MOUNTAIN GAME OF THE CAUCASUS 63 



The Caucasians, like all mountaineers, are full of supersti- 

 tions. Gods and devils haunt their mountains now as they did 

 when the ancients only knew them as a part of misty Turan, 

 the home of storm and evil, or at least the mountain men so 

 believe. And what wonder ? As Littledale stopped to scrape 

 together a few more fragments with which to sound the abysses 

 on either side of him, he noticed with a shudder a huge figure 

 crouching in the mist beside him. As he sprang to his feet 

 the awful shape reared up, and small blame to a level-headed 

 and cool man if he did not remember, until his express was 

 pressing against his shoulder, that there was such a thing as 

 the spectre of the Brocken, and that this huge shape which 

 followed and mimicked his every action was, after all, only his 

 own shadow in the clouds. 



It was long after this that, lying at the top of a ravine 

 which had taken him an hour and a half to climb, he struck 

 a light to find a few more pebbles and get a drink, and found 

 as he bent down his own track of that morning. 



He says the sight of it made him feel years younger, and 

 those who have been in such tight places and found their way 

 out of them will know the feeling ; but it was 10 P.M. when he 

 got back to his camp, and here are the last words in his notes : 

 ' Reached home a little after ten, had some food in bed, and 

 registered a vow that I had done my last solitary scramble in 

 the Caucasus.' 



I have registered that vow many times, when cold, and 

 starving, and dead tired, with hands and feet bleeding, and no 

 massive ' head ' to compensate me for my toil ; but I have 

 never kept my vow, and I venture to doubt whether my much 

 more successful fellow-sportsman will keep his. 



The great peaks are sorcerers whose spells no man may 

 resist, and the feeling that every manly quality in you has been 

 tried to the utmost, and has borne the strain, is worth more 

 than all the cruel toil endured. 



In conclusion let me say that there is so much confusion as 

 to the correct classification of the Caucasian goats, that before 



