A GLOOMY EVENING. 29 



takably broken, she looked certainly none the 

 worse for her four days' desertion. I fancy 

 that, though the Caucasian bear certainly does 

 eat flesh occasionally, he is not carnivorous 

 from choice ; and Avhere berries and fruit are 

 as plentiful as they were round Zaskoora, 

 animal food has no charms for him. 



Our camp that night was in one of the 

 nests at the foot of a big pine tree, of which 

 you see so many in the forests at the foot of 

 the Svanetian mountains. 



It was a gloomy evenmg for us, as in 

 addition to our being without an interj)reter, 

 and not speaking a dozen words of the Svan 

 tongue, the men were rough, brutal, not 

 civil to us, and quarrelsome and depressed 

 amongst themselves. There certainly was 

 not much pleasure in this part of our travels, 

 but having wasted so much time in a fruitless 

 pursuit of tur, I had come to that state of 

 mind when a man will suffer anything rather 



