74 Unexplored Spain 
are quite formidable adversaries. We have many such in our 
Coto Dofiana—boars that, having once overmastered our hounds, 
practically defy us. Each of these old solitary tuskers occupies 
some densely briared stronghold—it may be but an isolated patch 
of jungle, scarce half an acre in extent, or alternatively, a little 
sequence of similar thickets, each connected by intervals of lighter 
bush. Such spots abound by the hundred, but once the lair of 
our bristled friend is found, then there is work cut out for man, 
horse, and hound. For long-drawn-out minutes the silence of 
the wilderness re-echoes with doubly concentrated fury—frantic 
hound-music mingled with lower accompaniment of sullen, savage 
snorts and grunts and the champing of tusks; then a sharp 
crunch of breaking boughs and the death-yell of a podenco 
tells that that blow has got home. But the seat of war remains 
unchanged—the same rush and the same fatal result are repeated. 
Presently some venturous hound may discover an entry from 
behind. The enemy’s flank is turned, and with a crash that 
seems to shake the very earth, our boar retreats to a second 
stronghold only twenty yards away. All this is occurring 
within arm’s length; one hears, can almost feel, the stress 
of mortal combat, but one sees nothing inside the mural foliage, 
nor knows what moment the enemy may sally forth. Such 
moments may even excite what are termed in Spanish phrase 
‘* emotions.” 
In his second ‘‘ Plevna” our boar is secure, and he knows it. 
With rear and flanks protected by a revétement of gnarled roots 
and a labyrinth of stems, he fears nothing behind, while the 
furiously baying hounds on his front he now utterly despises. 
Blank shots fired in the air alarm him not, nor will Pepe Espinal 
—in a service of danger—succeed in dislodging him with a 
goarrocha, after a perilous climb along the briar-matted roof. 
That boar is victor—master of a stricken field. 
One human resource remains, to go in é arma blanca—with 
the cold steel. There are dashing spirits who will do this—in 
Spain we have seen such. But to crawl thus, prostrate, into the 
dark and gloomy tunnels that form a wild-boar’s fortress, inter- 
cepted and obstructed on every side, there to attack in single 
combat a savage beast, still unhurt and in the flush of victory, 
pachydermatous, and whose fighting weight far exceeds your 
own — well, that we place in the category of pure recklessness. 
