SWINE IN COLUMBIA. 63 



animals which the natives of these islands posses-*, they accordingly 

 receive great care and attention. This race is small, the belly 

 hanging, the legs short, the tail almost imperceptible, and the color 

 gray. Its flesh is very white and delicate. 



COLUMBIA. 



In the woods of Columbia there are numbers of swine, but for 

 tne most part wild ; and the flesh of these wild ones is far ^uperior 

 to that of the few that are domesticated, as that of the latter, from 

 the animals being often fed on stale fish and all kinds of abomina- 

 tions, acquires a rancid and unpleasant flavor. Some of the settlers 

 chiefly live by the sale of the flesh of wild swine, which they obtain 

 by hunting, and then cure or dry it. 



Experienced hunters will kill their fourteen or fifteen swine a-day, 

 and a well-trained dog will often destroy two or three of these ani- 

 mals a-day by himself The mode of proceeding is for the dog to 

 keep the hog at bay while the hunter creeps up, and watching his 

 opportunity, throws his lance with such vigor as to pin the animal 

 to the ground. This done, he rushes upon him, seizes the lance 

 firmly with one hand, and with the other dispatches the game with 

 his knife. 



In Paraguay and Brazil, swine are likewise abundant, and for the 

 most part wild. 



The Falkland Islands were stocked with swine by the French and 

 Spaniards, but little, if any, trace of the original breeds can now be 

 discovered in the fierce, bristly, tusked animals now found there, 

 some of the older ones of which rival the grisly boar in appearance 

 and wildness. 



SOUTH-SEA ISLANDS. 



The South-Sea Islands, on their discovery by Europeans, were 

 found to be well stocked with a small, black, short-legged hog ; the 

 traditionary belief of the natives was, that these animals were as 

 anciently descended as themselves. The hog, in fact, is in these 

 islands the principal quadruped, and is of all others the most care- 

 fully cultivated. The bread-fruit tree, either in the form of a sour 

 paste or in its natural condition, constitutes its favorite food, and 

 its additional choice of yams, eddoes, and other nutritive vegetables, 

 renders its flesh most juicy and delicious ; its fat, though rich, being 

 at the same time (so says Foster) not less delicate and agreeable 

 than the finest butter. Before our missionary labors had proved so 

 successful in these once benighted regions, by substituting the mild 

 spirit of Christianity for the sanguinary forms of a delusive and 

 degrading worship, the Otaheitans and other South-Sea Islandew 



