ch. x.] Royal Pig Hunt. 197 



pig in chase, and so it proved. We headed the game and 

 they soon came up to it, and a thrust or two with the 

 deadly spear and all was over with poor piggie. This 

 was a small black fellow about half the size of an English 

 boar. Not entertaining the prejudices of our Maho- 

 medan friends we begged the body of this last pig, and 

 when the captors asked for what purpose we required it, 

 we discreetly replied that we wanted it for our dogs. 

 This was satisfactoiy, and one of the men volunteered to 

 drag it down to the boat at his pony's tail. 



I shall not forget the Royal Pig Hunt in Sulu for 

 some time. There we were among the tall grass and 

 jungle, and the ever changing position of the numerous 

 gaily attired horsemen was a beautiful sight to see. A 

 group of fox-hunters at home by a covert side is a pleas- 

 ing sight, but here in the region of perpetual sunshine 

 and palm-leaves — in this " beautiful isle of the sea" — the 

 sight was not only pleasing but quite a novelty to us — a 

 thing seen for the first time, and perchance an experience 

 never to be enjoyed again. Down below us we could see 

 long files of horsemen wending their way to another piece 

 of covert which the men on foot and dogs were now beat- 

 ing, while, on the little rounded hill above, the Sultana 

 and her ladies formed a bright and picturesque group on 

 horseback, their large vividly-coloured umbrellas standing 

 out clear and sharp against the cloudless sky. 



We saw the Sultan again towards the close of the day, 

 and had a further chat with him, in which he much re- 

 gretted that the English would not help him to resist the 

 agressions of his neighbours, the Spaniards, whom the 

 Sultan detests, and perhaps not without reason. He sent 

 a man to see how many pigs had been killed, and on 

 being told seventeen, he observed, that they had some- 

 times killed as many as fifty in one day's hunting. 



