ELEPHANTS
God’s Acre—Major Rogers’ grave—Elephants—Export of elephants—Leopards—
Sambur deer or elk—Red deer—Moose deer—Spotted deer.
There is one spot at Nuwara Eliya which to me has a very pathetic
interest—namely, the neglected old burial-ground where sleep so many of
the early pioneers. Brackens and other ferns, tall spikes of lobelia,
and trails of bramble, veil many a nameless grave and long-neglected
monument, overshadowed by kindly trees.
It is a sweet sunny spot, and I came on it by chance while seeking for
the best point from which to sketch the Governor’s cottage, with the
grand blue cone of Kiklomani as a background, and to the right the dark
wooded range at the base of Pidura-tala-galla.
The monuments are in the solid brick-and-mortar and stone style, which
certainly lack beauty till the softening touch of time has clothed them
with mosses and lichens. But one[68] has a very peculiar interest,
having been riven asunder by lightning, which, strange to say, was also
the cause of the death of him whose body rests here—namely, Major Rogers
of the Ceylon Rifles, of whom the stone records that he was ‘Stricken to
death in the Happootalle Pass on the 7th of June, 1845, aged forty-one
years.’ He was long commandant of the little fort at Badulla, in the
heart of the country, which in those days was so overrun by all manner
of destructive wild animals that the sportsman who could best thin their
ranks, and especially those of the crop-devouring and all-destroying
herds of wild elephants, was the truest benefactor of mankind—a fact
which it is essential to bear in mind in view of the amazing number of
about 1,600 elephants which fell to Major Rogers’ own rifle. He kept
count of each up to 1,300, and after that gave up reckoning, but the
extra 300 is considered well within the mark. Up to about 1840 it was by
no means uncommon for a man to have killed a hundred elephants to his
own gun.
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Footnote 68:
The monuments next to this bear the names of Ebenezer Gordon Munro,
Sir William Rough, Colonel Peddie, and Edward Septimus Hodges of
Dorchester.
-----
In these days when sportsmen have to pay ten rupees—equal to about
15_s._—for a special licence for each separate elephant they shoot,
those who cannot realise the totally changed conditions of these forest
districts in the last fifty years are very apt to talk about ‘wholesale
massacre’ and ‘useless cruelty.’ If those who blame the pioneers so
readily could have spent a few years with my brother at Batticaloa, and
seen something of the ever-recurring heart-breaking devastation of his
cocoa-nut plantations by the elephant legions, they might understand why
it was that in those days Government offered a reward of 10_s._ for the
destruction of each of the great hungry creatures, whose carcasses
helped to manure the crops they sought to devour.
Of course it is pitiful to think of the many poor beasts which merely
serve as targets for unskilful shots, and are left to die in slow
torture in Eastern forests or British coverts, but certainly in that
respect Major Rogers was peculiarly happy, for his aim was so unerring
that comparatively few creatures which received his first bullet
survived to suffer long.
Elephant-shooting in Ceylon is, however, a very different matter from
what it is in Africa—the Asiatic elephant being so much smaller, and so
rarely possessed of tusks. Out of the legion slain by Major Rogers only
about sixty were tuskers, and of these, few had ivory equal to average
African tusks—the large majority being only provided with small tushes
like those of the females, rarely exceeding six inches in length, and
projecting with downward curve. These are frequently broken or worn
down, but are still useful to the animal in barking trees or otherwise
amusing itself.
In India, as in Ceylon, the female elephant never has tusks, but a much
larger proportion of males in the forests of the mainland are thus
endowed. In Africa both male and female have good ivory, a tuskless
elephant being comparatively rare. My brother Roualeyn, when in South
Africa, secured one tusk 10 feet 8 inches in length, and which weighed
173 lbs. In India a tusk five feet in length and weighing 36 lb. is
considered exceptionally fine, though there is a tradition of a tusk
weighing 90 lb., and eight feet in length.
The Asiatic elephant differs in many respects from its great African
kinsman. The latter has a projecting forehead and high skull; its
enormous ears actually meet over the shoulders: whereas the forehead of
the Indian elephant is actually sunken, and its skull is so depressed on
the summit that it forms two distinct humps. The ears are very much
smaller than those of the African, and less useful as fly-flaps. But the
animal is altogether smaller, and its legs are shorter in proportion to
its size.
A singular difference between the elephant of Ceylon and that of the
mainland is that the former (like that of Sumatra), though distinctly
smaller than the Indian elephant, is nevertheless provided with an extra
pair of ribs and dorsal vertebræ, the Indian having nineteen of each and
the Ceylon elephant having twenty.
With regard to height, it is somewhat disillusioning to ascertain how
much smaller elephants in general are than they are represented in most
picture-books. Colonel Forbes-Leslie says that during eleven years,
during which he had charge of an establishment in Ceylon for the capture
of elephants, he found that out of several hundred, only three exceeded
nine feet in height.
Even in India, Mr. Sanderson, a very great authority, states that out of
hundreds of elephants he has measured, the largest has never exceeded 10
feet 7-1/2 inches. He says he has often heard of enormous elephants, but
has invariably found that, when subjected to the measuring-tape, they
(with the single exception above noticed) never exceeded ten feet in
height. He inserted a request for information on the subject in Indian
newspapers, and offered an order on any gunmaker for the best
double-barrelled rifle, to any one who could produce evidence of an
elephant even eleven feet high. Accounts of giants poured in, but none
stood the test of inquiry.
The African elephant slightly exceeds this average. A new-born baby
elephant stands about three feet in height. They are dark-brown hairy
creatures, but they soon rub off their hair, and become lighter in
colour.
There are records of elephantine ‘Changs’—giants which are said to have
attained to a height of twenty feet. The inaccuracy of over-estimation
may, however, account for these figures as well as for more recent
errors. But in the museum at St. Petersburg there is a skeleton, sixteen
and a half feet high, of an elephant sent to the Czar Peter by the King
of Persia.
Fossil remains also have been found at Jubbulpore of elephants which
must have measured fully fifteen feet to the shoulder.
In our own Oxford Museum are the vertebræ and thigh-bone of one which
must have stood at least sixteen feet. It was found at Abingdon,
together with bones of the rhinoceros and various species of deer. At
Hoxton, too, a skull was dug up with tusks of enormous length, and most
of the large teeth perfect. Similar fossil remains of elephantine
skeletons and teeth have been dug up in the very streets of London,
Oxford, and various other parts of England.
Of the multitude of elephants which overran Ceylon even in the middle of
this century, some idea may be formed from the fact, referred to by Sir
Samuel Baker, of three first-rate shots having in three days bagged 104
elephants.
The really distressing part of such slaughter is the waste of so much
good meat, as it never seems to occur to the hungriest Singhalese to eat
elephant steak or stew. Of course all good Buddhists are by way of being
vegetarians, but the rule on that point is so elastic, that it is
reduced to refraining from killing or giving the order of death for any
animal. If other people choose to incur the sin of taking life, the best
Buddhist may without sin eat of the meat provided,[69] and any sort of
venison (or any meat which, when smoked and dried, can be passed off as
venison) is most acceptable, but not elephant. (Buddha himself is said
to have eaten freely of the flesh of wild pig.)
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Footnote 69:
Buddhism is a nice school for casuists. The Buddhist, who would on no
account kill cockroaches, turns in his chickens to eat them. Fishers
will not kill fishes, but lay them on the shore to die; they say they
are not to blame for the fishes’ peculiarities of breathing. So with
regard to serpents, they will not kill them, but cradle them in
baskets or spathes of palm-blossom and float them down the river,
hoping that they may be drowned.
-----
In Africa, on the other hand, the death of an elephant means a feast for
hungry tribes, and every morsel of the carcass is consumed. There,
however, such is the havoc by ivory hunters, that the country south of
the Zambesi is already well-nigh cleared, and no wonder, when we
consider that the twenty-five tons of ivory annually required by one
English firm (Messrs. Rodgers & Sons, of Sheffield) involves the death
of eight hundred tusk elephants! How rarely people investing in nice
ivory-handled knives think of such antecedents!
Wonderful to relate, in all his prolonged warfare with the lords of the
forest, Major Rogers only came to grief once; that was on December 29,
1841, when exploring a new forest track near Hambantota. He had done a
good deal of execution all the morning, and was following a herd of
elephants, and had fired twice at one of them, when it turned, and in a
moment caught him in its trunk and flourished him about as if he had
been an infant. It carried him towards a stream, but dropped him on the
sloping ground, and again and again attempted to crush him with its
great head, while emitting the most awful roars.
Happily the sloping ground frustrated its efforts, and each time Major
Rogers slipped from under it, till both reached the bed of the stream.
Then the elephant tried to lift him by his clothes, which happily were
very old, and gave way in every direction, so that he was nearly
stripped. Then the great creature played ball with him, kicking him from
its fore to its hind legs, and back again. Just then the elephant
suddenly jerked up its head and got entangled in some jungle ropes
(vines), which evidently alarmed it, awakening suspicions of a trap.
Major Rogers lay perfectly still, feigning death, and when the elephant
got disengaged from the vines it moved off as if satisfied, avoiding
treading on its victim, but flourishing his torn garments, and
trumpeting hideously.
The result of this encounter was that the left shoulder was dislocated,
the left arm broken in two places and otherwise severely contused, two
serious hurts on the right side, and a general all-overish consciousness
of having been severely battered. He was fifty miles from home, with an
intervening mountain 4,000 feet high to be crossed. However, his men
rallied round him, and carried him safely back to Badulla, where he
continued his work as a most efficient assistant Government Agent till
the fatal day when, as he was crossing the Haputale Pass, a most
appalling thunderstorm came on, and he took refuge in a rest-house which
then stood on the edge of the forest. (The forest is now the Sherwood
estate, and the rest-house was accidentally burnt.)
There he found friends who were also detained by the heavy downpour of
rain, and Major Rogers stepped on to the verandah to see if there were
any symptom of the storm passing away. As he turned to re-enter the
house, a blinding flash of lightning was followed by a deafening
thunder-crash—the central pole of the triumphal arch (_pandal_) before
the house was riven, the horses and coolies in the back verandah and
out-houses were all struck down, not seriously injured however, but poor
Rogers fell forward with his face to the door, dead. It was evident that
the electric fluid had been attracted by his brass military spurs, for
one heel was discoloured.[70]
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Footnote 70:
In a country so subject to the awful majesty of tropical
thunderstorms, these are responsible for many casualties. In June 1884
a thunderbolt fell right upon a drinking and gambling den, concealed
in the heart of the jungle at Kanduboda. Of the ten men present one
was killed, three were on the following day reported to be dying, and
all the others more or less injured. A very ghastly case occurred in
May 1891. Three men had gone out fishing in a canoe, when a storm set
in and the canoe was stricken by lightning. All three lost
consciousness; and when at length one man revived, he found one of his
companions dead, and the other unconscious and badly singed. With
great difficulty he contrived to bring the canoe back to Colombo with
its sad freight.
-----
Instead of carrying him back to lay him at Badulla, where he had so long
ruled wisely and well, his body was carried to Nuwara Eliya, there to be
laid in the peaceful God’s Acre, just 4,000 feet nearer heaven than at
Badulla, but there by a most strange coincidence his tomb was no sooner
finished than it likewise was stricken by ‘fire from heaven’; and we can
scarcely wonder that a people who (theoretically) hold all life sacred
(though they had never hesitated to petition Major Rogers to be their
benefactor by slaying as many as possible of the elephants which
devastated their fields and gardens) believed that these fiery flashes
were in very deed the ministers of heaven’s righteous retribution on one
who had dealt such destruction to the brute creation.
Yet so truly did they appreciate his justice and ability, and so greatly
was he personally loved that, at the suggestion of a Kandyan Buddhist
chief, these very people subscribed for and erected to his memory a
pretty little Christian church in the town of Badulla: for they said,
‘We Buddhists build a Vihara to the memory of an eminent Buddhist,
therefore it is fitting that Major Rogers, a Christian, should have his
memory perpetuated by a church of his faith.’
So Badulla owes her church to this ‘the most active official, the most
prominent planting pioneer, and the most famous sportsman Ceylon ever
saw.’ Of him Major Skinner wrote that ‘At the time of his death he was
performing, to the entire satisfaction of the Government and the public,
the offices of Government Agent for the district of Uva, District Judge,
Commandant of the district, and Assistant in charge of the roads of the
province—duties which, after his death, required four men to perform,
with far less efficiency, promptitude, and punctuality than when they
were administered by him alone.’
Speaking of elephants, Major Skinner remarked that the largest wild
elephants captured were invariably the most docile, but also most
sensitive. He also noted that at kraals the Singhalese invariably
selected the smallest elephants to decoy the big ones, who never showed
any violence or ill-will to these little traitors. The finest he ever
saw fed from his hand the very evening he was captured, and proved most
docile to his training till the first day he was put in harness to draw
a waggon. This indignity was more than the great lord of the forest
could endure. He dropped in the shafts, and died then and there of a
broken heart. So said the natives, and so Major Skinner firmly believed,
having seen the selfsame thing occur in several other cases.
But those which are captured young are truly valuable allies, combining
as they do such marked intelligence with mighty strength. For dragging
heavy machinery or clearing new ground they are invaluable—_vide_ Sir
Samuel Baker’s account of his elephants at work on his farm at Nuwara
Eliya. He had brought out a ‘cultivator’ large enough to anchor twenty
of the small native bullocks; but a splendid elephant worked it as
though it had been a toy, cutting through the coarse roots of rank turf
as a knife peels an apple.
Then a long wooden plough drawn by eight bullocks did its work, and
finally, when the seed was sown, the original elephant reappeared on the
scene, simultaneously dragging a pair of heavy harrows, attached to
which and following behind were a pair of light harrows, and after these
came a roller. Thus were time and labour economised.
When not required for farm work, this useful creature was employed in
building a dam across a stream. The newly felled forest was distant only
about fifty yards, and the rough stems of trees furnished suitable logs
about fifteen feet long and eighteen inches in diameter. Under the
direction of her driver, she lifted these one at a time _in her mouth_,
after testing the point at which she secured an exact balance, and then,
steadying it with her trunk, she carried each to the stream, and laid
them in exactly parallel rows. The larger logs she rolled gently over
with her head and foot, guiding each with her trunk till she had
arranged it exactly to her own satisfaction and that of her driver.
Of course, however sagacious the creature may be, such practical
usefulness as this is only attained by a long course of most patient
training; but it is well worth the trouble of teaching an animal which
lives about a hundred years. The average term of life is eighty years,
but there have been authentic cases of elephants known to have worked in
the Indian Commissariat stables for a hundred and fifty years.[71]
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Footnote 71:
The elephantine development is altogether leisurely. The female does
not attain maturity for fifteen years, so as the mother carries her
calf twenty-two months, she is probably about seventeen years old when
the first calf is born. She has only one at a birth, and suckles it
for two years. (She has only two teats, which are situated between the
fore-legs. The baby sucks with its mouth, not with the trunk.)
The male does not attain maturity till it is about twenty years of
age, and when in captivity is not full grown till about twenty-five.
In freedom it goes on growing till it is about thirty years old, and
continues in its prime till it is about sixty.
-----
Most of the tame elephants in Ceylon are employed in connection with
felling jungle, dragging timber, and making roads. They are also
valuable assistant masons, and I have often watched with the greatest
interest the tame elephants’ share in building stone bridges, and the
wonderful sagacity and skill with which they contrive to place very
heavy stones, and then with their heads shove them into exact position.
When one sees an elephant’s skull with its massive frontal, about eight
inches thick of bone and muscles, one can understand something of the
secret of the enormous force he can exert. The well-protected brain of
this sagacious beast is singularly small, only occupying about
one-eighth of the skull, and it needs an expert marksman to hit it with
fatal precision.
Gorgeous as is a procession of richly caparisoned elephants, it must be
allowed that the fine feathers go a long way, for nothing can be more
grotesquely ugly than the huge ungainly creature, with his grey leathery
skin hanging loose in wrinkled folds as he stands ceaselessly fidgeting,
swaying his great body from side to side, shaking his head, flapping his
great ears to keep off the flies, swinging his legs and tail, or
twisting his snake-like proboscis (sensitive as the antennæ of an
insect). Therewith he lightly passes over a fruit-tree, seeking for ripe
fruit, and having found one he gathers it with the tip of his trunk as
neatly as a girl could lift a cherry with her lips, and then the great
trunk curls up and carefully deposits the dainty in its hideous red
mouth. It drinks in the same way.
You almost wonder that so large a creature can condescend to toy with
small fruit, but then you should see him at work in real earnest at
dinner-time. Indeed it can be no trifle to satisfy the appetite of a
stableful of these huge herbivorous creatures, each of which daily
consumes, if he can get it, about 80 lb. weight of green fodder and 18
lb. of grain. The females are expected to be satisfied with less, as are
also the Government elephants, whose rations, I am told, are limited to
about 50 lb. weight, so that the poor beasts can never know the
satisfaction of repletion (like that hungry street-Arab who was asked if
he had ever known what it was to eat till he was satisfied, and whose
face lighted up at the pleasant memory as he answered, ‘Yes, once!’)
Even on this reduced scale, an elephant’s ‘daily bread’ costs about five
shillings.[72] First, each gets a pile of enormous _chupatties_, or, as
we should call them in Scotland, bannocks—coarse cakes about a foot in
diameter; then a heap of green meat and grain of some sort, and if
sugar-cane is available, a great bundle of sugar-cane, otherwise balls
of native sugar and ghee (rancid butter), for they love all sweatmeats,
and will take the smallest _bonbon_ or fruit from one’s hand, as gently
as a child.
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Footnote 72:
I am told that the daily rations of each elephant in the Zoological
Gardens in London consists of 10 lb. of sea-biscuit, 42 lb. of Swedish
turnips, a truss and a half of hay, and a mash composed of 1 bushel of
chaff, 1 bushel of bran, and 3 lb. of rice.
-----
The patient politeness and obedience of a group of educated elephants is
most remarkable—however hungry, never touching the most tempting food
till permission has been given, or till their turn comes, when each
uplifts its mighty trunk, while its attendant places a huge ball of rice
in its open mouth. Sometimes, at the bidding of the _mahout_, an
elephant will abstain from swallowing any specially dainty morsel,
hiding it in the corner of its mouth till afterwards, when it will give
up the treasure and go shares!
The restlessness of the trunk is a very remarkable characteristic. I
have often thought that some intelligent elephant must have instructed
his fellows in the secret of perpetual motion, for it is incessant, and
the concentrated essence of unrest lies in the trunk, which is never
still for a moment.
If it is amusing to watch the great creatures feed, it is also
interesting to watch their daily toilet as they stand in the water,
while their keepers scrub them with natural scouring brushes—_i.e._ half
of the thick fibrous husk which enfolds the cocoa-nut. Occasionally a
rough stone is substituted, and acts as sandpaper. Every elephant
answers to its own name. ‘The Pearl,’ ‘The Rosebud,’ ‘The Ethereal
Fairy,’ are among the playful titles to which these ponderous creatures
obediently respond.
Strange as it may seem, like most other big creatures these grandly
powerful animals are really very delicate, and require good care, their
feet being very liable to sores and their skin to abrasion. Their eyes,
too, are subject to inflammation; and long journeys in the sun are
distasteful to a creature that loves to stand in the cool shade waving
branches in his trunk to keep off the flies, and fanning himself as
assiduously as any Spanish beauty. When in good health an elephant can
travel about forty miles in a day, at a slow, steady pace. But if
over-driven and hurried, as has sometimes been done by too impetuous
foreigners, the willing beast has been known to drop down dead.
Speaking of the tenderness of the elephantine foot, I may mention a
curious detail concerning a tame elephant at Bristol. Quite
unaccountably it fell into bad health, and became lame. Mr. Bartlett,
Superintendent of the London Zoological Gardens, was requested to
inspect it; and after minute examination of its feet, he remarked, ‘You
have rats here.’ ‘Oh yes,’ was the answer; ‘there are plenty of rats
here!’ the elephant-house being a very old building. ‘Well,’ said he,
‘they are eating the elephant; you can see the marks of their teeth on
the soft part of the soles of the feet. When the elephant lies down to
sleep the rats come and gnaw through the thick leathery pad till they
reach the quick; and next morning when the poor beast goes out to walk
on the gravelled paths little bits of sharp flint lodge in the bitten
places, and so it becomes lame.’
On Mr. Bartlett’s recommendation good rat-hunting terriers were
thenceforward kept with the elephant until a new house could be built,
and the big creature rapidly recovered.[73]
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Footnote 73:
Concerning tame elephants as a profitable speculation, it is
interesting to learn that those at the London ‘Zoo’ earn about 800_l._
a-year, besides conferring indescribable enjoyment to thousands, by
giving rides at 2_d._ a head. Many as are the riders packed on those
long-suffering broad backs, it is startling to be told that on the
Bank Holiday in 1890 no less than 24,000 twopences were taken, a
number slightly in excess of the whole number of visitors, so that
many extravagant visitors probably indulged in several such rides.
-----
What becomes of elephants which die in the forest is an unsolved
mystery, as it is exceedingly rare to find one which has died a natural
death. The Singhalese say that in the deep forests to the east of Adam’s
Peak lies a mysterious valley, only to be reached by a narrow pass
between deep rock walls, and that therein is a quiet lake, beside which
all elephants desire to lie down and die in peace. So when sorely
wounded, or very old, they seek to reach this happy valley, and there
leave their bones. But no one now living has ever been able to find this
bourne whence no elephant returns.
Sir Samuel Baker says that in the course of many years’ hunting in Asia
and Africa he has occasionally, but very rarely, seen a dead elephant.
Most of those recorded bore the mark of a bullet. One found on the Agra
patenas in Ceylon was a fine tusk elephant, which had evidently been
killed in a furious duel with another tusker, his body being literally
bored in many places by the enemy’s tusks. The ground all round was
trodden down with the heavy trampling of the great warriors. But Sir
Samuel says he has never seen a wild elephant sick. When wounded they
salve the sore with wet mud, or else by blowing dry dust over it, to
protect the surface from flies, which would lay eggs and breed maggots.
There is a horrible fly in Ceylon which lays live maggots; these
instantly commence burrowing into the flesh, and within twenty-four
hours grow large, and make loathsome sores. The treatment for such is a
teaspoonful of calomel rubbed in.
My brother’s letters used to tell of the great herds which ranged
through the eastern forests, and how he used to watch them at night
coming to bathe in the great neglected tanks (like swampy lakes), and in
the daytime browsing peacefully or sleeping, some fanning themselves
with green branches—the young ones, so innocently playful miniatures of
their parents, but having a good deal of shaggy hair, which wears off by
friction as they rub against one another, or force their way through the
jungle.
When a young one is captured, perhaps six months old, it at first
refuses food, but after a day or two it will drink a bucketful of
buffalo’s milk; presently it is promoted to rice and then to bananas and
succulent young grass.
It is satisfactory to know that since the imposition in 1870 of the
ten-rupee tax on each elephant slain (in the form of a licence paid in
advance), the herds, which were previously in danger of being
exterminated as effectually as have been the buffaloes of the American
prairies, have now recovered to such an extent that in the North Central
Province, in the Batticaloa district of the Eastern Province, and in the
least cultivated districts lying between Hambantota on the south-east
coast, as far north as the Kumbukkan river, they are now probably as
numerous as ever. In the months from January to March, which are the
driest and healthiest for sportsmen, the elephants are so worried by the
large buffalo-flies which infest the dense forests along the base of the
mountains that they betake themselves to the comparatively open country
near the sea-coast of Uva.
It is pretty to see the way in which, on any alarm, the young ones are
protected by their parents, being placed in the centre of the herd,
while the mothers gather round so closely as effectually to hide them.
The wonder is, that the little ones are not crushed and trampled under
foot when the closely packed mass rush off in headlong fear, perhaps, as
sometimes happens, down steep slippery ground, where they stumble and
fall. Sometimes an old mother is seen hurrying along, her baby following
with its little trunk twisted round the end of its mother’s tail to
enable it to keep up.
The Singhalese have a method peculiar to themselves of capturing
full-grown elephants by erecting a strong stockade in the jungle, so
artfully contrived that wild elephants may enter it without perceiving
that they are being trapped. A great army of beaters, numbering perhaps
4,000 or 5,000, are posted round a large tract of jungle where herds are
known to be; many of the beaters are armed with guns, simply to frighten
the animals; gradually they close in day after day for perhaps a
fortnight, till at length the ever-retreating herd find themselves at
the entrance of the kraal, and, once inside, their capture is
comparatively easy, and is effected by the treachery of tame elephants,
who play the part of Delilah to perfection, coaxing and soothing the
captives, and so covering the approach of men who contrive to creep up
and slip strong rope-nooses round their legs, and then haul them to big
trees, where they are held prisoner, while the tame ones help the
captors to secure them, after which a short spell of hunger and
unfailing gentleness commences the work of their education.
When the English first occupied Ceylon, the herds were so numerous that
on grand field-days as many as 150 were sometimes captured in one kraal,
and of these a considerable number used to be exported to India. For
some years this trade almost perished in consequence of the imposition
in 1873 (one account says 1870) of an export duty of £20 on each animal:
it revived in a measure when in 1882 the royalty was reduced to £10, and
Ceylon elephants were again in demand for European menageries and for
the use of Rajahs in Southern India.
Mr. Ferguson gives the following statistics of the number of elephants
shipped during twenty years, furnished partly by the south-eastern
forests, and partly by those of the extreme north of the Isle:—
No.
Exported
1863 173
1864 194
1865 271
1866 203
1867 148
1868 167
1869 199
1870 38
1871 74
1872 53
1873 83
1874 77
1875 7
1876 3
1877 1
1878 1
1879 1
1880 12
1881 8
1882 25
1883 86
1884 51
And so on down to 1890, when
42 were exported.
When captured young, an elephant can be trained, like an affectionate
dog, to follow its master everywhere. One known as ‘Kurunegalla Jack,’
belonging to a medical officer, used to go round the hospital wards with
his master, who taught him to be generally useful, and even to
administer pills! A Malay soldier one day dropped his pill, whereupon
‘Jack’ picked it up and dropped it into the man’s open mouth, with a
puff which blew the pill safely down!
‘Jack’ learnt to go out shooting with his master, combining the work of
stalking-horse and retriever, for he would discern game afar, and wander
towards it in the most casual manner, acting as cover for his master,
and when the latter fired, he would scamper off quite delighted, and
return with the jungle fowl or peacock in his trunk.
Valuable as is the friendly elephant, there are certain individuals very
much to be avoided, namely, the ‘rogues,’ which are solitary males,
either mad with pain from some chronic suffering, too often the result
of an old bullet wound, or else subject to an attack of periodical
madness known as _must_, which is a form of temporary insanity to which
the male elephant is occasionally subject, and which, during a period
varying from five weeks to five months, makes him a very dangerous
neighbour to man and beast.
A curious detail concerning Indian elephants is the fact that the
natives recognise three distinct castes, differing in appearance as
greatly as do our breeds of domestic cattle. The highest caste, or
thorough-bred, are called Koomeriah: they are finely modelled animals,
and march at a slow and stately pace. The clumsily built low-caste
elephants are called Meerga: they are untidy-looking, extra-wrinkled
animals, but comparatively light and swift. The intermediate caste are
called Dwasala.
A very remarkable characteristic of these great creatures is that they
are the best swimmers of any land animal. Of course this talent is more
valuable in a land of broad rivers, such as India, than in Ceylon. Mr.
Sanderson, of Mysore, mentions that he once had occasion to send a troop
of seventy-nine elephants from Dacca to Barrackpore near Calcutta, which
involved crossing not only the main stream of the Ganges, but also
several of its large tidal branches. For six hours his elephants swam
without once touching ground; then, having rested awhile on a sand-bank,
they again took to the water and swam for three hours more! Not one was
lost. He states that this was by no means a unique swim.
It is said that elephants have an extraordinary aversion to dogs, and
always retreat from them. It would be well indeed if leopards shared in
this aversion! They unfortunately are only too partial to a feast of
poor bow-wow, and are ever on the prowl, where such are kept, watching
for an opportunity to devour them, snatching them from verandahs when
peacefully asleep, or even from the side of their masters. They are
unpleasantly stealthy foes, never rushing boldly to meet their prey, but
creeping up stealthily or climbing a tree, so as to be able to drop
suddenly upon it. They climb as well as our household cat, and can even
catch monkeys. They constantly sleep among the branches of trees.
A good deal of confusion has been caused by the habit prevalent, in
Ceylon, of calling all these creatures chetahs, by which is generally
understood the hunting leopard of India,[74] which is here unknown, and
whose habits are altogether different. It captures its prey by fleetness
of foot like a dog, whereas the leopard works by stealth like a true
cat. Ceylon has two distinct varieties of leopard, of which the
so-called chetah is much the smaller, rarely exceeding seven feet from
the tip of the tail to the nose: he is beautifully marked all over with
small round black spots.
-----
Footnote 74:
_Felis jubata._
-----
The panther, which is the other member of the leopard family found in
the Isle, is marked with black rings having a tawny centre. His average
length is nine feet, and his weight nearly double that of the chetah.
But naturalists and sportsmen differ greatly in their statements about
these creatures, some maintaining that Ceylon has really only leopards,
and that all the varieties are due to age and climate, those inhabiting
the hot lowlands being generally short-haired, and, when old, of a very
pale-yellow colour, while the mountain leopards have thick fur of a rich
tawny colour, approaching brown.
Leopards rarely attack human beings except in self-defence. A remarkable
exception to this rule occurred last year in the North Central Province,
when a male and female chetah entered a house at dawn. The female ‘sat
down in a corner,’ while the male attacked a sleeping man, sole inmate
of the house. His son, who was asleep close by, ran to his father’s
assistance and was severely mauled. On the villagers coming to the
rescue the chetahs made off, and the victims were carried to the
Vavuniya hospital, where both died of blood-poisoning.
An almost identical case occurred fifteen years ago in the same
province, when two leopards entered a house, and the male killed one of
the inmates.
They are not dainty feeders, and have been known to dig up a corpse and
feast on it. Their habit of eating half-putrid dead beasts makes a wound
from a leopard’s claws very dangerous, as they are so liable to have
been stuck into flesh, poisonous because decayed; therefore such wounds
should be syringed with a very weak solution of carbolic acid in cold
water, in the proportion of 1 to 35.
Leopards are grievously destructive to cattle, which stampede in terror
at the smell of one, or even of ground on which one has lain. Certainly
it would be no loss to the Isle if these could be exterminated!
Ceylon must, however, be congratulated on her immunity from tigers,
which is remarkable, as they abound in the jungles of the nearest
mainland in Southern India. But for the narrow Paumben Passage, which is
only about half a mile in width, Ceylon would be a peninsula instead of
an island. As it is, the tiger is so good a swimmer that half a mile
would nowise trouble him. Happily, however, for Ceylon, the barren
sand-spit, which so nearly connects the two lands, has no tempting shade
nor any water to induce tigers to forsake their accustomed haunts and
explore new ground.
Leopards have of late years become scarce about Nuwara Eliya; but
abundant sport is to be obtained in the pursuit of the sambur deer
(which is invariably miscalled elk, though it really bears no
resemblance whatever to that somewhat ungainly creature, with the large
palmated antlers), and also of the small so-called ‘red-deer,’ which
furnishes excellent venison.
The name of red-deer is as misleading as that of elk, as the animal in
nowise resembles the red-deer of our Highlands. In the first place,
though very numerous, they never go in herds; neither do they rush
straight away from a foe, but run to and fro like a hare. They only
measure about twenty-five inches to the shoulders, and their little
antlers, rarely exceeding eight inches in length, have only two points,
and no brow antler. But the most marked peculiarity is that they have
sharp tusks in the upper jaw, about an inch and a half in length, like
those of a wild boar, except that they curve downwards, as weapons of
defence instead of offence.
Another creature similarly furnished with sharp tusks is the tiny mouse
deer,[75] which only measures about twelve inches to the shoulder—a
pretty graceful little creature, grey, with dark spots. It is commonly
called the moose, also the musk-deer, probably because it has no sort of
likeness to a moose (elk), neither is it provided with any musk-bag. It
makes a very pretty pet, though apt to use its tusks rather sharply.
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Footnote 75:
_Moschus meminna._
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But the sambur is the joy of sportsmen. He is very much like a British
red-deer, with the same character of antler, and rough, coarse,
dark-brown hair. He is really much larger than the Scotch red-deer, but
has inferior horns. He is a solitary animal, wonderfully sure-footed on
the most dangerous rock-ledges, and runs clean away from his pursuer, if
possible bolting straight up-hill, so he affords good sport to his foes,
who hunt him with a pack of hounds and kill him with the hunting-knife.
The hounds are large powerful animals, those preferred being a cross
between blood-hound and fox-hound, having the heavy bay of the former,
so as to make themselves heard when they have followed their quarry far
into the jungle. Pure fox-hounds are found to be too keen in pursuit,
and so they get lost and devoured in the beast-haunted forest, their
chief danger being from the cat-like spring of the leopard. It is only
in these cool mountain districts that hounds can live in any comfort,
so, in the eyes of a sportsman, their presence here is another feature
of the mountain paradise.
All day long the great sambur lies close in the deep forest, and all
night he roams about feeding on the nicest young crops, and developing
new tastes, as new products are introduced. One would suppose that
quinine in any form was an acquired taste, but the foliage of young
cinchona plantations proved specially enticing, and I believe that of
cacao is still more so.
So the knowledge that the hunt is in the interest of the planters gives
it extra zest—not that that can ever be lacking in a country so
beautiful and so rugged, where there is no knowing into what
difficulties the chase may not lead ere the day is done, up and down
well-nigh inaccessible gorges, clothed with dense forest—such as also
crowns the summit of steep grass-covered mountains—or marshy bits of the
patenas—perhaps (to the bewilderment of the hounds) suddenly to end on
the brink of some frightful precipice over which the monarch of the glen
has leaped, in his despair, to the misty ravine far below, possibly to
fall into some rushing cataract, whence his mangled remains may be
rescued by a tribe of hungry villagers to whom such chances are a true
stroke of good luck. For the flesh of the deer is the very ideal of
luxury to these poor folk.
He who follows hart and hounds in these mountain districts has need to
be in good training, for nowhere will he find grander or more difficult
country than much of that between Nuwara Eliya and the lowlands where
the rugged grassy hills of Uva are seamed by mountain torrents dashing
over huge boulders and masses of fallen rock, or overleaping
perpendicular cliffs. One of these, the Fort M’Donald river, is a
succession of falls and foaming cataracts, ending in a sheer fall of
three hundred feet, over the mighty rock rampart which bounds the middle
zone of these mountain terraces.
In its impetuous course this river, so justly dreaded by huntsmen, forms
very dangerous pools enclosed in deep rock basins, whence the water in
some cases disappears into subterranean caverns, thence reappearing in
rushing rapids, till with a thunderous roar that echoes far through the
mountains, it takes its last headlong leap and is lost to sight in a
veil of dazzling spray, far, far below.
Throughout its course the river is exceedingly difficult of access, and
as the hunted sambur (invariably called elk in Ceylon) generally tries
to make for the water, a day’s hunting in this neighbourhood is liable
to try the strongest nerves and all capacities. In the annals of real
sport I know no chapter more thrilling than Sir Samuel Baker’s account
of following a majestic stag up and down this frightful ravine, till in
his last despair the magnificent creature bounded right over an awful
precipice into the abyss far below, whence, with infinite toil, his
splendid antlers were rescued. When the villagers heard of this, they
toiled to the spot to secure the venison, but found that two fine
leopards had been beforehand with them. However, they retrieved enough
to reward them for their toil.[76]
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Footnote 76:
‘Eight Years in Ceylon,’ Chap. VII. Longmans, Green & Co.
-----
Besides these large animals, the mountains shelter hares and herds of
wild pigs; while of creatures which cannot be classed as game, there are
wanderoo monkeys, black and grey squirrels, porcupines, rats, jackals,
otters, mongooses, and civet cats.
One very attractive deer abounds on the plains, but is such a lover of
heat that it never roams higher than 3,000 feet above the sea-level.
This is the axis or spotted deer, the only gregarious deer in Ceylon. It
is a very pretty creature, in size and colour like our own fallow deer,
but having slender horns, not palmated. The female has none. They are of
a rich fawn colour, very dark on the back, and spotted with white, and
they roam about in herds of from twenty to a hundred in the open park
country between the hills and the sea.
For the home-sick Briton, one special charm of these grassy downs is the
melodious song of many skylarks, soaring and singing in the bright
sunlight of this far land, as joyously as when rising from the fields
and downs of the old country.