CHAP. vii. HUNTING WITH DOGS. 331 



accompanied me ; while the remainder passed me, many 

 of them within reach of my hand, and although I held a 

 spear in it, I was too much occupied in watching the 

 unusual scene to remember it until too late. However, 

 in less time than it takes to write it we killed seven of 

 these handsome antelopes, besides getting two out of the 

 three that had jumped into the river ; the crocodiles pro- 

 bably accounting for the third. 



Among the other small antelopes which I have coursed, 

 I may mention the Vaal and roi raebok ; the former, 

 from the roughness of the ground on which they are 

 generally found, it is next to impossible to hunt with 

 dogs, but they are sometimes, though rarely, ridden into 

 on horseback. The latter is slower than the reed-buck, 

 but inhabiting a more hilly country does not afford so 

 much sport. The steinbuck is, like the duiker, too easily 

 caught ; so that for the purposes of coursing the palm 

 must, in my opinion, be given to the oribi and reed- 

 buck. 



Wild pigs were very common in Tongaland and on 

 the Bombo flats where I hunted a great deal, and it often 

 struck me that pig-sticking as performed in India would 

 be some little change from the continual pursuit of buffalo 

 and other large game, which, strange as it may appear, 

 one does in time tire of. I do not mean that one ever 

 really tires of the half-hour's fight with the wounded 

 brute, when every nerve is on the alert to protect one's 

 own life, and the excitement, so long as it lasts, takes 

 away all remembrance of the previous hard work ; but 

 after months and months of it, one begins to feel that 

 the necessary exertion is too great for the reward, and 



