MOUNTAIN GAME OF THE CAUCASUS
BY CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY
Wild and beautiful as they are in their way, it is not in the deep
mountain gorges at the head of the Kuban, nor in its vast reed beds,
neither is it in the rich forests of Circassia, or the dreary steppes
of the Mooghan, that the true spirit of the Caucasus dwells, and the
finest sport of the country makes slaves of natives and aliens alike.
Round the Mamisson Pass, in the wild and beetling precipices of
Svânetia, wherever nature is most cruel and most forbidding, lives a
race of men to whom, not only luxury, but every ordinary comfort of the
most primitive forms of civilisation, is unknown.
Stronger tribes than theirs drove them, in the dark ages, from the rich
plains below into the mist-hidden fastnesses in which they now dwell.
[Illustration: ‘STANDING LIKE STATUES’]
Their villages are perched at heights varying from 6,000 to 9,000
feet; their _pastures_ are such dizzy slopes as lowlanders would
hesitate to climb; their harvests travel down to the villages in rough
log toboggans, the impetus afforded them by their own weight and the
precipitous nature of their descent being their only motive power;
while the houses in which the natives crouch for shelter from the
bitter blast are mere irregular cairns of grey stone, without windows,
smoke-blackened, unfurnished, unmorticed even, and lit only by a
flaring pine knot carried uphill from the nearest straggling group of
stunted trees. A Russian writer says of these men that ‘as children
they learn the lessons of life from the lammergeiers wheeling round
their mountain-tops, until robbery and the chase become for them all
that makes life worth living.’
It is to their hunting-grounds that a true sportsman’s eyes will always
turn from plain or forest; to the region of desolate ironstone peaks by
the snow-line and above it, where, amidst the chaos of an unfinished
world, the tûr and the ibex, the chamois and the mountain goat, share
the solitudes with the vultures and the Ossetes or Lesghians.
If the truest sport is that into which most dangers and most hardships
enter; in which the odds are longest in favour of the quarry and
against the hunter; in which the sportsman hunts for the love of the
chase alone and not as a pot-hunter, still less for any reward of
‘filthy lucre,’ then is the ragged Ossete a prince amongst sportsmen.
Unless Nature has given a man a good head, the mere sight of the
Ossete’s hunting-ground is enough to turn him dizzy.
Starting at midnight from Teeb, or Tlee, or any other of those grim but
shattered citadels of the mountain-men in the Valley of the Mamisson,
you may climb until the stars fade and the dawn comes, and then, having
started at a height close on 9,000 feet above sea-level, you will reach
the ragged ironstone crags amongst which your game lives, just half an
hour too late, although since the moment you started you have had but
one short breathing space, and have plodded bravely on in the steps of
the lean grey hunter who is your guide, by a track which seems to lead
as persistently upwards as the flight of a skylark.
It is almost impossible to give any adequate idea of the weird
desolation which surrounds the home of the Ossete and the tûr. At
Alaghir, a village of the plains, some seventy-three versts from the
summit of the Mamisson, there are good houses and orchards and many of
the comforts of life. A few miles from Alaghir the road enters a gorge
full of the fumes of sulphur, the stream becomes a milky blue, the road
grows steeper and steeper, hour after hour vegetation becomes more
beggarly, until at last there is no timber on the side of the gorge,
only half of which gets the light of the sun at any one time; the
features of man and of nature are pinched as if by the cold and misery;
everything is hard and grey, and the chill of the glaciers seems to
have got hold of the very heart of life.
In old days the Caucasian mountaineer had two pursuits open to
him--brigandage and the chase. The shattered keeps, which no one has
troubled to repair, tell the story of the first of these.
Russian cannon has knocked the eyries of the mountaineers to pieces,
and cut short their career as warriors. It is for sport alone that the
best of them still live, and their one sport is the chase of mountain
game.
With a skin of sour milk over his shoulder, and a few thin cakes in
his bashlik (hood), the Ossete will disappear for days and days among
the crags which overhang his miserable home. To him the ironstone
rocks are as familiar as Piccadilly to a Londoner, and wherever dark
or the mountain mists may catch him, he knows of some lair under
a boulder where he and his predecessors have passed many a night
before. After two or three days of lonely hunting, the man comes back,
if empty-handed, uncomplaining; if successful, just as silent and
undemonstrative as the stones he lies down amongst. By a custom of
his country, the very game he kills is not his own, but must be given
to his fellows, his own share being but the massive horns, which he
hides away among the blackened rafters of his hovel, or hangs on a post
before the door of his tiny church.
There are, as far as I know, four varieties of mountain game between
the Black Sea and the Caspian, but the country has been but very
superficially explored by sportsmen, and the reports of naturalists who
base their theories upon the stories of the natives are not worth much.
On the lower ridges, and on the high grassy shoulders of Svânetia, and
elsewhere, chamois abound, identical in all respects with the common
chamois of Switzerland and the Tyrol. Being less hunted than the
European variety, the Caucasian chamois is generally found fairly low
down, just above timber limit, or in summer round the lower edges of
the glaciers. There is seldom a day in the mountains when the hunter
will not hear that long whistle so strangely human in its note, and,
turning, find that he has been detected by the mountain sentinel. In
Svânetia I have seen chamois in large herds (one herd which I remember
numbered at least fifty head), and every ‘sakli’ has its crevices or
its roof adorned with the little black horns.
But the tûr is the mountain beast, _par excellence_, of the Caucasus.
The chamois is looked upon as comparatively small game.
‘Tûr’ is a native name, and is applied to several different beasts
indiscriminately.
When a Svân, or an Ossete, or any man, native or Russian, talks to you
of tûr in the main chain between Kazbek and Elbruz, he means either
Caucasian ibex or Caucasian burrhel.
Of the two in Svânetia the ibex is the commoner beast, while, judging
by the horns found in the saklis, the burrhel is commoner in the
Mamisson district. I have, however, seen the burrhel in Svânetia, and
any intelligent native hunter will tell you that there are two kinds
of tûr in his country, one with notched and one with smooth horns.
There are now specimens of both in the Natural History Museum at
Kensington, and any one who will take the trouble to compare them will
find abundant points of difference, though their general similarity of
appearance is enough to account for the confusion which exists among
native hunters. The burrhel (_Capra pallasi_ or _cylindricornis_)
stands about 3 feet high at the shoulder (a big ram would stand
higher), and measures from shoulder to rump about 3 inches more than
that. His horns are something like the Indian burrhel’s, not being
indented, and turning out laterally before bending back. The coat of
the burrhel is hard and deer-like, in colour closely resembling that of
the ibex, both beasts being furnished by nature with coats of reddish
brown to match the ironstone rocks amongst which they live. In the
ibex (_Capra caucasica_) the colour and the size vary very little
from the colour and size of the burrhel, but the horns are true ibex
horns, curving back at once from the head towards the quarters, and
deeply indented. A glance at Mr. Littledale’s trophies of 1888 will
give an idea of the head of _C. caucasica_, while the little sketches
of horns in my possession and of the head in the Kensington Museum
will illustrate the difference between _C. cylindricornis_ and _C.
caucasica_. Before dealing with the hunting of any of these mountain
beasts, all of which live in the same kind of country and are hunted
in the same way, let me describe the fourth variety to which I have
alluded.
_C. cylindricornis_ and _C. caucasica_ are found in Central Caucasus,
and from personal knowledge I know that the former, _C. cylindricornis_
or _pallasi_, is found also in Daghestan; but it is only in Daghestan
and the neighbouring mountains, and I believe in Ararat, that that
splendid wild goat, _Hircus ægagrus_, is to be found.
Unfortunately Ararat is an impossible country for the sportsman, as
a gentleman named Kareim was in 1886, and perhaps still is, actively
engaged in the native industry of brigandage; and, moreover, what
few natives there are in the mountains are perpetually at war with
one another, in consequence of which the Russian officials will not
permit sportsmen, with or without an escort, to wander about Ararat.
In Daghestan, in 1878, there were also brigands, and, if you believed
the resident Russians, some of those with whom I associated were
distinctly no better than they ought to have been; but to me they were
the kindest of hosts, and in the part of Daghestan in which I shot,
life was absolutely luxurious compared with the life in the villages of
Central Caucasus, and, indeed, quite as comfortable as any healthy man
need desire. The whole population is composed of shepherds and hunters;
the half of their flocks being of goats, so like _Hircus ægagrus_ in
type that the suspicion that he himself was but a tame goat ‘gone wild’
would force itself upon one. The reverse of this may be the truth; but
undoubtedly there are among the herds which the little Lesghians
drive up to the mountain pastures every morning many old he-goats
which it would be hard to distinguish from those so well set up at
Kensington, or those others which I saw wild in the mountains about the
Christmas of 1878.
[Illustration: IBEX
(_Hircus Ægagrus_)]
_Hircus ægagrus_ is somewhat smaller in size and lighter in build
than either _C. caucasica_ or _C. pallasi_. He is a rich creamy brown
in colour, with a dark stripe along the spine and what a saddler
would call a ‘breast-plate’ of the same colour, and dark knees and
dark markings on the legs. The beast described and figured as _Capra
ægagrus_ by Mr. Sclater in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society
for May 1886 seems to me to represent the animal in question.
There are three ways at least in which the mountain game of the
Caucasus may be hunted. First, there is the royal method practised
by the Prince of Mingrelia, who was good enough to invite me to
participate in a mountain drive with him in 1887. This gentleman owns
a large tract of country between Kutais and Svânetia, in which tûr and
chamois are preserved. Once a year the Prince and his friends assemble
their retainers, of whom every Caucasian chieftain keeps and feeds a
vast number; and, having stationed the guns in the passes and runways
of the mountains, the beaters drive the tûr and chamois past the guns.
On one occasion I am informed that a bag of forty tûr was thus made
in one day’s driving. To those who prefer grouse driving to walking
up the wild old birds later on in the season, this may be fine sport.
For my own part I don’t consider it so. But it is a mere matter of
opinion. Then there is a second method which appeals strongly to those
who care to watch Nature and her wild things closely, when they are
most off their guard. This is the shepherd’s way. Wherever there are
tûr, there are what the natives call springs of bitter water, in some
cases mere yellow licks on almost inaccessible crags, in others big
springs of water very strongly impregnated with iron. The natives are
extremely fond of this water, believing that it cures all ailments and
endows a man with every physical virtue, and the mountain goats are
as fond of it as the men. Wherever there is such a spring or lick,
the tûr will, if possible, come down to it at least once in every
twenty-four hours, and the shepherds, knowing this, lie in wait for
their coming. All day long, at any rate during the warm months of the
year (June, July, and August), the tûr keep well up in the crags above
the snow-line, where neither man nor insects nor the broiling heat of
a Caucasian sun can annoy them. But as night begins to approach, the
listening hunter will hear the rattling of stones upon the moraines
above the glacier. The tûr are coming down to the little patches of
upland pasture to feed. By-and-bye he may catch sight of them as one
by one they come slowly on to a knife-like ridge of rock looking down
upon the patch of sweet grass below. But they are in no hurry, and the
probability is that they will stand there like statues, gazing into
the gulf below, for what seems to the watcher to be half a day, and
really is half an hour, while the chill mist wraps him round, numbing
him with cold and gradually hiding his game from his sight. Later on,
if he has crawled up to his eyrie opposite the bitter-water spring,
where he has just room to curl himself up on a ledge overhanging a
hideously dark profound, he may watch the moon sail up over the peaks,
and towards morning he may hear again that rattling of falling stones
displaced by unseen feet. Peer as he will into the silvery mists on the
other side of the ravine, he can see nothing; but the falling stones
continue to set his heart beating, and at last he hears that shrill
bleat from which the tûr gets its local name, djik-vee. Straining
his eyes to the utmost as cry after cry comes from the ‘lick,’ he at
last makes out shadowy forms moving like flies across the face of the
sheer rock opposite, and, praying to his patron saint, he startles the
solemn night with the sharp ring of his rifle. In nine cases out of
ten, if he kills anything it will be a ewe or a young ram at best; for,
though the young rams and the ewes go in large herds, the old beasts
keep themselves apart, retiring, so say the natives, to inaccessible
fastnesses above the snow-line, and not coming down until later on
in the season. This is to some extent corroborated by a note of Mr.
Littledale’s to the effect that in 1886 he found the old rams in a
certain remote district on the south side of the chain, 13,000 feet and
more above sea-level.
But the only true way to hunt ibex is to follow them to their own
haunts, and if they _will_ go high up, then must you go higher. There
is but one top to a mountain, even tûr cannot get above that; and the
man who, having got to the crest of the ridge, has the hardihood to
sleep there (no great hardship if he has a sleeping bag with him) is
pretty sure of success, even with _Capra cylindricornis_. The first
rule in hunting mountain game is, that if you want to get near them
you must hunt them from above. A few hawks, an occasional eagle, and
the great snow-partridge are the only living things which share the
mountain peaks with the tûr, and from these they have nothing to fear.
But watch them before they lie down for their midday _siesta_, and
you will see how they stand and stare from their dizzy resting-place
down on to the lower slopes of the mountain; notice, too, how the old
solitary rams choose their beds on some narrow ledge commanding every
possible approach from the lowlands. They know that man, their one
enemy, lives below them, and it is for him that they are incessantly
on the watch. The smoke of a camp fire on the edge of the pine forest
in Svânetia, if seen, as it probably will be by some of the sentinels
of the mountain herds, is sufficient to scare every beast from that
side the ridge for days; for, remote as his haunts are, the tûr has
been hunted by the natives for generations, and is alive to every move
in the hunter’s game. But from above the tûr expects no danger, and
is therefore comparatively easy to approach, always provided that no
eddying gust of wind brings the scent of man to his keen nostrils. If
this happens the hunter’s next view of him will be on a skyline which
it would take human feet a couple of hours to reach, and the direct
road to which appears impossible for anything without wings. There is
only one sense in which the tûr is inferior to the lowland beasts, and
that is in his hearing. A broken twig will disturb half a forest; but
stones may go rattling away from under your feet, making a noise like
volley-firing, and the tûr will hardly turn their heads. Presumably
stone slides and the fall of single detached rocks from natural causes
are so common that the ibex become indifferent to the noise.
Having then found a country, about the end of August, in which tûr are
said to be plentiful, make your permanent camp just inside the edge of
the forest where a tiny stream trickles from the glacier through the
pine-trees. It is ten to one that, if the country chosen is really a
good one for game, you will find traces of an old camp near at hand, if
it be but a smooth round nest among the fallen pine-needles.
Leave your supplies and a man to look after them here, and see that
the man left behind understands that if he shows himself outside the
forest, or goes hunting on his own account, he will forfeit his pay.
If you can persuade a Caucasian to submit to such a thing, it would
be safer to leave your man without firearms, and therefore out of the
reach of all temptation to wander. As this is difficult to do, I always
prefer to simply ‘cache’ my supplies and leave them unguarded. Even if
they should happen to be found by some wandering Tcherkess, they will
not be touched. The supplies having been cared for and a central camp
established, take a sleeping bag for yourself (your man very likely
will not even trouble to take his bourka with him if it is only for a
couple of nights), as many flat cakes of bread as you can manage to
pack, some cooked meat in the most portable form you can devise, an
extra pair of moccasins, and a suit of flannel for night. This last
item takes up very little room, and is worth more than all the whisky
you could carry.
Let your clothes be of good stout tweed, as near the colour of the
rocks as possible. Wear knickerbocker breeches, made very loose at
the knee, so as not to stop your stride uphill, and get from your
man a pair of the stout felt gaiters which he himself wears, to save
your shins from the sharp edges of the rocks. I find that a spare
bourka (native blanket) and a tanned skin are useful things to take
into camp with your other stores, for making and repairing gaiters
and moccasins. A pair of loose-fitting deerskin gloves, with (at any
rate in September) another pair of woollen gloves inside them, are
generally worn by the native hunters, and are almost a necessity.
Even with two new pairs of gloves to protect them, I came home, after
my last twenty-four hours in the ironstone rocks of Ossetia, with
my palms badly cut and bleeding. However, that was an exceptionally
rough twenty-four hours in an exceptionally rough bit of country, even
for the Caucasus. Add to the above outfit an alpenstock (the point
fire-hardened, _not_ iron-shod), your rifle, with a sling to carry it
over your shoulders, your stalking glass and your cartridges, with a
small coil of rope, a compass, matches, tobacco, a knife for skinning,
and any other small luxuries which you feel inclined to ‘pack’ on your
own shoulders, or which your man _offers_ to carry. Don’t let him have
a rifle if you can help it. A Caucasian is as keen after game as a
terrier after rats, and if he has a rifle it is quite on the cards that
at the critical moment he may think your movements too slow, outpace
you in getting to your game, or even fire over your shoulder.
I have had this happen once in my life, at the end of a long day of
hard work, and think I know now what is the utmost which a man can be
called upon to endure at the hands of his fellow-man.
Equipped as suggested, a man should be able to stay on the top of the
ridge for three or four days, and in that time it is hard indeed if
he cannot get a shot, at fairly close range, at a really good ‘head.’
In such quarters as he will have to sleep in, there is no fear that
the hunter will lie abed too long; but it is worth remembering that
ibex, especially, are somewhat nocturnal in their habits, and that as
soon as ever it is light you should be on some point of vantage from
which you can see your game returning from their feeding grounds to lie
down for the day. An old tûr, when he has once settled himself for
his _siesta_, is very hard to distinguish from the red rocks amongst
which he lies, and even when you have found one or more of the really
big fellows the probability is that they will be lying in some spot to
which it is impossible to approach unseen.
By sleeping, as suggested, at the top of your ground, or near it, you
avoid the necessity of rising at midnight; of forcing your way in
the dark through thickets of tall weeds, which soak you with rain or
dew; you are sure of being at your look-out station in time; you can
examine several faces of the range at once, and choose that on which
you see game in the most approachable position; you begin your day’s
work fairly fresh, instead of being dead beaten by a stiff climb before
dawn; you get a chance of stalking your game from the only point from
which it can be stalked with any reasonable hope of success, and all at
the price of a somewhat uncomfortable and chilly night’s rest.
There is one other point worth noticing before I tell the story of a
day’s stalk as illustrating tûr-hunting generally, and my last point is
this: Having fired your shot, lie still until you know certainly what
the result of it has been. If you have missed, you may, if you do not
show yourself, get a second shot, and this is especially the case with
mountain beasts like the tûr, which do not seem to ‘locate’ sound as
accurately or quickly as lowland beasts.
If the animals fired at move off at a run, wait a few moments before
firing again, and you will be rewarded by seeing them pull up and stand
at least once more before they are out of range. Unless you are a very
first-class performer, one chance at standing game is worth a dozen
at game ‘on the jump.’ Again, in any case lie still at first, for if
your beast is wounded he may either lie down before going very far, or
even come towards you if he has not seen you. I have had a brown bear
blunder almost over me when wounded, and that not because he meant
mischief, but because he had not seen me and did not know where the
shot came from. Even when badly scared, game will sometimes stop for a
second in full flight if the unseen hunter gives a shrill whistle. But
once a tûr, unhit or wounded, has discovered the hunter, nothing will
induce him to stop travelling for the next quarter of an hour, and no
beasts which I know will take so much lead with them (_uphill_ even) as
rams generally, and more especially Caucasian rams.
Having elsewhere published the story of most of my own best days
amongst the tûr, I have drawn upon some notes of Mr. Littledale (the
most successful hunter, I verily believe, who ever carried a rifle
between the Black Sea and the Caspian) for a story illustrative of tûr
shooting, and have told it almost in his own words.
Being camped at the extreme limit to which it was possible to take
horses, even with half-loads, and having his wife in camp with him, Mr.
Littledale was obliged to rise every day by starlight and do half a
day’s work before getting to his shooting grounds. In order to lighten
the work for his hunters, he had sent them on to a spot higher up, some
four hours’ walk from camp, there to await his coming every morning.
The interpreter he had with him was an untrustworthy sort of fellow,
and the camp was full of half-wild natives, good enough men in their
way, but as troublesome and mischievous as boys. This state of affairs
in the main camp made it essential that, instead of sleeping where he
shot, Littledale should return to camp every evening.
On the first day he rose at 2 A.M., and, guided by a native over
some extremely bad going, reached the hunters’ camp by 6 A.M. Here
Littledale left his guide and went on with the hunters, who were up and
ready for him.
That first day Littledale saw a band of tûr feeding on a slope above
his party, but as the day grew older the band made for the crags, and,
in spite of all the hunters’ efforts, reached their regular haunt on
an inaccessible ledge and lay down there. An attempt to get at them
by making a wide détour only resulted in moving the game, although
the hint of man’s proximity conveyed to them by some eddy of wind was
not sufficiently strong to make them move far or fast. However, it
was enough to render any further attempt useless that day; so that,
after making another détour and killing a chamois on his road home,
Littledale reached his camp and turned in by 8 P.M. Next morning he and
his guide were delayed at starting by the mountain mists, which hid
everything, so that they did not reach the hunters’ camp until 6.30
A.M. Going at once to the spot at which they had seen the tûr the day
before, they hunted high and low without success, and then took a line
along a ridge, which they stuck to until it grew so steep and dangerous
that the guides showed signs of striking and Littledale had to give the
order for ‘home.’ On their way back the party saw their old friends
the tûr far away below them, with such a yawning gulf between them and
the hunters as to render any attempt to reach them that day absolutely
hopeless. That night Littledale reached camp at 9 P.M., and at 2 A.M.
next day was again on foot. But on this third day the tûr were not upon
their usual ground, and, weary with incessant early rising, hard work
and hope deferred, the hunters gave way for a time to disappointment.
But honest hard work generally gets its reward, if there is only
enough of it, and as Littledale’s glass swept slowly over the crags
and snow-fields round the point on which he lay, luck turned, and lo!
there was the herd not half a mile away in a place where they could
apparently be stalked with ease, whilst even the wind for once was in
the right direction.
At first all went well; too well, Littledale thought. Experience had
taught him that such luck could not last. Nor did it. When the stalk
seemed almost at an end and success assured, he came to a sheet of snow
at least 100 yards in width, set between him and the tûr, and within
full view of the latter.
In vain he sought for a way round, or for some covert, however small,
behind which there would be some chance of crawling across; but it was
no use, there was absolutely no way for him except across that glaring
white patch in full view of his game. It seemed, after all his hard
work, too cruelly tantalising even for that sport of which the Russian
says that it is ‘harder than slavery’; but, unfortunately, there
was no help for it, so there the hunters lay, the game almost within
range of them, and yet hopelessly inaccessible. As they lay silently
watching, the heat which exercise had generated in their bodies slowly
oozed away, the wind began to twist and shift dangerously, so that
at any moment they might expect to have their presence betrayed, and
down below the mist-wreaths began to gather. All at once one of these
detached itself from the rest and came floating up towards the peaks.
Nearer and nearer it crept up the mountain-side, until, to Littledale’s
inexpressible delight, it rested for one moment upon that odious
snow-patch.
That was all that was wanted, and in a moment Littledale and his
companions had taken advantage of it, had flitted like ghosts through
the shifting veil before it had time to pass on, and had thrown
themselves, with a sigh of thankfulness, behind a huge boulder on the
other side of the snow-field. They were only just in time, for as they
gained their shelter the little mist floated off the snow, and the tûr,
which were still above the party, began to show unmistakable signs of
uneasiness.
From the boulder Littledale tried to worm himself still nearer to his
quarry, but as he did so, first one and then the whole herd got slowly
up, one big fellow standing, broadside on, upon a little pinnacle above
the rest. Putting up the 150 yards sight, and taking the foresight very
fine, as the shot was uphill, Littledale pressed the trigger, and the
great ram sprang from the rock with a stagger which looked as if he had
got his death-wound.
As the first beast left it, another big ram took his place upon the
rock, and as the left barrel rang out he too vanished on the other side
of the rock.
Uncertain as to the result of his shots, Littledale hurried to the
spot, to find one tûr _in extremis_ and the other gone.
However, the hunter, following at his leisure, pointed out the second
beast, dead, within ten or fifteen yards of the first. The fact that
Mr. Littledale (no novice, mind you) overlooked the second dead beast,
although so close to him, gives some idea of the way in which a tûr’s
rusty hide matches his surroundings.
But the game was not bagged yet, although Littledale had settled down
to skin one beast, and the hunter was preparing to skin the other.
In turning his ram over, on the steep incline upon which it lay, the
hunter lost control of it, and, in spite of his efforts, the dead
beast broke away from him, rolling over and over at first, and then
going in great bounds down the mountain until it lay on a snow-bank
several thousand feet below, upon which it appeared, even through the
field-glass, a mere speck. This misfortune complicated matters, and in
order to save both heads, Littledale was obliged to let both hunters
go down to the fallen tûr and pass the night alongside of it, whilst
he was left to find his way back to camp alone. This generally sounds
much easier than it is, and so Littledale found it upon this occasion.
As evening approaches, the mists begin to sail about among the crags,
first like great ostrich plumes, and then growing larger and more
dense, until they make the smooth places difficult and the difficult
places impossible. I have myself a very vivid memory to this day of
a certain rock to which I had to cling for half an hour until one of
these mist-wreaths floated away, leaving me almost too stiff and tired
to climb down, and far too tired to climb up any higher, though a
wounded ibex was above me. As for Littledale, upon this occasion he put
his best foot forward and made all the speed he could to get off the
ridge, and on to better going. For hours he had to grope his way along
a precipitous ridge, in dense fog, throwing small stones down either
side from time to time to tell by the sound whether he was still upon
the main ridge or not. Only now and again did a gleam of sunshine break
through the mist, and in a few hours the sun would set.
It was a horrible position for a lonely man, uncertain where his camp
lay and tired with three days’ hard work; but Littledale’s cup was not
yet full.
[Illustration: THE SPECTRE]
The Caucasians, like all mountaineers, are full of superstitions. Gods
and devils haunt their mountains now as they did when the ancients only
knew them as a part of misty Turan, the home of storm and evil, or
at least the mountain men so believe. And what wonder? As Littledale
stopped to scrape together a few more fragments with which to sound the
abysses on either side of him, he noticed with a shudder a huge figure
crouching in the mist beside him. As he sprang to his feet the awful
shape reared up, and small blame to a level-headed and cool man if he
did not remember, until his express was pressing against his shoulder,
that there was such a thing as the spectre of the Brocken, and that
this huge shape which followed and mimicked his every action was, after
all, only his own shadow in the clouds.
It was long after this that, lying at the top of a ravine which had
taken him an hour and a half to climb, he struck a light to find a few
more pebbles and get a drink, and found as he bent down his own track
of that morning.
He says the sight of it made him feel years younger, and those who have
been in such tight places and found their way out of them will know
the feeling; but it was 10 P.M. when he got back to his camp, and here
are the last words in his notes: ‘Reached home a little after ten, had
some food in bed, and registered a vow that I had done my last solitary
scramble in the Caucasus.’
I have registered that vow many times, when cold, and starving, and
dead tired, with hands and feet bleeding, and no massive ‘head’ to
compensate me for my toil; but I have never kept my vow, and I venture
to doubt whether my much more successful fellow-sportsman will keep his.
The great peaks are sorcerers whose spells no man may resist, and the
feeling that every manly quality in you has been tried to the utmost,
and has borne the strain, is worth more than all the cruel toil endured.
In conclusion let me say that there is so much confusion as to the
correct classification of the Caucasian goats, that before venturing
to publish this contribution I went for information to the British
Museum, considering that the nomenclature used by that Museum should
be the standard for British sportsmen. At the Museum I learned that on
this particular subject even our savants are in some doubt, whilst in
Russia the leading naturalists of St. Petersburg and Moscow disagree.
However, Mr. Thomas courteously supplied me with the following
definitions, which may be sufficient for present purposes.
_Capra cylindricornis_, or _pallasi_, is the name properly applied
to the Caucasian burrhel, a beast with smooth cylindrical horns;
_C. caucasica_ is applied to the Caucasian ibex, a beast with horns
recurved and modulated as in the true ibex; while _C. ægagrus_ is an
animal with horns of the common goat type, with sharp front edges
_irregularly_ modulated. The best horn measurements of these three
beasts known to me are:
Length Circumference
{38¼ inches 12½ inches
_C. cylindricornis_ {36 ” 15 ”
_C. caucasica_ 40⅛ ” 12⅝ ”
_C. ægagrus_ 48¼ ” 8⅜ ”
These measurements have been kindly supplied by Mr. Rowland Ward from
his notebook.
[Illustration: Dead aurochs]