THE BLUE TIGER
After one has traveled in a Chinese _sampan_ for several days the
prospect of a river journey is not very alluring but we had a most
agreeable surprise when we sailed out of Foochow in a chartered house
boat to hunt the "blue tiger" at Futsing. In fact, we had all the
luxury of a private yacht, for our boat contained a large central cabin
with a table and chairs and two staterooms and was manned by a captain
and crew of six men--all for $1.50 per day!
In the evening we talked of the blue tiger for a long time before
we spread our beds on the roof of the boat and went to sleep under
the stars. We left the boat shortly after daylight at Daing-nei for
the six-mile walk to Lung-tao. To my great surprise the coolies were
considerably distressed at the lightness of our loads. In this region
they are paid by weight and some of the bearers carry almost incredible
burdens. As an example, one of our men came into camp swinging a
125-pound trunk on each end of his pole, laughing and chatting as gayly
as though he had not been carrying 250 pounds for six miles under a
broiling sun.
Mr. Caldwell's Chinese hunter, Da-Da, lived at Lung-tao and we found
his house to be one of several built on the outskirts of a beautiful
grove of gum and banyan trees. Although it was exceptionally clean
for a Chinese dwelling, we pitched our tents a short distance away.
At first we were somewhat doubtful about sleeping outside, but after
one night indoors we decided that any risk was preferable to spending
another hour in the stifling heat of the house.
It was probable that a tiger would be so suspicious of the white tents
that it would not attack us, but nevertheless during the first nights
we were rather wakeful and more than once at some strange night sound
seized our rifles and flashed the electric lamp into the darkness.
Tigers often come into this village. Only a few hundred yards from our
camp site, in 1911, a tiger had rushed into the house of one of the
peasants and attempted to steal a child that had fallen asleep at its
play under the family table. All was quiet in the house when suddenly
the animal dashed through the open door. The Chinese declare that the
gods protected the infant, for the beast missed his prey and seizing
the leg of the table against which the baby's head was resting, bolted
through the door dragging the table into the courtyard.
This was the work of the famous "blue tiger" which we had come to
hunt and which had on two occasions been seen by Mr. Caldwell. The
first time he heard of this strange beast was in the spring of 1910.
The animal was reported as having been seen at various places within
an area of a few miles almost simultaneously and so mysterious were
its movements that the Chinese declared it was a spirit of the devil.
After several unsuccessful hunts Mr. Caldwell finally saw the tiger at
close range but as he was armed with only a shotgun it would have been
useless to shoot.
His second view of the beast was a few weeks later and in the same
place. I will give the story in his own words:
"I selected a spot upon a hilltop and cleared away the grass and ferns
with a jack-knife for a place to tie the goat. I concealed myself
in the bushes ten feet away to await the attack, but the unexpected
happened and the tiger approached from the rear.
"When I first saw the beast he was moving stealthily along a little
trail just across a shallow ravine. I supposed, of course, that he was
trying to locate the goat which was bleating loudly, but to my horror
I saw that he was creeping upon two boys who had entered the ravine to
cut grass. The huge brute moved along lizard-fashion for a few yards
and then cautiously lifted his head above the grass. He was within easy
springing distance when I raised my rifle, but instantly I realized
that if I wounded the animal the boys would certainly meet a horrible
death.
"Tigers are usually afraid of the human voice so instead of firing I
stepped from the bushes, yelling and waving my arms. The huge cat,
crouched for a spring, drew back, wavered uncertainly for a moment, and
then slowly slipped away into the grass. The boys were saved but I had
lost the opportunity I had sought for over a year.
"However, I had again seen the animal about which so many strange tales
had been told. The markings of the beast are strikingly beautiful. The
ground color is of a delicate shade of maltese, changing into light
gray-blue on the underparts. The stripes are well defined and like
those of the ordinary yellow tiger."
Before I left New York Mr. Caldwell had written me repeatedly urging me
to stop at Futsing on the way to Yün-nan to try with him for the blue
tiger which was still in the neighborhood. I was decidedly skeptical
as to its being a distinct species, but nevertheless it was a most
interesting animal and would certainly be well worth getting.
I believed then, and my opinion has since been strengthened, that it
is a partially melanistic phase of the ordinary yellow tiger. Black
leopards are common in India and the Malay Peninsula and as only a
single individual of the blue tiger has been reported the evidence
hardly warrants the assumption that it represents a distinct species.
We hunted the animal for five weeks. The brute ranged in the vicinity
of two or three villages about seven miles apart, but was seen most
frequently near Lung-tao. He was as elusive as a will o' the wisp,
killing a dog or goat in one village and by the time we had hurried
across the mountains appearing in another spot a few miles away,
leaving a trail of terrified natives who flocked to our camp to recount
his depredations. He was in truth the "Great Invisible" and it seemed
impossible that we should not get him sooner or later, but we never did.
Once we missed him by a hair's breadth through sheer bad luck, and it
was only by exercising almost super-human restraint that we prevented
ourselves from doing bodily harm to the three Chinese who ruined our
hunt. Every evening for a week we had faithfully taken a goat into the
"Long Ravine," for the blue tiger had been seen several times near this
lair. On the eighth afternoon we were in the "blind" at three o'clock
as usual. We had tied a goat to a tree nearby and her two kids were but
a few feet away.
The grass-filled lair lay shimmering in the breathless heat, silent
save for the echoes of the bleating goats. Crouched behind the
screen of branches, for three long hours we sat in the patchwork
shade,--motionless, dripping with perspiration, hardly breathing,--and
watched the shadows steal slowly down the narrow ravine.
It was a wild place which seemed to have been cut out of the mountain
side with two strokes of a mighty ax and was choked with a tangle of
thorny vines and sword grass. Impenetrable as a wall of steel, the
only entrance was by the tiger tunnels which drove their twisting way
through the murderous growth far in toward its gloomy heart.
The shadows had passed over us and just reached a lone palm tree on
the opposite hillside. By that I knew it was six o'clock and in half
an hour another day of disappointment would be ended. Suddenly at the
left and just below us there came the faintest crunching sound as a
loose stone shifted under a heavy weight; then a rustling in the grass.
Instantly the captive goat gave a shrill bleat of terror and tugged
frantically at the rope which held it to the tree.
At the first sound Harry had breathed in my ear "Get ready, he's
coming." I was half kneeling with my heavy .405 Winchester pushed
forward and the hammer up. The blood drummed in my ears and my neck
muscles ached with the strain but I thanked Heaven that my hands were
steady.
Caldwell sat like a graven image, the stock of his little 22 caliber
high power Savage nestling against his cheek. Our eyes met for an
instant and I knew in that glance that the blue tiger would never make
another charge, for if I missed him, Harry wouldn't. For ten minutes
we waited and my heart lost a beat when twenty feet away the grass
began to move again--but rapidly and _up the ravine_.
I saw Harry watching the lair with a puzzled look which changed to one
of disgust as a chorus of yells sounded across the ravine and three
Chinese wood cutters appeared on the opposite slope. They were taking
a short cut home, shouting to drive away the tigers--and they had
succeeded only too well, for the blue tiger had slipped back to the
heart of the lair from whence he had come.
He had been nearly ours and again we had lost him ! I felt so badly
that I could not even swear and it wasn't the fact that Harry was a
missionary which kept me from it, either. Caldwell exclaimed just once,
for his disappointment was even more bitter than mine; he had been
hunting this same tiger off and on for six years.
It was useless for us to wait longer that evening and we pushed our
way through the sword grass to the entrance of the tunnel down which
the tiger had come. There in the soft earth were the great footprints
where he had crouched at the entrance to take a cautious survey before
charging into the open.
As we looked, Harry suddenly turned to me and said: "Roy, let's go
into the lair. There is just one chance in a thousand that we may get
a shot." Now I must admit that I was not very enthusiastic about that
little excursion, but in we went, crawling on our hands and knees up
the narrow passage. Every few feet we passed side branches from the
main tunnel in any one of which the tiger might easily have been lying
in wait and could have killed us as we passed. It was a foolhardy
thing to do and I am free to admit that I was scared. It was not long
before Harry twisted about and said: "Roy, I haven't lost any tigers in
here; let's get out." And out we came faster than we went in.
This was only one of the times when the "Great Invisible" was almost in
our hands. A few days later a Chinese found the blue tiger asleep under
a rice bank early in the afternoon. Frightened almost to death he ran a
mile and a half to our camp only to find that we had left half an hour
before for another village where the brute had killed two wild cats
early in the morning.
Again, the tiger pushed open the door of a house at daybreak just
as the members of the family were getting up, stole a dog from the
"heaven's well," dragged it to a hillside and partly devoured it. We
were in camp only a mile away and our Chinese hunters found the carcass
on a narrow ledge in the sword grass high up on the mountain side. The
spot was an impossible one to watch and we set a huge grizzly bear trap
which had been carried with us from New York.
It seemed out of the question for any animal to return to the carcass
of the dog without getting caught and yet the tiger did it. With his
hind quarters on the upper terrace he dropped down, stretched his long
neck across the trap, seized the dog which had been wired to a tree and
pulled it away. It was evident that he was quite unconscious of the
trap for his fore feet had actually been placed upon one of the jaws
only two inches from the pan which would have sprung it.
One afternoon we responded to a call from Bui-tao, a village seven
miles beyond Lung-tao, where the blue tiger had been seen that day. The
natives assured us that the animal continually crossed a hill, thickly
clothed with pines and sword grass just above the village and even
though it was late when we arrived Harry thought it wise to set the
trap that night.
It was pitch dark before we reached the ridge carrying the trap, two
lanterns, an electric flash-lamp and a wretched little dog for bait. We
had been engaged for about fifteen minutes making a pen for the dog,
and Caldwell and I were on our knees over the trap when suddenly a low
rumbling growl came from the grass not twenty feet away. We jumped to
our feet just as it sounded again, this time ending in a snarl. The
tiger had arrived a few moments too early and we were in the rather
uncomfortable position of having to return to the village by way of a
narrow trail through the jungle. With our rifles ready and the electric
lamp cutting a brilliant path in the darkness we walked slowly toward
the edge of the sword grass hoping to see the flash of the tiger's
eyes, but the beast backed off beyond the range of the light into
an impenetrable tangle where we could not follow. Apparently he was
frightened by the lantern, for we did not hear him again.
After nearly a month of disappointments such as these Mr. Heller joined
us at Bui-tao with Mr. Kellogg. Caldwell thought it advisable to shift
camp to the Ling-suik monastery, about twelve miles away, where he had
once spent a summer with his family and had killed several tigers. This
was within the blue tiger's range and, moreover, had the advantage of
offering a better general collecting ground than Bui-tao; thus with
Heller to look after the small mammals we could begin to make our time
count for something if we did not get the tiger.
Ling-suik is a beautiful temple, or rather series of temples, built
into a hillside at the end of a long narrow valley which swells out
like a great bowl between bamboo clothed mountains, two thousand feet
in height. On his former visit Mr. Caldwell had made friends with the
head priest and we were allowed to establish ourselves upon the broad
porch of the third and highest building. It was an ideal place for a
collecting camp and would have been delightful except for the terrible
heat which was rendered doubly disagreeable by the almost continual
rain.
The priests who shuffled about the temples were a hard lot. Most of
them were fugitives from justice and certainly looked the part, for a
more disreputable, diseased and generally undesirable body of men I
have never seen.
Our stay at Ling-suik was productive and the temple life interesting.
We slept on the porch and each morning, about half an hour before
daylight, the measured strokes of a great gong sounded from the temple
just below us. _Boom--boom--boom--boom_ it went, then rapidly _bang,
bang, bang_. It was a religious alarm clock to rouse the world.
A little later when the upturned gables and twisted dolphins on the
roof had begun to take definite shape in the gray light of the new day,
the gong boomed out again, doors creaked, and from their cell-like
rooms shuffled the priests to yawn and stretch themselves before the
early service. The droning chorus of hoarse voices, swelling in a
meaningless half-wild chant, harmonized strangely with the romantic
surroundings of the temple and become our daily _matin_ and evensong.
[Illustration: The Ling-suik Monastery]
[Illustration: A Priest of Ling-suik]
At the first gong we slipped from beneath our mosquito nets and dressed
to be ready for the bats which fluttered into the building to hide
themselves beneath the tiles and rafters. When daylight had fully
come we scattered to the four winds of heaven to inspect traps, hunt
barking deer, or collect birds, but gathered again at nine o'clock for
breakfast and to deposit our spoil. Caldwell and I always spent the
afternoon at the blue tiger's lair but the animal had suddenly shifted
his operations back to Lung-tao and did not appear at Ling-suik while
we were there.
Our work in Fukien taught us much that may be of help to other
naturalists who contemplate a visit to this province. We satisfied
ourselves that summer collecting is impracticable, for the heat is
so intense and the vegetation so heavy that only meager results can
be obtained for the efforts expended. Continual tramping over the
mountains in the blazing sun necessarily must have its effect upon
the strongest constitution, and even a man like Mr. Caldwell, who has
become thoroughly acclimated, is not immune.
Both Caldwell and I lost from fifteen to twenty pounds in weight during
the time we hunted the blue tiger and each of us had serious trouble
from abscesses. I have never worked in a more trying climate--even
that of Borneo and the Dutch East Indies where I collected in 1909-10,
was much less debilitating than Fukien in the summer. The average
temperature was about 95 degrees in the shade, but the humidity was so
high that one felt as though one were wrapped in a wet blanket and even
during a six weeks' rainless period the air was saturated with moisture
from the sea-winds.
In winter the weather is raw and damp, but collecting then would
be vastly easier than in summer, not only on account of climatic
conditions, but because much of the vegetation disappears and there is
an opportunity for "still hunting."
Trapping for small mammal is especially difficult because of the dense
population. The mud dykes and the rice fields usually are covered with
tracks of civets, mongooses, and cats which come to hunt frogs or
fish, but if a trap is set it either catches a Chinaman or promptly is
stolen. Moreover, the small mammals are neither abundant nor varied in
number of species, and the larger forms, such as tiger, leopard, wild
pig and serow are exceedingly difficult to kill.
While our work in the province was done during an unfavorable season
and in only two localities, yet enough was seen of the general
conditions to make it certain that a thorough zoölogical study of the
region would require considerable time and hard work and that the
results, so far as a large collection of mammals is concerned, would
not be highly satisfactory. Work in the western part of the province
among the Bohea Hills undoubtedly would be more profitable, but even
there it would be hardly worth while for an expedition with limited
time and money.
Bird life is on a much better footing, but the ornithology of Fukien
already has received considerable attention through the collections of
Swinhoe, La Touche, Styan, Ricketts, Caldwell and others, and probably
not a great number of species remain to be described.
Much work could still be done upon the herpetology of the region,
however, and I believe that this branch of zoölogy would be well worth
investigation for reptiles and batrachians are fairly abundant and the
natives would rather assist than retard one's efforts.
The language of Fukien is a greater annoyance than in any other of the
Chinese coast provinces. The Foochow dialect (which is one of the most
difficult to learn) is spoken only within fifty or one hundred miles
of the city. At Yen-ping Mr. Caldwell, who speaks "Foochow" perfectly,
could not understand a word of the "southern mandarin" which is the
language of that region, and near Futsing, where a colony of natives
from Amoy have settled, the dialect is unintelligible to one who knows
only "Foochow."
Travel in Fukien is an unceasing trial, for transport is entirely
by coolies who carry from eighty to one hundred pounds. The men are
paid by distance or weight; therefore, when coolies finally have been
obtained there is the inevitable wrangling over loads so that from one
to two hours are consumed before the party can start.
But the worst of it is that one can never be certain when one's entire
outfit will arrive at its new destination. Some men walk much faster
than others, some will delay a long time for tea, or may give out
altogether if the day be hot, with the result that the last load will
arrive perhaps five or six hours after the first one.
As horses are not to be had, if one does not walk the only alternative
is to be carried in a mountain chair, which is an uncomfortable,
trapeze-like affair and only to be found along the main highways.
On the whole, transport by man-power in China is so uncertain and
expensive that for a large expedition it forms a grave obstacle to
successful work, if time and funds be limited.
On the other hand, servants are cheap and usually good. We employed a
very fair cook who received monthly seven dollars Mexican (then about
three and one-half dollars gold), and "boys" were hired at from five
to seven dollars (Mexican). As none of the servants knew English they
could be obtained at much lower wages, but English-speaking cooks
usually receive from fifteen to twenty dollars (Mexican) a month.
It was hard to leave Fukien without the blue tiger but we had hunted
him unsuccessfully for five weeks and there was other and more
important work awaiting us in Yün-nan. It required thirty porters
to transport our baggage from the Ling-suik monastery to Daing-nei,
twenty-one miles away, where two houseboats were to meet us, and by ten
o'clock in the evening we were lying off Pagoda Anchorage awaiting the
flood tide to take us to Foochow. We made our beds on the deck house
and in the morning opened our eyes to find the boat tied to the wharf
at the Custom House on the Bund, and ourselves in full view of all
Foochow had it been awake at that hour.
The week of packing and repacking that followed was made easy for us by
Claude Kellogg, who acted as our ministering angel. I think there must
be a special Providence that watches over wandering naturalists and
directs them to such men as Kellogg, for without divine aid they could
never be found. When we last saw him, he stood on the stone steps of
the water front waving his hat as we slipped away on the tide, to board
the S. S. _Haitan_ for Hongkong.