"Well, Barrin, you see, when I got to the bottom I saw something blazing; so I shut my eyes, made a rush at it, and brought it up in my arms in the best way I could, and here it is."
This same owl—a splendid specimen—I had stuffed, and kept facing my writing-table for a long time afterwards, as a memento of the Russian peasants' belief in the "Devil and all his works."
A BEAR-HUNT IN RUSSIA.
The Russians are not a sporting people, and it is only the bear that gives them anything like a desire for the hunt.
If a moujik can only find bruin in his winter quarters he is happy, as it gives him that which he loves so much—a "pot" shot.
There are always several peasants in every neighbourhood who spend the winter in searching for bear-holes, primarily with the idea of selling the "find" to some local gentleman, or, if that fails, of making a few roubles out of the animal's skin and fat.
The operation of searching is difficult, and even dangerous; the snow is so extremely fine and soft that walking on it without snow-shoes is impossible, and these long narrow slips of wood turned up at the ends, with a piece of leather nailed across the middle into which to place the feet, are difficult things to manage. Going on level ground is easy enough, but up or down hill the wearer of them is very apt to tumble; and then with some three feet of shoe sticking into the snow, and head and arms deeply plunged by the force of the fall, extrication is a work of time and partial suffocation a close probability.
"When, therefore," says Mr. Barry in his Ivan at Home, "we have discovered a bear, we let him alone until the snow is on the eve of disappearing, and he can be comfortably approached. By that time, also, he will be waking up from his hibernation, and a little more lively than he would be if we roused him in the midst of his winter slumbers.
"My greatest adventure in bear-hunting came about in the following manner. I was accustomed to pay a reward of twenty-five roubles to the man who found me a bear, and this reward kept my peasants on the look-out. The first moujik who, towards the end of a long winter, came to claim it one fine morning, lived at a distance of some hours' drive from my house. We drove over to his village to arrive towards evening, and sat down to supper in his house, where the head forester met me. After supper we cleared out the moujik and his family, and settled down, my head forester and I, to sleep.