TO THE HUNTING GROUNDS 91 



enough, and we were glad to leave it part way down 

 for the thickness of a jungle tangle where the beard 

 moss hung in swaying festoons across the path of the 

 woods, flinging long shadows on the secret lawns, 

 oases in the wilderness, smooth velvet swards for the 

 dancing feet of light-limbed satyrs, and sweet bur- 

 dened winds, full of the incense of coming autumn, 

 carried a sentient message upwards to the snow-tiers. 



The density lightened, and the smiling valley below 

 opened out before us like a stage scene as the curtain 

 rolls up. Little gardens — for every Russian Reservist 

 is given his small holding as an inducement to him to 

 come and play pioneer in the wilds — clung to the 

 almost perpendicular slopes of the hill-side. Cabbage 

 plants, destined some day to reach the large white- 

 headed stage, without which no reservist commissariat 

 is complete, and the stchi, a watery broth, could not 

 be manufactured, grew in rows between lines of 

 golden maize. To the top of the low foot-hills flour- 

 ished the carefully staked-out plots, ablaze with 

 colour, and crimsoned by the last rays of the evening 

 sun. 



Ali Ghirik was delighted. 



" Look ! " he cried in English, lapsing into Russian. 

 " Look ! The fields in this valley stand on end ! " 



He was like the Irishman who had filched a little 

 garden from the inhospitable perpendicular of the 

 Kerry hills. " Sure," he said admiringly, " it is like a 

 map of the world hanging against the wall." 



We rode into the village as night was falling, a 

 busy Uttle artillery cantonment, where we knew a 



