92 The Caucasian Mountains and tl><ir Inhabitants. 



particularly in the dense forests that border the Black 

 sea. The beautiful pheasant (of which their are some 

 excellent specimens in our State Geological rooms), is 

 common ; at least it formed one of the frequent dishes 

 that graced the table of Prince Woronzofl", the governor 

 general of that realm. There are also myriads of ducks 

 on the waters of the Rion and Kur. In the mountains, 

 bears, jackals and wolves are hunted, and their furs turned 

 to good account. I met one of these four-footed natives. 

 When traversing a plain through upper Colchis on my 

 return from the interior of Asia, I discovered that I was 

 regarded with great interest by a large wolf, a few hun- 

 dred yards distant. I had a revolver in my belt and felt 

 a certain degree of desperate security. The security, 

 however, was probably very small, for I was breathing 

 more freely when the driver of my sledge, applying his 

 whip with prodigious energy to his good fleet horse, 

 increased the distance between ourselves and our unwel- 

 come neighbor, and I saw that we were not followed. In 

 noting the physical aspect of the country I should have 

 said that the waters of these mountains flow both eastward 

 and westward. The Kuban at the north, the Rion or 

 Phasis at the south flow into the Black sea ; the Kur (or 

 Cyrus) and the Terek into the Caspian. It was the Rion, 

 so famous in ancient history or fable in connection with 

 the Jason exploits, that I ascended to reach Tiflis, the 

 capital of Georgia; but I had to leave those waters when 

 about two-thirds on the way from the Euxine to said city, 

 as they were no longer navigable even for a row-boat. 



The river that flows through Tiflis runs eastward to the 

 Caspian ; so that the highlands which I ascended after 

 leaving my boat at Marane, and whence the scenery is 

 often extremely attractive, were the dividing line between 

 the two great inland seas, which, on two sides, bound the 

 isthmus. The Kur, or Cyrus, or Kuros, just mentioned, 



