CHAPTER VI 



STILL JOURNEYING TO THE HUNTING GROUNDS 



Tartars, never trained 



To offices of tender courtesy. 



Merchant of Venice. 



Down again from the highlands to a country of 

 uninteresting plainness stretching away, dull-toned, 

 to the foot of bare, low hills, whose stony slopes seemed 

 to throw off the sun's fiery rays like reflectors. The 

 heat was insufferable, and the dust blinding. 



Round a little pool — an oasis in the waste — marched 

 a light-footed swineherd, a stick across his shoulders, 

 swinging along with the purposeful abandon of a piper 

 in the throes of a soul-stirring pibroch. His pigs 

 wallowed waist-deep in the water, the quaintest pigs 

 possible to see. Nature had fitted them out with coats 

 for any climate. The length of their hair ran to inches, 

 and its thickness would have astonished our own 

 sparsely covered porkers. 



The swineherd — a Georgian — ranged alongside to 

 give us kindly greeting, wishing us the " dila mshvido- 

 bisa," or " Morning of peace," which the flies and the 

 sun made it difficult to secure. And at our desire Ali 

 Ghirik taught us to reply, " Madobeli vart," " I 

 thank you." 



H 97 



