at which we have stopped is the ‘Starrie Metchat,’ or old church, a Tartar ruin near a well, embosomed in rosemary-covered hills. Near this well we pitch our tents, and then we each go off on a beat of our own. Here there is room enough for all, and as some excellent Russian sportsmen have a careless way of shooting through their friends’ legs at a bolting hare, perhaps solitude has its peculiar advantages.

As you breast the first hill the sweet-scented covert comes nearly up to your waist, and right and left of you huge grasshoppers jump away or into your face with a vicious snap that is at first enough to upset the best regulated nerves. But see, your dog is pointing, and as you near him a large covey of grey birds, larger than our grouse, get up with whistling wings, and with smooth undulating flight skim round the corner of the next hill. You get one long shot and bag your bird perhaps. The dog moves uncertainly forward, and then stands again. Go up to him; wherever strepita (lesser bustard) have been you are sure to find a hare or two close by. Time after time have I found this, although I cannot account for the fact in any way. The hares here are larger than our English hares, and in winter turn almost white, the skins in autumn having sometimes most beautiful shades of silver and rose upon them. The largest hare I ever remember to have seen weighed nearly thirteen pounds—it was an old buck—while in England a hare of eight pounds is exceptionally large.

The dogs used in the Crimea for coursing are called Tscherkess greyhounds; they stand considerably higher at the shoulder than our own dogs, are broken-haired, with a much longer coat than our staghound, and a feathered stern. I am told that on the flat the English greyhound beats them for a short distance; but that in the hills, or with a strong old hare well on her legs before them, the Crimean dogs have it all their own way. I never had the good fortune to see the two breeds tried together. In fact, what coursing I did see was utterly spoilt by the Russian habit of cutting off the hare, and shooting her under the dog’s nose. This is, of course, utterly alien to our notions of sport—but so are most of their sporting habits. They never shoot flying if they can get a chance sitting. Bears and boars and such large game they shoot from platforms in trees at night; and I never saw a horse jump in all my three years in Southern Russia. Of course, what applies to the Crimea and the Caucasus may not apply to other parts of Russia.

As long as we keep in the rosemary, hares, quails, and strepita are all we are likely to meet with, except that in the valley and on the less sunny hillsides the dogs ever and anon flush large owls, that sail away hardly as bewildered as they are generally supposed to be by the sunlight. Overhead kites and harriers swim about in the clear sky, keeping a keen look-out for winged quails or wounded hares. But as we get to the top of the next rising ground we see in the plain far away at our feet a long line of what might well be grey-coated infantry. A closer inspection, or a previous acquaintance with the objects before us, will enable us to make them out to be bustards feeding line upon line in a flock—or herd, to speak correctly—of several hundreds. Most of them are busy with their heads on the ground, gleaning what they can from an old maize field; but here and there, at a slight distance from the rest, stands a sentry that the most wary stalker cannot baffle, or the most alluring grain tempt from his ceaseless watch. Knowing that we are already seen, and being perfectly well aware that by ordinary stalking on these open plains we could never get nearer than three hundred yards from the herd before the old sentinel sets them all in motion with his shrill call, we retrace our steps, and get our comrades together. Then the horses are put to, and all with our guns in readiness we drive towards the point at which the bustards were seen. When within sight of them we make arrangements among ourselves, and then the droshky is driven quietly past the bustards some five hundred yards from them. All their heads are up, and the whole of the herd of two hundred is watching us intently; but they know something of the range of a gun, and feel safe enough to stay yet awhile. Watch hard as you may, grey birds, you didn’t notice that one of the occupants of the droshky has just rolled off, gun in hand, and is now lying flat buried in a deliciously fragrant bed of rosemary. One by one, as the droshky circles round the watchful birds, the occupants drop off and lie still, until at last we have a cordon of sportsmen drawn right round the herd, and only the yemstchik remains on the droshky. Slowly, so as not to frighten them, he narrows his circle, while each hidden gunner keeps his eye anxiously on his movements.

At last, having stretched their necks to the very utmost limit and twisted them into gyrations that would surprise a corkscrew, the bustards think they have had enough of it, and there is a slow flapping of wings, and hoisting of the heavy bodies into air. Slowly, with a grand solemn flight, wonderfully in keeping with the wild majesty of the boundless plains on which they live, they sail away towards the hills. Suddenly the leaders stop with a jerk, and try too late to change their direction. From the covert beneath the sportsman starts to his feet, two bright flashes are seen, two reports follow, one huge bird collapses at once and another lowers for a moment, and then goes feebly on to fall at the first discharge of the next hidden gun. Right and left the remainder fly, rising somewhat as they do so, but still not high enough to take them out of danger, and when at last they have passed the fatal circle, five fine birds reward our stratagem.

One of us has to face a storm of chaff hard for a disappointed sportsman to bear, for in his excitement he had neglected to change his cartridges; and although standing within short pistol-shot of a passing monster, the quail-shot produces nothing more than a shower of feathers, enough almost to stuff a bolster with.

By thus surrounding them, and by shooting them occasionally from a cart, a few of these magnificent birds (larger than a turkey and finer eating) are killed from time to time throughout summer and autumn. A few too are sometimes picked up by the gunner in the early summer whilst still young, as they hide separately or in small coveys in the deep undergrowth. But the only time when any quantity are exposed in the bazaar for sale is in the depths of winter. Then when a snowstorm has caught the birds hiding in the valleys, and clogged their wings with snow, which a bitter wind still more surely binds about them, these poor denizens of the desert are surrounded and driven like a flock of sheep into the Tartar villages, where they are butchered, and thence sent in cartloads into Kertch, to be sold at a rouble and a half (3s. 6d.) apiece.

After slaying the bustards, having done enough for glory, we have time to remember a thirst that would empty a samovar and an appetite that would astonish a negro. Gladly we hurry back to our little tent in a cleft at the foot of the hills, and while one unpacks the cold meats, dried sturgeon and caviare, another gets water for that tea without which our repast would be poor indeed to a Russian. Being born and bred Englishmen, two of us might well have been expected to prefer our native beer to tea, but it is wonderful how fond men get of the delicious tea brewed in Russia, with its slip of lemon in it to add piquancy to the flavour. For my own part, after really severe exertion I am most thoroughly convinced it is by far the best restorative you can take, and one which I should prefer to any other liquid