40 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



umbelliferous angelica pour down dew upon you in the murnii 

 until every rag of your clothing is soaked through, or later < 

 in the day impede your progress and render every footstep 

 noisy. 



Through all this wild tangle of forest growth run the brown 

 bears' paths. Down below are tracts of wild currant bushes ; 

 in the gullies made by the mountain brooks are patches of 

 raspberry canes, and leading to them, from the cool lairs 

 higher up (which he affects at noontide), are the broad path- 

 ways down which the lazy old gourmand half walks, half 

 toboggans, just as the sun goes down, when you can hardly 

 tell the outline of his clumsy bulk from the other great silent 

 shadows which people the gloaming. 



The natives of Radcha and the mountain forests to the 

 north-west of that province, having but little arable land, clear 

 small patches in ihe forests and grow crops of oats amongst 

 the charred stumps. These are the places in which to wait for 

 Bruin at night, and earn the thanks of your neighbours, as well 

 as the brown coat of the old thief himself. I well remember 

 once in Radcha, when the moonlight was so bright that I could 

 read a letter by it, waiting with my Tcherkess until it grew so 

 late that we gave up all hope of a bear that night. Suddenly 

 a bough snapped in the forest above us, and within ten 

 minutes a great brown shadow was biting at a bullet hole near 

 its shoulder, after which it galloped off into the rim of gloom 

 which hedged in our little oat-field. Within half an hour from 

 that time the field seemed full of bears, four or five of which 

 we could distinguish plainly, their backs moving about slowly 

 just above the level of the crop, and all of them as silent as 

 spectres. We got a bear every night we stopped at that camp, 

 and left feeling sorry for the local agriculturists. 



Amongst the chestnuts and old orchards between Tuaps^ 

 and Sukhoum bears are as numerous as in Radcha, and I have 

 frequently seen half a dozen in a day's still hunting. Being 

 undisturbed, they feed or wander almost all day long through 

 the still, shady forests, and though early morning and evening 



