H El MAWS DATCH. 107 



had evidently been the beast wounded by me in 

 the dark the night before. Of course the search 

 was now prosecuted with far greater ardour, at 

 least on my part. As for the men, they have so 

 many yarns about the much dreaded barse, that 

 they were not as keen as they might have been ; 

 and when the trail turned from the shore and 

 entered some extremely dense and dark thickets, 

 they came to a stand, and nothing would induce 

 them to enter the forest with me. Unfortunately 

 the dog was of their mind, so that after wandering 

 blindly about for some time, tearing myself to 

 pieces, and losing my temper terribly, I had to 

 give up my search, with the conviction strong 

 upon me that a noble and (in this part of the 

 world) rare quarry was lying dead within a stone's 

 throw of me. 



1 Barse ' is the name given by the peasants 6n 

 the Black Sea coast, and in fact generally through- 

 out the Caucasus, to any feline animal larger than 

 a wild cat ; and this indiscriminate use of the word 

 occasioned me a good deal of trouble. Too often 

 when they tell you of barse, the animal they refer 

 to is only the lynx, of which there are at least 

 two varieties in the Caucasus, and which is ex- 

 tremely numerous on some parts of the Black Sea 

 coast. The natives trap it for its skin, which is one 

 of the commonest in the furriers' shops of Till is 

 and Ekaterinodar. But that the leopard or ocelot 



