The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1876-01-08

you, Is to expose yourself and your Arab
to be upset, cut and slashed, and ruined
for life. A great deal now depends on
correctness Of aim and lightuess Of touch.
A practiced rider puts his horse into a
smart canter, bends slightly forward over
its right shoulder and plants the spear as
near the spine as possible, before the tusks
Of his adversary can rip up the forearm or
belly. With jerk, to which the instincts
Of the horse respond, he wheels rapidly
round to the left, Withdrawing his spear if
the wound be slight, and leave it sticking
If deep, while the enraged animal is just
too late even to Craze the horses hooks
Then, from determined boar, there may
ensuc series of these attacks. The woun-
ded hog sets its back to bush and rushes
out upon one man after another. As many
as three spears have been seen lodged in
the tanks or ribs, quivering as the hog
staggers away under them, until at last it
sinks from hemorrhagc, or fourth spear
settles the business. In good country,
not only level, but smooth, the whole af-
fair--tho burst, the pursuit, the charges
and the death-may oil be over in less
thanren minutes. But the course of true
hog-hunting is not always more smooth
than that of love. Sometimes tho ground
is clay, trodden by cattle unevenly when
wet, and then hardened into the consis-
tency Of iron. Sometimes the boar skirts
the edge of a marsh or swims deep river,
or takes to line of gardens and orchards,
in the midst of which lie buried the houses
of the Bengali peasant, where the hunter
gets bewildered among shady and morrow
paths crossing each other at right angles,
and may either lose the chase altogether,
or be suddenly charged by an euraged
tusker where there is no room for him to
practice the least cavalry maneuyre. At
other times the boar from the very first
'jinks," as it is technically termed, crosses
from right to left under the horses forelegs,
turns "dunghill, refuses to charge, aud
repeats his tactics so cleverly that the
three best mounted and most skilled riders
are thrown out, and the honor of drawing
first blood falls to some second-rate man
with third-ratc country-bred horse, who
comes up and "cuts in" just at the very
right time. Very rarely hog has been
heard to squeal as the hunters spear is
just about to be delivered, but in such
case it is reasonable to conclude that the
fiery blood of the jungle race has been i'm
poverished by connection with the domes
tic species; and, on the other hand, a fine
spesimen of a boar forty inches high, with
tusks polished by constant combats or Ry
rubbing against trees, refuses to run after
less than three hundred yards, turns sharp
ly on the delighted sportsman, gashes one
horse, sends another to tn, right-about,
and, when pierced through and through,
"dies in silence, biting hard at the spear
shaft or at atanything, animate or inanimate,
that comes within its reach.
OF course, hog hunting, like sport Of
many kinds in the East, is not what it was.
Select hunting grounds which forty, fifty,
or sixty years ago had furnished hogs and
hog-deer sufficient to exhaust whole stud
of Arabs in two or three days hunting,
are now converted into villages, and even
bazaars, teeming with population; or If
the jungle, favored by epidemics, inunda.
tions, and the tyranny and incapacity of
native landlord, has been too strong for
the plow and the hoe, six head would now
be accounted for instead of thirty. But
there are still places which will never be
fit for anything but temporary occupation,
and which can only yield one crop year
Far away in Eastern Bengal, on the allu-
vial fats Of some river named after Hindu
divinity good line of elephants will, now
aud then, turn out quantities Of pigs of
all sizes, sows with litters, lanky boars and
monsters with tusks, in the proportion
shown by hares and rabbits during Nor
folk battue. And few things can be moro
exhilarating than gallop across the san
dy loan, as smooth as Leicestershire
pasture, where the only puzzle is to select
out of many the boar that seems likely to |
give the best sport. As a general rule,
DO mount, for man under twelve stone, |
surpasses the Arab horse. Australians,
English hunters, horses from the Cape of |
Good Hope, have been entered at this sport
and have answered fairly. But the Cape
horse is very soon knocked up; the Eng
lish hunter, three parts bred, is superior
in stride, but cannot wheel to the right or
left with the necessary rapidity; Austria
lians and Walers are apt to be uncertain
In their disposition, and are given to "back
Jumping" For temper, for exquisite
beauty combined with bone aud sinew, for
certainty of rapid evolution, for coolness
in meeting the angry and bristling foe, for
obedience to the touch of spur or rein, and,
we may almost say, for sympathetic enjoy
ment Of sport, the Arab horse is pre-emi-
nent.
Some Queer Railway Builders.
There we're workmen on the Pacific