478 WILD SPORTS OF BURMA AND ASSAM 



the Assamese. I also shot game in the Durrung and Nowgong 

 districts, but the sport did not materially differ from that 

 already narrated. 



PIG-STICKING ON THE CHURS OF ASSAM 



Williamson, the Deputy Commissioner of the Garrow 

 hills, and I had been shooting for a few days in the Churs of 

 the Brahmapootra below Dobree, and as pigs were very 

 numerous, my friend proposed that we should have a shy at 

 them. Neither of us were well equipped for the sport ; I had 

 got rusty, as, during my thirteen years' residence in Lower 

 Burma, I had been unable to indulge in this the noblest of 

 sports. My spears had got blunted and rusty, and not think- 

 ing that I should have a chance of using them in such a jungly 

 country as Assam, I did not carry them about with me ; nor 

 had I suitable steeds. I had four good ponies, the best to be 

 got; but none of them were above 13.2 my largest and the 

 others under. I had put on a certain amount of flesh and 

 was no longer the light-weight I had been in the fifties, there- 

 fore these diminutive animals could not carry me as they 

 would have done ten years previously. I had only two ponies 

 out with me ; we seldom took any, but moved about and lived 

 almost on elephants. Williamson had a country-bred mare 

 and a couple of short jobbing spears of Bengal ; they are 

 barely 6 feet long, heavily weighted at the butt end ; those 

 I had been accustomed to were from /-|- to 8 feet long, and 

 were used for thrusting and not jobbing. Williamson had 

 seen a little pig-sticking in Tirhoot. Although neither of us 

 was properly equipped, the temptation to once more follow a 

 grizzly boar was too great to be resisted, especially as they 

 lay out under the very flimsiest of shelter and in splendid riding 

 ground. So we determined to try first the mainland on the 

 left bank, where the pigs were particularly numerous, the 

 country flat, fairly open, the beau ideal for hunting. Fences 

 and ditches there were none, but occasionally a dry water- 

 course had to be negotiated ; but most of these had sloping 

 banks, up and down which it was easy going, so I thought 



