Cuar. X.] MODE OF FRIGHTENING WILD BOARS. 179 
the mountains, my chance would have been a bad 
one. The fate of my predecessor, Mr. Douglas, 
who perished in a pit of this kind on the Sandwich 
Islands, must still be fresh in the recollection of 
many of my readers, and his melancholy end 
naturally coming to my mind at the time, made 
me doubly thankful for my escape. 
The other method of protecting the young 
bamboos from the ravages of the wild boar, is an 
ingenious one. A piece of bamboo wood, about 
eight or ten feet long, and rather thicker than a 
man’s arm, is split up the middle to within a fourth 
of its length. This is made fast to a tree in the 
bamboo thicket, and at an angle of about forty-five 
degrees, the split part being left loose, a cord, 
also made of bamboo, is fastened to it by one end, 
and the other is led to some convenient place out 
of the thicket, where a man is stationed. When 
the boars come down in the dead of night to 
attack the young shoots, the man pulls the rope 
backwards and forwards, and clank, clank, clank 
goes the bamboo, producing a loud and hollow 
sound, which on a quiet evening may be heard at a 
great distance. ‘The animals are frightened and 
make off to their dens on the hills. The first time 
I heard these things beating at night, all over the 
country, I imagined that some religious ceremony 
was going on, the hollow sounds of the bamboo 
being not unlike those produced by an instrument 
used in the Budhist worship in all Chinese temples. 
There are a large number of Budhist temples 
nN 2 
