THE CAUCASUS 



45 



wild dog {Ca?u's ka?-agafi) as amom 

 steppe. 



the denizens of the 



Wolves, djeran {Gazella gutturosd) and turatch I saw daily 

 in 1878, when I crossed the steppes from Tiflis to Lenkoran, 

 before the Poti-Tiflis line had been extended to Baku. The 

 saiga antelope, unless misrepresented in drawings and badly 

 ■stuffed in museums, is an ill-shaped beast, with a head as ugly 

 as a moose's, the ' mouffle ' being, like that of the moose, abnor- 

 mally large and malformed. But the djeran is a very different 

 creature, built in Nature's finest mould, with annulated, lyre- 

 shaped horns, coat of a 

 bright bay with white rump, 

 of which the hunter sees 

 more than enough, always 

 on the skyline, receding as 

 the rifle approaches. 



In the young djeran 

 the face is beautifully 

 marked in black and tan 

 and white, but the old 

 lords of the herd get white 

 from muzzle to brow. The 

 illustration is from a photo- 

 graph of a full-grown young 

 buck shot at Karias. 



There are many beasts 

 in the world which are 

 hard to approach. It is not easy to creep up to a stand of 

 curlew, or to induce a wood-pigeon to get out of your side of 

 a beech-tree : it is fairly hopeless to try to stalk chamois from 

 below when they have once seen you^but all these feats are 

 easy compared to the stalking of djeran on the steppes of 

 Karias. 



Nature has given the pretty beasts every sense necessary 

 for their safe keeping, and, like wise creatures, they generally 

 stay together in herds, so as to have the benefit of united 



A gutturosa 



