R VI.--A PECCARY HUNT ON THE NUECES.

In the United States the peccary is only found in the southernmost
corner of Texas. In April 1892, I made a flying visit to the ranch
country of this region, starting from the town of Uvalde with a Texan
friend, Mr. John Moore. My trip being very hurried, I had but a couple
of days to devote to hunting.

Our first halting-place was at a ranch on the Frio; a low, wooden
building, of many rooms, with open galleries between them, and verandas
round about. The country was in some respects like, in others strangely
unlike, the northern plains with which I was so well acquainted. It
was for the most part covered with a scattered growth of tough,
stunted mesquite trees, not dense enough to be called a forest, and
yet sufficiently close to cut off the view. It was very dry, even as
compared with the northern plains. The bed of the Frio was filled with
coarse gravel, and for the most part dry as a bone on the surface, the
water seeping through underneath, and only appearing in occasional
deep holes. These deep holes or ponds never fail, even after a year's
drought; they were filled with fish. One lay quite near the ranch house,
under a bold rocky bluff; at its edge grew giant cypress trees. In
the hollows and by the watercourses were occasional groves of pecans,
live-oaks, and elms. Strange birds hopped among the bushes; the
chaparral cock--a big, handsome ground-cuckoo of remarkable habits, much
given to preying on small snakes and lizards--ran over the ground with
extraordinary rapidity. Beautiful swallow-tailed king-birds with rosy
plumage perched on the tops of the small trees, and soared and flitted
in graceful curves above them. Blackbirds of many kinds scuttled
in flocks about the corrals and outbuildings around the ranches.
Mocking-birds abounded, and were very noisy, singing almost all the
daytime, but with their usual irritating inequality of performance,
wonderfully musical and powerful snatches of song being interspersed
with imitations of other bird notes and disagreeable squalling.
Throughout the trip I did not hear one of them utter the beautiful love
song in which they sometimes indulge at night.

The country was all under wire fence, unlike the northern regions, the
pastures however being sometimes many miles across. When we reached the
Frio ranch a herd of a thousand cattle had just been gathered, and two
or three hundred beeves and young stock were being cut out to be dr