100 CENTRAL AMERICA. 



country a herd is met with, the safest plan 

 is to avoid them altogether and have nothing 

 to say to them ; but in the forest it is some- 

 times a very different affair, as the following 

 anecdote will shew. 



I was one day hunting alone, on foot, 

 with a double-barrelled smooth bore, one 

 barrel loaded with ball, the other with Num- 

 ber-two shot, in a rather (for that country) 

 open wood, when a large boar made his ap-. 

 pearance, about sixty yards off, and not seeing 

 any of his comrades, I let fly the ball-barrel 

 at him and tumbled him over. He gave a 

 fierce grunt or two as he lay, and a large 

 herd of these boars and sows immediately 

 rushed out of some thicker underwood behind 

 him, and, after looking a few seconds at the 

 fallen beast, made a dash at me ; but they 

 w^ere a trifle too late, for, on first catching 

 sight of them, I ran to a tree, cut up it for 

 life, and had only just scrambled into some 

 diverging branches, about ten feet from the 

 ground, when the whole herd arrived, grunt- 

 ing and squealing, at the foot of the tree. 

 It was the first time I had ever been tree'd^ 

 as the North Americans call it, and I could 

 not help laughing at the ridiculous figure I 

 must have cut, chased up a tree by a drove 



