Sketches From My Life: By The Late Admiral Hobart PashaHobart-Hampden, Augustus Charles
History
Sketches From My Life: By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha
Hobart-Hampden, Augustus Charles
Adventure and adventurers; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Blockades
There was, as may be supposed, great excitement among the men when the
pigs took to the water; they at once went at them, firing revolvers,
pulling after them as they swam, using language not allowed in these
refined days in the navy; and, before we got to the scene of action
they had lassoed as it were two fine pigs, and tied them to trees on the
river-side, and when we arrived were firing their revolvers at them
apparently with very little effect; however, we soon gave the animals
the _coup de grâce_. Thus we killed five pigs in our first drive. We
took the liver, alias fry, out of the pigs to eat (it is most
excellent), cut off the heads of the tuskers, and hung the remaining
parts on a tree to wait our return, changing our camp further up the
river the same night. The next morning early I took a stroll into the
woods by myself; while looking about me I saw what I thought was a large
animal sleeping in the bushes. I began accordingly to stalk him. I got
within eighty yards, put my gun up to shoot, but as I could not pitch on
a vital part to aim at, only seeing a mass of what was evidently an
animal rolled up, I went nearer and nearer; in fact, little by little, I
got within ten yards of the quarry; then I fired a ball into what I now
saw was a huge pig. No move! What did it mean? I could not have killed
it sleeping. However, I took courage and went close and put my hand on
the beast; what should it be but an immense boar lying dead in his lair.
He must have died months before I found him, as the skin fell to pieces
on being touched, the hair into powder; his head was a splendid one,
but I could only save the jawbones, in which were a grand pair of tusks.
The moral of this was that pigs, like everything else, die--sometimes
quietly in their beds, be that retreat only a lair in the forest; but it
is a rare occurrence to find relics of wild animals in so perfect a
state. I fancy their friends and relations generally eat them. The bed
or lair he was lying in was a most snug spot, and he would have been
quite invisible had not some of the brushwood been burnt away, Arab
fashion, a short time before I found him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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