kicking at your own horse, he spoils your sport, throws you out of the
chase, and you are lucky if you do not receive some ugly cut or bruise
from his too active heels. There is the great beauty of a well trained
Arab or country-bred; if you get a spill, he waits beside you till you
recover your faculties, and get your bellows again in working order; if
you are riding a Cabool, or even a waler, it is even betting that he
turns to bite or kick you as you lie, or he rattles off in pursuit of
your more firmly seated friends, spoiling their sport, and causing the
most fearful explosions of vituperative wrath.

There is something to me intensely exciting in all the varied incidents
of a rattling burst across country after a fighting old grey boar. You
see the long waving line of staves, and spear heads, and quaint shaped
axes, glittering and fluctuating above the feathery tops of the swaying
grass. There is an irregular line of stately elephants, each with its
towering howdah and dusky mahout, moving slowly along through the
rustling reeds. You hear the sharp report of fireworks, the rattling
thunder of the big _doobla_ or drum, and the ear-splitting clatter of
innumerable _tom-toms_. Shouts, oaths, and cries from a hundred noisy
coolies, come floating down in bursts of clamour on the soft morning
air. The din waxes and wanes as the excited beaters descry a 'sounder'
of pig ahead; with a mighty roar that makes your blood tingle, the
frantic coolies rally for the final burst. Like rockets from a tube,
the boar and his progeny come crashing through the brake, and separate
before you on the plain. With a wild cheer you dash after them in hot
pursuit; no time now to think of pitfalls, banks, or ditches; your
gallant steed strains his every muscle, every sense is on the alert,
but you see not the bush and brake and tangled thicket that you leave
behind you. Your eye is on the dusky glistening hide and the stiff
erect bristles in front; the shining tusks and foam-flecked chest are