88 CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS 



creature its death blow when Cecily called loudly 

 to our man. With a tremor the hare regained the use 

 of his frozen limbs, and in a little sideway spring was 

 off into the wilderness. A hare cannot see directly 

 to his front, owing to the conformation of his eyes, 

 and this may have helped to put him at our mercy. 



So to higher altitudes, and all the way Cecily ex- 

 plained to the astonished Ali the ethics of the Law of 

 the Sporting Chance, a statute hitherto unknown to 

 the bewildered Daghestani, whose rule it was to kill if 

 you had the opportunity, without delving into the 

 morals of the matter. 



These high pasture lands were dotted with fine oaks 

 and beeches, in whose shade nomadic shepherds 

 watched over great flocks of curly-woolled sheep, with 

 the fattest tails, weighing, I should think, perhaps 

 four or five pounds. 



The herdsman in the Caucasus is content with a 

 very simple kosh, or shelter, A rough tent of sheep- 

 skins, or a rock-screened hollow, a skin bagful of sour 

 milk, a quire or two of paper-like bread, fresh-killed 

 mutton for the roasting, and our shepherd has all of 

 the Jug, Bough, Thou, and Paradise Enow, 



The crest of the range rose above us still, and the 

 climbing of it was not to be negotiated on horseback. 

 The turf grew slippier, and every one of us took a 

 different line of ascent, that he or she might not be in- 

 volved in a possible debacle from above. The ponies, 

 left more or less to their own devices, reached the 

 summit level after a goat-like climb, and fell to on the 

 summer garden outspread before them. 



