Past Perfect: A Wild Hog Chase

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Sir Edwin Arnold (1832–1904) was an English poet, journalist and Orientalist. In 1852 while attending University College in Oxford he won the Newdigate Prize for his poem “Feast of Belshazzar.” Later, after serving as principal of a college in India, he returned to England and joined the Daily Telegraph, where he became editor. His interests remained in the East, and he traveled to Japan and back to India whenever possible. His writing was heavily influenced by that part of the world, and Arnold is most noted for The Light of Asia, an Indian epic about the life of Buddha. Arnold later wrote a similar (but not so well received) poem about Jesus called The Light of the World. He was made a Companion of the Star of India and Knight Commander of the Indian Empire.

Following is an excerpt from Arnold’s Wandering Words (1894) describing a rather obscure evening pastime on the Jericho plain:

Meantime all this discursive and irrepressible retrospect springs from a question asked of me, whether I recollected any special incident of travel in the Holy Land. I do, indeed, remember a curious night passed there, full of solemn and far-reaching thoughts, mingled with the most incongruous scenes and pursuits. It was a night spent on the plain of Jericho in shooting wild boar amid the company of the Arabs of Er-Riha—that is to say, the “village of the strong odour”—which place is, by the way, very justly named. My sister and I had ridden over the arid hills from Jerusalem to the Ghôr, as the deep depression is called wherein lies the Dead Sea. We took an escort of Turkish soldiers, for the district was dangerous, and especially so about that particular locality on our way where “the man fell among thieves.” From the brow of the western range, where they locate the “Mount of Temptation,” you look into the deep, hot hollow of the “Sea of Lot” (Bahr-Lut), and all over the lower portion of the Jordan’s course. The impetuous river, hastening to die, rushes through the thickets of thorn and reed beds into the great, still caldron of the brimming lake, and makes a long line of whitish water where it enters the thick and foul basin. Then it perishes, like everything else around …

The surrounding scenery is not without a wild and desolate beauty. Beyond the Sea of Death the mountains of Moab present that fine, serrated ridge called by Lamartine “Une ligne droite tracée par une main tremblante” [a straight line traced by a trembling hand], and in the changing influences of sunrise and sunset show alternately rose-pink, purple, blue and blood-red. The vast plain of the Ghôr stretches from range to range, apparently rich in vegetation and strangely pretty. Nevertheless most of the foliage is of the dry glossy nebbuk, the bush of barrenness, mingled with the Dead Sea apple, a kind of thorn on the hideous and acrid fruit of which the Arabs say the damned in hell daily feed. Still there are springs and trickling streams here and there, which render a sparse, fitful cultivation possible; and such occasional crops, together with the natural roots and berries, bring the wild pig to the spot, in quest of whom we were to sally forth as soon as the moon rose, about 9 p.m.

I shall not easily forget that odd, savage, sleepless night, between solemn hills that shut out Jerusalem on the west and the dark rampart of the Moabitish mountains on the east … the desert people, unused to justice, were anxious to show me good sport with “the accursed beast.” We sallied forth in single file silently under the bright moonlight, and brought up in an open space with the Arabs in company and eight or ten mangy, prick-eared dogs, which did not appear very likely to tackle such boars as I had known in India. I carried a double gun loaded with buckshot and my cook’s 070green handled knife in my belt. My dragoman had his sabre only, and the Arabs their matchlocks and spears. We squatted a long time on the sand, every dog receiving instantly a tremendous blow with a cudgel if he fought his fellows or barked, for it was to be essentially a still hunt.

“What do we wait for?” I presently asked, and the answer given was, “We are waiting for El-Nimr.” This I supposed would prove some doughty hunter, styled “the Tiger” for his personal qualities, but it turned out to be a famous dog infallible at scenting and fighting pigs, which dog presently came up in the society of a master as ugly as himself. A one-eared, scarred, battered, cock-eyed mongrel cur it was, but El-Nimr knew his business thoroughly, and being by-and-bye ordered to seek for game, disappeared in the thick bushes, we silently following.

The method of the strange chase turned out to be this:—Everybody, including the dogs, had to attend patiently and respectfully upon “the Tiger” who again and again emerged from the cover, mute and wistful, without any results; but after two miles of wandering we heard a low yelp from him at a distance, and immediately all the other dogs sprang silently into the thicket, going off, ventre a terre [at a great speed], toward the sound. Soon El-Nimr raised a short, sharp howl of certainty, and my dragoman exclaimed, “Now we shall get wild pork!” The rest of the scratch pack joined hereupon in a hoarse uproar, making the wandering jackals yell and fly, and we all ran hard in the direction of the clamour, to find the centre of it a dense clump of prickly thorns and nebbuk, where apparently a pig had taken refuge. Animated by our approach, “the Tiger” went boldly into the darkness, and soon forth into the moonlight jumped the unhappy hog, which fell to an easy double shot at close quarters from my gun. However, as nearly every Arab also blazed off his matchlock, and madly danced in the way of his fellows, I saw there would be manslaughter as well as “wild pork” if we continued such a loose, illegitimate pastime, and therefore gave the word to go back to camp, especially as we had already obtained a pair of tusks and enough forbidden meat for all the Christians in our camp. Needless to say, the Arabs and Turks would not touch the unclean creature, which nevertheless affords no bad food when young …

But the chief attraction of that singular nocturnal chase was the scene itself. The deadly pallid sheet of the Sea of Lot stretching away to Petra and Egypt; the hills so full of history and religion, this side and that; the dark patches of bitter thorn glittering in the moonlight, with here and there a whispering palm-tree standing high among them, suggesting Zacchaeus and the days of the journey to Jericho, with close at hand “Bethabara, beyond Jordan,” and the very pool of the ancient river quite near us, where our Lord Himself underwent baptism. What a locality for a hunting party! … But it did seem ridiculous and well-nigh irreverent to be chasing wild hogs over such a sporting ground.

Sir Edwin Arnold (1832–1904) was an English poet, journalist and Orientalist. In 1852 while attending University College in Oxford he won the Newdigate Prize for his poem “Feast of Belshazzar.” Later, after serving as principal of a college in India, he returned to England and joined the Daily Telegraph, where he became editor. His interests remained in the East, and he traveled to Japan and back to India whenever possible. His writing was heavily influenced by that part of the world, and Arnold is most noted for The Light of Asia, an Indian epic about the life of Buddha. […]