72 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. 



buried his bullet head in his advancing chest. I saw the 

 two roll over and over together ; and then the gallant Tinker 

 rose on the top of the wolf, his vice-like jaws firmly fastened 

 on his throat. At this point of a combat he usually over- 

 powered his antagonist utterly, by using his immense weight 

 and power of limb to force him prostrate on the earth, the 

 while riving at the throat with a force that often scooped a 

 hollow in the earth under the scene of action. His efforts 

 were now directed to effect this favourite manoeuvre ; but the 

 wolf was too strong for him, and repeatedly foiled the at- 

 tempt. But the young hounds, who were not at all without 

 pluck, soon returned to his assistance, and seizing the wolf 

 by different hind-legs, made such a spread eagle of him that 

 Tinker had no difficulty in holding him down while I dis- 

 mounted and battered in his skull with the hammer-head of 

 my hunting-whip. None of the three dogs had been bitten, 

 Tinker having got his jaws in chancery from the very first. 

 I am sure that the three, or even Tinker alone, would have 

 killed him in time without my assistance ; for Tinker never 

 let go a grip he had once secured, and though not so large, 

 was not much inferior to him in strength. 



The catalogue of amusements offered to the sportsman in 

 the open plain would be incomplete without a mention of the 

 "mighty boar." He is to be found almost everywhere in the 

 low jungle on the edge of cultivation, and sometimes in the 

 sugar-cane and other tall crops ; and with a liberal expendi- 

 ture of self and horse may be ridden and speared in a good 

 many places. Generally, however, the country is highly 

 unfavourable to riding, the black soil of the plains being 

 split up into yawning cracks many feet in depth, or covered 

 with rolling trap boulders, both sorts of country being almost 

 equally productive of dangerous croppers. The neighbour- 



