262 SPORT IX BENGAL. 



For some moments after turning eastward along the 

 sand, I confess my mind was more occupied by the scenery, 

 then new to me, than aught else, but the round stern of a 

 boar trotting on in front recalled me to the business of the 

 day. The pig sauntered on leisurely, stopping here and 

 there, snout to the sand, as if bent upon some interesting 

 investigation ; anon turning up the sand and munching 

 something apparently very toothsome and dainty. Curious 

 to learn what he was at, I followed silently, and discovered 

 that he was diligently engaged in hunting and eating crabs, 

 which ran about in hundreds above the wash of the waves, 

 and on being disturbed made each for his own particular 

 hole in the sand, or if cut off therefrom ran into the water. 

 They were the kind common on this coast, bright red in 

 colour, and about the size of a shilling to a half-crown piece. 

 The boar sniffing at a hole, and finding its occupant at home, 

 turned up the sand with his snout, and if successful in 

 catching the householder, the latter was at once snapped up 

 and eaten. Having no quarrel with him, I gave the boar 

 a loud good morning, which startled him very considerably, 

 and caused him to make off in a great hurry into the forest, 

 with loud grunts expressive of the utmost alarm and surprise 

 at an object probably quite new to him. 



As I walked along the beach I noticed that it was 

 covered with the footprints of deer and wild hog, which had 

 passed over it since midnight, when the tide was at the full, 

 and made it their playground in the bright moonlight, having 

 in some places run round and round, in the enjoyment of the 

 balmy sea-air, in complete safety, since there they could not 

 be surprised by their fell tyrant the tiger, or the still more 

 horrible python. 



When I had covered a mile of beach I came upon an 

 opening in the woods on my left, looking as if the trees there 

 had been laid low by some terrific tornado, and had given 

 place to a growth of bushes and dwarf palm over some forty 

 or fifty acres. Entering the glade cautiously, I put up in it 

 a large herd of spotted deer, which, scattering right and left, 



