chap. vii. HUNTING WITH DOGS. 333 



wards an evergreen thicket, where they would be sure 

 to stand. The first thing was to get the dog quieted, 

 and so I went on until I reached it. The boar, an im- 

 mense brute with tusks eight or nine inches long, was 

 standing with his hind-quarters protected by a bush 

 facing the dog, which I was sorry to perceive all covered 

 with blood from the severe gashes it had already received. 

 I would not fire for fear of driving the buffalo out of the 

 covert, but took a couple of spears from my gun-bearer, 

 and going up to within five yards of the grunting brute, 

 hurled one into its ribs behind the shoulder. On re- 

 ceiving the wound — a deadly one, as these spears can 

 be thrown with great force as well as precision, — it 

 wheeled round, ploughing up a furrow with its curved 

 tusk, and came straight at me. It was utterly impossible 

 for me to have got out of its way; so, using the remaining 

 spear as a leaping-pole, I planted it straight in between 

 its shoulders, and leaning all my weight on it, sprang on 

 one side just in time to escape his tusks. I lost my grasp 

 of the spear, which was driven right down through him ; 

 but my Kaffir ran up and stabbed it as it struggled to 

 rise, and the dog seeing its enemy on the ground pinned 

 it by the ear, and in a few seconds it was dead. 



After this I determined to send for all my dogs, some 

 of which were absent with my native hunters, and buying 

 as many more as I could, to increase their numbers by 

 borrowing all those belonging to the natives, and then 

 to try how pig-sticking on foot would succeed. Horses 

 would not have lived where I was, on account of the 

 tsetse. The one I had already killed was no criterion, as 

 he, I afterwards found, had had his hind-leg broken by 



