HUNTING WITH DOGS. 163 



enabled me to do without water, and that without 

 any great discomfort. 



But, although I avoided fever myself, and 

 believe that with these precautions a foreigner might 

 well pass some time hi the Caucasus and escape, 

 more especially if he went in late autumn and 

 returned by the end of March, I have no wish to 

 describe the Caucasus, more especially the Black 

 Sea coast and the neighbourhood of Ekaterinodar 

 and the Kuban, as anything but a nest of fever. 

 Where the vegetation is as rank, and marshes so 

 frequent and of such extent as those round Poti 

 and Lenkoran on the Caspian, the summer time is 

 a dangerous time for even the most prudent. 



For two or three more days, after our visit to 

 the valley of mist and fever, I continued to hunt 

 near Golovinsky, though my man was too ill to help 

 me much. But day after day proved more deci- 

 sively that unless I could get deeper into the forest 

 than I had ever penetrated yet, my labour would 

 continue to be but labour in vain. So I deter- 

 mined to return to Heiman's Datch, the old ruin 

 where I got my first boar on this coast, and 

 after spending a few days there in search of the 

 panther which I had wounded, or another if lie 

 was dead, return to Duapse and thence to Kertcli. 

 To this 1 felt impelled by a number of reasons, of 

 which the bareness of our larder was by no means 

 the least. For over a week chestnuts had formed 



M 2 



