low tremulous sound by which some of these animals denote the close
presence of a tiger. We peered all about with beatings of the heart;
and at last the mahout, who was lower down on the elephant’s neck, said
he saw him lying beneath a thick Jáman bush. We had some stones in the
howdah, and I made the Lállá, who was behind me in the back seat, pitch
one into the bush. Instantly the tiger started up with a short roar
and galloped off through the jungle. I gave him right and left at once,
which told loudly; but he went on till he saw the pad-elephant blocking
the road he meant to escape by, and then he turned and charged back
at me with horrible roars. It was very difficult to see him among the
crashing bushes, and he was within twenty yards before I fired again.
This dropped him into one of the channels, but he picked himself up,
and came on as savagely, though more slowly, than before. I was now
in the act of covering him with the large shell rifle, when suddenly
Sarjú spun round, and I found myself looking the opposite way, while a
worrying sound behind me, and the frantic movements of the elephant,
told me I had a fellow-passenger on board I might well have dispensed
with. All I could do in the way of holding on barely sufficed to
prevent myself and guns from being pitched out; and it was some time
before Sarjú, finding he could not kick him off, paused to think what
he would do next. I seized that placid interval to lean over behind and
put the muzzle of my rifle to the tiger’s head, blowing it into fifty
pieces with the large shell.”
In Assam and other parts of Indo-China, and in the interior of Malacca,
the natives are treated by tigers much after the same manner as those
of India were in the days before modern inventions had modified the
views of these brutes upon mankind.
A pit is an effectual device for taking tigers, but most descriptions
of the way in which it is arranged are evidently incorrect. Malays,
however, procure most of the animals they export by means of pits,
which are constructed after the manner of those _oubliettes_ or
“dungeons of the forgotten,” where in the good old times captives were
placed who had no hope of release.
What is the tiger’s temper? Conventionally, and according to common
misapprehension, he is the furious and insatiable savage that Buffon
paints--“_sa ferocité n’est comparable à rien_.” He is full of base
wickedness and inappeasable cruelty, loves blood and carnage for their
own sake, and longs continually to fly at unfortunate creatures with
that _tremendæ velocitatis_ of which Pliny speaks.
“What immortal hand or eye,
Framed thy matchless symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies,
Burned that fire within thine eyes?”
writes William Blake, and then he asks, “Did He who made the lamb make
thee?” The French naturalist and English poet looked at the subject
from the same standpoint. It was not necessarily seen wrongly on that
account, but it happened that the view taken by both was an imperfect
one. Deeper insight or more profound research would have resolved
uncertainty in the one case, and checked extravagance in the other. Had
they read the runes of nature aright, the answer to such questionings,
the rebuke to such exaggerations, would have been found stamped upon
the organization of everything that lives. Physical constitution is
never an accident or a mistake; it is at once the consequence of
special modes of existence, and the cause of their continuance. Bodily
conformation and its correlates in mental structure are to brutes
absolutely determinative.
“Most carnivorous of the carnivora,” writes W. N. Lockington
(“Riverside Natural History”), “formed to devour, with every offensive
weapon specialized to the utmost, the _Felidæ_, whether large or small,
are relatively to their size the fiercest, strongest, and most terrible
of beasts.” The tiger stands at their head. He must needs appreciate
his destructive power and feel the desire to exercise it. Inherited
tendencies and the pressure of necessity put his capabilities into
action. Their exercise, transmitted traits, and those experiences
implied in habit, make him what he is,--audacious, treacherous, wary,
cunning, ferocious. These characteristics answer to the anatomical
specialties by which his frame is distinguished,--his convoluted and
back-reaching forebrain, protective coloring, differentiated and
perfectly innervated muscles, his simple digestive tract, formidable
armature, and padded feet.
THE PUMA
What is true with regard to the present geographical distribution of
the cats, has been true always; throughout their fossil history the
greater and more formidable _Felidæ_ have been confined to the Eastern
Hemisphere. A number of American species exist, however, ranging from
among the smallest and most beautiful forms contained in this family,
up to animals that in destructive power, only give place to their
great African and Asiatic allies. The puma and jaguar have not filled
so large a space in zoölogical literature as the lion and tiger; they
have not attracted so much general attention, and are less known. But
this is, to a considerable degree, the result of accident. For the most
part, those who encountered them were men of a different stamp from
the famous hunters whose adventures in Asia and Africa have made the
animals of their forests and plains familiar and full of interest to so
large a portion of the public in civilized lands.
[Illustration: THE PUMA.
[_From a photograph by Gambier Bolton. Copyright._]]
It is seldom that the throngs that pass before cages in which wild
beasts are confined, contain a spectator who knows how perfect a
creature a cat is. As a class these forms are adjusted to their place
in nature better than other creatures, and also much better than
the human race. Their distinctive characteristics are all strongly
marked, and have persisted from a period so incalculably remote, that
the _Felidæ_ may in this respect be said to stand by themselves. “We
have as yet,” remarks A. R. Wallace (“Geographical Distribution of
Animals”), “made little approach towards discovering ‘their origin,’
since the oldest forms yet found are typical and highly specialized
representatives of a group which is itself the most specialized
of the carnivora.” No one acquainted with the evidence upon which
this statement rests is likely to gainsay it, and its meaning is
not obscure. The fact carries with it a necessary implication that
animals of the species referred to, having followed a definite way
of life longer than the rest, are more fit in every way to meet its
requirements.
Perhaps the most striking illustration that could be given of the
reality of what has been said, is the small difference actually
existing between wild and domesticated cats. Domestication is so great
and radical a change from the feral state, that the entire constitution
of an animal is affected,--mind and body, temper, intelligence, form,
color, fertility and physical capacity, are all modified. But it is
not thorough enough to do away with the traits engendered in the
_Felidæ_, and therefore it happens that after thousands of years,
the house cat varies from the wild one so little in important and
distinctive characteristics. Cattle and sheep were domesticated before
the dispersion of the Aryan tribes; linguistic evidence places that
fact beyond question. Cats, however, though introduced into Europe
from Asia, as was the case also with the horse, ass, and goat, were
no doubt first reclaimed from savage life in Egypt. On the Lower Nile
domestic cats were sacred to Pasht, whom the Greeks called Bubastis,
and identified with Artemis. She was represented with the head of a cat
or lioness, as was Sechet also, a divinity equivalent to the Phœnician
Astarte.
These personifications were not meaningless. Bast or Sechet was the
patroness of the baser passions and more destructive vices. It was
her part, likewise, to torture the condemned in the lower world.
Naturalists (Pastophori) belonging to the faculties established at “the
hall of the ancients” in Heliopolis, and “the house of Seti” in Thebes,
knew much more, and also much less, about zoölogy and its allied
sciences than is popularly supposed.
_Felis concolor_, the puma, cougar, panther, mountain lion, etc.,
is more correctly called by the last of these names than by that of
panther, under which he is commonly known throughout the northern part
of this continent. In its habits the puma is said, but not with any
great degree of appropriateness, to resemble the leopard more closely
than any feline species. Buffon called it the American lion, but he
knew very little about this animal, and his opinion upon its character
is of no special importance. E. F. im Thurn (“Among the Indians of
Guiana”) remarks that in the southern part of America, and particularly
in Guiana, all varieties of feral cats take their titles from the kind
of game upon which they principally subsist. Thus _Felis concolor_ is
called “the deer tiger,” _Felis nigra_ the “tapir tiger,” and _Felis
macnera_ the “peccary tiger.” Such may be the case when aborigines
are forced to particularize; but in common parlance one hears only the
sobriquet “_león_” bestowed by all classes of people on the puma.
There is but one true species found in America, and this is distributed
in all parts of the continent. The average length from tip to tip
may be given at about six and a half feet. In maturity the skin is
of a uniform tawny hue on the back and sides, with some deepening of
shade in the case of individuals. Cubs are born with dark stripes upon
the body, and spots on the neck and shoulders. Garcilasso de la Vega
(“Royal Commentaries”) speaking of this beast as the tutelar of certain
noble Peruvian families, and probably their eponymous ancestor, says:
“A Spaniard whom I knew killed a large lioness (female puma) in the
country of the Antis, near Cuzco. She had climbed into a high tree, and
was slain by four thrusts of a lance. There were two whelps in her body
_which were sons of a tiger_ (jaguar), for their skins were marked with
the sire’s spots.”
Like all _Felidæ_ except the cheeta or hunting leopard, the limbs have
little free play; they are not adapted to continued rapid locomotion,
being short and massive, very powerful, but somewhat limited in variety
of action, and more capable of extreme and spasmodic efforts than of
persistent use. The animal is very arboreal in its habits, and its
climbing powers and general dexterity are not surpassed by any species
belonging to this family.
Like true panthers, these cougars, carcajous, catamounts or pumas (the
native title is _sassu-arana_ or false deer) are, according to H. W.
Bates (“The Naturalist on the River Amazon”), accustomed to live in
cliffs and caves, and they seem able to do without the constant supply
of water that some others among the _Felidæ_ require.
It is said that here, as in India, the representatives of the tiger and
lion do not live together. While this may be true in a general way,
there is not the same separateness of range as in Asia; and the author,
in common with other explorers, has found them in similar localities on
several occasions. No accounts have been given, so far as the present
writer is aware, of actual conflicts occurring between the puma and
jaguar, and, in fact, there could be little hope for the former in such
a contest, as his adversary would be much heavier and more powerful,
equally active, and better armed. With respect to the grizzly bear,
there is little doubt that common report among frontiersmen, to the
effect that he is often assailed by the puma and frequently worsted,
has some foundation in fact. From two to four young are born together,
and by the end of the first year these whelps lose their spots and
stripes. They are lively and playful during infancy, and although in
them, as in all animals so highly organized, a decided individuality
displays itself from the first, personal experience has convinced the
author that they possess a great degree of intelligence, are easily
taught those things which their faculties enable them to acquire; and,
so far as their own interest and convenience influence conduct, that
they exhibit ludicrously strong preferences and dislikes.
Great strength and activity are combined in the puma, its armature is
formidable, the brute is habitually silent, stealthy in the highest
degree, and full of the so-called treachery of its race. Besides
this, it is very enterprising when occasion warrants a display of
audacity, as well as extremely ferocious and blood-thirsty. More
frequently, perhaps, than any of the great cats, it kills for the
mere gratification of its cruel impulses. Dr. Merriman (“Mammals
of the Adirondacks”) states that on level ground “a single spring
of twenty feet is not uncommon for a cougar,” and Sheppard records
the measurement of a distance twice as great when the leap was made
downward from a ledge of rock upon a deer.
Padre José de Acosta (“Historia natural y moral de las Indias”) says
that neither the puma nor the jaguar “is so fierce as he appears to
be in pictures,” though both will kill men. There are, however, many
places where the puma has been so cowed by ill success in his attacks
upon human beings, that he avoids them as much as possible. Cieza de
Leon and Garcilasso de la Vega express themselves to the same effect.
Humboldt found whole villages abandoned by their helpless inhabitants
in consequence of the ravages of the two great American cats, but
Emmanuel Liais (“Climats, Géologie, Faune, etc. du Brésil”) asserts
that both “_l’une et d’autre fuient l’homme et les chiens; même un
enfant à cheval leur fait peur_.” This is a mere repetition of what
has been asserted without qualification, proper inquiry, or adequate
experience with the larger _Felidæ_ in Asia and Africa.
There is no need to argue the question whether or not pumas can or
will kill men; that has been affirmatively settled by facts. This
creature’s personal courage is a different matter. It is only a brute;
yet if any one studies what has been said with regard to this trait,
it will appear that most denunciations of the animal’s cowardice
rest upon circumstances under which it did not conduct itself like
a gentleman. A cougar’s padded foot, its short massive limbs, which
prevent it from chasing prey, the brute’s great powers of concealing
itself, and perfect physical adjustment to sudden and violent attacks,
are recapitulated as though they had no necessary connection with
its behavior, and were not inseparably associated with corresponding
peculiarities of character and habit.
A beast of prey passes the active portion of its existence in
projecting or executing acts of violence. Habitual success means life,
and failure death. Under such circumstances, under the influence of
an experience in which by far the larger part of those enterprises
undertaken resulted favorably, a self-confidence, incompatible with
cowardice, will ensue.
At the same time there seems to be some general preconception with
respect to the character of wild beasts, such as converts every
manifestation of prudence into poltroonery. The clash of opinions
expressed about all the more imposing animals witnesses to the crude
and arbitrary manner in which they have been formed. With respect
to this one, not the tiger himself has been the subject of more
irreconcilable statements.
Stories of puma hunting and of the animal’s exploits depend, so far
as their style is concerned, upon the place where they are told, and
the experiences of the narrator. No hunter of large game thinks it
anything of a feat to shoot a cougar, yet the author has known these
brutes to fight desperately when brought to bay, and in two instances
their resistance was sufficiently formidable to cause, in the one
case loss of life, and in the other injuries from which men never
entirely recovered. Many such examples might be gathered, but they are
nevertheless exceptional. A puma is not difficult to kill, and if it is
seen in time, a properly armed man must either be very unfortunate or
very unfit for the position in which he finds himself, if the result
is not favorable. What is said of the panther and leopard, however, by
Captain Forsyth (“The Highlands of Central India”) and by Sir Samuel
Baker (“Wild Beasts and their Ways”) is peculiarly applicable to this
animal: it is almost always met with unexpectedly, and no mortal can
say beforehand what it will do. If taken at advantage and by surprise,
as commonly happens, a single man would not usually have much chance at
close quarters. The writer has, however, known them to be killed with
knives, though not without severe injury to the victor.
The average native of tropical America, while fully appreciating
how much more dangerous is the beast he calls a tiger, is quite
enough impressed with the prowess of its smaller, though sometimes
equally ferocious ally, to have his mind saturated with superstitions
concerning pumas. Tapuyo or Mameluco guides will sit by a camp fire
and talk in a way to put Acuna or Artieda in the background. Almost
equally with the jaguar this creature has supernatural and diabolic
connections. When its rarely heard cry or scream, as any one may choose
to call a sound so difficult to describe and which varies so greatly,
floats through the forest, these natives never know whether they
hear a prowling cougar, or the voice of that god from whom its race
descended. Botos, a demon of woodland lakes, guides the beast to his
prey; the basilisk worm Minhocao is somehow connected with it in its
designs against human beings, and the deadly man-like Cæpora shrieks in
concert with pumas as they roam through the darkness. W. A. Parry (“The
Cougar”) says that its cry “can only be likened to a scream of demoniac
laughter,” and that the female’s answer to her mate’s call resembles
“the wail of a child in terrible pain.”
James Orton and Prince Maximilian of Nieuwied have severally settled
it that cougars are all abject cowards. Speaking from personal
recollection, the author feels no hesitation in saying that it required
great singleness of mind to come to this conclusion, and much dexterity
to go where they did and avoid seeing things which might have modified
this conclusion.
It does not follow, for reasons which have been explained at length,
that because a puma attacks a grizzly bear he must be dangerous to a
man; or because numbers of men have undoubtedly been killed in some
places, that it should be formidable to human beings everywhere.
“When hungry,” says Theodore Roosevelt (“Hunting Trips of a Ranchman”),
“a cougar will attack anything it can master.” Audubon, however,
supposes that it never ventures to assail such large animals as cows
or steers. William B. Stevenson (“Twenty Years in South America”)
tells us how destructive this creature is to horses, and also how
the more than half-wild cattle of the pampas form into rings to
defend themselves. Captain Flack (“A Hunter’s Experience in the
Southern States of America”) relates an incident in which his horse
was stalked by a cougar. S. S. Hill (“Travels in Peru and Mexico”)
informs us that “this animal always flies at the sight of man.” G. W.
Webber (“The Hunter Naturalist”) declares that he “knows hundreds of
well-authenticated instances in which the cougar or panther attacked
the early hunters--springing suddenly upon them from an ambush.” Many
writers affirm that calves, colts, sheep, goats, swine, are the only
domestic animals ever preyed upon, and a deer the largest wild creature
which is destroyed. But a traveller like Charles Darwin was certain to
observe that, although in La Plata “cougars seldom assault cattle or
horses, and most rarely man,” living principally on ostriches, deer,
bizcacha, etc., in Chile, they killed all those animals they are said
never to touch, including man.
Moreover, we read dogmatic assertions to the effect that pumas always
leap on their victims from behind, and break their necks by bending
back the head. Another authority decides that this is so far from
being the case that death commonly arises from dislocation caused by
a blow with the paw; still another insists that the vertebræ are not
disjointed at all, but bitten through, which is again denied by those
who are convinced that cougars invariably kill their prey by cutting
the throat. Much the same statements are made about everything the
beast does or is said to do, and the conclusion, which one familiar
with this kind of literature comes to, is that these conflicting
statements are not all false, but in a restricted sense all true. That
is to say, the several ways of destruction mentioned are practised as
occasion requires or suggests.
One point at least with regard to the puma’s disposition in certain
directions is more clearly set forth than has been the case in respect
to other beasts of prey, and this is the fact that the creature’s
temper has been greatly changed by contact with mankind. The same
thing has happened everywhere with all game hunted successfully for a
long period; but this fact is ignored, and brutes whose natures are
different in some minor traits from what they once were, are discussed
as if the special features now exhibited had been always the same.
C. Barrington Brown (“Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana”) relates
an incident which occurred while he was exploring the upper courses of
the Cutari and Aramatau rivers. “One evening, while returning to camp
along the portage path that we were cutting at Wonobobo Falls, I walked
faster than the men, and got some two hundred yards in advance of them.
As I rose the slope of an uneven piece of ground, I saw a large puma
(_Felis concolor_) advancing towards me, along the other side of the
rise, with its nose close to the ground. The moment I saw it I stopped,
and at the same instant it tossed up its head, and seeing me also, came
to a stand. With its body half-crouched, its head erect, and its eyes
round and black from the expansion of their pupils in the dusky light,
it was at once a noble and appalling sight. I glanced back along our
wide path to see if any of the men were coming, as at that moment I
felt that it was not well to be alone without some weapon of defence,
and I knew that one of them had a gun; but nothing could be seen. As
long as I did not move the puma remained motionless also; and thus we
stood, some fifteen yards apart, eyeing each other curiously. I had
heard that the human voice was potent in scaring most wild beasts, and
feeling that the time had arrived for doing something desperate, I
waved my arms in the air and shouted loudly. The effect on the animal
was electrical; it turned quickly to one side, and in two bounds was
lost in the forest.”
Now why did this brute thus behave? The narrative gives not the least
explanation of its conduct. Brown thought it was frightened by his
gestures, because a few days before he had come upon a jaguar basking
on a rock by the river, whose serenity was not at all disturbed by
the voices of a boat full of men. But that was merely a guess. Very
probably this animal had never seen a man previously, and almost
certainly not a white man in civilized costume. There was then the
profound impressiveness of absolute strangeness in the sight, and this
alone would have been more likely to alarm a human being or intelligent
brute than any other cause we know of. Perhaps the puma had just
devoured a peccary and was gorged; or possibly its keen senses revealed
the approach of Brown’s party, who in fact appeared almost immediately.
One may see in a narrative like this, which is a fair specimen of those
relations from which most dogmatic conclusions upon the character of
wild beasts have been drawn, how arbitrary and unjustifiable they
generally are.
Roosevelt states that a slave on his father’s plantation in Florida
was passing through a swamp one night, when he was attacked by a
puma. The negro was “a man of colossal size and fierce and determined
temper.” Moreover, he carried one of the heavy knives that are used
in cutting cane. Both parties were killed after a long and desperate
struggle, whose traces were plainly impressed upon the spot. But here
it appears that a man was assailed, and that the beast continued its
attempts to kill him after discovering that he was armed, and persisted
in its attack as long as life lasted.
One evening as the author was riding towards a hacienda in Sinaloa, and
was about half a league distant from it, a girl rushed to the edge of a
thicket and began to scream for help. Galloping up, it appeared she had
just discovered the body of her father, killed apparently by a puma,
who lay dead beside him. Life was not extinct, however, although he was
very badly wounded. He said that while passing, the bellowing of an ox,
mingled with the cries of some kind of beast, induced him to make his
way to the scene of action. There he found a large lion, as he called
it, engaged in a fight with a steer, whom he had injured severely, and
who was rapidly losing blood. As soon as the man appeared, the beast
left the ox and made at him. There was scant time to roll his _serape_
around his left arm, and draw the long knife which every ranchero wears
in the _bota_ on his right leg, before he found himself in deadly
conflict.
In these three anecdotes we have a very clear refutation by facts of
several points with regard to this brute’s character, which have been
generally accepted as settled.