f the Malays or Europeans who
are working by their side. Perhaps once a month, a tiger or his skin
will be brought into the city by natives, and several times at night
I have heard them in the jungle; but to my knowledge only three have
been shot by European sportsmen during my residence in the island. So
wild pigs really remain the one item of big game.

The pigs live in the jungle bordering plantations in which they can
range for pineapples, sweet potatoes, and tapioca root. They are
the ordinary wild hog, black in color, and fleet of foot. The older
ones have good-sized tusks and show fight when cornered. The lone
sportsman has very little chance of obtaining a shot, so they are
hunted in large companies of from five to fifteen guns. Such parties
generally organize a hunt at least once a week and leave Singapore
early in the morning for an all-day shoot.

The pig hunts organized by the officers of the Royal Artillery are
the largest, and as a description of one is a description of all,
I will take one up in regular order, rather than quote from many.

We left Singapore at six o'clock in the morning in a four-horse
dray. As the sun had not reached the tops of the trees, the
atmosphere was mild and pleasant. A half-hour took us outside the
great cosmopolitan city, of three hundred thousand inhabitants. The
low, cool bungalows with their wide-spreading lawns gave place to
the grass-thatched huts of the Chinese coolies, and the omnipresent
eating-stalls. A hard-packed road carried us through almost endless
cocoanut groves. At intervals a Malay kampong, or village, was
revealed in the heart of the grove, its queer attap-thatched houses
raised a man's height from the ground, and connected with it by rickety
ladders. Dozens of nude little children played under the shadow of the
palms, while the comely faces and syrah-stained teeth of their mothers
peeped at us from behind low barred windows. The cocoanut groves were
superseded by tapioca, pepper, and coffee plantations. At regular
distances were neat stations, manned by Malay and Sikh police. The
roads over which we dashed were in perfect repair. In another hour
we were nine miles from Singapore and near our first "beat."

Major Rich had sent his shikaris on the night before to collect
beaters, so that when we arrived we were welcomed by a small
army of Klings, Tamils, and Malays, and the usual sprinkling of
pariah dogs. A wild, strange set are these beaters. They toil