394 SWINE GROUP 



using their snouts to such good purpose that a long, wide tunnel, 

 almost impervious to the heaviest rains, is soon formed. They feed 

 throughout the night, generally in herds of from four or five to as 

 many as twenty in number ; and at dawn retire to their lairs, seldom 

 moving again except in misty or wet weather, when they feed 

 throughout the day till evening. They do incalculable damage to 

 the crops of the natives, visiting the same gardens night after night, 

 and trampling down what they do not eat. Their principal food 

 consists of roots, berries, and wild fruit, but they also devour reptiles, 

 eggs, and small birds, and on one occasion a number of them partially 

 ate the carcase of a bushbuck. They are expert swimmers and swift 

 of foot, and can get over the roughest ground at a great pace. There 

 are no pluckier beasts in Africa than bush-pigs, and even a leopard 

 will hesitate before attacking a full-grown boar. Like all wild animals 

 they have an instinctive dread of man, and will always seek to escape 

 if possible ; but if surrounded or wounded and brought to bay, they 

 appear to accept the situation with stolid imperturbability, and die 

 fighting against all odds, grim and silent to the last. The young are 

 born in December and January usually five or six in a litter ; they 

 are prettily striped with brown and pale yellow. Bush-pig are very 

 tenacious of life ; and their flesh, although somewhat coarse, is 

 excellent in the rainy season. 



" I have elsewhere described a style of bush-pig hunting in which 

 the rifle is only occasionally used, the game being brought to bay 

 and killed with assegais. It was in this sport that I learned to 

 appreciate the gallant pluck and splendid fighting qualities of the 

 bush-pig. I have seen an old boar after receiving nine thrusts from 

 those terrible ' stabbing assegais,' two of which were still fast in him, 

 make a charge that scattered us like chaff, and in three consecutive 

 lunges lame one of our number for life and disembowel two of the 

 finest ' pig-dogs ' with which I ever hunted. In such encounters a 

 boar inflicts terrible wounds with his teeth as well as with his tusks. 

 The plan invariably adopted on these hunts was to take up the spoor 

 from the ' mealie-fields ' in the early morning, and follow it till we 

 marked the pigs down in a certain bush or kloof, which was then 

 immediately surrounded, the dogs loosed, and the pigs brought to 

 bay. A word of advice to any one who may wish to try this form of 

 sport. The regular ' stabbing assegai ' of the Swazis, although very 

 handy in thick bush, is too short in the haft to be of any service in 

 stopping the rush of a boar. The charge must be dodged, and the 

 weapon plunged between the shoulders of the boar ; or a longer haft 



