34 FINE SPORTING COUNTRY. 



and a grouse. Pig shooting is tame work, but 

 spearing them on horseback, as they do in India, as 

 Captain Blackwood described to me, would, I have 

 no doubt, be admirable sport, and the country is 

 well adapted for it — a succession of covers and open 

 undulating plains. It would, however, require a 

 larger breed of horses than they now have in Java, or 

 the rider would be buried in the grass if he came to 

 a patch of alang alang, and would not be able to see 

 the chase. We did not hear of any Dutch gentle- 

 men who were sportsmen ; but had Java continued 

 in the English possession, I have no doubt it would 

 ere this have been celebrated for its field sports. 

 Pigs, especially, are so numerous as to be a perfect 

 nuisance to the inhabitants, who, as Mahomedans, 

 do not eat pork, but are delighted to see them killed ; 

 while of tigers there is no lack, from all we heard, 

 even in our short excursion in the country. Bears 

 are to be found, and wild buffalo, the most danger- 

 ous of all animals to meet with, and far more 

 dreaded by the natives than the tiger himself. The 

 rhinoceros is confined, I believe, to the most wild 

 and uninhabited parts of the southern coast in the 

 native dominions, but, as I was afterwards informed, 

 was sometimes to be found in the highest part of the 

 volcanic mountains of the interior. 



