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Among the pastimes he indulged in was one which exhibited his skill with the rifle, and at the same time protected the camp from the intrusions and ravages of a drove of razor-backed hogs which belonged to Mr. Switzler.

Several centuries of guinea-pig time went by; generation after generation of healthy guinea-pigs passed under his modifying hands; and after some five years he had in one small yard a fine group of the descendants of his gall-fed pair, and in another the offspring of the trained ones; nimble, swift, as different from the first as the razor-backed pig of the forest from the fatted porkers in the sty.

You see, he had named one of his pigs after the king, and there was more scandal over that than for all the crimes he had been guilty of; and there was a razor-backed yaller one for Tweedie, and an old sow for the queen, and porkers for the princes, and he passed insulting remarks on them till the Kanakas went wild those that weren't of Afiola's own family, I mean; and Afiola would laugh and laugh till his great pocked face grew a dirty crimson, laying on a mat with a Winchester beside him, and sniggering as they'd bring him orange beer in a calabash.

"Then, while the two big snakes thrashed around the deck, Mr. Bengal slunk away like a cat scared by a dog his tail between his legs, and the fur on his back raised up so that it looked like that of a razor-backed hog. "He went forward of the house to think it over, and the two snakes fought it out, while the lion, thinking that he had won the fight, roared and growled his defiance to the rest.

They left thirty-seven dead behind, for Ropata gave no quarter, and had not his men loitered to plunder, Te Kooti, who, still lame, was carried off on a woman's back, must have been among their prizes. Pushing on to Ngatapa, Ropata found it a very formidable stronghold. The pa was on the summit of an abrupt hill, steep and scarped on two sides, narrowing to a razor-backed ridge in the rear.

Carleton moved up the poverty-stricken country through marsh, sea-sand, pitch-pine, swamp, and plain. Here and there were the shanties of sand-hillers, negro huts, and scores of long, lank, scrimped-up, razor-backed pigs of the Congo breed, as to color; but in speed, racers, outstripping the fleetest horses.

Here and there he would have met a razor-backed hog lazily rooting his way along the principal thoroughfare; and more than once he would probably have had to disturb the slumbers of some yellow dog, dozing away the hours in the ardent sunshine, and reluctantly yielding up his place in the middle of the dusty road.

Pigs, gone back to wildness, range the ridges, each razor-backed drove captained by a gaunt, savage, slab-sided old boar. By night the bull frogs, inconceivably big and tremendously vocal, bellow under the banks. It is a wonderful place for fish bass and crappie and perch and the snouted buffalo fish.

There is a piece of water, which might easily be made very pretty, but it is allowed to turn into a quagmire. But few of the door-yards are neatly kept. The village seems to have been laid out at haphazard. Moreover, their stock is of poor breeds; the pigs especially being wretched razor-backed creatures. As to the people there can be no doubt that they are happy and contented.

Among the pastimes he indulged in was one which exhibited his skill with the rifle, and at the same time protected the camp from the intrusions and ravages of a drove of razor-backed hogs which belonged to Mr. Switzler.