mysterious collective impulse among birds or animals are found among
men to depend on a succession of individual impulses, it is good
psychology as well as good natural history to dismiss the whole herd
instinct as another thoughtless myth. The familiar social and imitative
instincts, the contagion of excitement, the outward projection of
emotional impulses, the sensitive bodily nature of an animal which
enables him to respond to such impulses even when they are
unaccompanied by a voice or cry,—these are comparatively simple and
“sensible” matters which explain all the phenomena of flock or herd
life more naturally and more reasonably.
VI
WHERE SILENCE IS ELOQUENT
Looking back a moment on our trail of animal “talk” before following it
onward, we see, first, that birds and beasts have certain audible cries
which convey a more or less definite meaning of food or danger or
assembly; and second, that they apparently have also some “telepathic”
faculty of sending emotional impulses to others of their kind at a
distance. The last has not been proved, to be sure; we have seen little
more than enough to establish it as a working hypothesis; but whether
we study science or history or an individual bird or beast, it is
better to follow some integrating method or principle than to blunder
around in a chaos of unrelated details. And the hypothesis of silent
communication certainly “works,” since it helps greatly to clarify
certain observed phenomena of animal life that are otherwise darkly
mysterious.
When the same dimly defined telepathic power appears in a man or
woman—so rarely that we are filled with wonder, as in the shadow of a
great mystery or a great discovery—it is not a new but a very old
matter, I think, being merely a survival or reappearance of a faculty
that may have once been in common use among gregarious creatures. All
men seem to have some hint or suggestion of telepathy in them, as shown
by their ability to “speak with their eyes” or to influence their
children by a look; and the few who have enough of it to be conspicuous
receive it, undoubtedly, by some law or freak of heredity, such as
enables one man in a million to wag his ears, or one in a thousand to
follow a subconscious sense of direction so confidently that, after
wandering about the big woods all day, he turns at nightfall and heads
straight for his camp like a homing pigeon. The rest of us, meanwhile,
by employing speech exclusively to express thought or emotion, and by
habitually depending on five senses for all our impressions of the
external world, have not only neglected but even lost all memory of the
gift that once was ours. As an inevitable consequence Nature has taken
her gift away, as she atrophies a muscle that is no longer used, or
devitalizes the nerve of sight in creatures, such as the fishes of
Mammoth Cave, that have lived long time in darkness.
In previous chapters we have noted, as rare examples of telepathy in
human society, that a mother may at times know when an absent son or
husband is in danger, or that an African savage often knows when a
stranger is approaching his village hid in the jungle; but there is
another manifestation of the same faculty which is much more common,
and which we have thus far overlooked, leaving it as an odd and totally
unrelated thing without explanation. I refer to the man, known in
almost every village, who has some special gift for training or
managing animals, who seems to know instinctively what goes on in a
brute’s head, and who can send his own will or impulse into the lower
mind. I would explain that unrelated man, naturally, by the simple fact
or assumption that he has inherited more than usual of the animals’
gift of silent communication.
I knew one such man, a harmless, half-witted creature, who loved to
roam the woods alone by day or night, and whom the wild birds and
beasts met with hardly a trace of the fear or suspicion they manifest
in presence of other human beings. He was always friendly, peaceable,
childlike, and unconsciously or subconsciously, I think, he could tame
or influence these wild spirits by letting them feel his own.
So also could an old negro, an ex-slave, with whom I used to go
fox-hunting in my student days. He could train a dog or a colt in a
tenth part of the time required by ordinary men, and he used no whip or
petting or feeding, or any other device commonly employed by
professional trainers. At times, indeed, his animals acted as if
trained from the moment he touched or spoke to them. He had a mongrel
lot of dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, cows and horses; but they were a
veritable happy family (on a cold night his cats would sleep with a
setting hen, if they could find one, or otherwise with the foxhounds),
and to see them all running to meet “Uncle” when he came home, or
following at his heels or doing what he told them, was to wonder what
strange animal language he was master of.
At daybreak one winter morning I entered the old negro’s kitchen very
quietly, and had a fire going and coffee sending forth its aroma before
I heard him creaking down the stairs. I had traveled “across lots,”
making no sound in the new-fallen snow, and, as I approached the house,
had purposely kept its dark bulk between me and the dogs, which were
asleep in their kennel some distance away. For a time all was quiet as
only a winter dawn can be; but as we sat down to breakfast one of the
hounds with a big bass voice suddenly broke out in an earth-shaking
jubilation. The other hounds quickly caught up the clamor, yelling as
if they had just jumped a fox, while two dogs of another breed were
strangely silent; and then ’Poleon added his bit to the tumult by
stamping, whinnying and finally kicking lustily on the boards of his
stall. ’Poleon, by the way, was an old white horse that Uncle used to
ride (he was “gittin’ too rheumaticky,” he said, to hunt with me
afoot), and this sober beast was fair crazy to join the chase whenever
a fox was afoot.
The negro paid no attention to the noise; but as it went on increasing,
and ’Poleon whinnyed more wildly, and the big-voiced hound kept up a
continuous bellow that might have roused the seven sleepers, the
unseemly racket got on my nerves, so early in the day.
“What the mischief is the matter with Jum this morning?” I demanded.
“Matter? Mischief?” echoed Uncle, as if surprised I did not understand
such plain animal talk. “Why, ol’ Jum’s a-gwine fox-huntin’ dis mawny.
He reckons he knows what we-all’s up to: and now de yother dawgs an’
’Poleon dey reckons dey knows it, too. Jum’s tole um. Dat’s all de
matter an’ de mischief.”
“But how in the world should he know? You never go hunting now unless I
tempt you, and none of the dogs saw or heard me come in,” I objected.
Uncle chuckled at that, chuckled a long time, as if it were a good
joke. “Trust ol’ Jum ter know when we-all’s gwine fox-huntin’,” he
said. “You jes’ trust him. I specks he kinder pick de idee outer de air
soon’s we thunk it, same’s he pick a fox scent. ’Tain’t no use tryin’
ter lie ter Jum, ’cause you can’t fool ’im nohow. No, sir, when dat ol’
dawg’s eroun’, you don’ wanter think erbout nothin’ you don’ want ’im
ter know.”
I had often marveled at Uncle, but now suddenly I thought I understood
him. In his unconscious confession that he thought or felt with his
animals, rather than spoke English to them, was probably the whole
secret of his wonderful gift of training.
The same “secret” is shared by the few men who have the gift of
managing horses, and who can do more by a word or even a look than
another man by bit and harness. I have heard the gift described by a
professional horse-trainer as the “power of the human eye”; but that is
nonsense set to melodrama. An eye is a bit of jelly, and means nothing
without a will or communicating impulse behind it. When the spirit of a
horse is once broken (and most of them are broken rather than trained
by our methods) almost anybody can manage him, the blind as well as the
seeing; but when a horse keeps the spirit of his wild ancestors, their
timidity, their flightiness, their hair-trigger tendency to shy or to
bolt, then I envy the man who can cross the gulf of ages and put
something of his own steadiness into the nervous brute.
This steadying process seems to be wholly a matter of spirit, so far as
I have observed it, and whatever passes from man to brute passes
directly, without need of audible speech. For example, a friend of
mine, a very quiet man of few words, once brought home a magnificent
“blooded” horse which he had bought for a song because “nobody could
handle him.” The horse was not vicious in any way, but seemed to have a
crazy impulse to run himself to death—an impulse so strong that even
now, when he is past twenty years old, he cannot be turned loose for a
moment in a farm pasture. He had never been driven save with a powerful
curb; even so, he would drag the carriage along by the reins, and an
hour of such driving left a strong man’s arms half paralyzed by the
strain. Yet at the first trial his new owner put a soft rubber bit in
his mouth, flipped the lines loosely across his back, and controlled
him by a word.
Some years later I was riding behind that same horse, jogging quietly
along a country road, when my friend, with an odd twinkle in his eye,
said, “Take the reins a moment while I get out this robe.” I took them,
and what followed seemed like magic or bedevilment. I had noticed that
the reins were loose, just “feeling” the horse’s mouth; I shifted them
to my hand very quietly, without stirring a hair, and blinders on the
bridle prevented the horse from seeing the transfer. Yet hardly had I
touched them when something from my hand (or from my soul, for aught I
know) flowed along the leather and filled the brute with fire. He flung
up his head, as if I had driven spurs into him, and was away like a
shot.
Again, I was crossing the public square of Nantucket one morning when I
saw a crowd of excited men and boys eddying at a safe distance around a
horse—an ugly, biting brute that had once almost torn the side of my
face off when I passed too close to him, minding my own affairs. Now he
was having one of his regular tantrums, squealing, kicking, plunging or
backing, while his driver, who had leaped to the ground, alternately
lashed and cursed him. I heard an angry voice near me utter the single
word “Fools!” and saw a stranger brush some men aside and stand
directly in front of the horse, which grew quiet on the instant. The
stranger went nearer, pulled the horse’s head down and laid his face
against it; and there they stood, man and brute, like carved statues.
It was as if one were whispering a secret, and the other listening.
Then the man said, “Come along, boy,” and walked down the square, the
horse following at his heels like a trained dog.
Watching the scene, my first thought was that the horse recognized a
former and kinder master; but the man assured me, when I followed him
up, that he had never spoken to the animal till that moment, and that
he could do the same with any refractory horse he had ever met. “Try it
with that one,” I said promptly, pointing to a nervous horse that,
feeling the excitement of the recent affair, was jerking and frothing
at his hitch-rope. The man smiled his acceptance of the challenge,
stepped in front of the horse, and looked at him steadily. What he
thought or willed, what feeling or impulse he sent out, I know not; but
certainly some silent communication passed, which the horse recognized
by forward-pointing ears and a low whinny of pleasure. Then the man
unsnapped the rope from the bridle ring, turned away without a word,
and the horse followed him across the square and back again to the
hitching-post.
When I asked how the thing was done, the man answered with entire
frankness that he did not know. It “just came natural” to him, he said,
to understand horses, and he had always been able to make them do
almost anything he wanted. But he had no remarkable power over other
animals, so far as I could learn, and was uncommonly shy of dogs, even
of little dogs, regarding them all alike as worthless or dangerous
brutes.
Some of my readers may recall, in this connection, the shabby-genteel
old man who used to amuse visitors in the public gardens of Paris by
playing with the sparrows, some twenty-odd years ago. So long as he
went his way quietly the birds paid no more attention to him than to
any other stroller; but the moment he began to chirp some wild and
joyous excitement spread through the trees. From all sides the sparrows
rushed to him, alighting on his hat or shoulders, clamoring loudly for
the food which they seemed to know was in his pockets, but which he
would not at first give them. When he had a crowd of men and women
watching him (for he was vain of his gift, and made a small living by
passing his hat after an entertainment) he would single out a
cock-sparrow from the flock and cry, “What! you here again, Bismarck,
you scoundrel?” Then he would abuse the cock-sparrow, calling him a
barbarian, a Prussian, a mannerless intruder who had no business among
honorable French sparrows; and finally, pretending to grow violently
angry, he would chase Bismarck from bench to bench and throw his hat at
him. And Bismarck would respond by dodging the hat, chirping blithely
the while, as if it were a good joke, and would fly back to peck at the
crust of bread which the old man held between his lips or left sticking
out of his pocket.
One might have understood this as a mere training trick if Bismarck
were always the same; but he was any cock-sparrow that the man chanced
to pick out of a flock. After playing with the birds till they wearied
of it, he would feed them, pass the hat, and stroll away to repeat his
performance with another flock in another part of the gardens. That
these wary and suspicious birds, far more distrustful of man than the
sparrows of the wilderness, understood his mental attitude rather than
his word or action; that he could make them feel his kindliness, his
camaraderie, his call to come and play, even while he pretended to
chase them,—this was the impression of at least one visitor who watched
him again and again at his original entertainment.
Some kind of communication must have passed silently between the actor
and one of his audience; for presently, though I never spoke to the old
man, but only watched him keenly, he picked me out for personal
attention. Whereupon I cultivated his acquaintance, invited him to dine
and fed him like a duke, and thought I had gained his confidence by
taking him to see a big wolf of mine that might well have puzzled any
student of birds or beasts. The wolf was one of a wild pack that had
recently arrived at the zoo from Siberia, where they had been caught in
a pit and shipped away with all their savagery in them. Through some
freak of nature this one wolf had attached himself to me, like a lost
dog; by some marvelously subtle perception he would recognize my coming
at a distance, even in a holiday crowd, and would thrust his grim
muzzle against the bars of his cage to howl or roar till I came and
stretched out a hand to him, though he was as wild and “slinky” as the
rest of the pack to everybody else, even to the keeper who fed him.
That interested the sparrow-tamer, of course; but he was silent or too
garrulous whenever I approached the thing I wanted to know. He would
not tell me how he won the birds, but made a mystery and hocus-pocus of
the natural gift by which he earned a precarious living.
The same “mystery” cropped out later, amid very different scenes, in
the interior of Newfoundland. Coming down beside a salmon river one
day, my Indian, a remarkable man with an almost uncanny power of
calling wild creatures of every kind, pointed to a hole high on the
side of a stub, and said, “Go, knock-um dere; see if woodpecker at
home.” I went and knocked softly, but nothing happened. “Knock-um
again, knock-um little louder,” said Matty. I knocked again, more
lustily, and again nothing happened. Then the Indian came and rapped
the tree with his knuckles, while I stood aside; and instantly a
woodpecker that was brooding her eggs stuck her head out of the hole
and looked down at her visitor inquisitively.
The next day at the same place we repeated the same performance
precisely, after our morning fishing; and again the interesting thing
to me was, not the bird’s instant appearance at the Indian’s summons,
but the curiously intent way in which she turned her head to look down
at him. When he showed his craft again and again, at the doors of other
woodpeckers that were not interested in my knocking, I demanded, “Now,
Matty, tell me how you do it.”
But Matty only laughed. When we are alone in the woods he has a fine
sense of humor, though grim enough at other times. “Oh, woodpecker know
me; he look down at me,” he said; and that was all I could ever get out
of him.
So, though I have seen the gift in operation several times, I have not
yet found the man who had it and who could or would give me any
explanation. There is no doubt in my own mind, however, that the negro,
the Frenchman, and the Indian, and all others who exercise any unusual
influence over animals, do so by reason of their subconscious power to
“talk” or to convey impulses without words, as gregarious wild
creatures commonly talk among themselves. At least, I can understand
much of what I see among birds and brutes by assuming that they talk in
this fashion.
Such a power seems mysterious, incredible, in a civilized world of
sense and noise; but I fancy that every man and woman speaks silently
to the brute without being conscious of the fact. “If you want to see
game, leave your gun at home,” is an accepted saying among hunters; but
the reason for the excellent admonition has not been forthcoming. When
you have hunted six days in vain, and then on a quiet Sunday stroll
come plump upon noble game that seems to have no fear, you are apt to
think of the curiosities of luck, but even here also are you under the
sway of psychological law and order. As you go quietly through the
woods, projecting your own “aura” of peace or sympathy, it may be, in
an invisible wave ahead of you, there is nothing disturbing or
inharmonious in either your thoughts or your actions; and at times the
wild animal seems curiously able to understand the one as well as the
other, just as certain dogs know at first glance whether a stranger is
friendly or hostile or afraid of them. When you are excited or lustful
to kill, something of your emotional excitement seems to precede you;
it passes over many wild birds and beasts, all delicately sensitive,
before you come within their sense range; and when you draw near enough
to see them you often find them restless, suspicious, though as yet no
tangible warning of danger has floated through the still woods. At the
first glimpse or smell of you they bound away, your action in hiding or
creeping making evident the danger which thus far was only vaguely
felt. But if you approach the same animals gently, without mental
excitement of any kind, sometimes, indeed, they promptly run away,
especially in a much-hunted region; but more frequently they meet you
with a look of surprise; they move alertly here or there to get a
better view of you, and show many fascinating signs of curiosity before
they glide away, looking back as they go.
Such has been the illuminating experience of one man, at least,
repeated a hundred times in the wilderness. I have been deep in the
woods when my food-supply ran low, or was lost in the rapids, or went
to feed an uninvited bear, and it was then a question of shoot game or
go hungry; but the shooting was limited by the principle that a wild
animal has certain rights which a man is bound to respect. I have
always held, for example, that a hunter has no excuse for trying long
shots that are beyond his ordinary skill; that it is unpardonable of
him to “take a chance” with noble game or to “pump lead” after it,
knowing as he does that the chances are fifty to one that, if he hits
at all, he will merely wound the animal and deprive it of that gladness
of freedom which is more to it than life. So when I have occasionally
gone out to kill a buck (a proceeding which I heartily dislike) I have
sometimes hunted for days before getting within close range of the
animal I wanted. But when, in the same region and following the same
trails, I have entered the big woods with no other object than to enjoy
their stillness, their fragrance, their benediction, it is seldom that
I do not find plenty of deer, or that I cannot get as near as I please
to any one of them. More than once in the woods I have touched a wild
deer with my hand (as recorded in another chapter) and many times I
have had them within reach of my fishing-rod.
It is even so with bear, moose, caribou and other creatures—your best
“shots” come when you are not expecting them, and it is not chance, but
psychological law, which determines that you shall see most game when
you leave your gun at home. A hunter must be dull indeed not to have
discovered that the animal he approaches peaceably, trying to make his
eyes or his heart say friendly things, is a very different animal from
the one he stalks with muscles tense and eyes hard and death in the
curl of his trigger finger.
I once met an English hunter, a forest officer in India, who told me
that for the first year of his stay in the jungle he was “crazy” to
kill a tiger. He dreamed of the creatures by night; he hunted them at
every opportunity and in every known fashion by day; he never went
abroad on forest business without a ready rifle; and in all that time
he had just one glimpse of a running tiger. One day he was led far from
his camp by a new bird, and as he watched it in a little opening,
unarmed and happy in his discovery, a tiger lifted its huge head from
the grass, not twenty steps away. The brute looked at him steadily for
a few moments, then moved quietly aside, stopped for another look, and
leaped for cover.
That put a new idea into the man’s head, and the idea was emphasized by
the fact that the unarmed natives, who had no desire to meet a tiger,
were frequently seeing the brutes in regions where he hunted for them
in vain. As an experiment he left his rifle at home for a few months;
he practised slipping quietly through the jungle without physical or
mental excitement, as the natives go, and presently he, too, began to
meet tigers. In one district he came close to four in as many months,
and every one acted in the same half-astonished, half-inquisitive way.
Then, thinking he understood his game, he began to carry his rifle
again, and had what he called excellent luck. The beautiful tiger skins
he showed me were a proof of it.
To me this man was a rare curiosity, being the only Indian or African
hunter I ever met who went into the jungle alone, man fashion, and who
did not depend on unarmed natives or beaters or trackers for finding
his game. His excellent “luck” was, as I judge, simply a realization of
the fact that human excitement may carry far in the still woods, and be
quite as disturbing, as the man-scent or the report of a rifle.
Does all this sound strange or incredible to you, like a chapter from a
dream-book? However it may sound, it is the crystallized conviction
resulting from years of intimate observation of wild beasts in their
native woods; and if you consider it a moment without prejudice, it may
appear more natural or familiar, like a chapter from life. If the man
who sits opposite you can send his good or evil will across a room, so
that you feel his quality without words, or if he can so express
himself silently when he enters your gate that certain dogs instantly
take his measure and welcome or bite him, it is not at all improbable
that the same man can project the same feelings when he goes afield, or
that sensitive wild creatures can understand or “feel him out” at a
considerable distance.