122 THE LION KILLER. 



insufferable smell exhaled from the porcupine, which has 

 become completely putrified, and at last the police interfere 

 and turn out of doors alike the porcupine and his hunters 

 who are obliged to close their session or find some other 

 retreat. 



A propos of the porcupine, I am glad to mention here an 

 occurrence I witnessed, and which testifies to the correctness 

 of what I have said in the chapter on the hyena. Having 

 one day met a troop of Hatcheichia laying siege to a burrow, 

 I hastened to witness the denouement. 



After several hours' hard work, a hyena was taken and 

 drawn out by a child twelve years old, who had lodged two 

 feet of his lance in the body of the animal. European 

 hunters would have been proud of this result ; the Hatchei- 

 chia were disgusted and ashamed ; disgusted, because in 

 their eyes it was a bad sign, and ashamed, because the 

 neighboring Arabs who had assembled to assist in the work, 

 overwhelmed them with all sorts of jests and ridicule. 



It is useless to say that the animal was left on the ground 

 to serve as food for his relatives, and the hunters left the 

 country in order to escape the jibes of the Arabs, and sought 

 elsewhere better hunting grounds. 



As there are only two or three expeditions a year, made by 

 these people against the porcupine, in order to keep them- 

 selves and their dogs in practice, the Hatcheichia hunt the 

 hedge-hog. "When the weather is good, and the moon at her 

 full, they leave Constantino in the afternoon, with several 

 couples of griffins, and beat the plain all night. As soon as a 

 dog takes the trail of a hedge-hog, he gives tongue and is 



