THE RAINS. 341 



with the only specimen of an ancient blunderbuss 

 which I ever saw in actual use. 



The neighbourhood of Poti must at no very 

 distant date have been one of the most favourite 

 habitats of the red-deer in the whole world. The 

 Mingrelian nobles were all staunch preservers of 

 game, and it was not until Russian greed of ter- 



O o 



ritory had angered them, that they in revenge for 

 their wrongs, real or fancied, at the hands of their 

 somewhile ally, and to deprive that ally of his 

 favourite recreation, taken with or without their 

 consent, slew all the tall stags and graceful roe- 

 bucks in their land, whenever they could find 

 them, by foul means or fair. So it came to pass 

 that within the last ten years speculators have 

 bought cartloads of stags' horns in the neighbour- 

 ing ' aouls ' for a few roubles the load, and even to 

 within the last three years it was still possible to 

 find in out-of-the-way places ladders used to reach 

 from the peasants' ground-floor to his loft, com- 

 posed entirely of the branching glory of the forest 

 king. These things are now of the past, for the 

 Mingrel has discovered that stags' horns are 

 marketable commodities : native middlemen have 

 ferreted out every pair of antlers in the province, 

 and established a regular trade in these and in 

 boars' tusks, the majority of which articles were 

 sent to France to be made up into the hundred and 

 one knicknacks with which people adorn their libra- 



