CAUCASIAN SPORT.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 664, 29 April 1914, Page 6

CAUCASIAN SPORT.

A DRIVE. I placed my sell' on a jungle path, wide as a turnpike road, clear of timber and undergrowth, and waited events. Cecily was stationed in the next green tunnel, a narrower way, parallel to mine. First came the birds, in distraught array, flying wide and wild. Woodcock, breaking cover at many points, in zig-zag course ; pheasants wittt plumage flashing in the sun ; sleepy, blinking owls, pigeons, and hawks, in fellow-feeling strangely akin ; and beautiful vari-coloured starlings clustering r*n a rosy cloud. Nest a solitary old boar rushed out with hackles on end, and tusks gleaming white against the green background. Just for a moment I saw him with back well humped, mobile snout carried low at the charge, eyes like long-lit lamps. Crash ! Into the opposite tangle his thundering pace carried him, with the velocity of an eightcenpounder shell, and so to safety. A wolf now, furtive and wary. Not for him the reckless taking of chances, the wild distressed stampede. He stole forth with a quick right and left glance of his kind, the first thing his mother taught him ere she gave him freedom. He saw me, and for a second it seemed to me, standing there, with unready rifle, his grey coat grew stiff and erect—then, like a ghost, he passed, stealthily as he came. Haves, scurrying this way and that in frantic disorder, and tragic-faced little rabbits with no reason in their race, fled past, and then an o*d hind, with terrified eyes, leapt out almost alongisde me. —From "Casuals in the Caucasus," by Agnes Herbert.