3 8 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



principal item in the bag made at the big drives in the Imperial 

 and other preserves of the district. The sharp bark of these 

 little bucks, as they bound away unseen from some thicket 

 above you, or a glimpse of a group of roes standing as still as 

 statues, dappled with the shadows of the foliage above them, 

 are incidents in most days' still hunting in Circassia. 



In the Crimea, round Theodosia and Yalta, men may hunt 

 specially for roe, as there is no larger game (except, they say, a 

 few red deer near Yalta), but in the Caucasus he is only looked 

 upon as useful for filling up the void in one's larder. 



After all, in big game hunting half the charm lies in the 

 mystery of the dark silent forests and the mist-hidden moun- 

 tain peaks. Once well away from the haunts of men, you are 

 in a land of romance, and if you do not actually believe in the 

 eternal bird who broods upon Elbruz, at the sound of whose 

 voice the forest songsters become dumb, and the beasts tremble 

 in their lairs ; if you don't believe, as the natives do, that the 

 tempests are raised by the flapping of her hoary wings ; if you 

 scout the camp-fire stories of the tiny race seen riding at night 

 upon the grey steppe hares ; you have still some superstitions 

 of your own you look for some wonder from every fresh ridge 

 you climb, in every dim forest that you enter. In America it 

 is the hope of a 2,ooo-lb. grizzly or a 2o-in. ram which buoys 

 up the hunter ; on the head-waters of the Kuban, on the 

 Zelentchuk, on the Urup, on the Laba, and especially upon 

 the Bielaia river beyond Maikop, in the least known and most 

 unfathomable wooded ravines from which the Kuban draws 

 his waters, it is the rumour of a great beast, called zubre by the 

 natives, which draws the hunter on. 



If the zubre differs at all from the aurochs, 1 he is the only 

 beast left, now that Mr. Littledale has slain the Ovis poli, of 

 which no specimen has fallen to an Englishman's rifle. 



That a beast nearly allied to the great bull of Bielowicza 

 does exist, and in considerable numbers, in the districts in- 



1 Since this was written Mr. St. G. Littledale has killed the aurochs as he 

 killed the Ovis poli. 



