CAUCASIAN AUROCHS 69 



kept him contented till we broke up our party. As an instance 

 of a curious custom in the Caucasus, I relate the following 

 circumstances. I had had bad luck in losing a wounded beast 

 or two, and the Lesghian told me the rifle wanted washing. 

 I let him look through the barrels, which were bright as silver, 

 for never under any circumstance do I go to sleep without first 

 cleaning my rifle. He said it looked clean, but it wanted 

 washing. After wounding and losing a stag, the Lesghian 

 insisted on returning to camp. He said I might fire at all the 

 animals in the whole Caucasus, but until my rifle was washed 

 we should get nothing. To humour the man we retraced our 

 steps, and I asked him to cure the rifle ; he said we must wait 

 till the morning, and then get water from different streams 

 before any animal had drunk, or man had washed in it. The 

 Russian hunters were equally confident of the necessity, so the 

 following day they brought water from three different springs, 

 carefully boiled it, and then washed out the rifle with the hot 

 water. Whether it was owing to their fetish, or to my having 

 substituted solid for hollow bullets, I express no opinion, 

 though the hunters were less modest, but from that time forth 

 I lost no more wounded beasts. 



Early one August morning, with my two best hunters, I 

 made another attempt after zubr (this being the Russian name 

 for aurochs). We struck right down into the timber, making for 

 a mineral spring, where we hoped to find tracks. On our way 

 we passed and examined another small spring and found no- 

 thing fresh, but on reaching the lower spring we came on the 

 track of a bull that had drunk there the previous evening. We 

 followed his trail as quickly and silently as we could. The 

 tracks showed that he had gone up the hill and had been 

 browsing about there, and we found a comfortable bed which 

 he had scraped out for himself in the pine needles, under a 

 big pine with low spreading branches. We now redoubled our 

 precaution ; the head hunter went first, tracking ; I, with the 

 other man carrying the rifle, kept a sharp look-out ahead. 

 Several hours passed, and we were still steadily creeping 



