1 62 HUNTING WITH DOGS. 



satisfaction of shaking off the fever, never to be 

 troubled with it any more, though I have spent 

 days in Poti, of which town Baron von Thiel- 

 mann says, in his excellent book on the Caucasus, 

 that ' no European has passed a night there and 

 been spared the fever.' 



It is my firm belief that abstinence from water 

 whilst in the chase or on the journey will be found 

 almost a safeguard against fever, and if, in spite of 

 this, the mists and chills of the undrained swamps 

 are too much for the traveller's constitution, a good 

 bout of violent exercise, taken as soon as the fever 

 seizes him, will free him from his illness in its 

 infancy. 



That the natives suffer from fever is not to be 

 wondered at. They live so poorly that an Eng- 

 lishman would die of want of nourishment alone, 

 did he live as they do. They sleep out in mists 

 that soak through and through a man as no rain 

 ever could, and, worse than all, in the chase or 

 on the journey, when heated and over- wrought, 

 they lie down at every rill, and drink like thirsty 

 cattle. I attribute my own freedom from fever to 

 the fact that I never touched the water of the 

 Caucasus for drinking purposes, except in the 

 shape of one cup of tea in the morning and one at 

 night, never drinking at all throughout the day ; 

 and though my tongue sometimes grew dry and 

 seemed almost to rattle in my mouth, habit soon 



