of my facts. I have only space to submit a few typical instances,
and must, therefore, beg it will be borne in mind that the following
list could be largely reinforced. Yet even if I inserted all I have
thus far been able to collect, I believe insufficient justice would
be done to the real truth of the case. Captive animals do not
commonly fall within the observation of travellers, who mostly
confine themselves to their own encampments, and abstain from
entering the dirty dwellings of the natives; neither do the majority
of travellers think tamed animals worthy of detailed mention.
Consequently the anecdotes of their existence are scattered
sparingly among a large number of volumes. It is when those
travellers are questioned who have lived long and intimately with
savage tribes that the plenitude of available instances becomes most
apparent.
I proceed to give anecdotes of animals being tamed in various parts
of the world, at dates when they were severally beyond the reach of
civilised influences, and where, therefore, the pleasure taken by
the natives in taming them must be ascribed to their unassisted
mother-wit. It will be inferred that the same rude races who were
observed to be capable of great fondness towards animals in
particular instances, would not unfrequently show it in others.
[North America.]--The traveller Hearne, who wrote towards the end of
the last century, relates the following story of moose or elks in
the more northern parts of North America. He says:--
"I have repeatedly seen moose at Churchill as tame as sheep and even
more so.... The same Indian that brought them to the Factory had, in
the year 1770, two others so tame that when on his passage to Prince
of Wales's Fort in a canoe, the moose always followed him along the
bank of the river; and at night, or on any other occasion when the
Indians landed, the young moose generally came and fondled on them,
as the most domestic animal would have done, and never offered to
stray from the tents."
Sir John Richardson, in an obliging answer to my inquiries about the
Indians of North America, after mentioning the bison calves, wolves,
and other animals that they frequently capture and keep, said:--
"It is not unusual, I have heard, for the Indians to bring up young
bears, the women giving them milk from their own breasts."
He mentions that he himself purchased a young bear, and adds:--
"The red races are fond of pets and treat them kindly; and in
purchasing them there is always the unwillingness of the women and
children to overcome, rather than any dispute about price. My young
bear used to rob the women of the berries, they had gathered, but
the loss was borne with good nature."
I will again quote Hearne, who is unsurpassed for his minute and
accurate narratives of social scenes among the Indians and Esquimaux.
In speaking of wolves he says:--
"They always burrow underground to bring forth their young, and
though it is natural to suppose them very fierce at those times, yet
I have frequently seen the Indians go to their dens and take out the
young ones and play with them. I never knew a Northern Indian hurt
one of them; on the contrary, they always put them carefully into
the den again; and I have sometimes seen them paint the faces of the
young wolves with vermilion or red ochre."
[South America.]--Ulloa, an ancient traveller, says:--
"Though the Indian women breed fowl and other domestic animals in
their cottages, they never eat them: and even conceive such a
fondness for them, that they will not sell them, much less kill them
with their own hands. So that if a stranger who is obliged to pass
the night in one of their cottages, offers ever so much money for a
fowl, they refuse to part with it, and he finds himself under the
necessity of killing the fowl himself. At this his landlady shrieks,
dissolves into tears, and wrings her hands, as if it had been an
only son, till seeing the mischief past mending, she wipes her eyes
and quietly takes what the traveller offers her."
The care of the South American Indians, as Quiloa truly states, is
by no means confined to fowls. Mr. Bates, the distinguished
traveller and naturalist of the Amazons, has favoured me with a list
of twenty-two species of quadrupeds that he has found tame in the
encampments of the tribes of that valley. It includes the tapir, the
agouti, the guinea-pig, and the peccari. He has also noted five
species of quadrupeds that were in captivity, but not tamed. These
include the jaguar, the great ant-eater, and the armadillo. His list
of tamed birds is still more extensive.
[North Africa.]--The ancient Egyptians had a positive passion for
tamed animals, such as antelopes, monkeys, crocodiles, panthers, and
hyenas. Mr. Goodwin, the eminent Egyptologist, informed me that
"they anticipated our zoological tastes completely," and that some
of the pictures referring to tamed animals are among their very
earliest monuments, viz. 2000 or 3000 years B.C. Mr. Mansfield
Parkyns, who passed many years in Abyssinia and the countries of the
Upper Nile, writes me word in answer to my inquiries;--
"I am sure that negroes often capture and keep alive wild animals. I
have bought them and received them as presents--wild cats, jackals,
panthers, the wild dog, the two best lions now in the Zoological
Gardens, monkeys innumerable and of all sorts, and mongoose. I cannot
say that I distinctly recollect any pets among the _lowest_ orders
of men that I met with, such as the Denkas, but I am sure they exist,
and in this way. When I was on the White Nile and at Khartoum, very
few merchants went up the White Nile; none had stations. They were
little known to the natives; but none returned without some live
animal or bird which they had procured from them. While I was at
Khartoum, there came an Italian wild beast showman, after the
Wombwell style. He made a tour of the towns up to Doul and Fazogly,
Kordofan and the peninsula, and collected a large number of animals.
Thus my opinion distinctly is, that negroes do keep wild animals
alive. _I am sure of it_; though I can only vaguely recollect them
in one or two cases. I remember some chief in Abyssinia who had a
pet lion which he used to tease, and I have often seen monkeys about
huts."
[Equatorial Africa.]--The most remarkable instance I have met with
in modern Africa is the account of a menagerie that existed up to
the beginning of the reign of the present king of the Wahumas, on
the shores of Lake Nyanza. Suna, the great despot of that country,
reigned till 1857. Captains Burton and Speke were in the
neighbourhood in the following year, and Captain Burton thus
describes (_Journal R. G. Soc._, xxix. 282) the report he received
of Suna's collection:--
"He had a large menagerie of lions, elephants, leopards, and similar
beasts of disport; he also kept for amusement fifteen or sixteen
albinos; and so greedy was he of novelty, that even a cock of
peculiar form or colour would have been forwarded by its owner to
feed his eyes."
Captain Speke, in his subsequent journey to the Nile, passed many
months at Uganda, as the guest of Suna's youthful successor, M'tese.
The fame of the old menagerie was fresh when Captain Speke was there.
He wrote to me as follows concerning it:--
"I was told Suna kept buffaloes, antelopes, and animals of all
colours' (meaning 'sorts'), and in equal quantities. M'tese, his son,
no sooner came to the throne, than he indulged in shooting them down
before his admiring wives, and now he has only one buffalo and a few
parrots left."
In Kouka, near Lake Tchad, antelopes and ostriches are both kept tame,
as I was informed by Dr. Barth.
[South Africa.]--The instances are very numerous in South Africa
where the Boers and half-castes amuse themselves with rearing zebras,
antelopes, and the like; but I have not found many instances among
the native races. Those that are best known to us are mostly nomad
and in a chronic state of hunger, and therefore disinclined to
nurture captured animals as pets; nevertheless, some instances can
be adduced. Livingstone alludes to an extreme fondness for small
tame singing-birds (pp. 324 and 453). Dr. (now Sir John) Kirk, who
accompanied him in later years, mentions guinea-fowl--that do not
breed in confinement, and are merely kept as pets--in the Shiré
valley, and Mr. Oswell has furnished me with one similar anecdote. I
feel, however, satisfied that abundant instances could be found if
properly sought for. It was the frequency with which I recollect to
have heard of tamed animals when I myself was in South Africa,
though I never witnessed any instance, that first suggested to me
the arguments of the present paper. Sir John Kirk informs me that:
"As you approach the coast or Portuguese settlements, pets of all
kinds become very common; but then the opportunity of occasionally
selling them to advantage may help to increase the number; still,
the more settled life has much to do with it."
In confirmation of this view, I will quote an early writer,
Pigafetta (_Hakluyt Coll._, ii. 562), on the South African kingdom
of Congo, who found a strange medley of animals in captivity, long
before the demands of semi-civilisation had begun to prompt their
collection:--
The King of Congo, on being Christianised by the Jesuit missionaries
in the sixteenth century, "signified that whoever had any idols
should deliver them to the lieutenants of the country. And within
less than a month all the idols which they worshipped were brought
into court, and certainly the number of these toys was infinite, for
every man adored what he liked without any measure or reason at all.
Some kept serpents of horrible figures, some worshipped the greatest
goats they could get, some leopards, and others monstrous creatures.
Some held in veneration certain unclean fowls, etc. Neither did they
content themselves with worshipping the said creatures when alive,
but also adored the very skins of them when they were dead and
stuffed with straw."
[Australia.]--Mr. Woodfield records the following touching anecdote
in a paper communicated to the Ethnological Society, as occurring in
an unsettled part of West Australia, where the natives rank as the
lowest race upon the earth:--
"During the summer of 1858-9 the Murchison river was visited by
great numbers of kites, the native country of these birds being
Shark's Bay. As other birds were scarce, we shot many of these kites,
merely for the sake of practice, the natives eagerly devouring them
as fast as they were killed. One day a man and woman, natives of
Shark's Bay, came to the Murchison, and the woman immediately
recognising the birds as coming from her country, assured us that
the natives there never kill them, and that they are so tame that
they will perch on the shoulders of the women and eat from their
hands. On seeing one shot she wept bitterly, and not even the offer
of the bird could assuage her grief, for she absolutely refused to
eat it. No more kites were shot while she remained among us."
The Australian women habitually feed the puppies they intend to rear
from their own breasts, and show an affection to them equal, if not
exceeding, that to their own infants. Sir Charles Nicholson informs
me that he has known an extraordinary passion for cats to be
demonstrated by Australian women at Fort Phillip.
[New Guinea Group.]--Captain Develyn is reported (Bennett,
_Naturalist in Australia_, p. 244) to say of the island of New
Britain, near Australia, that the natives consider cassowaries "to a
certain degree sacred, and rear them as pets. They carry them in their
arms, and entertain a great affection for them."
Professor Huxley informs me that he has seen sucking-pigs nursed at
the breasts of women, apparently as pets, in islands of the New
Guinea Group.
[Polynesia.]--The savage and cannibal Fijians were no exceptions to
the general rule, for Dr. Seemann wrote me word that they make pets
of the flying fox (bat), the lizard, and parroquet. Captain Wilkes,
in his exploring expedition (ii. 122), says the pigeon in the Samoon
islands "is commonly kept as a plaything, and particularly by the
chiefs. One of our officers unfortunately on one occasion shot a
pigeon, which caused great commotion, for the bird was a king pigeon,
and to kill it was thought as great a crime as to take the life of a
man."
Mr. Ellis, writing of these islands (_Polynesian Researches_, ii. 285),
says:--
"Eels are great favourites, and are tamed and fed till they attain
an enormous size. Taoarii had several in different parts of the
island. These pets were kept in large holes, two or three feet deep,
partially filled with water. I have been several times with the
young chief, when he has sat down by the side of the hole, and by
giving a shrill sort of whistle, has brought out an enormous eel,
which has moved about the surface of the water and eaten with
confidence out of his master's hand."
[Syria.]--I will conclude this branch of my argument by quoting the
most ancient allusion to a pet that I can discover in writing,
though some of the Egyptian pictured representations are
considerably older. It is the parable spoken by the Prophet Samuel
to King David, that is expressed in the following words:--
"The poor man had nothing save one little ewe lamb, which he had
bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him and with
his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup,
and lay in his bosom, and was to him as a daughter."
We will now turn to the next stage of our argument. Not only do
savages rear animals as pets, but communities maintain them as sacred.
The ox of India and the brute gods of Egypt occur to us at once; the
same superstition prevails widely. The quotation already given from
Pigafetta is in point; the fact is too well known to readers of
travel to make it necessary to devote space to its proof. I will
therefore simply give a graphic account, written by M. Jules Gérard,
of Whydah in West Africa:--
"I visited the Temple of Serpents in this town, where thirty of
these monstrous deities were asleep in various attitudes. Each day
at sunset, a priest brings them a certain number of sheep, goats,
fowls, etc., which are slaughtered in the temple and then divided
among the 'gods.' Subsequently during the night they (? the priests)
spread themselves about the town, entering the houses in various
quarters in search of further offerings. It is forbidden under
penalty of death to kill, wound, or even strike one of these sacred
serpents, or any other of the same species, and only the priests
possess the privilege of taking hold of them, for the purpose of
reinstating them in the temple should they be found elsewhere."
It would be tedious and unnecessary to adduce more instances of wild
animals being nurtured in the encampments of savages, either as pets
or as sacred animals. It will be found on inquiry that few travellers
have failed altogether to observe them. If we consider the small number
of encampments they severally visited in their line of march, compared
with the vast number that are spread over the whole area, which is or
has been inhabited by rude races, we may obtain some idea of the
thousands of places at which half-unconscious attempts at domestication
are being made in each year. These thousands must themselves be multiplied
many thousandfold, if we endeavour to calculate the number of similar
attempts that have been made since men like ourselves began to inhabit
the world.
My argument, strong as it is, admits of being considerably
strengthened by the following consideration:--
The natural inclination of barbarians is often powerfully reinforced
by an enormous demand for captured live animals on the part of their
more civilised neighbours. A desire to create vast hunting-grounds
and menageries and amphitheatrical shows, seems naturally to occur
to the monarchs who preside over early civilisations, and travellers
continually remark that, whenever there is a market for live animals,
savages will supply them in any quantities. The means they employ to
catch game for their daily food readily admits of their taking them
alive. Pit-falls, stake-nets, and springes do not kill. If the
savage captures an animal unhurt, and can make more by selling it
alive than dead, he will doubtless do so. He is well fitted by
education to keep a wild animal in captivity. His mode of pursuing
game requires a more intimate knowledge of the habits of beasts than
is ever acquired by sportsmen who use more perfect weapons. A savage
is obliged to steal upon his game, and to watch like a jackal for
the leavings of large beasts of prey. His own mode of life is akin
to that of the creatures he hunts. Consequently, the savage is a
good gamekeeper; captured animals thrive in his charge, and he finds
it remunerative to take them a long way to market. The demands of
ancient Rome appear to have penetrated Northern Africa as far or
farther than the steps of our modern explorers. The chief centres of
import of wild animals were Egypt, Assyria (and other Eastern
monarchies), Rome, Mexico, and Peru. I have not yet been able to
learn what were the habits of Hindostan or China. The modern
menagerie of Lucknow is the only considerable native effort in those
parts with which I am acquainted.
[Egypt.]--The mutilated statistical tablet of Karnak (_Trans. R. Soc.
Lit._, 1847, p. 369, and 1863, p. 65) refers to an armed invasion of
Armenia by Thothmes III., and the payment of a large tribute of
antelopes and birds. When Ptolemy Philadelphus feted the
Alexandrians (_Athenoeus_, v.), the Ethiopians brought dogs,
buffaloes, bears, leopards, lynxes, a giraffe, and a rhinoceros.
Doubtless this description of gifts was common. Live beasts are the
one article of curiosity and amusement that barbarians can offer to
civilised nations.
[Assyria.]--Mr. Fox Talbot thus translates (_Journal Asiatic Soc._,
xix. 124) part of the inscription on the black obelisk of Ashurakbal
found in Nineveh and now in the British Museum:--
"He caught in hunter's toils (a blank number) of armi, turakhi, nali,
and yadi. Every one of these animals he placed in separate enclosures.
He brought up their young ones and counted them as carefully as
young lambs. As to the creatures called burkish, utrati (dromedaries?),
tishani, and dagari, he wrote for them and they came. The
dromedaries he kept in enclosures, where he brought up their young
ones. He entrusted each kind of animal to men of their own country to
tend them. There were also curious animals of the Mediterranean Sea,
which the King of Egypt sent as a gift and entrusted to the care of
men of their own land. The very choicest animals were there in
abundance, and birds of heaven with beautiful wings. It was a
splendid menagerie, and all the work of his own hands. The names of
the animals were placed beside them."
[Rome.]--The extravagant demands for the amphitheatre of ancient
Rome must have stimulated the capture of wild animals in Asia, Africa,
and the then wild parts of Europe, to an extraordinary extent. I
will quote one instance from Gibbon:--
"By the order of Probus, a vast quantity of large trees torn up by
the roots were transplanted into the midst of the circus. The
spacious and shady forest was immediately filled with a thousand
ostriches, a thousand stags, a thousand fallow-deer, and a thousand
wild boars, and all this variety of game was abandoned to the
riotous impetuosity of the multitude. The tragedy of the succeeding
day consisted in the massacre of a hundred lions, an equal number of
lionesses, two hundred leopards, and three hundred bears."
Farther on we read of a spectacle by the younger Gordian of
"twenty zebras, ten elks, ten giraffes, thirty African hyenas, ten
Indian tigers, a rhinoceros, an hippopotamus, and thirty-two
elephants."
[Mexico.]--Gomara, the friend and executor of Herman Cortes, states:
--
"There were here also many cages made of stout beams, in some of
which there were lions (pumas); in others, tigers (jaguars); in
others, ounces; in others, wolves; nor was there any animal on four
legs that was not there. They had for their rations deer and other
animals of the chase. There were also kept in large jars or tanks,
snakes, alligators, and lizards. In another court there were cages
containing every kind of birds of prey, such as vultures, a dozen
sorts of falcons and hawks, eagles, and owls. The large eagles
received turkeys for their food. Our Spaniards were astonished at
seeing such a diversity of birds and beasts; nor did they find it
pleasant to hear the hissing of the poisonous snakes, the roaring of
the lions, the shrill cries of the wolves, nor the groans of the
other animals given to them for food."
[Peru.]--Garcilasso de la Vega (_Commentaries Reales_, v. 10), the
son of a Spanish conqueror by an Indian princess, born and bred in
Peru, writes:--
"All the strange birds and beasts which the chiefs presented to the
Inca were kept at court, both for grandeur and also to please the
Indians who presented them. When I came to Cuzco, I remember there
were some remains of places where they kept these creatures. One was
the serpent conservatory, and another where they kept the pumas,
jaguars, and bears."
[Syria and Greece.]--I could have said something on Solomon's apes
and peacocks, and could have quoted at length the magnificent order
given by Alexander the Great (Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, viii. 16) towards
supplying material for Aristotle's studies in natural history; but
enough has been said to prove what I maintained, namely, that
numerous cases occur, year after year, and age after age, in which
every animal of note is captured and its capabilities of
domestication unconsciously tested.
I would accept in a more stringent sense than it was probably
intended to bear, the text of St. James, who wrote at a time when a
vast variety and multitude of animals were constantly being
forwarded to Rome and to Antioch for amphitheatrical shows. He says
(James iii. 7), "Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents,
and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind."
I conclude from what I have stated that there is no animal worthy of
domestication that has not frequently been captured, and might ages
ago have established itself as a domestic breed, had it not been
deficient in certain necessary particulars which I shall proceed to
discuss. These are numerous and so stringent as to leave no ground
for wonder that out of the vast abundance of the animal creation,
only a few varieties of a few species should have become the
companions of man.
It by no means follows that because a savage cares to take home a
young fawn to amuse himself, his family, and his friends, that he
will always continue to feed or to look after it. Such attention
would require a steadiness of purpose foreign to the ordinary
character of a savage. But herein lie two shrewd tests of the
eventual destiny of the animal as a domestic species.
_Hardiness_.--It must be able to shift for itself and to thrive,
although it is neglected; since, if it wanted much care, it would
never be worth its keep.
The hardiness of our domestic animals is shown by the rapidity with
which they establish themselves in new lands. The goats and hogs
left on islands by the earlier navigators throve excellently on the
whole. The horse has taken possession of the Pampas, and the sheep
and ox of Australia. The dog is hardly repressible in the streets of
an Oriental town.