1 80 Incidents of Foreign Field Sport. 



over difficult land, ground which in cold blood you 

 would prefer to walk across on your own legs, than trust 

 to your horse's. Again, there is the rivalry for first 

 spear, when a wounded boar becomes a foe worthy of 

 any man. I know no pluckier brute, nor one who dies 

 so game, for he utters no sound of pain and gives up 

 the ghost with his face to his enemy. " A firm hand 

 and eagle eye, must he possess who would aspire to 

 see the wild boar die." 



My first experience of this glorious sport was in 

 this wise. I was en route to Condapilly to relieve an 

 officer of another regiment, who I may say, par 

 parenthese, had one of the prettiest women in India 

 for a wife. Whilst at Rajahmundry, Tom Prendergast 

 asked me to join a pig-sticking party ; my detachment 

 could go on and I overtake it before it could get to 

 its destination. This I gladly accepted. I had a 

 chestnut, christened " the man-eater," and a very high- 

 caste gray Arab, as fleet as the wind, but so excitable 

 that in the hunting-field you could do nothing with 

 him, as he generally threw up his head and ran away. 

 I also possessed a golden bay with black points, a 

 Gulf Arab. How I became the owner of a part of 

 my stud was in this way. Whilst at Secunderabad 

 I received much kindness from officers who had known 

 my grandparents, my father and mother, and myself 

 as a baby. One of them, who commanded a regiment 

 of irregular cavalry, asked me if I'd like a good horse 

 or two, as he was sending down Nightingale to 

 purchase a lot of remounts for the regiment, and that 

 buying such a lot at a time, he got them all round 

 on an average of Es. 400 each. I told him I would 

 like a couple, but that I had only Rs. 500, but would 



