
one of these unsteady craft, while the water
crept gradually along its inside until I was
the centre of a small flood.

Most of the snipe we shot were young
birds — indeed, I think all were ; and, beyond
snipe, we got nothing except a quail or two
and a bittern, which when cooked was one of
the very best birds I ever ate. AVhen at last
we got a steamer to Batoum we left Poti with
the least possible regret.

Batoum is the onl}^ place in the Caucasus
that seems to have grown at all since I was
last in the country (1879), and Batoum has
grown and is growing fast. It is already a
large and flourishing town — many of the
houses well built, some of the shops excellent,
and at least one first-rate hotel in course of
construction.

236 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

The Russians, I am told, are spending
much money and labour on the construction
and extension of military works about the
town, and ere long Batoum will be a strongly
fortified and first-rate port.

At Batoum wind and weather were again
unfavourable to our voyage to Golovinsky, so
that we were obliged to spend day after day
waitmg for a steamer that never came, until
very little more time for sport was left us.
Moreover, since there was very little sport to
be had near Batoum, except in a swamp
where the Mussulman population of the town
seemed invariably to pass the greater part of
the morning, my friend and I spent a good
deal of our time at the hotel, so that ease and
good feeding softened our hearts and made us
a trifle disinclined for further hardships.

Any long expedition into the hills round
Batoum is out of the question, as those hills
are full of bandits, as bold and grasping as

LAND AT SUKHOUM. 237

those of Greece. No one appears to be safe
half a dozen miles from the town.

When a steamer at last arrived, we found
that owing to the bad weather we should not
be able to make a stay at any of the small
ports, and the nearest point to Golovinsky at
which we could be landed would be Sukhoum
Kaleh.

So at Sukhoum we landed, together with
a general of the Russian army, who had come
to make an inspection of the battalion stationed
at that port. Luckily for us this general was
a genial, kind-hearted gentleman, who felt
for our many disappointments, and was deter-
muied to help us all he could. Thus, instead
of making his review, and the shooting parties
organised by the officers in our honour, clash
with and frustrate our plans, the general
managed to hold his review early, and forward
our sport for the rest of the day.

Everyone at Sukhoum was as kind as

238 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

Russians can be, and none can be more hos-
pitable than they. On the day after our
arrival, after breakfastmg with the officers of
the battalion, we were pro\'ided with horses,
and in company with about a couple of dozen
other chasseurs, for the most part military
men, betook ourselves to the valley between
the first and second rano-e of low hills at the
back of the town.

The weather was simply superb, though
intensely hot, and the rich autumnal tints of
the wooded hills, which were set round a bay
of the bluest and calmest sea in the world,
made a gorgeous picture, a strong contrast to
the scenes of our late travel, where snow-clad
mountain peaks and dark pine forest stood
out in bold relief against a cold, clear sky.

For my part I think I liked the sterner
picture best, for here the air is so enervatmg
that if only Circe still dwelt in her ancient
haunts, and came to you with a bottle of Bass

A VARIED PACK. 239

and a pipe of bird's-eye, poor human nature
would hardly be strong enough to resist her.

I confess that when 1 started on our first
drive at Sukhoum I looked on my rifle as a
rather unnecessary encumbrance, but the
bright spirits of the party made me feel that
if the shoot was not a success, the picnic could
not be a failure.

The pack which met us two or three miles
from the town was of the most varied de-
scription. There were bigrough-coatedhounds,
such as the shepherds of Southern Russia and
the Caucasus keep to guard their flocks,
straining at their collars and viciously anxious
to fight anything and everything which came
near them. There were hounds not unlike
our own fox-hounds, and there were a couple of
well-bred little French bassets.

The huntsman was a sergeant of the regi-
ment, and his whips were a couple of sturdy
non-commissioned oflicers. The master's office

210 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

was shared, perhaps a little to the detriment of
sport, between the different owners of hounds,
for be it understood the hounds were not one
pack, but the contributions from half-a-dozen
different kennels. Every one was furnished
with a huntmg-horn, at least all the owners
of doo;s carried these musical instruments.

The meet was under a huge walnut tree,
so large that all our great following of men
and dogs seemed comfortably shaded beneath
its spreading limbs.

At the meet waiting for us was a princess
of the country, who to her admirable address
as a horsewoman added a keen love of the
more dangerous forms of sport. Fair and
young, with a fund of bright spirits and
ready raillery, she was a welcome addition to
our party ; but may she forgive me if she ever
reads these lines, when I admit that the first
sight of her bonnie face and trim hunting
costume sent my last hope of sport to the

OUR SHOOTING GHOUND. 241

"winds, and a closer inspection of the danger-
ous little rifle she carried made me form the
dastardly resolution, that let him who would
take care of her, I would put myself out of
range of any stray shots. It is no doubt
a stupid prejudice on my part, but I never
could get over the conviction that Venus
ought to let Cupid do all her shooting
for her.

The ground to be shot over was a stretch
of low hills and shallow valleys, covered knee
deep in brown ferns, and frightfully thorny
briars. Here and there a clump of forest
intervened, and in these clumps the going was
simply impracticable without a free use of the
kinjal.

One reckless dragoon attempted to ride
through the first tract of the kind, but a mesh
of wild vine had him under the chin before
he had gone many yards, and the horse grow-
ing restive the gallant warrior was as neatly

VOL. II. R

242 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

' Absalomed ' as any man need wish to be.
After this all the horses were sent back,
and the guns followed the old colonel on foot,
and were told off one after another to their
respective places. My post seemed as promis-
ing as need be, for at my feet was the junc-
tion of two f)aths which the wild swine had
trampled through the jungle and at my back
was a large fig-tree, the terminus probably of
these two lines. All round was a dense wall
of briars and thorny things, whose Russian
names were longer than their thorns, so
though I have a vivid memory of the latter,
the former are unluckily forgotten, By-and-
bye there was n sound of horns, and then
intense silence.

After a while some hounds gave tongue
and carried a line apparently right past
where I was standing, but keen as my watch
had been I saw nothing either then or there-
after.

SPORT SPOILED. 243

Two or three times at different parts of
the beat I heard the hounds give tongue, and
several shots were fired, but nothing came my
way, and small wonder, for the two soldiers
who had been stationed near me as stops,
liavmg tired of the task after the first five
minutes, were noisily employed in collecting
figs off the tree in my rear. Sticks and
stones were freely used ; and at last one fellow
not being able to get a bough down by these
means, and being too lazy to climb, bethought
himself of his musket. His capital idea was
received with applause by his comrade, and a
couple of shots immediately followed, raising
no doubt a pang of envy in some distant
sportsman's mind, at the confounded luck of
those fellows by the fig-tree. Though they
may not have known it before, those two
soldiers found out immediately after their
escapade, that the unfortunate Englishman
whose sport they were spoiling knew a good
R 2

244 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

deal of the vulsfar tono;ue of the Russian and
could use it to some purpose.

After having seen in what manner my
neio;hbours used their rifles, I was not the
least surprised to find that though thirty or
forty shots had been fired, nothing had been
bagged.

Once, when the hounds seemed farthest
from me, I had glanced down the narrow path
in front of me, lying on my belly to do so, and
had caught sight in the dim obscurity of three
beasts, who followed one another slowly
across the path, carrymg their heads like
hounds trying to pick out a line. For a
moment I thought they were pigs, and had
taken aim at the biggest of them, but the
fear of killing a hound overcame me, and I
let them go.

When I crept down the path afterwards
and found I had let three young boar Avalk
({uietly past me, at about thirty yards off, I

DIPROVEMENT IN SPORT. 245

Avas not in the best of humours ; but anythmg
is better than hurtins; a hound.

Jackals seemed to abound, but to shoot
these Httle rascals as they twist and turn in
thick covert is not easy work with an ' Ex-
press,' and not one was killed in the three days
we were out : and thouo-h the hounds were in
full cry at their heels almost all day and every
day, they never managed to ' chop ' one.

Towards evening the sport rather im-
proved, although all discipline had long since
fled. In the early part of the day, men had
been posted all round the country to be
beaten, and only the huntsman and whips
followed the dogs, which were put in at the
furthest point down wind. But as the heat
decreased and the sportsmen's patience waned,
every man did as seemed best to him.

The hounds were divided. Three or foin-
were pegging away after jackals in the lower
country towards the sea, another lot had got

246 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

some pigs on foot amongst the ferns and
briars of a basin in the hills, where grew quite
an orchard of frnit trees, and still another
division of the pack had got some roe deer
on foot.

Frank and some one or two others were
well placed for the roe, and had the doubtful
pleasure of missing them two or three times
as their heads glanced along above the top of
the deep fern at distances varying from one to
three hundred yards.

As for me, I had been placed in the drive
before in such a very den of thorns that I had
been unable to extricate myself in time to join
this last drive, and now found myself left out
of the hunt. However, I was not alone, and
I am inclined to think that a certain prince
and myself, having secured our horses, had
much the best of the fun ; for having gained
the place where the dogs were hunting the
boar, we tied up our cattle and had a really

A DAY'S BAG. 247

merry run witli the dogs on foot. But we
never saw the boar, and the last half hour of
that noisy day I spent much to my own
satisfaction, feasting on ripe figs on a limb of
the tree which bore them, quite convinced that
however excellent Russian soldiers might be
at their own trade, with our host the gallant
old colonel to lead them, they had' as little
idea of carrymg a drive to a successful issue
as have Easter holiday-makers of stag hunt- ,
ing.

The bag that day was one roe deer, shot
by -the colonel, and the best hound of the pack,
shot clean through the shoulder, the best shot
made all day if only the hound had been the .
boar he was mistaken for. In mercy to his
feelino's the name of the dosf-shooter shall not
be recorded here, but I sincerely hope he
won't forget the debt of gratitude he owes the
kindly old colonel for the gentle way in wliich
he treated his offence.

348 SAVAGE SVANETIA.

As the days crept on, and the bad weather
still kept us storm- stayed at Sukhoum, even
the cordial kindness of our military friends
failed to console us for our prolonged stay
amongst them. All hope of a visit to Golo-
vinsky vanished, and both Frank and myself
became decidedly nervous about our health.

At last, one day, we heard from the
telegraphists that a steamer would really call
at Sukhoum next morning, and though the
hour of its departure from that port was 3 a.m.,
we were down on the shingle in the grey
light with our packages around us, in time to
catch the boat. jNot until we had got our-
selves and our belongings on board, and said
good-bye to Platon, did we experience any
feeling cf security, convinced that now we
were once more within a measurable distance
of railways and other connecting links which
join the civilised world to the Caucasus.

From that moment until our arrival in

HOME WARD-BOUND. 249

England all went well with us, though where-
ever we passed we witnessed traces of the
stormy weather which had been visiting
Europe this month.

Between Odessa and the Austrian frontier
all the forests through which the railroad
passed presented a pitiable spectacle. For
three days a heavy rain had fallen, and a bitter
frost had congealed the drops as they fell.
Hence every tree and every telegraph wire
had collected round itself a massive coating of
ice, of which the weight was intolerable.

On the fourth day a perfect hurricane had
swept over the land. The wires, which had
not already succumbed to the pressure of their
icy load, now fell, dragging the posts with
them m their fall; and as for the forests, I can
only compare them to fields of ripe wheat
which a wild rainstorm has beaten to the
ground. It was not so much that the great
trees were snapped or uprooted, but their

250

SAVAGE SVANETIA.

forms were contorted and. twisted as if tliey
bad been screwed out of sbape by some
gigantic band, and tben bent eartbwards till
tbey bowed tbeir beads upon tbe ground.

Of course tbe Cbannel passage was about
tbe worst bit of sea voyage we bad encountered
since we left England ; and altogetber bome-
sick Frank was not one wbit more ready tban
my sea-sick self to admit tbat in all our wander-
ings we bad never been so pleased to arrive
anywbere as we were to arrive at Victoria.

THE EXD.

EXPLORATIONS, VOYAGES, AND TRAVELS.

Recollections of My Life.

By the late Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. In 3 vols, post 8vo.

31.S. 6d.
' One of the most freshly ■written and fascinating books of travel we have read
for a long time. The prince's per:.onal cliaiacter is clearly, though nnconsciously,
delineatid on every page, and in this lies cue of the chief atti actions of these
fasciiiating volumes. A\'e know of no recent book of travels on which we can bestow
a warmer or more cordial commendation.' — Times.

A Diary kept during a Journey to Europe
in 1878.

By the Shah of Persia, and rendered into English by General
ScHixDLER and Baron Loris de Nueman. In demy 8vo. 12*.

Five Weeks in Iceland.

By C. A. De Eoxblaxque. In small crown 8ro. 3s. 6d.

Round about Norway.

By Charles AV. "\A'ood. Author of 'Through Holland' &c. In
demy Svo. with 63 Illustrations, l'2s.

Through Holland.

By Charles W. "Wood. In demy Svo. with 57 Illustrations, 12s.

The Dead Cities of the Zuyder Zee.

From the French of 31. Henry Havard, by Annie Wood. In
crown Svo. with 10 Illustrations. The ^^ew and Popular Edition, &s.

Picturesque Holland:

A Journey in the Provinces of Friesland. Groningen, Drenthe,
Overyssel, Guelderland, Limbourg, &c. From the French of M.
Henky Havard, by Annie Wood. Iu demy Svo. with 10 Illuttra-
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In the Heart of Holland.

From the French of M. Hf.nky' Havard, by Mrs. Cashel Hoey.
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In the Black Forest.

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2 EXPLOBATIONS, VOYAGES, AND TRAVELS.

Rambles among the Mountains and Villages of
Alsace.

By Mrs. Jenner. 1 vol. large crown 8vo. with 2 Illustrations.

[/?i the press.

Summer Days in Auvergne.

By Admiral de Kantzow. In crown 8vo. with 5 full-page Illus-
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Azahar. A Tour in Spain.

By E. C. Hope-Edwaedes. 7s. 6d.

Among the Spanish People.

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Fair Lusitania :

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A Lady's Tour in Corsica.

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Diary of an Idle Woman in Sicily.

By Frances Elliot, Author of ' Diary of an Idle Woman in
Italy.' In 2 vols, crown Svo. 185.

Unknown Hungary.

By Victor Tissot, and translated by Mrs. A. Oswald Brodie.
In two volumes, crown Svo. 21s.

Word-Sketches in the Sweet South.

By Mary Catherine Jackson. Demy Svo. 10s. 6^^.

The Fortunate Isles ;

Or, the Archipelago of the Canaries. By M. Pegot-Ogifr.
Translated by Frances Locock. 2 vols, crown Svo. 21s.

Eau-de-Nil. A Nile Diary.

By E. C. Hope-Edwardes. 1 vol. large crown Svo. 10s. 6d.

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EXPLOBATIOXS, VOYAGES, AXD TRAVELS. 3

Five Months in Cairo and in Lower Egypt.

From the French of G-abeiel Charmes, by AYilliam Conn. In
1 vol. crown 8vo. 7s. Qd.

' One of the best works on Egy]it that has been published, JI. Charmes being not
only a quick observer and an industrious hunter after information, but the wielder
of a most graphic pen. The translation has been most carefully done, and is a
model of paiiistakin? workmanship.' — Globe.

A Voyage Up the Niger and Benueh.

By Adolphe Burdo. Translated by Mrs. George Sturge. With
Illustrations. In demy 8vo. 10s. 6^.

In the Land of Misfortune.

By Lady Florence Dlxie, Author of ' Across Patagonia ' &c.
With numerous Illustrations by Major Fraser and Capt. C. F.
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demy 8vo. 185.

A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa.

Being a Kecord of Nine Years' Sport and Travel in the Far Interior
of Africa. By Frederick Courteney Selotjs. With Illustrations
engraved by Whymper and Pearson, and a Map. Second Edition.
In 1 vol. demy 8vo. 2\s. \In preparation .

With the Cape Mounted Rifles.

A Record of Service in the Native Wars against the Galekas.
Gaikas, Pondos, &c., including the Storming of Moirosi's Mountain.
In 1 vol. demy 8vo. 105. 6d.

Japan and the Japanese.

By AniE Humbert, Envoy Extraordinary of the Swiss Confedera-
tion. From the French by Mrs. Cashel Hoey, and Edited by W.
H. Bates, Assist. -Secretary to the Geographical Society. Illus-
trated by 207 Drawings and Sketches from Photographs. In royal
4to. handsomely bound, 21 5.

Old New Zealand.

A Tale of the Good Old Times, and a History of the War in the
North against the Chief Heke. Told by an Old Pakeha Maori.
With a Preface by the Earl of Pembroke. In demy 8vo. 125,
' The best book ever \\Titten about a savage race.' — Athenjei'ji.

South Sea Bubbles.

Bv the Earl and the Doctor. Library Edition. 8vo. 14s.
'POPULAR EDITION. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.

The Coral Lands of the Pacific.

Being an Account of nearly all the Inhabited Islands of the Pacific,
their Peoples and their Products. By H. Stonehewer Cooper.
A New and Revised Edition in One Volume, crown 8vo. 6s.

4 EXPLORATIONS, VOYAGES, AND TRAVELS.

Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation since the
War.

By the Hon. Mrs. J. W. Leigh. In 1 vol. demy 8vo. 10s. Qd.

This Work is copyright in the United Kingdom and in the United
States.

'Mrs. Leiprb writes with temper, care, and clearness, and her testimony is
perhaps one of the most vaUiable contributions yet made to our knowledge of the
state of the South during the critical period which we hope is now approaching its
closing.'— Saturday Kevikw.

' No book has presented a more vivid description of the ruin that fell upon the
South.' — Globe.

Peru in the Guano Age.

By A. J. DuFFiELD. In crown 8vo. 4s.

Western Wanderings :

A Record of Travel in the Land of the Setting Sun. By J. W.
Boddam-Wheth.\.m. With 12 full-page Illustrations, engraved by
Whymper. Demy 8vo. 15s.

A Trip to Manitoba.

By Mary FitzGibbon. In large crown Svo. 10s. 6d.

A Search after Sunshine :

A Visit to Algeria in 1871. By Lady Herbert. Square Svo.
with 16 Illustrations engraved by George Pearson, 16s.
' The whole -volume is full of charm.'— Morning Post.

A Journal Abroad in 1868.

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Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus.

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1 vol. demy Svo. 14s.

Savage Svanetia.

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Roch Inscriptions in the Peninsula of Sinai.

By George Bentley, F.E.G.S. Demy Svo. sewed, Is.

EXPLOBATIONS, VOYAGES, AND TRAVELS.

Heth and Moab.

A Narrative of Exploration in Palestine. By Captain Clal'd
CoNDER, E.E. In 1 vol. demy 8vo. [In the press.

East of the Jordan.

A Record of Travel and Observation in the Countries of Moab,
Gilead, and Basha during the years 1875-77. By Selah
Merrill, Archaeologist of the American Palestine Exploration
Society, and with an Introduction by Professor Eoswell Hitch-
cock, D.D. In 1 vol. demy 8 to. with 70 Illustrations and a Map,
16s.

Underground Jerusalem.

An Account of the principal difficulties encountered in its Ex-
ploration, and the Results obtained. AVith a Narrative of .-in
Expedition througli the .Jordan Valley and a Visit to the
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charge of the Explorations in the Holy Land. In demy Svo.
"with Illustrations, 21s.

Tent Work in Palestine.

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demy 8ro. With Illustrations, '24s. Also a New and Popular
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The Recovery of Jerusalem.

An Account of the Recent Excavations and Discoveries in the
Holy City. By Captain Wilsox, R.E., and Colonel Waerex,
RE. With an Introductory Chapter by Dean Stanley. Third
Thousand. Demy Svo. with 50 Illustrations, 21s.

The Temple or the Tomb ?

By Charles Warhen, Author of 'Underground Jerusalem.' In
demy Svo. with Illustrations, 10s. Gd.

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THE

TEIPLE BAR lAGAZIIE.

' One can never help enjoying " Temple Bar." ' — Guardian.
' Who does not welcome " Temple Bar"?' — John Bull.

SERIAL STOEIES have recently appeared in the Magazine by—
ANTHONY TROLLOPE, Miss FOTHERGILL, WILKIE COLLINS,
Mrs. HENRY WOOD, Mrs. EDWARDES, Miss BROUGHTON,
Major WHYTE MELVILLE, Mrs. LYNN LINTON, Mrs.
ALEXANDER, Major HAWLEY SMART, Miss BRADDON, the
Author of ' Comin' thro' the Rye,' the Author of ' Dorothy Fox,' and
other well-known Authors.

' "Temple Bae" is sparkling and brilliant. It might command a
constituency by its fiction alone, but it takes so much care of its more
solid matter, that if there were no stories at all there is enough to
interest the reader.' — English Independent.

NEW SEEIAL STOEIES

NOW APPEARING in TEMPLE BAR ;—

I.

' BELINDA,'

By RHODA BROUGHTON,

Author of ' Cometh up as a Flower,' ' Good-bye, Sweetheart,'
' Second Thoughts,' &c.

*IONE STEWART.'

By Mrs. LYNN LINTON,

Author of ' Patricia Kemball,' &c.

BESIDES ESSAYS AND SHORT ARTICLES.

M

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

Los Angeles
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

gAN 29 1978

Form L9-Series 444

AA 000 836 963

V.2