ON SAFARI. RHINO AND GIRAFFE 
87 
sat down to a comfortable dinner, with game of some sort 
as the principal dish. 
On the first march after leaving our lion camp at Potha 
I shot a wart-hog. It was a good-sized sow, which, in com¬ 
pany with several of her half-grown offspring, was grazing 
near our line of march; there were some thorn-trees which 
gave a little cover, and I killed her at a hundred and eighty 
yards, using the Springfield, the lightest and handiest of all 
my rifles. Her flesh was good to eat, and the skin, as with 
all our specimens, was saved for the National Museum. 
I did not again have to shoot a sow, although I killed half- 
grown pigs for the table, and boars for specimens. This 
sow and her porkers were not rooting, but were grazing 
as if they had been antelope; her stomach contained noth¬ 
ing but chopped green grass. Wart-hogs are common 
throughout the country over which we hunted. They are 
hideous beasts, with strange protuberances on their cheeks; 
and when alarmed they trot or gallop away, holding the 
tail perfectly erect with the tassel bent forward. Usually 
they are seen in family parties, but a big boar will often be 
alone. They often root up the ground, but the stomachs of 
those we shot were commonly filled with nothing but grass. 
If the weather is cloudy or wet they may be out all day 
long, but in hot, dry weather we generally found them 
abroad only in the morning and evening. A pig is always 
a comical animal; even more so than is the case with a 
bear, which also impresses one with a sense of grotesque 
humor—and this notwithstanding the fact that both boar 
and bear may be very formidable creatures. A wart-hog 
standing alertly at gaze, head and tail up, legs straddled 
out, and ears cocked forward, is rather a figure of fun; 
