The leopard.--How to shoot him.--Gallant encounter with a wounded
one.--Encounter with a leopard in a dak bungalow.--Pat shoots two
leopards.--Effects of the Express bullet.--The 'Sirwah Purrul,' or
annual festival of huntsmen.--The Hindoo ryot.--Rice-planting and
harvest.--Poverty of the ryot.--His apathy.--Village fires.--Want of
sanitation.
Writing principally for friends at home, who are not familiar with
Indian life, I must narrate facts that, although well known in Indian
circles, are yet new to the general reader in England. My object is of
course to represent the life we lead in the far East, and to give a
series of pictures of what is going on there. If I occasionally touch
on what may to Indian readers seem well-worn ground, they will forgive
me.
The leopard then, as a rule keeps to the wooded parts of India. In the
long grassy jungles bordering the Koosee he is not generally met with.
He is essentially a predatory animal, always on the outlook for a meal;
round the villages, nestling amid their sal forests, he is continually
on the prowl, looking out for a goat, a calf, or unwary dog. His
appearance and habits are well known; he generally selects for his
lair, a retired spot surrounded by dense jungle. The one we were after
now had his home in a matted jungle, growing out of a pool of water,
which had collected in a long hollow, forming the receptacle of the
surface drainage from the adjacent slopes. This hollow stretched for
miles towards the creek which we had been beating up; and the locality
having moisture and other concurring elements in its favour, the
vegetation had attained a luxuriance rarely seen in the dry uplands,
where the west winds lick up the moisture, and the soil is arid and
unpromising. The matted intertwining branches of the creepers had
formed an almost impervious screen, and on the basis thus formed, amid
the branches and creepers, the leopards had formed their lair. Beneath,
was a still stagnant pool; above, was the leafy foliage. The tracks led
down to a well-worn path.
Climbing like a cat, as the leopards can do, they found no difficulty
in gaining a footing on the mass of vegetation. They generally select
some retired spot like this, and are very seldom seen in the daytime.
With the approach of night, however, they begin their wandering in
quest of prey. In a beat such as we were having 'all is fish that comes
to the net,' and leopards, if they are in the jungle, have to yield to
the advance of the beaters, like the other denizens of the forest.
Experience tells you that the leopard is daring and ferocious. Old
experienced hands warn you, that unless you can make sure of your shot,
it is unwise to fire at a leopard approaching. It is better to wait
till he has got past you, or at all events is 'broadside on.' If you
only wound him as he is approaching, he will almost to a certainty make
straight at you, but if you shoot him as he is going past, he will,
maddened by pain and anger, go straight forward, and you escape his
charge. He is more courageous than a tiger, and a very dangerous
customer at close quarters. Up in one of the forests in Oudh, a friend
of mine was out one day after leopard, with a companion who belonged to
the forest department. My friend's companion fired at a leopard as it
was approaching him, and wounded it severely. Nothing daunted, and
recognising whence its hurt had come, it charged directly down on the
concealed sportsman, and before he could half realise the position,
sprang on him, caught his left arm in its teeth, and began mauling him
with its claws. His presence of mind did not desert him; noticing close
by the stump of a sal tree, that had been eaten by white ants till the
harder parts of the wood alone remained, standing up hard and sharp
like so many spikes of steel; and knowing that the leopard was already
badly wounded, and in all probability struggling for his life, he
managed to drag the struggling animal up to the stump; jammed his left
arm yet further into the open mouth of the wounded beast, and being a
strong man, by pure physical force dashed the leopard's brains out on
the jagged edges of the stump. It was a splendid instance of presence
of mind. He was horribly mauled of course; in fact I believe he lost
his arm, but he saved his life. It shows the danger of only wounding a
leopard, especially if he is coming towards you; always wait till he
has passed your station, if it is practicable. If you _must_ shoot,
take what care you can that the shot be a sure one.
In some of the hill stations, and indeed in the villages on the plains,
it is very common for a leopard to make his appearance in the house or
verandah of an evening.
One was shot in Bhaugulpore station by the genial and respected
chaplain, on a Sunday morning two or three years ago. As we went along,
H. told us a humorous story of an Assistant in the Public Works
Department, who got mauled by a leopard at Dengra Ghat, Dak Bungalow.
It had taken up its quarters in a disused room, and this young fellow
burning, with ardour to distinguish himself, made straight for the room
in which he was known to be. He opened the door, followed by a motley
crowd of retainers, discharged his gun, and the sequel proved that he
was _not_ a dead shot. He had only wounded the leopard. With a bound
the savage brute was on him, but in the hurry and confusion, he had
changed front. The leopard had him by the back. You can imagine the
scene! He roared for help! The leopard was badly hit, and a plucky
_bearer_ came to his rescue with a stout _lathee_. Between them they
succeeded in killing the wounded animal, but not before it had left its
marks on a very sensitive portion of his frame. The moral is, if you go
after leopard, be sure you kill him at once.
They seldom attack a strong, well-grown animal. Calves, however, goats,
and dogs are frequently carried off by them. The young of deer and pig,
too, fall victims, and when nothing else can be had, peafowl have been
known to furnish them a meal. In my factory in Oudh I had a small,
graceful, four-horned antelope. It was carried off by a leopard from
the garden in broad daylight, and in face of a gang of coolies.
The most commonly practised mode of leopard shooting, is to tie a goat
up to a tree. You have a _mychan_ erected, that is, a platform elevated
on trees above the ground. Here you take your seat. Attracted by the
bleating of the goat, the prowling leopard approaches his intended
victim. If you are on the watch you can generally detect his approach.
They steal on with extreme caution, being intensely wary and
suspicious. At a village near where we now were, I had sat up for three
nights for a leopard, but although I knew he was prowling in the
vicinity, I had never got a look at him. We believed this leopard to be
the same brute.
I have already described our mode of beating. The jungle was close, and
there was a great growth of young trees. I was again on the right, and
near the edge of the forest. Beyond was a glade planted with rice. The
incidents of the beat were much as you have just read. There was,
however, unknown or at any rate unnoticed by us, more intense
excitement. We knew that the leopard might at any moment pass before
us. Pat was close to a mighty bhur tree, whose branches, sending down
shoots from the parent stem, had planted round it a colony of vigorous
supports. It was a magnificent tree with dense shade. All was solemn
and still. Pat with his keen eye, his pulse bounding, and every sense
on the alert, was keeping a careful look-out from behind an immense
projecting buttress of the tree. All was deadly quiet. H. and myself
were occupied watching the gambols of some monkeys in our front. The
beaters were yet far off. Suddenly Pat heard a faint crackle on a dried
leaf. He glanced in the direction of the sound, and his quick eye
detected the glossy coats, the beautifully spotted hides of not _one_
leopard, but _two_. In a moment the stillness was broken by the report
of his rifle. Another report followed sharp and quick. We were on the
alert, but to Pat the chief honour and glory belonged. He had shot one
leopard dead through the heart. The female was badly hit and came
bounding along in my direction. Of course we were now on the _qui
vive_. Waiting for an instant, till I could get my aim clear of some
intervening trees, I at length got a fair shot, and brought her down
with a ball through the throat. H. and Pat came running up, and we
congratulated ourselves on our success. By and bye Mehrman Singh and
the rest of the beaters came up, and the joy of the villagers was
gratifying. These were doubtless the two leopards we had heard so much
about, for which I had sat up and watched. It was amusing to see some
villager whose pet goat or valued calf had been carried off, now coming
up, striking the dead body of the leopard, and abusing it in the most
unmeasured terms. Such a crowding round as there was! such a noise, and
such excitement!
While waiting for the horses to be brought, and while the excited mob
of beaters and coolies carried off the dead animals to the camp to be
skinned, we amused ourselves by trying our rifles at a huge tree that
grew on the further side of the rice swamp. We found the effects of the
'Express' bullet to be tremendous. It splintered up and burst the bark
and body of the tree into fragments. Its effects on an animal are even
more wonderful. On looking afterwards at the leopard which had been
shot, we found that my bullet had touched the base of the shoulder,
near the collar-bone. It had gone downwards through the neck, under the
collar-bone, and struck the shoulder. There it had splintered up and
made a frightful wound, scattering its fragments all over the chest,
and cutting and lacerating everything in its way.
For big game the 'Express' is simply invaluable. For all-round shooting
perhaps a No. 12 smooth-bore is the best. It should be snap action with
rebounding locks. You should have facilities and instruments for
loading cartridges. A good cartridge belt is a good thing for carrying
them, but go where you will now, where there is game to be killed, a
No. 12 B. L. will enable you to participate in whatever shooting is
going. Such a one as I have described would satisfy all the wishes of
any young man who perhaps can only afford one gun.
As we rode slowly along, we learned many curious facts of jungle and
native life from the followers, and by noticing little incidents
happening before our eyes. Pat, who is so well versed in jungle life
and its traditions, told us of a curious moveable feast which the
natives of these parts hold annually, generally in March or April,
which is called the _Sirwah Purrub_.
It seems to be somewhat like the old carnivals of the middle ages. I
have read that in Sardinia, and Italy, and Switzerland something
similar takes place. The _Sirwah Purrub_ is a sort of festival held in
honour of the native Diana--the _chumpa buttee_ before referred to. On
the appointed day all the males in the forest villages, without
exception, go a-hunting. Old spears are furbished up; miraculous guns,
of even yet more ancient lineage than Mehrman Singh's dangerous
flintpiece, are brought out from dusty hiding-places. Battle-axes, bows
and arrows, hatchets, clubs and weapons of all sorts, are looked up,
and the motley crowd hies to the forest, the one party beating up the
game to the other.
Some go fishing, others try to secure a quail or partridge, but it is a
point of honour that something must be slain. If game be not plentiful
they will even go to another village and slay a goat, which, rather
than return empty-handed, they will bear in triumph home. The women
meet the returning hunters, and if there has been a fortunate beat,
there is a great feast in the village during the evening and far on
into the night. The nets are used, and in this way they generally have
some game to divide in the village on their return from the hunt.
Ordinarily they seethe the flesh, and pour the whole contents of the
cooking-pot into a mess of boiled rice. With the addition of a little
salt, this is to them very palatable fare. They are very good cooks,
with very simple appliances; with a little mustard oil or clarified
butter, a few vegetables or a cut-up fish, they can be very successful.
The food, however, is generally smoked from the cow-dung fire. If you
are much out in these villages this smoke constantly hangs about,
clinging to your clothes and flavouring your food, but the natives seem
to like it amazingly.
In the cold mornings of December or January it hangs about like the
peat smoke in a Highland village. Round every house are great stacks
and piles of cow-dung cakes. Before every house is a huge pile of
ashes, and the villagers cower round this as the evening falls, or
before the sun has dissipated the mist of the mornings. During the day
the village dogs burrow in the ashes. Hovering in a dense cloud about
the roofs and eaves, and along the lower branches of the trees in filmy
layers, the smoke almost chokes one to ride through it. I have seen a
native sit till half-choked in a dense column of this smoke. He is too
lazy to shift his position; the fumes of pungent smoke half smother
him; tears run from his eyes; he splutters and coughs, and abuses the
smoke, and its grandfather, and maternal uncle, and all its other known
relatives; but he prefers semi-suffocation to the trouble of budging an
inch.
Sometimes the energy of these people is surprising. To go to a fair or
feast, or on a pilgrimage, they will walk miles upon miles, subsisting
on parched peas or rice, and carrying heavy burdens. In company they
sing and carol blithely enough. When alone they are very taciturn, man
and woman walking together, the man first with his _lathee_ or staff,
the woman behind carrying child or bundle, and often looking fagged and
tired enough.
Taking vegetables, or rice, or other commodities to the bazaar, the
carrier often slings his burden to the two ends of a pole worn over the
shoulder, much as Chinamen do. But they generally make their load into
one bundle which they carry on the head, or which they sling, if not
large and bulky, over their backs, rolled up in one of their cloths.
During the rice-planting season they toil in mud and water from
earliest morn till late into twilight. Bending and stooping all the
day, their lower extremities up to the knee sometimes in water, and the
scorching sun beating on their backs, they certainly show their patient
plodding industry, for it is downright honest hard work.
The young rice is taken from the nursery patch, where it has been sown
thick some time previously. When the rice-field is ready--a sloppy,
muddy, embanked little quagmire--the ryot gets his bundle of young
rice-plants, and shoves in two or three at a time with his finger and
thumb. These afterwards form the tufts of rice. Its growth is very
rapid. Sometimes, in case of flood, the rice actually grows with the
rise of the water, always keeping its tip above the stream. If wholly
submerged for any length of time it dies. There are over a hundred
varieties. Some are only suited for very deep marshy soils; others,
such as the _s[=a]tee_, or sixty-days rice, can be grown on comparatively
high land, and ripen early. If rain be scanty, the _s[=a]tee_ and other
rice crops have to be weeded. It is cut with a jagged-edged sort of
reaping-hook called a _hussooa_. The cut bundles are carried from the
fields by women, girls, and lads. They could not take carts in many
instances into the swamps.
At such times you see every little dyke or embankment with a crowd of
bustling villagers, each with a heavy bundle of grain on his head,
hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The women, with clothes
tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at
a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken--garnering
the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over.
Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor,
dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a
yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use
leaving a bundle on the field; where food is so eagerly looked for by
such a dense population, where there are hungry mouths and empty
stomachs in every village, a bundle of rice would be gone by the
morning.
As in Greece, where every man has to watch his vineyard at night, so
here, the _kureehan_ or threshing-floor each has its watchman at night.
For the protection of the growing crops, the villagers club together,
and appoint a watchman or _chowkeydar_, whom they pay by giving him a
small percentage on the yield; or a small fractional proportion of the
area he has to guard, with its standing crop, may be made over to him
as a recompense.
They thresh out the rice when it has matured a little on the
threshing-floor. Four to six bullocks are tied in a line to a post in
the centre, and round this they slowly pace in a circle. They are not
muzzled, and the poor brutes seem rather to enjoy the unwonted luxury
of feeding while they work. When there is a good wind, the grain is
winnowed; it is lifted either in bamboo scoops or in the two hands. The
wind blows the chaff or _bhoosa_ on to a heap, and the fine fresh rice
remains behind. The grain merchants now do a good business. Rice must
be sold to pay the rent, the money-lender, and other clamouring
creditors. The _bunniahs_ will take repayment in kind. They put on
the interest, and cheat in the weighments and measurements. So much has
to be given to the weigh-man as a perquisite. If seed had been borrowed,
it has now to be returned at a ruinous rate of interest. Some seed must
be saved for next year, and an average _poor_ ryot, the cultivator of
but a little holding, very soon sees the result of his harvesting melt
away, leaving little for wife and little ones to live on. He never
gets free of the money-lender. He will have to go out and work hard
for others, as well as get up his own little lands. No chance of a new
bullock this year, and the old ones are getting worn out and thin. The
wife must dispense with her promised ornament or dress. For the poor
ryot it is a miserable hand-to-mouth existence when crops are poor.
As a rule he is never out of debt. He lives on the scantiest fare;
hunger often pinches him; he knows none of the luxuries of life.
Notwithstanding all, the majority are patient, frugal, industrious,
and to the full extent of their scanty means even charitable and
benevolent. With the average ryot a little business goes a great way.
There are some irreconcileable, discontented, worthless fellows in
every village. All more or less count a lie as rather a good thing to
be expert in; they lie naturally, simply, and instinctively: but with
all his faults, and they are doubtless many, I confess to a great
liking for the average Hindoo ryot.
At times, however, their apathy and laziness is amazing. They are very
childish, petted, and easily roused. In a quarrel, however, they
generally confine themselves to vituperation and abuse, and seldom
come to blows.
As an instance of their fatalism or apathetic indolence, I can remember
a village on the estate I was managing taking fire. It was quite close
to the factory. I had my pony saddled at once, and galloped off for the
burning village. It was a long, straggling one, with a good masonry
well in the centre, shadowed by a mighty _peepul_ tree. The wind was
blowing the fire right along, and if no obstruction was offered, would
sweep off every hut in the place. The only soul who was trying to do a
thing was a young Brahmin watchman belonging to the factory. He had
succeeded in removing some brass jars of his own, and was saving some
grain. One woman was rocking to and fro, beating her breast and crying.
There sat the rest of the apathetic villagers in groups, not lifting a
finger, not stirring a step, but calmly looking on, while the devouring
element was licking up hut after hut, and destroying their little all.
In a few minutes some of my servants, syces, and factory men had
arrived. I tied up the pony, ordered my men to pull down a couple of
huts in the centre, and tried to infuse some energy into the villagers.
Not a bit of it; they would _not_ stir. They would not even draw a
bucket of water. However, my men got earthen pots; I dug up fresh earth
and threw it on the two dismantled huts, dragging away as much of the
thatch and _debris_ as we could.
The fire licked our faces, and actually got a footing on the first
house beyond the frail opening we had tried to make, but we persevered,
and ultimately stayed the fire, and saved about two thirds of the
village. I never saw such an instance of complete apathy. Some of the
inhabitants even had not untied the cattle in the sheds. They seemed
quite prostrated. However, as we worked on, and they began to see that
all was not yet lost, they began to buckle to; yet even then their
principal object was to save their brass pots and cooking utensils,
things that could not possibly burn, and which they might have left
alone with perfect safety.
A Hindoo village is as inflammable as touchwood. The houses are
generally built of grass walls, connected with thin battens of bamboo.
The roof is bamboo and thatch. Thatch fences surround all the little
courtyards. Leaves, refuse, cowdung fuel, and wood are piled up round
every hut. At each door is an open air fire, which smoulders all day. A
stray puff of wind makes an inquisitive visit round the corner, and
before one can half realise the catastrophe, the village is on fire.
Then each only thinks of his own goods; there is no combined effort to
stay the flames. In the hot west winds of March, April, and May, these
fires are of very frequent occurrence. In Bhaugulpore, I have seen,
from my verandah, three villages on fire at one and the same time. In
some parts of Oudh, among the sal forests, village after village is
burnt down annually, and I have seen the same catastrophe visit the
same village several times in the course of one year. These fires arise
from pure carelessness, sheer apathy, and laziness.
Sanitary precautions too are very insufficient; practically there are
none. Huge unsightly water-holes, filled during the rains with the
drainage of all the dung-heaps and mounds of offal and filth that
abound in the village, swelter under the hot summer sun. They get
covered with a rank green scum, and if their inky depths be stirred,
the foulest and most fearful odours issue forth. In these filthy pools
the villagers often perform their ablutions; they do not scruple to
drink the putrid water, which is no doubt a hotbed and regular nursery
for fevers, and choleraic and other disorders.
Many home readers are but little acquainted with the Indian village
system, and I shall devote a chapter to the description of a Hindoo
village, with its functionaries, its institutions, its inhabitants, and
the more marked of their customs and avocations.