338 LARGE GAME. chap. vii. 



sent half a dozen men and all the dogs with orders not 

 to come back without the boar, which they were not long 

 in doing (though it was all they could do to carry it), 

 as they found it lying perfectly dead three or four hun- 

 dred yards from where I had stabbed it, and my other 

 dog, also dead, a few yards off. In this case the pig cer- 

 tainly had the best of it, though he had only two stumps 

 of tusks worn away to almost nothing ; but on other 

 days I have killed, morning and evening, a considerable 

 number with hardly a scratch among the whole pack. 



Of course it was to be expected that we should 

 occasionally fall in with other animals, and I have already 

 referred to the impallas, and in another place to a buffalo. 

 Sometimes we came across troops of monkeys, when the 

 dogs would tree them, and we would spend an hour or 

 two throwing spears and stones at them for the sake of 

 their skins, which are prized by the natives as an article 

 of dress. We also killed a baboon. The latter happened 

 in this wise : — I had not got far from home on a pig-hunting 

 expedition, and the dogs were still in leash, when I heard 

 the booming call of a male baboon, and on looking about 

 I saw him — a very large old fellow — sitting on the top of 

 a great ant-heap, resting from his labour of grubbing up 

 roots. The ground was open with here and there a tree, 

 and as it is rare to find a solitary baboon, I determined to 

 try and stalk as close as I could, and then run him down 

 with the whole pack, and get up and kill him before he 

 could do much damage ; for they will decimate a pack in ten 

 minutes. He was sitting with his back towards us, and 

 we got within a hundred yards unperceived, and then as 

 he made off I had the dogs sHpped, and they had him at 



