32 
A BOLD BOAR, 
and ride down the steep side covered with large boulders, 
required a steady hand and nerve. I have seen a man ride 
his horse down the side of a nullah so steep that he would 
have been unable to get htm up without the greatest difificulty * 
however, the Arab horse is wonderfully surefooted ^ and if you 
keep his head straight he will hardly ever fall, as he throws 
his hind legs under him if he trips with his fore. 1 have 
known the skin to be taken off the hocks after a ride down 
one of these hills. When the boar has been driven into the 
plain below, it is often worse riding than on the hill-side, as 
there are hidden holes and fissures and deep dry nullahs or 
watercourses to get across, as the boar generally selects the 
most difficult ground he can find. The beauty of hog-hunting 
is that you are hound and huntsman combined, added to which 
there is the intense excitement and the glorious uncertainty 
of racing for the first spear, for the boar will turn and twist so 
that any one well to the front has a chance. Then, when the 
spear is held up showing first blood, you have to fight the 
boldest, pluckiest animal 1 know. 1 once saw a boar receive 
eight spears in succession, charging each time like a knight 
at a tournament, and in one of these charges he actually forced 
himself up the spear and got to the horse s flank. I rushed 
to the rescue, when he turned on me, and after receiving my 
spear, which went clean through him and was left in him, he 
sat down ready to charge the next horseman that came up. 
It is very dangerous leaving a spear in a boar, but some- 
times it cannot be helped. We fully expected to find the 
horse he had attacked badly ripped, but to our surprise he 
was unharmed. On examining the dead boar we found he 
had a broken tusk on that side — a lucky escape ! The rip of 
a boar's tusk is like the cut of a razor. I once saw a fine 
