208 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. Xtt. 



unclean beast. Nor had he as far as he personally was concerned, but 

 that was a point which unfortunately proved to have little to do with the 

 question. We had a good deal of wet weather on the journey out, so 

 much so that a few days after leaving the coast, my companion was 

 prostrated with a sharp attack of malarial fever and dysentery, and as we had 

 reached a spot where there was plenty of wood and water, we determined to 

 halt there for a day or two to enable him to puU round. The whole time we 

 were at this camp it rained almost incessantly ; our tents were saturated and 

 everything and everybody very wet and miserable. Our following of camel- 

 men, shikaries, etc., had of course no tents, but according to their custom had 

 rigged up two or three '' gurgies " or huts for themselves out of " herios," 

 (the fibre mats used as numdahs for the baggage camels) and in these they 

 squatted cheek to jowl, waiting, with philosophic patience worthy of Micaw- 

 ber, for something to turn up. The second evening there was a little break 

 in the weather, and I was sitting at tea with the invalid preparatory to going 

 out to shoot something for the larder, when my small waiting boy Yusuf came 

 running up excitedly to tell me in his crude English that two " Bacon," as he 

 naively called them, were feeding across the river bed within sight of camp. 

 My Midgan was away from camp at the time tending our camels at graze and 

 the shikaris were out scouting, so piloted by Yusuf I started off to where he 

 had seen the pig. By the time we had crossed the stony river bed they had 

 disappeared into the jungle fringing the further bank, but, after a longish 

 run at my best pace parallel to the direction in which they were making, I at 

 last got a broad side shot and accounted for one of them — a boar with fair 

 tushes. Yusuf was by way of being a strict, if juvenile, Mahommedan, and 

 in any case was not likely to be of much assistance to me, so I sent him back 

 to camp to try and get hold of the Midgan. Meanwhile I started the labo- 

 rious job of decapitating the dead boar. It was no easy matter to worry, 

 through the bull neck and sever the vertebrae with an ordinary hunting knife, 

 and when the operation was finished it was nearly dark and as yet no sign of 

 the Midgan, so I had to make the best of a bad job and carry the head and 

 my rifle back to camp, about a mile away. By the time I got in the Midgan 

 had returned and I told him to get to work at once on the headskin, but in 

 spite of his previous protestations he at first absolutely refused to touch it 

 and it was only by dint of much persuasion both moral and physical and by 

 threatening to turn him out of camp in the morning and let him find his way 

 back to Zaila as best he could, that he was at last prevailed upon to obey. 

 Then the play began. 



It came on to rain again while we were at dinner and all the men made for 

 their improvised huts, prepared to remain there for the night ; but the poor 

 Midgan who had begun to carry out his compact and by this time was 

 thoroughly defiled, now began to have a sorry Lime, He was expelled from 

 his '* mess " ; his food was thrown to him as to a dog, as he sat beside the 



