of forests, he is one foot long, has but little coat, although his
stripes can be seen, and is blind. On the eighth or tenth day his
eyes open, and by that time he has grown four inches and a half. At
nine months the length is five feet, and at the expiration of a year
he measures five feet eight inches. When two years of age the male’s
length from tip to tip is about seven feet six inches, and that of the
tigress seven feet. Between the second and third year they separate
from their mother. While in the days of his youth the _lodia bagh_
makes indiscriminate war upon the brute creation, commits unnecessary
murders, stalks his prey instead of surprising it, and, Leveson
and others assert, chases it like the cheetah. But time diminishes
nervous energy, and leaves him, like all other beings, bereft of the
incitements its excess engenders. Experience warns him against the
consequences of temerity, and he grows lazy. Then these animals take to
ambushing deer-runs and drinking places; they round up game by moving
round and roaring; they practise upon the curiosity which besets the
_Cervidæ_; and partly show themselves in the jungle to tempt an axis
deer to a closer inspection; they are also said to bark in imitation of
the sambur stag, in order to lure a doe or some pugnacious buck, within
reach of a rush.
As for the beast that takes to man-eating, what was most probably at
first an accidental event, now becomes the occupation of its life. In
the first place it encountered men casually, now this is done with
intention. He _must_ study the habits of his game, and that he does so,
is attested by his fatal success. _Adme khane wallah_, the eater of
men, glares upon them from every “coign of vantage”; he discriminates
between individuals, classes, and occupations, he learns the ways
of farmers and woodcutters, of women who wash by the stream, of
mail-carriers, and travellers on roads, of priests who serve at lonely
shrines.
No country is so favorable for his exploits as India. The endless
divisions of its people into castes or professions is destructive to
unanimity of feeling and combined action. The “gentle Hindu,” who is
one of the most callous and unsympathetic of mankind, folds his hands
when one of his co-religionists has been carried off, and says that
Kali probably sent the tiger for that especial purpose, so what has
he to do with it? His Mussulman acquaintance twists his mustache, and
mutters, _Ul-humd-ul-illa_, praise be to God, this man was only an
infidel, and it was his destiny! They cannot act together, and formerly
matters were worse than they are now.
Nothing could suit the prowling tiger better than these isolated
settlements with their careless, nearly defenceless inhabitants, the
by-ways and wastes that separate them. When he has once killed a man,
and has discovered the creature’s feebleness, those horrors so often
recorded follow as matters of course. Henceforth, nobody is safe beyond
the walls of his town or dwelling. Occasionally not even there, for the
man-eater combines the extremes of conduct,--excessive wariness and
desperate audacity.
There is no necessity to multiply references as to the fact that these
tigers are audacious,--that is generally known to be the case; but it
is well to remember in connection with their relations to mankind,
that they are apt to become panic-stricken at anything which appears
strange and unaccountable. Colonel Pollok preserves an incident (“Sport
in British Burmah”) which illustrates their enterprise, and yet shows
how they become confused, incapable, and appalled by whatever is beyond
comprehension,--a feature in the animal’s character, by the way, which
is much more creditable to its intellect than derogatory to its courage.
Hill, the officer to whom the adventure happened, relates his own
experiences. He was out with a body of native troops after some Shan
mutineers at the time, and in a country that Crawfurd, Colonel Yule,
Hallett, Colquhoun, etc., speak of as much infested by tigers. At
Yonzaleem a report was brought to him that a scourge of this kind was
in the neighborhood, and that fifteen men had been killed in a month;
but duty called, and there was no time in which to go hunting. “We were
travelling along a mountain pathway fringed with bamboo-like grass,”
Hill says, “and I was leading the way about thirty paces, perhaps, in
front of the party, followed at a little distance by my lugelay, or
Burmese boy, carrying my loaded gun. I had nothing in my hand but my
oak stick, but you know what a shillelah it is, and what a thundering
blow can be given with it. It was still early, and as I was trudging
along carelessly, the men behind me jabbering and talking, I heard a
slight noise on the edge of the pathway to my right; for a second I
paid no attention to it, but thinking it might be a jungle-fowl or a
pheasant, I beckoned to the boy to give me my gun. He had loitered
behind, and before he could reach me, by slow degrees out came the head
of an enormous tiger, close to me, almost within hitting distance.
Unfortunately my lad, and the Burmese escort, saw it too, and halted,
calling out ‘The tiger! the tiger! he will be killed! he will be
killed!’ meaning me. I did not take my eyes off the tiger’s, but put my
hand behind my back, saying in Burmese to the boy, ‘Give me my gun;’
but he and the others only kept jabbering, ‘He will be killed! he will
be killed!’ Not a man stirred, though they were all armed and loaded.
So there we were, the tiger and I, face to face. At last, thinking
to frighten it away, I lifted the stick and pretended to hit it a
back-handed blow, at the same time making a sort of yelling noise. The
stick was over my left shoulder, but so far from being intimidated, the
tiger rushed at me, and I caught him a blow on the side of the head and
floored him.
“Seeing him pick himself up with his back towards me, I thought he was
going to bolt, and for the first time turned round, and said, ‘Now
give me my gun.’ Before the words were well out of my mouth, my stick
was sent flying, my right hand pinned to my side by one of his hind
claws, and one of his fore-paws on my shoulder and back, and he stood
over me growling in a most diabolical manner. I bent my back, stuck
out my legs, and with my left arm struck towards my right shoulder at
the brute’s face, which was towering over me, snarling and growling
like the very devil. Suddenly, with an infernal roar, he struck me on
the neck, and down I went as if I had been shot, the tiger turning
a somersault over me, and falling on his back. In a second, in my
endeavors to get up, I was on my hands and knees, the blood pouring
over my face, beard and chest, giving me, I have no doubt, a most
satanic appearance. As the tiger recovered we met face to face. He
looked at me, seemed to think that by some strange metamorphosis,
from a two-legged man, whom he despised, I had become some kind of a
four-legged monster like himself, put his tail between his legs, and
bolted for his life.”
This is a very disconcerting account for those who assert that the
tiger is always dazed by daylight, and a coward at all times; that he
shrinks from the sight and scent of human beings, flies from the sound
of the human voice, and quails before the glance of a man’s eye.
Colonel Pollok (“Natural History Notes”) says he “never heard of a
black tiger,” but that he has “seen the skins of three white ones; two
entirely white and the other faintly marked with yellow stripes.” These
came from the mountains of Indo-China. In the Himalayas they have been
shot at an elevation of eight thousand feet above the sea, and, besides
being what is called white, were maned. J. W. Atkinson (“Travels on the
Upper and Lower Amoor”) tells of a young Kirghis who, while carrying
off his bride, camped on this river and lost her there by a tiger’s
attack. He threw away his own life in following this animal, dagger
in hand, into the reeds. This does not always happen so by any means.
Asiatics do what Europeans cannot attempt. It is well known that the
Ghoorkas kill tigers with their celebrated knives; but we do not hear
how many of them are destroyed in such combats. Captain Basil Hall
(“Travels in India”) saw a Hindu (using one of these weapons) meet
a tiger at a Rajah’s court, evade his spring, hamstring him as he
passed, and cut through his neck into the spinal cord when the brute
turned. In ancient times that class of gladiators called _Bestiarii_,
encountered tigers in the Roman arena; and if one may judge from
notices that are rather vague, they were pretty generally expended. The
Brinjarries, says Forsyth, sometimes, assisted by their dogs, assail
them with lances; and they were certainly killed by arrows at one
period, but in what proportion to those whom they slew is unknown.
Certain traits are common to all the race; and as a summary of the
foregoing, the appended remarks and illustrations will not be out of
place. Wherever the tiger is found, water, despite Colonel Barras’
solitary voice to the contrary, must be near. He drinks much and
often, and cannot live in arid places. Therefore it is that the time
to hunt him in India is during the hot season. Those spots where he
resorts for water, and what is equally necessary to him, shade, are
well known in all parts where he is to be found; and it is there that
buffaloes--young ones, for an ordinarily fastidious tiger will not
touch an old, tough animal--are tied up. When taken, his trail is
followed to the spot where he makes his lair.
There is one exception, however, to all rules that usually govern the
pursuit of tigers. When a man-eater is the object, the trailing must
go on all day and every day until this monster is run down. No better
example of what is to be done under these circumstances can be given
than Captain Forsyth’s narrative of his own exploit in the Bétúl jungle.
“I spent nearly a week ... in the destruction of a famous man-eater,
that had completely closed several roads, and was estimated to
have devoured over a hundred human beings. One of these roads was
the main outlet from the Bétúl teak forests, towards the railway
under construction in the Harbadá valley; and the work of the
sleeper-contractors was completely at a stand-still, owing to the
ravages of this brute. He occupied regularly a large triangle of
country between the rivers Móran and Ganjál; occasionally making a
tour of destruction much further to the east and west, and striking
terror into a breadth of not less than thirty or forty miles. It was
therefore supposed that the devastation was caused by more than one
animal; and we thought we had disposed of one of these early in April,
when we killed a very cunning old tiger of evil repute after several
days’ severe hunting. But I am now certain that the one I destroyed
subsequently was the real malefactor, since killing again commenced
after we had left, and all loss of human life did not cease till the
day I finally disposed of him.
“He had not been heard of for a week or two when I came into his
country, and pitched my camp in a splendid mango grove near the large
village of Lokartalae, on the Móran River.
“A few days of lazy existence in this microcosm of a grove passed
not unpleasantly.... In the mean time I was regaled with stories
of the man-eater--of his fearful size and appearance, with belly
pendent to the ground, and white moon on the top of his forehead; his
pork-butcher-like method of detaining a party of travellers while he
rolled himself in the sand, and at last came up and inspected them all
round, selecting the fattest; his power of transforming himself into
an innocent-looking woodcutter, and calling or whistling through the
jungle till an unsuspecting victim approached; how the spirits of all
his victims rode with him upon his head, warning him of every danger,
and guiding him to the fatal ambush where a traveller would shortly
pass. All the best shikáris of the country-side were collected in my
camp, and the land-holders and many of the people besieged my tent
morning and evening. The infant of a woman who had been carried away
while drawing water at a well was brought and held up before me, and
every offer of assistance in destroying the monster made. No useful
help was, however, to be expected from a terror-stricken population
like this. They lived in barricaded houses, and only stirred out, when
necessity compelled, in large bodies, covered by armed men, and beating
drums and shouting as they passed along the roads. Many villages had
been utterly deserted, and the country was being slowly depopulated by
a single animal. So far as I could learn, he had been killing alone
for about a year--another tiger that had assisted him in his fell
occupation having been shot the previous hot weather. Bétúl has always
been unusually afflicted with man-eaters, the cause apparently being
the great numbers of cattle that come for a limited season to graze
in that country, and a scarcity of other prey at the time when these
are absent, combined with the unusually convenient cover for tigers
alongside of most of the roads. The man-eaters of the Central Provinces
rarely confine themselves _solely_ to human food, though some have
almost done so to my own knowledge.
“As soon as I could ride in the howdah [Captain Forsyth was suffering
from an accident at this time], and long before I was able to do more
than hobble on foot, I marched to a place called Chárkhérá, where
the last kill had been reported. My usually straggling following
was now compressed into a close body, preceded errand followed by
baggage-elephants, and protected by a guard of police with muskets,
peons with my spare guns, and a whole posse of matchlock shikáris.
Two deserted villages were passed on the road, and heaps of stones at
intervals showed where some traveller had been struck down. A better
hunting-ground for a man-eater certainly could not be found. Thick,
scrubby teak jungle closed in the road on both sides; and alongside
of it for a great part of the way wound a narrow, deep watercourse,
overshadowed by jámare bushes, and with here and there a small pool of
water still left. I hunted along this nálá the whole way, and found
many old tracks of a very large male tiger, which the shikáris declared
to be those of the man-eater. There were none more recent, however,
than several days. Chárkhérá was also deserted on account of the tiger,
and there was no shade to speak of; but it was the most central place
within reach of the usual haunts of the brute, so I encamped there, and
sent the baggage-elephants back to fetch provisions. In the evening
I was startled by a messenger from a place called Lá, on the Móran
River, nearly in the direction I had come from, who said that one of a
party of pilgrims who had been travelling unsuspectingly by a jungle
road, had been carried off by the tiger close to that place. Early next
morning I started off with two elephants, and arrived at the spot
about eight o’clock. The man had been struck down where a small ravine
leading to the Móran crosses a lonely pathway a few miles east of Lá.
The shoulder-stick with its pendant baskets, in which the holy water
from his place of pilgrimage had been carried by the hapless man, was
lying on the ground in a dried-up pool of blood, and shreds of his
clothes adhered to the bushes where he had been dragged down into the
bed of the nálá.
“We tracked the man-eater and his prey into a very thick grass
cover, alive with spotted deer, where he had broken up and devoured
the greater part of the body. Some bones and shreds of flesh, and
the skull, hands, and feet were all that remained. This tiger never
returned to his victim a second time, so it was useless to found any
scheme for killing him on that expectation. We took up his tracks,
however, from the body, and carried them patiently down through very
dense jungle to the banks of the Móran,--the trackers working in fear
and trembling under the trunk of my elephant, and covered by my rifle
at full cock. At the river the pugs [footprints] went out to a long
spit of sand that projected into the water, where the man-eater had
drunk, and then returned to a great mass of piled-up rocks at the
bottom of a precipitous bank, full of caverns and recesses. This we
searched with stones and some fireworks I had in the howdah, but put
out nothing but a scraggy hyena, which was, of course, allowed to
escape. We searched about here all day in vain, and it was not till
nearly sunset that I turned and made for camp.
“It was almost dusk, when we were a few miles from home, passing along
the road we had marched by the former day, and the same by which we
had come out in the morning, when one of the men who was walking behind
the elephant started and called a halt. He had seen the footprint of a
tiger. The elephant’s tread had partly obliterated it, but further on
where we had not yet gone it was plain enough,--the great square pug
of the man-eater we had been looking for all day! He was on before us,
and must have passed since we came out in the morning, for his track
had covered that of the elephants as they came. It was too late to
hope to find him that evening, and we could only proceed slowly along
on the track, which held to the pathway, keeping a bright lookout. The
Lállá [Forsyth’s famous tiger-hunting shikári] indeed proposed that he
should go on a little ahead as a bait for the tiger, while I covered
him from the elephant with my rifle. But he wound up by expressing a
doubt whether his skinny corporation would be a sufficient attraction,
and suggested that a plump young policeman, who had taken advantage
of our protection to make his official visit to the scene of the last
kill, should be substituted--whereat there was a general but not very
hearty grin. The subject was too sore a one in that neighborhood just
then. About a mile from the camp the track turned off into a deep nálá
that bordered the road. It was now almost dark, so we went on to camp,
and fortified it by posting the three elephants on different sides,
and lighting roaring fires between. Once during the night an elephant
started out of its deep sleep and trumpeted shrilly, but in the morning
we could find no tracks of the tiger near us. I went out early next
morning to beat up the nálá, for a man-eater is not like common
tigers, and must be sought for morning, noon, and night. But I found
no tracks save in the one place where he had crossed the ravine the
evening before, and gone off into thick jungle.
“On my return to camp, just as I was sitting down to breakfast,
some Banjárás [carriers, and probably gypsies] from a place called
Déckná--about a mile and a half from our camp--came running in to say
that one of their companions had been taken out of the middle of their
drove of bullocks by the tiger, just as they were starting from their
night’s encampment. The elephant had not been unharnessed, and securing
some food and a bottle of claret, I was not two minutes in getting
under way again. The edge of a low savanna, covered with long grass
and intersected by a nálá, was the scene of this last assassination,
and a broad trail of crushed-down grass showed where the body had been
dragged down to the nálá. No tracking was required. It was all horribly
plain, and the trail did not lead quite into the ravine, which had
steep sides, but turned and went alongside of it into some very long
grass reaching nearly up to the howdah. Here Sarjú Parshád, a large
government mukna [tuskless male elephant] I was then riding, kicked
violently at the ground and trumpeted, and immediately the long grass
began to wave ahead. We pushed on at full speed, stepping as we went
over the ghastly half-eaten body of the Banjárá. But the cover was
dreadfully thick, and though I caught a glimpse of a yellow object as
it jumped down into the nálá, it was not in time to fire. It was some
little time before we could get the elephant down the bank and follow
the broad plain footsteps of the monster, now evidently going at a
swinging trot. He kept on in the nálá for about a mile, and then took
to the grass again; but it was not so long here, and we could make
out the trail from the howdah. Presently, however, it led into rough,
stony ground, and the tracking became more difficult. He was evidently
full of go, and would carry us far; so I sent back for more trackers,
and orders to send a small tent across to a hamlet on the banks of the
Ganjál, towards which he seemed to be making. All that day we followed
the trail through an exceedingly difficult country, patiently working
out print by print, but without having been gratified by a sight of his
brindled hide. Several of the local shikáris were admirable trackers,
and we carried the line down to within about a mile of the river, where
a dense, thorny cover began, through which no one could follow a tiger.
“We slept that night at the little village, and early next morning
made a long cast ahead, proceeding at once to the river, where we soon
hit upon the track leading straight down its sandy bed. There were
some strong covers reported in the river-bed some miles ahead, near
the large village of Bhádúgaon, so I sent back to order the tent over
there. The track was crossed in this river by several others, but
was easily distinguished from all by its superior size. It had also
a peculiar drag of the toe of one hind foot, which the people knew
and attributed to a wound he had received some months before from a
shikári’s matchlock. There was thus no doubt that we were behind the
man-eater; and I determined to follow him while I could hold out,
and we could keep the trail. It led right into a very dense cover
of jáman and tamarisk in the bed and on the banks of the river, a
few miles above Bhádúgaon. Having been hard pushed the previous day,
we hoped that he might lie up here; and, indeed, there was no other
place he could well go to for water and shade. So we circled round the
outside of the cover, and finding no track leading outside, considered
him fairly ringed. We then went over to the village for breakfast,
intending to return in the heat of the day.
“About eleven o’clock we again faced the scorching hot wind, and made
silently for the cover where the man-eater lay. I surrounded it with
scouts on trees, and posted a pad-elephant at the only point where he
could easily get up the high bank and make off, and then pushed old
Sarjú slowly and carefully through the cover. Peafowl rose in numbers
from every bush as we advanced, and a few hares and other small animals
bolted out at the edges--such thick green covers being the midday
resort of all the life in the neighborhood in the hot weather. About
its centre the jungle was extremely thick, and the bottom was cut up
into a number of parallel water-channels among the strong roots and
overhanging branches of the tamarisk.