n6 GOLOVINSKY. 



has no fowling-piece, and I have left mine behind 

 at Ekaterinodar. You would imagine that living 

 as the Cossacks, Stepan and many others, do, in a 

 state of semi- starvation in the matter of meat from 

 week to week, with an abundance of game birds 

 round them, they would become good shots and 

 keen sportsmen, or at the very least turn trappers, 

 and so supply themselves with food. And yet it 

 is not so. Not one Cossack amongst the many I 

 have met was a sportsman, and this perhaps their 

 want of sporting rifles and ammunition may account 

 for ; though, if they were allowed to use them, no 

 better rifle than the Berdianka, with whicli they are 

 supplied, could be desired. But that neither they, 

 nor the settlers and peasants, should have any idea 

 of trapping, is most strange. In all the Crimea and 

 Caucasus I never saw or heard of snare, or pitfall, or 

 any of the hundred and one devices for killing game 

 without fire-arms, which other nations use. The 

 only thing of the kind I ever heard of, was told me 

 by a German settler, who assured me that in some 

 places they caught pheasants by inserting small 

 cones of paper, limed inside, into the earth ; in the 

 bottom of each cone a pea is placed and others 

 strewn around. The pheasant, after finishing the 

 peas scattered on the surface of the ground, finds 

 the pea at the bottom of the cone, and, in trying to 

 peck it out, hoodwinks himself with the limed paper 

 cone, and being blinded becomes frightened, and re- 



