CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 651, 14 March 1914, Page 3

CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS.

A. LADY'S BOOK OF ADVENTURE. In J-uly, the month when ibexshooting begins, a party of three, consisting of the authoress, Agnes Herbert, and her two cousins,, Cecily Windus and Colonel Kenneth Baird, set out to see, shoot, and climb in the Caucasus, a country whose many sided fascinations are described in Mies Herbert's book, "Casuals in the Caucasus." From the port of Batoum, to. which they travelled in a yacht, the trio made the thirteen-hour train jouincy to Tifiis, the heart of Caucasia. Tearing themselves away from the motley attractions of the old town, they took ponies and rode to the mountains above the Kakheti'Valley and thence into Daghestan. Their experiences at a post-house en route would have been enough to deter most ladles from adventuring further into a country of which, according to Miss Herbert, it is idealistic, to say, as someone has said, that its only discomforts at the present day aro "food and tieas.''

Every necessity for eating, drinking. and sleeaiag must be carried by the traveller who is not content with a barbarian standard of comfort. But the hardships and heroics of the expedition are treated v.'ith gay humour. The ladies possessed the strength, endurance, mid couuvj.e of mighty hunters. They made breakneck descents in pursuit of ibex. They faced and shot dead a charging bear, and after making a cairn of stonDS over the body, returned nest day to disrobe him. They traversed mountain passes cn which the stumbling of a horse might mean destruction, and in every way took a truly masculine and Anglo-Saxon delight in roughing it. After returning to Titi'is, the two ladies made an arduous trip to Vladikavkaz and Karbarda. Their modes of conveyance were the "telega," a springless vehicle described as an oblong wooden box, and the tarantass, which is only a trifle more elastic. "It needs," says the authoress, "a frame of steel to post in the Caucasus."

In Karbarda the travellers were tlie guests of a. Caucasian prince, who inhabited a feudal stronghold on a rocky height. Here the authoress went shooting, and slew some lordly stags ; and another day, while "heating for pig," she was charged by a boar, and only saved herself by plunging into a thicket, of wolf'stooth horn, her simple comment on such an alarming experience being that "woif's-tooth pricks dreadfully." Inspired by this adventure, both ladies assailed another boar, and drove him wounded into the bush. Then, "with a weird scream of wrath all unexpectedly he charged out on us. We scattered as lie came. His wiry bristles were on-ended, and I could hear the grinding of his tusks as he shot by me." A crossing shotby Miss Herbert, which, although she does not say so, must have been a very clever one, finally laid low the monster, of whose huge tusks the huntresses presently made trophies. To work further destruction on the ollen deer they camped out in the forest, which the authoress, whose hardihood in the chase is only matched by the keenness of perception of the beauties of nature, describes as '"the most beautiful of all o-ur homes, still green deeps, banked with ithe bracken of years, the holes of the silver birch shining like bars of silver through the gloom,, end. the thread of the river v.'inlinf, winding, to the sea." But others who may follow in the tracks of ■ these two are warned of miasmaladen marshes, and that "a horrible little scorpion, wasps, and fire-ants all : go big-game hunting'' in the forest.

The climax of this expedition was a situation whose apparent, danger and difficulty did not blind tlio laches to its humour. Their stav at the Prince's castle was terminated by the fact that game was becoming; scarce, and by the more donate circumstance that their aolof and autocratic host "had fallen in lo"e with Cecily." Requests for a conveyance to remove their trophies and kit met with no response, and when tin authoress announced to the Prince their ni. ntion of departing, "You may ; ,o," he said, with brutal fraii'-.xic::s. "You may go ; but she rm'.st stay. I keep her here, until she proxieca to marry me." While enjoying the dramatic quality of this quandary, the proposed captives decided to escape it by running away. In the early morning of the next dayi, accompanied by their servant, Ali, they rode off without a word of farewell. En'route they shot a pheasant, which they toasted and ate for supper, and then, undaunted by night terrors, slept in th? open. But next day in the forest they met the Prince, who, to their great relief, behaved with perfect chivalry, learina; the happ'iest impression tn his parting guests. Returning safely to Tiflis, they rejoined the third member of the and the "casual" holiday came to ;:n end. It. is all admirably described in a light and discursive style of narrative, which rambles into a thousand byways of human interest, though never at great length from the travellers' loved Caucasian wilcis. —'"Telegraph."