HUNTING PECCARIES IN TEXAS, 389 
get it free. The planters amuse themselves very much by 
relating these adventures, as there are many mirth-provoking 
scrapes connected with them. 
My first adventure with the peccaries I shall never forget. 
I was stopping with a planter on Caney Creek for a few 
days of rest and recreation. He was an old friend from my 
native State, had been one of the early emigrants to Texas, 
and was now settled with his brothers on a magnificent 
plantation, of which their joint enterprise had made them 
possessors. I was yet comparatively a new-comer, young, 
eager, and withal the tragic incidents of my late initiation to 
such life, an enthusiastic sportsman. Of course, I listened 
curiously to their many relations of adventures in the chase, 
which always form the chief topic of the social intercourse of 
the border. It happened that the Peccaries had lately been 
doing much mischief to their crops of grain, and as they 
had been hunting them with great zeal and wrath, they 
formed the principal theme of denunciation and narrative. 
Their invective became quite amusing as they took me out 
to show me several of their finest dogs, which had been 
disabled by the shocking mutilation received in accidental 
meetings with this fierce little animal. I say accidental, 
because no dog could be found hardy enough to hunt it, after 
having had one taste of its quality. The eldest brother told 
me of a meeting with them the day before. He had walked 
out with his rifle into a field of grain, on the border of the 
plantation, to look for fresh traces of the bear, which, 
together with the Peccary, had almost utterly destroyed his 
corn. Here, by way of parenthesis, he exclaimed, “And I 
did find the tracks of a whopping old he!” 
“Tet us go hunting him then, this morning!” we all 
exclaimed in a breath. 
“Well, well, we'll see.” 
When near the outside fence, he suddenly came upon a 
drove of Peccaries in the very act of demolishment. It was 
