84 CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS 



inclined to the right to allow of its being instantly 

 drawn from the sheath, makes for awkwardness for 

 those who have had no experience of a poniard 

 in such a position. I tried pulling out a specimen 

 from its scabbard and lunging with it, just to see how 

 " hefty " an implement it was. Ali Ghirik corrected 

 me, saying that no brave foeman thrusts, the straight- 

 pointed stab is for cowards only ! The heroes of old- 

 time Daghestian hacked and slashed, but never drove 

 a kinjal right home. 



Leaving the town, we crossed the railway and rode 

 over prairie-like country, burnt and parched up, 

 where dull-coloured lizards gorged on grasshoppers, 

 and a haze of heat, light as gossamer, hung about the 

 arid space. In early spring, our servant told us, this 

 khaki-tinted expanse is a mass of waving green. How 

 I should love to see it so ! 



You could hardly distinguish the lizards from the 

 ground, so much the colour of their surroundings were 

 the speckled grey-brown flat bodies. If you touch one 

 with your whip he commences digging a grave for him- 

 self, into which he wriggles and lies feigning death, with 

 eyes closed wearily. A most engaging little creature. 



A rise of rolling ground, and then down into a 

 titanic amphitheatre, an Olympic stadium, four or 

 five miles long and perhaps a mile across. This basin 

 traversed, our way, narrowing to a track, wound up 

 the hills to high steppe land, where a group of Cos- 

 sacks guarded miles of hay country, newly cut, and 

 heaped in sweet-smelling ricks, ready for conveyance 

 in forage wagons to the stables of the Viceroy. 



