firing into the brown of them at 300 yards, to kill one and wing another, and I might have sold my rifle at a fancy price on the spot to the Pasha, but I would not part from it. I was very glad I did not, for the first time I fired it on shore I killed a wild boar, and the second time I bagged the finest red deer stag I ever killed. His head and the clumsy-looking old rifle that killed him are still two of my most valued possessions. Whatever the virtues of the modern small-bore rifles may be, I can testify that a 500-bore Henry with five drams of black powder will kill anything from an elephant downwards, and that fewer beasts have got away wounded from this rifle than from any that I ever possessed.
One of the most curious things that I saw in Salonica, a proof of the mixed population of the district, was the official journal, printed in four different languages with four distinct characters as follows—Greek, Turkish in the Arabic character, Bulgarian in the Russian character, and Spanish printed in the Hebrew character for the benefit of the important colony of Spanish Jews who then as now controlled a great deal of the trade of the place.
As soon as Alexander had got the horses, always a matter which takes time in the East if you are at all particular about your mount, we rode into the country at the mouth of the Vardar river, where its delta forms great marshes, the home of innumerable wildfowl of many species, and spent some days in shooting in this paradise for the wildfowler until ammunition ran low. In the marshy forest on the east of this delta we found the wild pheasant, Phasianus colchicus, which, owing to the density of the thickets, was very difficult to flush, and when put up by dogs sometimes flew into a tree. When the snow had melted from the mountains, we went to a monastery called Kalipetra on the banks of the Bistritza river near Verria, where the forests on the lower hills of the Macedonian Mount Olympus sheltered wild pigs, roe and red deer; and where, higher up, bears and chamois are said to be found. With the help of the native hunters and woodmen we had several more or less successful drives, and I was lucky enough to get a stag which I have only once seen the like of. I was posted close to the top of a pass where the snow still lay at about 3,000 feet. After waiting for some time I heard the hounds, which the Turks use for this sport, open a long way down the glen. At last, out of the mist which was gathering round me, two splendid stags came trotting up, and I shot the leader dead at about sixty yards. I slipped in another cartridge and ran to get a shot at the other, but I tripped and fell on the frozen snow; he was out of sight in the mist before I recovered myself. This stag, though very lean at this season, had a fine head of fourteen points and the four quarters weighed 94 okes, equal to about 250 pounds.
On a cliff near Verria I took my first nest of the black vulture, but though we saw lammergeyer we never found their eyries. The white-tailed eagle, Haliætus albicilla, was as common in the marshy woods on the Karasmak river as I had found it in the previous year in the cliffs of the Hebrides, and breeds on willow and black poplar trees. It is here so plentiful that we found three nests within half a mile of each other, all of which were tenanted, and there were numerous others at a short distance.
