238 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



Mazanderan forests. The boar would charge 

 furiously ; he would wait till it was quite close, 

 and then "un, deux," he would step aside and 

 place his bullet behind the beast's shoulder 

 "une lutte vraiment impressionante." Perhaps 

 there was a little picturesque exaggeration about 

 his account, but this prerogative is not confined 

 to any one nationality or form of sport. 



Some of these boars are of enormous size bigger 

 than any I have seen in India. I was within an 

 ace of shooting one such, in mistake for a bear. 1 

 He was rooting about in bushes, and I could only 

 see his red hairy body and a pair of furry ears that 

 I could have sworn could only be a bear's. I was 

 just pulling on him when he gave a whisk of his 

 tail, thus if the Hibernicism may be allowed 

 displaying the cloven hoof and saving his bacon. 

 This was the biggest boar I have ever seen ; soli- 

 tary and with a coat of red bristles that looked 

 like thick fur. Seeing his huge size, I half put 

 up my rifle again, but lowered it. Not a soul in 

 camp would eat or even touch it, and I had no 

 desire to spend half the day in taking off the skull 

 myself. He would, however, have looked very 

 fine stuffed in the South Kensington Museum. 

 Our people in camp were of course all Mahomme- 



1 Bears exist in these forests, but I never did more than see 

 their tracks, and traces of their depredations on wild walnut trees. 



