young and
plump women.

In its nocturnal ramblings the werwolf often encounters enemies--bears,
wolves, and panthers--with which it struggles for dominion--dominion of
forest, plain and mountain; and when the combat ends to its
disadvantage, its metamorphosed corpse is at once devoured by its
conqueror.

Of all parts of Russia, the werwolf loves best the Caucasus and Ural
Mountains. They are to Russia what the Harz Mountains were to Germany,
centuries ago--the head-quarters of all manner of psychic phenomena, the
happy hunting ground of phantom and fairy; and over them still lingers,
almost, if not quite, as forcibly as ever, the glamour and mystery
inseparable from the superphysical.

Times without number have the great black beetling crags of these
mountains been scaled by the furry, sinewy feet of werwolves; times
without number have the shadows of these anomalies fallen on the
moon-kissed, snowy peaks, towering high into the sky, or mingled with
the rank and dewy herbage in the pine-clad valleys, and narrow abysmal
gorges deep down below.

It was here, in these lone Russian mountains, so legend relates, that
Peter and Paul turned an impious wife and husband, who refused them
shelter, into wolves: but Peter and Paul, apparently, had not the
monopoly of this power; for it was here, too, in a Ural village, that
the Devil is alleged to have metamorphosed half a dozen men into wolves
for not paying him sufficient homage.

There is no restriction as to the sex of werwolves in Russia and
Siberia--male and female werwolves are about equal in number, though
perhaps there is a slight preponderance in favour of the female.
Vargamors are to be encountered in almost all the less frequented woody
regions, but more especially in those in the immediate vicinity of the
Urals and Caucasus.

Though many of the werwolves inherit the property, many, too, have
acquired it through direct intercourse with the superphysical; and the
invocation of spirits, whether performed individually or collectively,
is far from uncommon.

Black Magic is said to be practised in the Urals, Caucasus, Yerkhoiansk,
and Stanovoi Mountains; in the Tundras, the Plains of East Russia, the
Timan Range, the Kola Peninsula, and various parts of Siberia.

I am told that the usual initiating ceremony consists of drawing a
circle, from seven to nine feet in radius, in the centre of which circle
a wood fire is kindled--the wood selected being black poplar, p