CAUCASIAN AUROCHS 71 



The Lesghian and I prepared to sleep out. We gralloched the 

 bull, and a difficult and dirty business it was, as his carcase had 

 dammed up the rivulet, and we were working up to our knees 

 in water and blood. We took some of his rump steak, cut 

 it into little chunks and skewered it alternately with lumps of 

 fat on a long stick carefully trimmed. When cooked it looked 

 and smelt so delicious that I would not then have traded those 

 kabobs for the best dinner Delmonico could turn out. I was 

 very hungry, and fell to with a will : the will was there but not 

 the power. One might just as well have tried to chew a stone. 

 Even the hunter was beaten. He tried again with liver, but 

 as I draw the line at that, I omitted supper, and looked forward 

 to what the morrow might bring forth. Early next morning 

 the men came with food, &c. We cut down some small trees, 

 barked them, and got them partially under the aurochs, then 

 tying ropes to a horn and to each of his legs, all hands hauled 

 first at one leg then at another, making fast the slack gained 

 with each haul, until by degrees we got him out of the stream 

 on to the bank. We then skinned him and cut the meat 

 roughly off his skeleton. His bones were all carefully put 

 into sacks. The skin, bones, and a little meat formed a 

 heavy load for three ponies, which the men had managed 

 to bring from camp somehow. That afternoon and the two 

 following days we were busy drying and preparing the skin and 

 skeleton. Having been successful with the bull, I thought I 

 would try to get a female, so we pursued the same tactics and 

 I eventually shot a cow, whose skin and skeleton we also pre- 

 served. Some weeks after that, I found myself face to face with 

 a grand old bull, bigger than my first victim. We were hidden 

 in the bush and he stood in the open wood, and grand indeed 

 he looked. I laid my rifle down, for the temptation was great, 

 and I would not have slain him for i,ooo/. I took off my cap 

 to him out of respect for a noble representative of a nearly 

 extinct species. I had got what I wanted, and mine should 

 not be the hand to hurry further the extermination of a fading 

 race for mere wanton sport. I shot the aurochsen for the 



