species of this family, the average number is sometimes exceeded. Of
the young jaguar’s first essays in life very little is known. Whether
its father takes part in the whelp’s education, as a lion does, or is
on the contrary a destroyer of his male offspring, like the tiger; how
long parental care continues, and in fact all details relating to its
period of infancy, remain obscure. If one inquires about these matters
from natives, they entertain him with romances, legends, and folk-lore
tales. It was a subject for comment among the early Spanish writers
that so few of these animals were killed by Indians. In his “Brief
Narrative of the Most Remarkable Things that Samuel Champlain observed
in the Western Indies,” we find a mention of some jaguar skins that
had been bartered by natives, referred to as rarities. Now, as many or
more come annually from Buenos Ayres alone as were once procured in the
same time throughout the Amazon valleys. Notices of jaguars being taken
in traps are occasionally found in books, but detailed descriptions
of the process of catching them the author has not met with. Some
of the tribes possess efficient weapons of their kind--bows, strong
enough, as Cieza de Leon asserts, “to send an arrow through a horse, or
the knight who rides it.” These Indians are in the habit likewise of
poisoning their arrow-heads. Cieza gives an account of how, after much
trouble and persuasion, he induced the aborigines at Carthagena and
Santa Martha to show him their mode of preparing poison. His relation,
however, is not very instructive. Humboldt and Bonpland (“Voyage,
etc., Relation Historique”) give “_curare_” as the active principle of
those mixtures made by Amazonian tribes. These poisons contain, both
in South America and all over the world where they are used, matters
which are more or less inert, and have been introduced upon purely
magical principles. E. F. im Thurn found the effective constituent
used in Guiana to be “Strychnos-Urari, Yakki, or Arimaru--_i.e._,
_S. toxifera_, _S. Schomburgkii_, _S. cogens_.” Both he and Sir R.
Schomburgh speak of other ingredients--bark, roots, peppers, snake
venom--compounded with the more active principle. Waterton gives
much the same account of the toxic agent used by means of the bow or
blow-gun, and of course there is no doubt that a jaguar inoculated with
enough _curare_ would die.
As for foreigners, their reliance has always been upon firearms, ever
since the first arquebuses were introduced into Spanish America by the
_conquistadores_; and nothing less efficient is likely to avail against
an animal that Audubon and Bachman say “compares in size with the
Asiatic tiger,” and is his “equal in fierceness.”
THE TIGER
A tiger to the majority of men is probably the most impressive and
suggestive of all animals. Apart from those traits so obvious in his
appearance that they affect every one, most beholders have in their
minds some material with which imagination works under the quickening
influence of his deadly eye. No creature matches him in general powers
of destruction; none enacts such tragedies as he, amid scenes so
replete with a various interest; none sheds so much human blood.
The hunter’s spirit natural to our remoter ancestors survives in their
descendants, and few persons are placed under circumstances favorable
for its revival without experiencing something of its force. When
tigers are the objects of pursuit, this often becomes a passion.
[Illustration: THE TIGER.
[_From a photograph by Gambier Bolton. Copyright._]]
One can scarcely look upon the poor, dispirited wretch behind the bars
of a cage, without freeing it in fancy, and transferring the animal to
fitting surroundings,--open spaces in jungle, where tall jowaree grass
waves in the evening air, deep nálás clothed with karinda and tamarisk,
vast, gloomy forests of sál and teak, magnificent mountain buttresses,
upon whose crags stand the ruined fortresses of long-forgotten chiefs.
The tiger of the mind, splendid and terrible is there, and we are there
to meet him.
“In some parts of India,” remarks Inglis (“Work and Sport on the
Nepaul Frontier”), “notably in the Deccan, in certain districts on the
Bombay side, and even in the Soonderbunds, near Calcutta, sportsmen
and shikáris go after tigers on foot. I must confess that this seems
to me a mad thing to do. With every advantage of weapon, with the most
daring courage, and the most imperturbable coolness, I think a man
no fair match for a tiger in his native jungles.” The list of killed
and wounded shows that this opinion is not without foundation; and
when we consider what it means to meet such adversaries as these on
level ground, and face to face, our judgment of its accuracy cannot
be doubtful. Gérard compared a contest on foot with a lion to a duel
between adversaries armed with equally efficient weapons, but one naked
and the other covered with armor in which there were only one or two
spots that were not impenetrable. He intended to illustrate, not the
animal’s invulnerability, of course, but the fact that its tenacity of
life was such that, unless instantly killed, it would almost certainly
kill its opponent. For this reason sportsmen mostly shoot from howdahs,
or machans in tree-jungle. In its depths a great forest is nearly
lifeless at all times. In India its skirts are commonly fringed with
scrub, and there most of the vitality of these regions concentrates
itself. The intense heat of noonday at that season when tiger-hunting
begins--namely, in April--makes those immense woodlands as silent and
lonesome, to all appearance, as if the hand of death had been laid
upon them. But when the short twilight of low latitudes deepens into
gloom, the air, before vacant, except for the wide sweep of some
solitary bird of prey, is filled with the voices of feathered flocks
returning to their roosts. Flying foxes cross vistas still open to the
view, and great horned owls flit by on muffled wings. Those spectral
shapes which haunt such scenes appear amid the solemn gathering of
shadows--contrasts in shade indescribably altering objects from what
they are, waving boughs and rigid tree trunks that start into strange
relief in changing lights, the distorted forms of animals indistinctly
seen moving stealthily about. Throughout those provinces where the
most famous tiger haunts are found, positions of advantage, each
beetling cliff and isolated hill, holds mementos of the past which
are now inexpressibly desolate; the former strongholds of Rajpúts
that may, like the Baghél clan, have claimed descent from a royal
tiger. As we sit aloft watching, a gleam of water, where when gorged
the beast will drink, is visible, and towards that also, each with
infinite precaution, and guided by senses of whose range and delicacy
of perception human beings cannot conceive, the thirsty denizens of
this wilderness take their way. When we mark their timid and uncertain
steps, and see how often they hesitate and stop and turn aside, the
truth that “nature’s peace” is only a form of words expressive of our
own misconception and blindness reveals itself most impressively. There
is no peace. To hunt and be hunted, to slay and be slain, that is the
cycle of all actual life.
Here, while the solemn booming of the great rock monkey sounds like a
death knell, those tragedies take place which only a hunter beholds.
Every creature has its enemy, and there is one abroad in the gloaming
from which all fly. Listen! Above the sambur’s hoarse bark, the bison’s
cavernous bellow, and hyæna’s unearthly cry, a deep, flat, hollow
voice, thrilling with power, floats through the forest. It is a tiger
rounding up deer. If he were in ambush, not the slightest sound would
betray his presence. Now his roar, sent from different directions,
crowds the game together, and puts it at his mercy.
When and in what way will our tiger come? Some of these beasts never
return to a “kill,” they lap the blood, or eat once, and abandon their
quarry altogether. Others consume it wholly in one or several meals,
and even after putrefaction has set in. This animal for whom we wait
may approach boldly while it is yet light, or wait till darkness falls,
and appear at any hour of the night. At its coming it might put in
practice every precaution that could be made use of in stealing upon
living prey, or walk openly towards the carcass with long, swinging,
soft but heavy strides.
Incidents of any special kind, however, reveal the tiger’s nature only
in part. What sort of a being is this in whole; how much mind does he
possess; what are the traits common to his species; and what their
individual peculiarities? Do tigers roar like lions and jaguars, and is
it probable that their neighborhood would be announced in this manner?
Are they in the habit of going about by day; and if not, on what kind
of nights is the beast most active and aggressive? How does a tiger
take his prey, especially man? How far can one spring; in what way does
he kill; what is his mode of devouring creatures? Can tigers climb?
How large are they? Will they assail human beings without provocation,
or has the aspect of humanity a restraining power over them? May they
be met with casually, and at any time? Where are their favorite lairs?
Are they brave or cowardly, cunning or stupid, enterprising, adaptive,
energetic, or the reverse?
Sanderson declares that the tiger never roars; he grunts according
to Major Bevan, and the only approach to roaring Baldwin ever heard,
was a hollow, hoarse, moaning cry, made by holding his head close to
the ground. Inglis describes the sound as like the fall of earth into
some deep cavity, and Colonel Davidson protests that the tiger barks.
Pollok, Leveson, Shakespear, and Rice assert that he roars loudly,
terribly, magnificently, tremendously; and D’Ewes (“Sporting in Both
Hemispheres”) states that in comparison with the roar of a tigress he
encountered in the jungle between Ballary and Dharwar, “any similar
sound he may have heard, either at the zoölogical gardens or elsewhere,
was like a penny trumpet beside an ophicleide.” All these names are
those of men who hold the most conspicuous positions among hunters of
large game; all had killed many tigers and often heard the animal’s
voice.
Much the same contradictory evidence exists with regard to other
things. Colonel Pollok assures us that if he trusted to ambushing game
to supply himself with food he would starve to death. Captain Rice, a
renowned slayer of tigers, lays down the law to this effect, that these
brutes never attack except from an ambush.
Without crowding the page with references, suffice it to say that both
by day and night, in forests, thickets, and open grass land, tigers
have many times been reported by equally reliable witnesses both to
stalk their game, and to spring upon it from a place of concealment.
The striped assassin is provided with a jaw and teeth that enable him
to crush the large bones of a buffalo. He can strike his claws, as
Major Bevan saw him do, through the skull of an ox into its brain,
or break a horse’s back with a blow of his forearm. How then does
he despatch his victims? Their necks are dislocated, says Colonel
Pollok; by biting into them and wrenching round the head with his paws,
explains Captain Forsyth. Not at all, protests Baldwin;--dislocation
is effected by bending the head backward. In neither way, Dr. Jerdon
declares;--the animal’s neck is always broken by a blow. Sir Samuel
Baker adds his testimony to the effect that a tiger never strikes, and
Sanderson says “the blow with his paw is a fable.” Other authorities
maintain that the cervical vertebræ are crushed when the beast, as it
always does, bites the back of the neck; and yet others are sure that
since he never seizes an animal in this manner, loss of blood is the
immediate cause of death, because the great vessels are severed when a
tiger, as is his invariable practice, cuts into the throat. Sanderson
states that the blood is not sucked, since a tiger could not form the
necessary vacuum. In response to this Shakespear and Davidson both
_saw_ the blood of animals that had been tied up as lures sucked, and
Colonel Campbell, Captain Rice, Major Leveson, and others speak of this
act as having come under their personal cognizance.
These animals have been so generally credited with great springing
power that the expressions, “tiger’s leap,” and “tiger’s bound,”
have passed into the colloquial phrases of more than one language.
Nevertheless, when the experiences of eye-witnesses of his performances
in this way are referred to, nothing but contradictions are to be met
with.
Sanderson (“Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India”) thinks “the
tiger’s powers of springing are inconsiderable.” Sir Joseph Fayrer
(“The Royal Tiger”) says that “it is doubtful whether a tiger ever
bounds when charging,” and Inglis supports him in this particular.
Captain Shakespear regarded a machan twelve feet high as perfectly
secure, and Captain Baldwin felt that he was safe when fifteen feet
above the ground. Moray Brown saw a tiger jump fourteen feet high.
J. H. Baldwin (“The Large and Small Game of Bengal”) reports a case
in which a tiger leaped the stockade of a cattle-pen “with a large
full-grown ox in his mouth,” and Dr. Fayrer gives, in the work referred
to, the only authentic story of a tiger’s having taken a man out of
a howdah while the elephant was on his feet. Major G. A. R. Dawson
describes the accident that occurred to General Morgan from a wounded
tigress that sprang across a ravine twenty-five feet wide and struck
him down. Captain W. Rice (“Tiger Shooting in India”) measured the leap
of a tigress he shot, and found it to be “over seven yards.”
Professor Blyth and Dr. Jerdon concluded from their researches at
the Calcutta Museum and elsewhere that tigers could not climb. It
was certainly a very singular conclusion to come to on anatomical
grounds; but waiving this point, we have the statements of Inglis and
Shakespear to the fact that several were shot in trees. It is not
worth while to continue these inquiries as to whether it is possible
to discover something certain about tigers from books; on all points
connected with them we should find the same discordances.
Although Buffon’s extravagances (“Histoire Naturelle”) about this
brute’s disposition need not be seriously considered,--such expressions
as “_sa ferocité n’est comparable à rien_” meaning nothing, and no
creature, for physiological reasons, being capable of remaining in
“a perpetual rage,”--enough is known about the beast to make it
doubtful whether it deserves the “whitewashing” that some have given
its character. But if it be granted that tigers possess intelligence,
that in many places they have become acquainted with the effects of
European firearms, and are not at all likely to mistake an Englishman
with a rifle for a Hindu carrying a staff, many things which seem
inexplicably at variance will become plain. If rage does not overpower
their discretion, they run away when the prospect of certain death
stares them in the face. What do they do when it does not? that is the
question at present, and the answer is that they act like tigers. This
most formidable of beasts of prey is not in the least afraid of a man
because he is a man; he does not quail at his glance--that enrages
him; his voice will not always startle,--it often attracts; nor can
the scent of a human being of itself turn him aside--on the contrary,
it frequently guides the beast to his prey. So much for the general
view; and we may now go into the jungle again and discuss what befalls,
in the light of those principles which have been advanced elsewhere.
This will be a _duróra_ against the tigers of a district, our
hunting-grounds lie in historic spots, and the party is accompanied by
elephants, baggage animals, attendants, and all the varied appliances
that belong to a raid of this kind conducted upon a large scale.
Close to our camp lie the crumbling _cedghas_, shrines, tombs, and
fortress palaces of a race of princes now extinct, and seated in a
kiosk around whose crumbling walls half-effaced Persian and Arabic
inscriptions tell of the beauty of some girl whose bright eyes closed
ages ago, and whose career of ineffectual passion finds a fit emblem
in the _pishash_, or transient dust column that glides across the
plain, let us attempt to forecast the events of to-morrow. More can
be foretold than one would suppose. The tiger’s size and age, the
configuration of the ground, his previous habits of life, and the
places where shade and water are to be found, will certainly affect his
movements after he has been roused, and when the shikáris come in we
shall know all this. Here is the head huntsman now, who comes back from
his scout to make a report to the “Captain of the hunt,” an experienced
sportsman always elected on such occasions to take a general direction
of affairs, and manœuvre our elephants in the field. Mohammed Kasim
Ali is a typical figure and worth looking at; a small withered being
with a dingy turban wound around his straggling elf locks; dressed
in a ragged shirt of Mhowa green, and lugging a matchlock as long as
himself loaded half way up the barrel. He bears the big bison horn of
coarse slow-burning native powder, and a small gazelle-horn primer.
His person is bedecked with amulets, and his beard, he being an
elderly man, is dyed red--if he were young, it would be stained gray.
But despite this man’s grotesque appearance, he possesses a profound
knowledge of wood-craft, and as a tracker and interpreter of signs,
no savage or white prodigy of the wilderness who ever embellished the
pages of a certain style of romance can surpass him.
This worthy delivers himself somewhat as follows: “May I be your
sacrifice! Whilst searching with eagerness for these sons of the devil,
your slave beheld the footprints of a tiger. _Alla ke Qoodrut_, it is
the power of God; then why should your servant defile his mouth with
lies? These tracks were made by the great-grandfather of all tigers.
The livers of Chinneah and Gogooloo turned to water at the sight, but
sustained by my Lord’s condescension I followed them to a nálá, and he
was standing by a pool. Karinda and tamarisk bushes grew more thickly
than lotus flowers in Paradise, but I saw clearly that the unsainted
beast was bigger than a buffalo bull. His teeth were as iron rakes,
his eyes glared like bonfires, and the spirits of those whom he had
devoured sat upon his head.” This with many aspirations, to the effect
that unquenchable fire might consume the souls of the tiger’s entire
family.
This rhodomontade--quite in keeping, however, with the individual and
his country--means that a large tiger was seen, and will be found for
us next day.
The one that Kasim Ali, the eloquent, saw by the pool was making
ready for his nightly excursion; for although they are frequently
seen abroad by day, these animals are nocturnal in habit. The writer,
however, sees no reason for repeating a remark which is often made in
this connection, namely, that they are “half-blind” during daylight.
There is no rigidity in the iris, nothing to prevent the eye from
adjusting itself to different degrees of intensity in that medium by
which the retina is stimulated. He sees very well at night, and if
sensitive to a strong light, so are many other animals whose vision
is also good when it is not dark. It is habitual with tigers to seek
shade; and any eyes, except those of some birds, would be dazzled by
the intense glare of an Indian sun.
When viewed by the shikáris, he had lately roused from his rest as
the day declined, and the faint lowing of distant herds, and far-away
voices of _Gwallas_ bringing home their cattle penetrated to his
retreat. He stretched his lithe length and magnificent limbs, his
fierce eyes dilated, and a strange and terrible change came over the
beast. Every attitude and motion betrayed his purpose. But although
murder was in his mind, and all that he did revealed that intention,
his movements varied, or would do so, with age and experience. If
the animal were young, and had been but recently separated from the
tigress, that taught him to find prey, showed how to attack it, and
encouraged him to kill for the sake of practice, his actions would
exhibit all the boldness that comes from entire self-confidence. He
then leaves the lair without precaution, and takes his way through the
intricacies of the jungle with confidence, not pausing to examine every
sign, as his trail shows. If old, however, an unusual sound would stop
him, a footprint in the path that was not there when he last passed
would turn him aside. This tiger of ours is not aged, but has learned
something since he became solitary like all his kind, except in the
brief season of pairing. Experience may be thrown away on men, but not
upon tigers. This one will never again make mistakes such as those into
which overboldness and want of proper attention have already betrayed
him. Once, shortly after he began to shift for himself, a buffalo, of
whom he thought that it could be killed as easily as a slim long-necked
native cow, tossed him. Another time when too hungry to wait for a
favorable opportunity, he seized upon a calf prematurely. No sooner did
his roar of triumph as he struck it dead echo through the jungle, than
a dark crescentic line fringed with clashing horns confronted him. It
came on in quick irregular rushes, and no tiger could withstand such an
array, so he had to fly. His glossy hide was ripped likewise by a “grim
gray tusker,” which the unsophisticated youth designed to despatch
without difficulty. Before these instructive incidents occurred
something more had been learned also.
One morning the silence was broken by blasts of cholera horns, the
beating of tom-toms, and wild cries from a multitude of men--such men,
however, as he knew and had frequently observed in the jungle and
elsewhere. But there was now a man, mounted on an elephant, the like of
which he had never seen, but whose appearance is not forgotten. He had
guns far worse than matchlocks, instruments of sudden death that killed
his mother. This formidable robber, for all his ferocious temper,
great strength, and terrible means of offence, is as cunning as a fox,
and wary to a degree that closely simulates cowardice. But one might as
well call North American Indians cowards,--which by the way is often
done by those whose opinions are unbiassed by any personal acquaintance
with them,--because they always fight on the principle of taking the
greatest advantage and least risk.
To start a party such as ours takes time, and of the value of time
no Hindu has the slightest idea. The mob of beaters are packed off
with strenuous injunctions to keep together, but they will not do
so. An ineradicable heedlessness besets them, and they are certain
to straggle, though the risk that doing so entails is perfectly well
understood. The Oriental says, “If it is my fate to perish thus, how
can I avoid the decree of heaven? My destiny is fixed; it is in the
hands of God, and may the devil take these infidels who talk as if
matters could be otherwise than as they are.”
Every crupper, breast-band, girth, and howdah cloth must be looked to
by the hunters themselves; mahouts and attendants cannot be trusted to
equip their charges, and if things were left to them, an elephant would
be disabled every day.
All our proceedings as we draw near to the tiger require to be
conducted with reference to the lie of the land. Whether he be beaten
for with elephants, or roused by the unearthly clamor of the crowd
that has come to drive him, it is probable that his first act will
be an attempt to escape. He carries a perfect topographical chart of
the neighborhood in his head, and an unguarded avenue of egress means
that we shall not carry back his spoils. When he does start, it will
not be with the wild, affrighted rush of a bison or sambur stag; his
retirement, if he is not actually sighted, is made with the deathly
silence of an elephant warned of danger. He makes use of every mode of
concealment, creeps from bush to bush, from tree to tree, from rock to
rock, crouching where cover grows thin or fails, so that the colors
of his coat assimilate with those of the herbage, and he becomes well
nigh invisible even in places where it seems utterly impossible for so
large an animal to hide himself. In denser jungle the fugitive stops
and stands with head erect to listen, or rears up amid long jowaree
grass, taking in every sight and sound that indicates the position of
his enemies. Thus his advance is made towards the point at which it is
intended to break away; and if it be necessary to cross bare spots, he
does so, not indeed with a panther’s lightning-like rapidity, but in
long, easy bounds that devour the distance.
Under all circumstances, if the ground is sufficiently broken to permit
of it, the tiger keeps among ravines, at one time traversing the crest
of a ridge, at another stealing along through the underbrush below.
Then it is that the pad-elephants and lookouts in trees come into play
in order to turn him in the direction where the rifles are stationed;
the former by their presence, the latter by softly striking small
sticks together.