PEEFACE. 



In offering ' Savage Svanetia ' to my readers 

 I am acting upon the advice of one of the 

 reviewers of my former book. ' Sport in the 

 Crimea and Caucasus.' 



He it was, who, writing in the * Saturday 

 Review,' first called my attention to Svanetia 

 find the forest reoion of Lekera as being: 

 among the least known corners of the Cauca- 

 sus. Svanetia had always been spoken of to 

 me as a hungry land inhabited by an angry 

 people. The Russians themselves know very 

 little of either the country or its inhabitants, 



