Page:The Hog.djvu/65

63 animals which the natives of these islands possess, they accordingly receive great care and attention. This race is small, the belly hanging, the legs short, the tail almost imperceptible, and the color gray. Its flesh is very white and delicate.

In the woods of Columbia there are numbers of swine, but for the most part wild; and the flesh of these wild ones is far superior to that of the few that are domesticated, as that of the latter, from the animals being often fed on stale fish and all kinds of abominations, acquires a rancid and unpleasant flavor. Some of the settlers chiefly live by the sale of the flesh of wild swine, which they obtain by hunting, and then cure or dry it.

Experienced hunters will kill their fourteen or fifteen swine a-day, and a well-trained dog will often destroy two or three of these animals a-day by himself The mode of proceeding is for the dog to keep the hog at bay while the hunter creeps up, and watching his opportunity, throws his lance with such vigor as to pin the animal to the ground. This done, he rushes upon him, seizes the lance firmly with one hand, and with the other dispatches the game with his knife.

In Paraguay and Brazil, swine are likewise abundant, and for the most part wild.

The Falkland Islands were stocked with swine by the French and Spaniards, but little, if any, trace of the original breeds can now be discovered in the fierce, bristly, tusked animals now found there, some of the older ones of which rival the grisly boar in appearance and wildness.

The South-Sea Islands, on their discovery by Europeans, were found to be well stocked with a small, black, short-legged hog; the traditionary belief of the natives was, that these animals were as anciently descended as themselves. The hog, in fact, is in these islands the principal quadruped, and is of all others the most carefully cultivated. The bread-fruit tree, either in the form of a sour paste or in its natural condition, constitutes its favorite food, and its additional choice of yams, eddoes, and other nutritive vegetables, renders its flesh most juicy and delicious; its fat, though rich, being at the same time (so says Foster) not less delicate and agreeable than the finest butter. Before our missionary labors had proved so successful in these once benighted regions, by substituting the mild spirit of Christianity for the sanguinary forms of a delusive and degrading worship, the Otaheitans and other South-Sea Islanders