with men; then the sportsmen advance in their howdahs, and one may see
how a highly-trained shikar tusker can work.
Sir Samuel Baker (“Wild Beasts and Their Ways”) described the qualities
of a good hunting animal in action. His party were out near Moorwara.
It was in the dry season, and they were keeping on a line parallel
with the railroad, and about twenty miles from it. The heat had
evaporated tanks, caused upland springs to fail, and dried up pools and
watercourses, so that tigers, that cannot endure thirst, were driven
from their accustomed retreats into places more accessible. On this
occasion the natives were beating towards Baker’s elephant, but the
beast, as it sometimes does, broke back upon their line at once.
“We were startled,” he continues, “by the tremendous roars of this
tiger, continued in quick succession within fifty yards of the
position I then occupied. I never heard, either before or since, such
a volume of sound proceed from a single animal. There was a horrible
significance in the grating and angry voice that betokened extreme fury
of attack. Not an instant was lost. The mahout was an excellent man,
as cool as a cucumber, and never over-excited. He obeyed the order to
advance straight towards the spot where the angry roars still continued
without intermission.
“Moolah Box was a thoroughly dependable elephant; but although moving
forward with a majestic and determined step, it was in vain that
I endeavored to hurry the mahout. Both man and beast appeared to
understand their business completely, but according to my ideas the
pace was woefully slow if assistance was required in danger.
“The ground was slightly rising, and the jungle thick with saplings
about twenty feet in height, and as thick as a man’s leg; these formed
an undergrowth among the larger forest trees.
“Moolah Box crashed with his ponderous weight through the resisting
mass, bearing down all obstacles before him as he steadily made his
way across the intervening growth. The roars had now ceased. There
were no leaves on the trees at this advanced season, and one could
see the natives among the branches in all directions, as they perched
for safety on the limbs to which they had climbed like monkeys at the
terrible sounds of danger. ‘Where is the tiger?’ I shouted to the first
man we could distinguish in his safe retreat only a few yards distant.
‘Here! here!’ he replied, pointing immediately beneath him. Almost at
the same instant, the tiger, which had been lying ready for attack,
sprang forward with a loud roar directly for Moolah Box.
“There were so many trees intervening that I could not fire, and the
elephant, instead of halting, moved forward, meeting the tiger in
his spring. With a swing of his huge head he broke down several tall
saplings, that crashed towards the infuriated tiger and checked his
onset. Discomfited for a moment, he bounded in retreat, and Moolah Box
stood suddenly like a rock, without the slightest movement. This gave
me a splendid opportunity, and the .577 bullet rolled him over like a
rabbit. Almost at the same instant, having performed a somersault, the
tiger disappeared, and fell struggling among the high grass and bushes
about fifteen paces distant.
“I now urged Moolah Box carefully forward until I could plainly see the
tiger’s shoulders, and then a second shot through the exact centre of
the blade-bone terminated its existence.”
In this attack four men were wounded, but it is not often that a
tiger charges home upon a line of beaters; generally, only stragglers
suffer, although, as has been said, some tigers attack immediately
upon being found. Whenever and however the assault is made, it must
needs be a terrible one, and to most creatures at once overwhelming.
Imagine a beast like this, so active, so powerful, so armed,--five
hundred pounds’ weight of incarnated destructive energy launched by
such muscles as his against an enemy. “It has been the personification
of ferocity and unsparing cruelty,” says Sir Samuel Baker. But it is
to the terrible character of its attack, to the fact that this is so
frequently fatal, and to the awe-inspiring appearance of the beast
as it comes on with dilated form and fire-darting eyes, that much of
its reputation for more than ordinary ferocity is due. A tiger is
beyond question the most formidable of all predatory creatures when
earnest in his aggressive intentions; very frequently, however, he is
not so. False charges, made in order to intimidate, are more common
than real ones. A tiger will bristle, and snarl, and roar, apparently
with a perfect consciousness of the additional impressiveness given
to his general appearance in this way. Some are, of course, braver
than others; locality and their experience of human power make a wide
difference between those whose characters have been formed in separate
areas. Still everywhere their temper is short and fierce, and when
roused to fury they fight desperately. When we hear of the abject
cowardice of these beasts,--how they slink away from before the face
of man and cannot endure his look, how they will never assail him if
not provoked, and how they die like curs at last,--it is natural,
and a mere suggestion of common sense, to think that these are _ex
parte_ statements, premature generalizations, sweeping conclusions
from special experiences, and misinterpretations of observations that
a little diligence and proper intellectual sincerity upon the part of
their narrators would have shown to be more than counterbalanced by
facts of a different complexion.
No two tigers are identical in anything, and all the elements of
uncertainty and dispute which have been specified make their appearance
when we come into contact with them. Nobody knows or can know what
will happen then. Silently like some grim ghost, the animal may steal
within shot, and fall dead at the first fire. Sometimes he bursts from
a dense clump of bushes that the hunter’s sight has been unable to
penetrate, and if hit, rages round the tree from which the ball came
as if mad; or, if his foes be within reach, he kills or is killed.
Occasionally when not well watched by lookouts, the first intimation
that his domain has been invaded is the signal for a retreat to some
secure hiding-place,--the pits and passages of an abandoned mine, or a
cave perhaps, in which latter case, if it be attempted to dislodge him
by an indraught of smoke from fire kindled at its mouth, it will be
seen that a tiger can breathe in an atmosphere such as would seem to
be necessarily fatal to any animal. Finally, the brute may break back
and attack the beaters, or creep through their line, or charge the
elephants, and perish amid the wildest display of fury and desperation.
Finally, as it sometimes, though rarely happens, the first stir in the
jungle sends him off by an unguarded path across ridges and plains to
some distant lair, and the hunt for that day is bootless.
Tiger-shooting is never without danger to the sportsman. Many a man has
been clawed out of a tree and killed, or caught before he could get out
of reach. Elephants have been pulled down, or the howdah ropes have
broken and precipitated its occupants into the tiger’s jaws. Moreover,
nine elephants out of ten are not stanch, they become panic-stricken
and bolt; in which event the risk of being dashed to death against a
tree is greater than that of any other fatal accident that is likely to
occur.
Most accounts of tigers are confined to their connection with mankind;
but if this be the more important, it certainly is not the more
general relationship. Out of the large number born every year (though
not in the same season, for these animals pair irregularly) few come
in contact with human beings. They prey upon the larger animals of
their respective provinces, both wild and domestic, but, of course,
chiefly upon the former. In this way they are of positive benefit to
the agricultural class. Baldwin, Sanderson, Leveson and others, whose
observations made upon the spot, and with the best opportunities for
knowing the truth in this matter, are not likely to be incorrect, state
that but for the aid rendered by tigers in keeping down the numbers
of grain-eating species, the Indian cultivator would find it almost
impossible to live. No doubt the same condition of things prevails in
other parts of Asia. Cattle-lifters, however, impose a heavy tax on
the country, and as these generally grow fat, lazy, and rarely hunt,
they are a decided disadvantage to any neighborhood. Furthermore, it
is from among this class that most man-eaters come. In districts to
which cattle are driven to graze, and then withdrawn when the grass
fails, tigers accustomed to haunt the vicinity of herds, and that have
remained for the most part guiltless of human blood so long as their
supply of beef lasted, are apt to eat the inhabitants when it fails.
One of these marauders upon livestock will kill an ox every five days,
and smaller domestic animals proportionately often, and it is easy to
see that the cost of supporting them must be very considerable.
So much has been said in connection with other beasts of prey upon
the subject of those reports in which each group is represented to
have an invariable way of capturing and killing game, that it seems
unnecessary to enlarge upon this point with reference to tigers. They
stalk animals, and spring upon them from an ambush. When a victim has
been caught, it is destroyed by a blow with the arm, its neck vertebræ
are crushed by a bite, its throat is cut, or head wrenched round. Very
probably the tiger does not strike habitually like a lion. He often
does so, however, and the fact that one was seen to drive his claws
into the brain of an ox has been mentioned. Sir Joseph Fayrer reports
the case of a tiger that dashed into a herd, “and in his spring struck
down simultaneously a cow with each fore foot.” Major H. A. Leveson
(“Hunting Grounds of the Old World”) saw one of his men killed in the
Annámullay forest in this manner. “His death,” says Leveson, “must
have been instantaneous, as the tigress with the first blow of her paw
crushed his skull, and his brains were scattered about.”
“I venture to assert,” says Colonel Gordon Cumming (“Wild Men and Wild
Beasts”), “that one of the chief characteristics of the tiger is, that
in its wild state, it will only feed on prey of its own killing.” No
other name of equal weight has been appended to a statement such as
this. On the contrary, nearly all evidence goes to show that tigers are
very indiscriminate in their eating, that they feed on almost anything,
living or dead, fresh or putrid. Captain Walter Campbell (“The Old
Forest Ranger”) mentions the fact of their appropriating game already
killed as coming under his personal observation; and Major Leveson
(“Sport in Many Lands”) records that he shot two tigers in the Wynaad
forest while they were engaged in a desperate fight for the possession
of a deer’s carcass. It is notorious that tigers so constantly destroy
their cubs that the tigress leaves her mate almost immediately after
they are born, and conceals her young. There are several instances
in which she herself has been devoured, and there is no doubt of the
cannibalism of this beast. J. Moray Brown (“Shikar Sketches”), speaking
of the frequency of combats between tigers, says that, “occasionally
the victor eats the vanquished.” Colonel Pollok (“Sport in British
Burmah”) informs us that “when two tigers contend for the right of
slaughtering cattle in any particular locality, one is almost sure to
be killed, and, perhaps, eaten by the other. I have known instances
of this happening.” General W. C. Andersson shot a tiger in Kandeish,
within whose body he found the recently ingested remains of another,
whose head and paws were lying close by in the jungle. General Blake
also discovered, near Rungiah in Assam, the partially devoured body of
a tiger that had been killed by one of its own kind.
Except incidentally, technical details bearing upon character have
not been mentioned; the tiger’s size, however, has no doubt a
marked influence upon his mental traits. Looking upon a trail that
goes straight towards the water, which other creatures approach so
differently, one sees how the animal that left those footprints--nearly
square in the male, oval in case of a tigress--felt no fear of any
adversary, and therefore must have been of considerable bulk. Not
only the best authorities, so far as formal zoölogy is concerned, but
almost every one who has devoted special attention to this subject,
gives the length of an average tiger, when fully developed, at about
nine feet six inches from tip to tip. The female is quite twelve inches
shorter. Many writers, however, admit the existence of tigers ten feet
long, and no one is in a position to deny that some may attain to that
length. But when a writer like Sir Joseph Fayrer (“The Royal Tiger
of Bengal”) says that he has “measured their bodies as they lay dead
on the spot where they had fallen,” and found them to be “more than
eleven feet from the nose to the end of the tail,” there is nothing to
be replied, except that, very few persons have been so fortunate as
to see the like. There was once, indeed, a tiger-slayer who used to
shoot specimens fourteen feet long and over, but he died gallantly in
battle, and his name need not be given.
With regard to the structure of his brain, the tiger is gyrencephalous;
that is to say, the lobes exhibit a certain degree of convolution.
It may also be said that the cerebral hemispheres project backwards
so as to cover the anterior border of the cerebellum, and that these
greater segments of the encephalon are completely connected. The
nervous structure is not of the highest type known to exist among
inferior animals, but it is quite high enough not to militate against
an empirical conclusion that this creature’s actions show it to be
organically very capable.
Of the details of the every-day life of the tiger we know comparatively
little. Thousands of cattle, for instance, are killed every year in
India, and yet there is but one narrative, so far as the writer knows,
of a tiger having been seen to stalk a quadruped of this kind. It is
quoted by J. Moray Brown (“Shikar Sketches”) from Captain Pierson’s
relation of the incident. While hunting in the jungles of Kamptee,
he saw from the edge of a ravine on which he was resting, a herd
grazing on the ground just below, and a tigress at a little distance
reconnoitering. Her choice fell in the first place upon a white cow
that was straggling, and she approached till within about eighty
yards under cover of the bushes, and then broke into a trot. The cow,
however, became aware of her danger, and after standing a moment as
if paralyzed with fear, dashed into the midst of her companions. The
tigress, which during this time had continued to advance, then charged
at once, and “in a few seconds she picked out a fine young cow, upon
whose shoulders she sprang, and they both rolled over in a heap. When
the two animals were still again, we could distinctly see the cow
standing up with her neck embraced by the tigress, which was evidently
sucking her jugular. The poor creature then made a few feeble efforts
to release herself, which the tigress resented by breaking her neck.”
Major H. Bevan (“Thirty Years in India”) saw a tiger “knock over a
bullock with a single blow on the haunch, and seizing the throat, lay
across the body sucking the blood.” Major Leveson (“Hunting Grounds
of the Old World”), while lying out by a pool at night, witnessed the
death of a sambur deer that was struck down and instantly killed by a
tiger. Various narratives of the tiger’s attack might be quoted, but
his behavior while stealing upon his prey, the manner in which he seeks
for it, and the way in which it is discovered, these are points that we
know very little about.
“The tiger is a shy, morose, and unsociable brute,” Dr. Fayrer remarks,
“but like all animals of high type, the range of individual differences
is very great.” “Nearly every tiger,” observes Moray Brown, “has a
certain character for ferocity, wiliness or the reverse--of being a
man-eater, cattle-lifter, or game-killer--which is well known to the
jungle folk.”
The tiger’s overlordship of the jungle is not maintained without some
reverses. A bear sometimes beats him off, but usually these contests
end in the bear’s being devoured. Sanderson, together with others,
reports this upon personal observation. Wild boars occasionally avenge
the death of their fellows. Inglis found the bodies of both combatants
lying side by side.
Single buffaloes are killed by a tiger; but when a herd is combined
against him, as is always the case when his presence is discovered,
he has no chance of success. Inglis (“Work and Sport on the Nepaul
Frontier”) describes such an event, and as it is the only narrative of
this kind the author has met with, his account is given in full.
“One of the most exciting and deeply interesting scenes I ever
witnessed in the jungles ... took place in the month of March, at the
village of Ryseree, in Bhaugulpore.
“I was sitting in my tent going over some accounts with the village
putwarrie and my gomasta. A posse of villagers were grouped under the
grateful shade of a gnarled old mango tree, whose contorted limbs bore
witness to many a tufan and tempest which it had weathered. The usual
confused clamor of tongues was rising up from this group, and the
subject of debate was the eternal ‘_pice_’ [small coins].
“A number of horses were picketed in the shade, and behind the horses,
each manacled by weighty chains, with their ponderous trunks and
ragged-looking tails swaying to and fro with a never-ceasing motion,
stood a line of ten elephants. Their huge leathery ears flapped lazily,
and ever and anon one would seize a branch, and belabor his corrugated
sides to free himself from the detested and troublesome flies.
“Suddenly there was a hush. Every sound seemed to stop simultaneously
as by prearranged concert. Then three men were seen rushing madly along
the elevated ridge surrounding one of the tanks. I recognized one of
my peons, and with him there were two cowherds. Their head-dresses
were all disarranged, and their parted lips, heaving chests, and eyes
blazing with excitement, showed that they were brimful of some unusual
message.
“Now there arose such a bustle in the camp as no description could
adequately portray. The elephants trumpeted and piped; the syces and
grooms came pushing up with eager questions; the villagers bustled
about like so many ants roused by the approach of a foe; my pack of
terriers yelped in chorus; the pony neighed; the Cabool stallion
plunged about; my servants rushed from the shelter of the tent-veranda
with disordered dress; the ducks rose in a quacking crowd, and circled
round and round the tent; and the cry arose of ‘_Bagh! Bagh! Khodawund!
Arree Bap re Bap! Ram Ram, Seeta Ram!_’
“Breathless with running, the men now tumbled up and hurriedly
salaamed; then each with gasps and choking stops, and pell-mell
volubility, and amid a running fire of cries, queries, and
interjections from the mob, began to unfold their tale. There was an
infuriated tigress on the other side of the nullah, or dry watercourse,
and she had attacked a herd of buffaloes, and it was believed she had
cubs.
“Already Debnarain Singh was getting his own pad-elephant caparisoned,
and my bearer was diving under my camp bed for the rifles and
cartridges. Knowing the little elephant to be a fast walker, and
fairly stanch, I got upon her back, and accompanied by the gomasta and
mahout we set out, followed by the peon and herdsmen to show us the way.
“I expected two friends, officers from Calcutta, that very day, and
wished not to kill the tigress, but to keep her for our combined
shooting next day. We had not proceeded far, when on the other side of
the nullah we saw dense clouds of dust rising, and heard a confused
rushing, trampling sound, intermingled with the clashing of horns, and
the snorting of a herd of angry buffaloes.
“It was the wildest sight I have ever seen in connection with animal
life. The buffaloes were drawn together in the form of a crescent;
their eyes glared fiercely, and as they advanced in a series of short
runs, stamping with their hoofs, and angrily lashing their tails, their
horns would come together with a clanging, clattering crash, and they
would paw the sand, snort, and toss their heads, and behave in the most
extraordinary manner.
“The cause of all this commotion was not far to seek. Directly in
front, retreating slowly, with stealthy, crawling, prowling steps, and
an occasional short, quick leap or bound to one or the other side, was
a magnificent tigress, looking the very impersonification of baffled
fury. Ever and anon she crouched down to the earth, tore it up with
her claws, lashed her tail from side to side, and with lips retracted,
long mustaches quivering with wrath, and hateful eyes scintillating
with rage and fury, she seemed to meditate an attack upon the angry
buffaloes. The serried array of clashing horns, and the ponderous bulk
of the herd appeared, however, to daunt the snarling vixen; at their
rush she would bound back a few paces, crouch down, growl, and be
forced to move back again, before the short, blundering charge of the
crowd.
“All the old cows and calves were in rear of the herd, and it was not a
little comical to witness their awkward attitudes. They would stretch
their ungainly necks, and shake their heads as if they did not rightly
understand what was going on. Finding that if they stopped too long to
indulge their curiosity, there was danger of getting separated from
the fighting members of the herd, they would make a stupid, lumbering,
headlong rush forward, and jostle each other in their blundering panic.
“It was a grand sight. The tigress was the embodiment of lithe savage
beauty, but her features expressed the wildest baffled rage. I could
have shot the striped vixen over and over again, but I wished to keep
her for my friends; and I was thrilled by the excitement of such a
novel scene.
“Suddenly our elephant trumpeted, and shied quickly on one side from
something lying on the ground. Curling up its trunk it began backing
and piping at a prodigious rate.
“‘Hallo! what’s the matter now?’ said I to Debnarain.
“‘God only knows,’ said he.
“‘A young tiger! _Bagh ta butcha_,’ screamed our mahout, and regardless
of the elephant or our cries, he scuttled down the pad rope like a
monkey down a backstay, and clutching a young dead tiger cub, threw
it up to Debnarain. It was about the size of a small poodle, and had
evidently been trampled by the pursuing herd of buffaloes.
“‘There may be others,’ said the gomasta, and peering into every bush,
we went slowly on. My elephant then showed decided symptoms of dislike
and reluctance to approach a particular dense clump of grass.
“A sounding whack on the head, however, made her quicken her steps, and
thrusting the long stalks aside, she discovered for us three blinking
little cubs, brothers of the defunct, and doubtless part of the same
litter. Their eyes were scarcely open, and they lay huddled together
like three enormous striped kittens, and spat at us, and bristled their
little mustaches much as an angry cat would do. All four were males.
“It was not long before I had them wrapped up carefully in the mahout’s
blanket. Overjoyed at our good fortune, we left the excited herd still
executing their singular war-dance, and the enraged tigress, robbed of
her whelps, consuming her soul in baffled fury.
“We heard her roaring through the night close to camp, and on my
friends’ arrival, we beat her up next morning, and she fell, pierced by
three balls, in a fierce and determined charge. We came upon her across
the nullah, and her mind was evidently made up to fight.”