TO THE HUNTING GROUNDS 113 



Pheasants abounded, just the common indigenous 

 species, whose name comes from the ancient Phasis in 

 Colchis. Two thousand five hundred feet above sea 

 level seems about their limit, and talk about Marathon 

 races ! I never saw such sprinters. They hardly ever 

 rose from the ground, far preferring to use their legs 

 to their wings. In pheasant shooting everywhere it 

 always seems to me that the only sporting element is 

 finding and pursuing. In these woods even the 

 uncertainty was lacking — the fine birds ran hither and 

 thither wherever you stepped. Vambery, in his 

 Travels m Central Asia, told us of the existent cus- 

 tom of pheasant slaughter by means of sticks. This 

 would be a fatally easy method in the Caucasus. The 

 natives, however, do not seem particularly addicted 

 to fowls of any kind ; in fact, no dietary lures them 

 from their mutton, mutton, mutton. 



Leaving camp, we commenced the ascent of the ridge 

 again. Our way lay past jagged rifts where the 

 treasure -seekers of long ago had delved for iron ore, 

 " Max," as our servant called it. The deep wounds of 

 the earth had healed in the passing of the years, and 

 from the depths sprung a tangle of beech and walnut 

 trees, whose leaves, level with the top of the riven 

 ground, seemed to close the gap tenderly, as is the way 

 with the Earth-Mother. Nature ever repairs her 

 ravages, just as she kills every non-supporting atom. 

 How much she teaches us ! She explains ever3'thing. 

 Even the quaint methods on which Ali Ghirik ran his 

 Islamic tenets, the loosest I ever saw, were elucidated 

 here. He illustrated Nature's perspective of ideals, 



