Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1884-07-31
Mistellaueuns &eading.
THE PECCARY.

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THE PECCARY.
SOME OF THE HABITS AND CHARACTER
ISTICS OF 4 STRANGE BEAST
Texas has within her borders beast into
whose narrow skull fear never enters 1t
it the peccary-the Havilinah of the MeXi-
cans, the Dicotyles torquatus of zoologists
Bravery is notable attribute of man, and
it is discovered in birds, beasts and fishes.
1 don't claim that quality for the brute 1 am
about to describe. believe bravery cannot
be said to exist in senses devoid of fear. L
conceive that an appreciation of danger is
a necessary menstruum to the nobler cour-
age. 1t is not the man of dogged indiffer-
ence admire, it is the man who refuses to
fly when duty bids him stand, and though
he fears death, fears dishonor more.
Now the peccary has no particle of fear
on account of any show of odds, and ap-
pears to live only for the purpose of madly
dying when opportunity offers. The game
in his swimming eyes, when GATED and
bleeding in the pit, glances of regret and
nameless fear. He shudders out his life be-
meath his growing conquerOr, and his tiny
heart perhaps sWells with woe at it's last
throbs. At least, he looks that way to me.
The dying pachyderm of the Texas forest
dies in "a matter of course" manner as if he
was meant to end that way and was glad of
it, He looks up in the tree where the man
sits who shot him Qfew men of any expert
ence ever shoot them from any other stand
point) and anon he holds up his cloven foot
and glances at it. If the peccary regrets
anything in the hour of dissolution it is
that he was not made like a Squirrel-to
climb
Roaming the glade, searching for mast, a
drove of peccaries resemble drove of tame
hogs. They never begin a war, but when
one is assailed the entire drove rush to
the attack as men rush when martial
valor urges them. Each bead-like eye is
a fire-spark; tusks are protruded, the echi-
mated spine Strengthened, and woe to the
wretch who falls in their path. Gored, bit
ten, torn, trampled upon. and eaten up, to
the last shred of his clothing-such is the
fate of man caught by drove of angry
peccaries. With the same fury they assail
wolf or attack bull; and neither the
wolf nor the bull can stand up against a
charge of half a dozen peccaries. Both
know this and fly in terror from the field.
Lately, on the Wichita River, l attack
ed drove of peccaries. was safely perch
ed in tree and armed with Winchester
rifle and accompanied by Sergeant Platt, Of
the Frontier Battalion, who occupied a
bough beneath me.
We waited until the drove approached
within thirty yards of our tree and then
we fired simultaneously, killing one and
wounding another. The roar of our car
bines brought them upon us with that
strange alacrity that suggested their hav-
ing awaited from sucklings for just that oc-
casion and kept perfectly ready for it.
When they arrived at the tree they bit it
each in turn, and then glancing up, squatted
and fixing upon us a dozen pair of eyes
small as peas and blazing with fierce pur-
pose and fury intense.
One by one, we shot them, and they fell,
one by one, and died; each willing and
ready to 90, and accepting his fate as pleas
antly as schoolboys accept apples. Not a
groan or squeal betrayed pain or dismay.
Squatting on their hams, they gazed at us
and took the bullets as if we were tossing
them acorns. Presently only one was left
alive amid Il dozen cOrpseS, and there he
sat brown, brstling, furious, foaming with
raging life, courting death; unmindful Of
the blood that damped the grass about him;
Indifferent to the fate Of his comrades-a
very epitome of hate.
"Don't shoot yetn' | said to Sergeant
Platt, 81 want to study him"
Grim, voiceless, horrible-the hog sat
and gave me back glance for glance. The
spot he squatted upon was within the radi-
us of red ant bed. The insects craWled
over him and stung his thick hide; they
wasted their fOrmic acid, blunted their Ian
Gets in vain. AS we'll might they have stung
the cactus plant growing beside their bed.
After time the old boar grew weary of
gazing and he got up and went around,
smelling the bodies of his late companions.
Then he ate a few acorns that had fallen
from the live oak tree we were perched in,
and after that he deliberately stretched
himself at the root of the tree intending to
remain sentry and prevent our slipping
away without his permissiOn; or Without
doing by him as we had done by the others.
We did not keep him waiting much long
er. Platt aimed at his heart and pierced
it with forty-four calber bullet; with a
single glance upward from sinister eye, the
hog died gently, and with his life ended his
one emotion-hate.
Texas & Pacific and Fort Worth & Denver
/ City locomotive engineers often encounter
ed droves of peeearies, as l suppose, 90 all
engineers who operate on the Western Tex
as railroads. No whistle is sounded to
frighten them. The engineer knows that
peCcaries cannot be frightened. The engine
rrushes into the midst of the drove and those
not killed outright die madly charging and
biting the wheels that crush them.
a peccary is in all respects a hog. He
looks, smells, tastes like a hGg-and is a
hog, but for thing of indOmitable courage
of the lower type, for a hater of quenchless
fury, and for a fighter to the last throb of
! his heart, commend me to the fierce Dicoty-
| les torquatus, the indigenous Texas hog, a
brute that would, if he could, while riding
in the midst of a cylone, bite at the ziz-zag
flashes of the death-dealing lighting.