74 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



and traversed for a few versts the road that Napoleon's 

 army passed along after the evacuation of Moscow- 

 Sascha and his brother, who rode with us that day, joked 

 about Napoleon's discomfiture, and the devotion of the 

 moujiks, who burned their produce rather than sell it to 

 the French, much as though the whole affair were an 

 occurrence of yesterday. 



The talk was of wolves and bears, as our road led us 

 through tracts of wild forest. Some of the tracts are 

 several thousand dessiatines in extent, and in the 

 depths of these both wolves and bears remain all sum- 

 mer. The wolves prey on the smaller animals ; the 

 bears live on roots and berries. During the summer 

 they are invisible, but in the winter hunger drives the 

 wolves to come out and commit depredations on the 

 sheep and cattle of the surrounding villages. Three or 

 four pairs of wolves, that have managed to rear their 

 young without molestation in the depths of the forest 

 during the summer, muster a fair-sized hunting-pack 

 by the following winter. 



Bear-hunting is the most ambitious sport in Russia. 

 Winter is the season of bruin's undoing, for, though 

 he hibernates, the art of discovering his lurking-place 

 has been reduced to a reasonable certainty by a num- 

 ber of sturdy peasants, who devote their winters to 

 finding bears and selling them to the sportsmen. 



When the ground is covered with several feet of 

 snow, the village bear-finders scatter through the 

 forests. The sleeping place of a bear is revealed by a 

 hoie in the snow made by his breath. The finder of a 

 bear, taking sundry precautions to " prove his claim " 

 should others come to the same spot after his depar- 



