ground was slippery, and the unshod ponies went sliding around over it like cats on ice with clam shells tied to their feet. I weighed 265 pounds, and my small pony not over two or three times as much, and how he kept up with the others, swinging through choyallas and around thick mesquite brush is yet a mystery. [Illustration: CHASING THE JABALIS IN THE RAIN] Occasionally a horse would get a bunch of cactus in his fetlock joint, and then he would turn up his heels to let the lightning pick it out, regardless of his rider. Once or twice the peccaries were sighted as two faint gray streaks, just outlined against the dark green brush, into which they disappeared at once. Several times it looked as if we ought to overtake them in a minute or two, but that minute never came. Our Yaqui guide was valiantly to the front, making leaps over cactuses that would have shamed a kangaroo, and keeping well ahead of the horses. Suddenly he stopped and gave up the chase on the near side of a broad river, the result of the rain. His face was melancholy in the extreme, and it was known he would not give up the chase without the best of reasons, as he was to receive a month's wages (five dollars) if a _jabali_ were killed. He explained in Spanish that the party had been following the hogs with an absolute certainty of catching them, so tired had they become, when, to his dismay, the tracks of three other fresh peccaries were seen coming in at this point. Whenever fresh _jabalis_ join those worn out enough to come to bay, the latter change their minds as to fighting, and will run as long as their fresh companions hold out. We thus would have had another eight to twelve miles' chase through the slippery mud, which the horses and mules could not have endured, so exhausted were they already. We had seen the beasts, nevertheless, and in losing them had learned one of their distinct peculiarities, which fact was sufficient compensation for our first, but never to be forgotten, hunt for wild pigs. [Illustration] The peccary, as already stated, is a ferocious little beast, never hesitating, when in numbers, to attack other animals. The coyote leaves them alone if numerous, and even the mountain lion passes them to look for other game. Their tusks are deadly weapons, and they click like so many hammers when the creature is angry. If any ambitious Nimrod wants a hunt after the most peculiar game extant in the United States and Mexico he ought to take a peccary chase in Central Sonora.