Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/123

Rh in with thick scrub oak bushes and reeds, and in these we kicked out an extraordinary number of pheasants from right under our feet, being able only to stand and watch them run swiftly away, twisting in and out through the grass and bushes and almost flattened to the earth as they ran.

Finding they would not rise, we metamorphosed our Cossack into a hunting dog, sent him into the brush about two hundred yards ahead of us and had him come shouting down toward us. When the birds broke and discovered us, they flared straight up into the air and gave us easy targets. Sometimes for days we fed our men on this delicious game, thus giving them, with their fondness for meat and their inability to indulge this expensive taste, a tremendous treat. However, after some time we ourselves tired of this dainty and could no longer swallow what had become for us an insipid meat; and we consequently soon ceased hunting, as this is the least interesting of shooting, when the birds are so numerous.

Not far from the mouth of the Chor we found a lake of the same name, almost entirely overgrown with reeds and rushes and covered, in the slightly deeper parts, with a carpet of water-lilies and the leaves of small aquatic plants. One evening, when the ducks and geese were flighting, we made an observation here at this lake which astonished us and set us wondering what the explanation might be. When flocks of these birds, tired by the day's journey, circled over the lake with the evident intention of stopping there for the night, instead of settling, they began to utter their notes of warning and danger, as they swung down close over the water and swept up and away to make off toward the river. We were quite at a loss to understand the reason of the birds for consistently refusing to settle and were much interested and relieved,