During two or three evenings we had great fun near the town of Pietermaritzburg in blocking out porcupines. I nearly ran over one on horseback one day, and narrowly escaped getting his quills in my horse's legs. They spread their quills wide, and run backwards very fast, thus presenting a _chevaux-de-frise_ anything but agreeable. This one dodged about round me, now running through the grass quite fast, then stopping and backing, so that I could with difficulty keep my usually well-behaved shooting-pony from actually turning tail, and in consequence fired both bullets without any satisfactory result. In a few minutes he came to his hole, a place big enough for a man to live in near the entrance, that had evidently formerly been occupied by some able excavator, probably an ant-bear. I could not get at the "fretful" in this retreat, but on arriving at home consulted with my Kaffirs, who agreed that we would get some dogs, and go out soon after the moon rose. We did so, armed with knob-kerries and assagies; and placing two sentries over the hole, we sent the dogs on the traces, having discovered that he was out for the night. We soon heard the yelping of the curs, and ran to the spot. The porcupine was coming along in a great fuss with the dogs all round him; assagies and sticks were hurled at him, while he dodged amongst the Kaffirs' naked legs, who jumped about with wonderful activity. A blow on the nose at last finished him. At this place two gentleman attempted to play on me a very silly trick, that might have led to very serious consequences, had it not been for the greatest caution on the part of myself and another individual. A party of five had been dining together, when, at about 10 p.m., a commissariat officer and I, who were two of the five, left the others, and mounted our horses for the purpose of riding round the edge of the Berea, on the chance of finding an elephant outside it, as I had heard several feeding in the bush as I returned from shooting in the afternoon of this day.