78 Unexplored Spain 
me. The dash of that onset was splendid to watch. Luckily 
he had a yard or two of soft bog to get through, but it was 
necessary to stop him with another bullet. 
Impressive is the mental sensation aroused when any savage 
wild-beast—normally the object of pursuit—suddenly turns the 
tables and becomes the aggressor. The actual incident is 
necessarily but momentary, yet its effect remains graven on the 
tablets of memory. Pity ’tis so rare. 
Again we conclude with an independent impression by 
J. OL Go 
Never a visit to the Coto Dofiana but brings some separate experi- 
ence—possibly more pleasurable in retrospect than reality! I will 
instance my first interview with wild-boars. Now, of course, I know more 
about them and can almost regard them with serenity; but at that time, 
believe me, it was not so. That first encounter at really close quarters 
occurred at the close of a long day’s work. My post was behind a 
twelve-inch pine on an otherwise bare hill, the reverse slope of which 
dipped down to dense bamboo-thickets just out of my sight, though close 
by. Within a few minutes commenced and continued the hullabaloo of 
hounds. Close glued to my pine-trunk I listened in tense excitement. 
Suddenly, ere I had quite realised such possibility, there rushed into 
view on the ridge, not twenty paces distant, a great shaggy grey boar. 
He had dashed up the steep bank beyond and was now making direct for 
my legs. This is not the confession of a nervous man, but it did occur 
to me that truer safety lay.in the fork of my tree! but B. was the next gun, 
only sixty or seventy yards away, and keenly interested. In a moment I 
was myself again; but the interval had been, to say the least, painfully 
enthralling. I had, of course, to wait till the great “Havato~ had 
crossed my “firing-lines.” He certainly saw something, for he paused 
momentarily, took rapid counsel, and bolted past. Nerves were steady now, 
and once across the line the boar had my right in the ribs, left in flank. 
I actually saw blood spurt—hair fly—at each shot, yet the boar 
followed on his course unmoved. Pachydermatous pig! I pondered 
while reloading. Ten seconds later on my boar’s sleuth follows Boca- 
Negra, a veritable Beth Gelert. Utterly ignoring me, he passes away into 
gloom and silence; but shortly I see him coming back, blood-stained and 
satiated, and my self-respect returns. Ten minutes later, a second tusker 
gallops along the hollow behind. Him also my right caught fair in 
the ribs—only a few inches left of the heart, yet again without visible 
result. The second bullet, however, broke his spine as he ascended the 
sand-bank beyond, and he fell stone dead. When the beat was over we 
followed No. 1. He also lay still, 200 yards away—a pair of first-rate 
tuskers. 
