SPEARING VARIOUS ANIMALS 229 



nil once the bear had been roused and was angry and noisy ; 

 but most of them were only a little afraid at first, and it was 

 the quaint waving hair that frightened them first. I saw 

 that a horse was very much faster than a bear even on 

 very rocky and broken country, also that a bear is a very 

 clumsy beast, and could be killed on foot if two or three 

 spears could dismount together in the open. This is what 

 Geddes and I ought to have done on the first day and 

 during the first run, and what we probably should have 

 done had the other heat joined us ; after that one chance 

 we were always separated in ones and twos in thick, bushy 

 and rocky country. The other heat told us that they 

 understood that the shikari said, " A very large pig is 

 coming," and that is all ; which shows how important a 

 knowledge of the language and ways of the people of India 

 is to the would-be hunter of bears or anything else. 



My second attempt at bear happened about March 1903 

 thus : I was out shooting with two friends who had not 

 shot bear, and who were very keen to do so when news came 

 in of a bear lying out on an old bund miles from any hills 

 or ravines. The country was cultivated and cut up with 

 little irrigation channels and very blind. So far as my 

 position as host allowed I tried to persuade my guests to 

 ride the bear, but they decided to use guns, so I mounted 

 an old caster from the 77th Battery and hoped that they 

 would both miss. The mare was old and very bold, and, 

 so far as I knew, afraid of nothing but slow and clumsy. 

 One of my friends walked up to the bear asleep in a thick 

 bush and missed him like a man ; the bear then scuffled 

 past the other who did likewise from the cover of a pepul 

 tree. The old fellow then came to me ; I nursed him very 

 carefully, till nicely in the middle of a field and then clapped 

 in my spurs, and before bear or mare knew what was 

 happening I got home a good spear. The bear roared, and 

 the way that the old mare reared up and then bolted was 

 extraordinary, I did not know she could. Well then I had 

 a rare old time ; the country was thick with natives 

 harvesting, and the bear was out for blood, but not very 

 active. The mare would not go near him, and all I could 



