The Tiffin tribune. (Tiffin, Ohio) 1868-1887, 1870-05-20
LFrOln the Overland Monthly.
Il BO1R HUNT

In the good old days, when Placer
Vile was i'm its glory, and when gold
was obtained not in pennyweight
dribbIets, but the pOund-weight, few
men in that mining camp were doing
so we'll as Lanty Spelman and myself.
| Coming home to our tent early one
Saturday afternoon for the purpose of
cleaning our weeks gOld-We got
three pounds weight of it chat week
we lit our pipes and lounged idly.-
This is the miners usual preliminary
to action, at once recuperatiKe and
cautious. THAT" said ], after a
pause, THAT was a narrow escape you
had this morning, when the bank
caved i'm as YOU were getting into the
drive. -
"Pretty sharp; wasn't it2u smiled
Lanty. AbutI've been so used TO mar
row escapes in my time That I've
come to look upon these matters as
second nature. never told YOU of a
fight I had with wild boar once, did
I?p
at was pretty rough, / tell yOu,"
said Lanty, shaking the ashes out of
his pipe and plunging into his story !:
The first time that / ever attached
myself to a boar-hunting expedition,
was in IS, now more than thirty
years ago, the hunting ground being
one of the NaYegatOr's Islands. The
NavigatOr's are nowadays pretty
much resOrted to by all sorts of hOli-
day makers, but at the time speak of
Captain Hill and myself were the
only two white men living on these
islands, having been cast ashore on
one OF them by the wreck Of the Nam
tucket, from New Bedford, during a
whaling voyage in the Pacific. The
natives were very friendly, and, when
we had been living for some weeks
among them, would often take Hill
out with them in their hunting eXcur-
siOns; while /, a lad of only eighteen,
was not yet deemed sufficiently sea-
soned to endure die fatigues of a hunt
ing campaign and was always left
behind-an arrangement, by the way,
which I did not relish. At last | re-
solved, indeed, TO be one of the very
next hunting party, the grumbling
and fears of the hunters to the contra
ry Notwithstanding ] had not long
to watt.
A party was made up for going to
the mountains, many miles inland
for the valleys and undulating ground
at the foot OF the mountains were the
fayOrite resort of wild hogs. Those
were always occasions of considerable
Importance, for hunting party was
usually composed of forty or fifty
men, young, strong, and active, who
carried provisions for several days,
lest the chase should prove umsuc-
eessful. Days, therefore, were spent
in preparation, when the women were
constantly Gt work preparing the COM
missariat, Prsliminaries over, at last,
the expedition started at dawn, ac-
cOmpanied by a multitude of dogs. all
barking with such anticipating zeal
as made the woods hoarse with the
echoes.
1t was a beautiful morning, and,
like all mornings in the trOpic, the
air was cool and refreshing; the birds
chriped and fluttered about so happily,
as to have filled ones heart with re-
spOnsiye pleasure. The very glisten-
ing of the silvery dew, as it bespan.
gIed the grass and ffirted with the
sunbeams, had something about it of
indescribable felicity.
We mustered fifty young men, each
armed with q sharp, iFOl-pOinted
spear; and after two days marching
arrived on the hunting grounds. But
the mount tains, so-ealled, 4 were no
mountains at all, being nothing more,