I am sorry to say it is more than twenty years since I began to listen
to stories of tigers and leopards in Burma; and even more since I
first made acquaintance with the beasts myself. I do not expect to see
any more now, except in a Zoo. So perhaps it is time to note what has
been learned, to re-tell the best of what I have heard, and in short
do for others what others in days gone by have done for me. I have
always considered that the man who keeps a good story fresh is the
greatest of public benefactors.
What made me think of this in connection with cats was the recent
discovery of the truth of a story, which I have heard many times
without believing it. It was first told to me in 1891 by Burmans in
the locality where it happened. Then, and as often afterwards as it
was told, I questioned the speaker about how he knew, and never was
quite satisfied. Even the version of it in Colonel Pollok's _Wild
Sports of Burma and Assam_ (p. 65 of the 1900 edition), read like
hearsay and seemed unconvincing. At last, in 1908, Colonel Dobbs told
it to me in Coonoor, and when he was questioned he was able to delight
me with the news that he had _seen_ the thing. So here it is.
The time was 1859. The scene was the forest-covered hilly ground about
seventy miles north of Maulmain, in what is now Bilin township of
Thaton district, Burma, between the Sittang and Salween rivers. A
detachment of the 32nd Madras Native Infantry, under Captain Manley,
was marching on business there, going in single file along a footpath,
preceded by the civil officer with them, a Mr Charles Hill.
Hill was a big man, "over six feet and of great strength," and strode
ahead with a big stick in his hand, while two orderlies or servants
followed at a careless distance behind him, with his weapons. This
Chinese way of making war or hunting is almost a custom in Burma among
Europeans; and a very natural custom too, in a hot, moist climate.
Suddenly Hill came upon a tiger lying full length on the footpath,
apparently asleep. He looked round and called for his gun. It was for
the moment out of reach.
Perhaps it may be worth while to try to make the ordinary stay-at-home
Englishman, who does not know how lucky he is to be able to stay at
home, and knows a great deal less than he supposes, realise how and
why the sensations of Mr Hill were different from what his own would
have been. The first point is that Hill knew what a Londoner would
never suspect, that there was no particular cause to be afraid. If
afraid, he had only to go back a few yards, and shout, and bang the
trees with his stick. The monstrous cat would take the hint and
silently slip away. Not even a tiger in the prime of life would _seek_
a fight. He feels, what politicians are only beginning to realise in
another sphere, that fighting is bad business.
We must remember that the tiger has no medicaments, no surgical help,
no hospitals, no friends, no companions. When he crawls away to lick
his wounds, he is as solitary in a hostile world as a poor man "out of
a job," on a wet wintry night on the Thames Embankment, and suffers
and dies unaided and alone. This is not conducive to courage. So even
a tiger that has taken to eating men does not openly attack humanity,
but lies in wait for it, to take it by surprise without fighting,
seeking nothing but to get his dinner in the easiest way. Our common
criminals, and many wholesale thieves of superficial respectability,
are more dangerous than tigers because of their extra cunning, but not
different in spirit. What difference there is, is in favour of the
tiger. He is never malevolent or cruel. Like Jonathan Wild, he never
hurts anybody, except to benefit himself.
The Englishman at home will perhaps now be ready to understand the
next point that will surprise him, that the retiring habits of the
tiger make him a rare sight, even in countries where he is at home. I
have known many people who had often suffered from the depredations of
tigers, but had never seen one, just as a man's house may be burgled
more than once without his seeing any of the burglars. The tiger is
like a burglar, who comes and goes in the dark.
It is true that a globe-trotter visiting Rangoon to-day (1909) may buy
on the Pagoda steps a picture of a tiger upon the Pagoda, and be truly
told that it was seen there. Some years ago a tiger did go up the
gentle slope of the spire; and once arrived there, he stood
bewildered, as if paralysed; conspicuous, like a weather-cock upon a
steeple, looking helplessly down upon a large port like Plymouth, a
big animated and terrified target, while the soldiers shot at him till
they killed him. But though Englishmen, who knew there were tigers
always near, might think this natural, and only wonder that it did not
happen oftener, and wish it would, yet to the people of the country,
who knew the habits of tigers, it seemed portentous. Long afterwards
old men might be seen on the Pagoda platform shaking their heads
knowingly, and if you listened and understood them, you could hear
them discussing what the miracle meant. It was certainly very odd. The
poor animal must somehow have lost his reckoning. To use an
old-fashioned phrase, he was never intended for a town life, and
assuredly he never intended to try it. The Pagoda stands on the skirts
of the town, on the last bluff of the Pegu hills, and he was probably
going up it before he knew he had left the woods.
An incident that took place near the scene of Mr Hill's adventure may
be mentioned to illustrate the normal ways of the tiger. Three
officers united to assist the villagers there against a tiger that was
thinning their herds. Each of them had killed big cats before; and one
was locally famous as a hunter. His house was full of trophies,
including scores of tiger skins, of which he was as proud as ever Red
Indian was of scalps. About a hundred villagers who knew the ground
well co-operated zealously. No mistakes were made, and everybody did
his best for several days; and yet not one of the large party ever
even saw the beast they were seeking. He had not gone away. He was
lying low; and he resumed his cattle killing as soon as they stopped
hunting. The widest "beat" in woods like these is like a net flung at
random into the sea. A hunter is lucky if he averages a single glimpse
of such game for half-a-dozen days or nights out of bed. Experienced
hunters seldom go out there after tiger except to spend a night in a
tree over a "kill," which is generally a bullock killed and left half
eaten, to which the tiger may return.
So it is easy to understand why Hill was unwilling to lose sight of
this fellow, especially if Colonel Pollok is rightly informed that it
was a man-eater; for in that part of Burma the occasional man-eater is
not only a public affliction, he is also more often than not old and
decrepit. I saw one in the Sittang valley, which had killed three men
in one week, and yet was a meagre creature, with shrunken shanks and
bald, bare hide, which made him look mangy, and with only a single
whole tooth in his jaws, and two broken ones. So if Hill had heard the
rumour which Colonel Pollok believed and took this for a man-eater, he
might reasonably suppose he could take liberties. The canny Dutch
themselves have a proverb, that the hares can pull the lion's beard
when the lion has grown old.
It is a witty exaggeration, of course, as proverbs often are. In
reality, neither hares nor horses nor deer of any kind would risk
going near a lion or a tiger, however old. They shrink in horror from
the like of a tiger. I have felt a brave horse shudder at one although
he was dead, for even in death he seemed terrible. But his carcass
does not cumber long the ground. White ants have a horror of nothing,
and maggots and microbes, safe in their insignificance, are equally
impartial. Vultures, too, may serve the tiger for undertakers, as they
serve the Parsis, or the wild dogs may anticipate them. Sometimes it
has been credibly reported that the dogs begin the tiger's funeral
before he is dead, so that if only the Dutch had said "dogs" instead
of "hares" their proverb would have been _not_ wit but natural
history.
Even if Hill had never heard about this tiger being a stiff old
man-eater, he might have suspected it was one, because it was there,
upon the footpath, as if it had fallen asleep while watching for some
benighted traveller who might be caught unawares. The few seconds Hill
stood waiting for a gun would seem as many minutes, or more. In short,
it is easy to imagine how, as he watched the big beast, perhaps
stretching itself and yawning, seeming likely to step aside soon,
before a gun arrived, into a wood wherein a few steps would make it
safe from pursuit, the big strong man lost patience, and lifting his
stick with both hands he hit the tiger on the head between the eyes.
This completed the wakening process. Hill said he only saw it
disappear among the bushes at the side of the path. Meanwhile
Lieutenant Dobbs (he was _young_ Dobbs then and on duty under Captain
Manley) happened to be nearest to the front after Hill, and he and
some sepoys hurried forward. In jungle fighting you run to the
shouting, just as in ordinary war the rule used to be to march towards
the sound of the cannon. So Dobbs, running forward in this way, was in
time to see what followed. It was all over in a few seconds, and the
reproaches of the troops in some histories of the event are without
foundation. The tiger leapt out of the bush towards Hill's back, and
with a paw on each of his shoulders was seen to be biting at the back
of his neck, as if trying to get a grip. Then Hill, who had been flung
forward into a stooping posture, but kept his foothold, straightened
himself with a jerk, whirled round and thrust out his arms in front of
him, with open palms, as if pushing. "That, at least, is what it
seemed like to me," said the accurate veteran, Colonel Dobbs, and that
was how Hill described it. Then the tiger fell backwards, rolled on
his back, regained his balance with a soft, silent celerity, and
disappeared again among the bushes "almost like lightning," and was
seen no more.
Hill came staggering towards Dobbs, and fell on his face in a dead
faint. He was bleeding freely from the neck, but the bleeding was soon
stopped. "Only the upper fangs penetrated the neck," writes Colonel
Pollok. What Dobbs was sure of was only that in a short time Hill was
going about as usual, "though he complained of stiff neck for about
two years afterwards."
In 1891 the Burmans thereabouts were still speaking of him as
"Kya-ma-naing," meaning "The man that the tiger did not beat." He was
honourably known to his countrymen in Burma for the rest of his life
as "Tiger-Hill"; and the many and various versions of his adventure
might furnish texts for a book on mythology as long as Fraser's three
big volumes on the _Golden Bough_. But as nearly all the reflections
hitherto made upon it are refuted by this mere statement of the
details, the present writer will take warning from the mistakes of his
predecessors and leave readers, now in possession of the truth, to
evolve their own reflections.