The tiger's mode of attack.--The food he prefers.--Varieties of prey.
--Examples.--What he eats first.--How to tell the kill of a tiger.
--Appetite fierce.--Tiger choked by a bone.--Two varieties of
tiger.--The royal Bengal.--Description.--The hill tiger.--His
description.--The two compared.--Length of the tiger.--How to
measure tigers.--Measurements.--Comparison between male and female.
--Number of young at a birth.--The young cubs.--Mother teaching cubs
to kill.--Education and progress of the young tiger.--Wariness and
cunning of the tiger.--Hunting incidents shewing their powers of
concealment.--Tigers taking to water.--Examples.--Swimming powers.
--Caught by floods.--Story of the Soonderbund tigers.
The tiger's mode of attack is very characteristic of his whole nature.
To see him stealthily crouching, or crawling silently and sneakingly
after a herd of cattle, dodging behind every clump of bushes or tuft
of grass, running swiftly along the high bank of a watercourse, and
sneaking under the shadowing border of a belt of jungle, is to
understand his cunning and craftiness. His attitude, when he is
crouching for the final bound, is the embodiment of suppleness and
strength. All his actions are graceful, and half display and half
conceal beneath their symmetry and elegance the tremendous power and
deadly ferocity that lurks beneath. For a short distance he is
possessed of great speed, and with a few short agile bounds he
generally manages to overtake his prey. If baffled in his first
attack, he retires growling to lie in wait for a less fortunate
victim. His onset being so fierce and sudden, the animal he selects
for his prey is generally taken at a great disadvantage, and is seldom
in a position to make any strenuous or availing resistance.
Delivering the numbing blow with his mighty fore paw, he fastens on
the throat of the animal he has felled, and invariably tries to tear
open the jugular vein. This is his practice in nearly every case, and
it shews a wonderful instinct for selecting the most deadly spot in
the whole body of his luckless prey. When he has got hold of his
victim by the throat, he lies down, holding on to the bleeding
carcase, snarling and growling, and fastening and withdrawing his
claws, much as a cat does with a rat or mouse. Some writers say he
then proceeds to drink the blood, but this is just one of those broad
general assertions which require proof. In some cases he may quench
his thirst and gratify his appetite for blood by drinking it from the
gushing veins of his quivering victim, but in many cases I know from
observation, that the blood is not drunk. If the tiger is very hungry
he then begins his feast, tearing huge fragments of flesh from the
dead body, and not unusually swallowing them whole. If he is not
particularly hungry, he drags the carcase away, and hides it in some
well-known spot. This is to preserve it from the hungry talons and
teeth of vultures and jackals. He commonly remains on guard near his
_cache_ until he has acquired an appetite. If he cannot conveniently
carry away his quarry, because of its bulk, or the nature of the
ground, or from being disturbed, he returns to the place at night and
satisfies his appetite.
Tigers can sneak crouchingly along as fast as they can trot, and it is
wonderful how silently they can steal on their prey. They seem to have
some stray provident fits, and on occasions make provision for future
wants. There are instances on record of a tiger dragging a _kill_
after him for miles, over water, and through slush and weeds, and
feasting on the carcase days after he has killed it. It is a fact, now
established beyond a doubt, that he will eat carrion and putrid flesh,
but only from necessity and not from choice.
On one occasion my friends put up a tigress during the rains, when
there are few cattle in the _derahs_ or plains near the river. She had
killed a pig, and was eagerly devouring the carcase when she was
disturbed. Snarling and growling, she made off with a leg of pork in
her mouth, when a bullet ended her career. They seem to prefer pork
and venison to almost any other kind of food, and no doubt pig and
deer are their natural and usual prey. The influx, however, of vast
herds of cattle, and the consequent presence of man, drive away the
wild animals, and at all events make them more wary and more difficult
to kill. Finding domestic cattle unsuspicious, and not very formidable
foes, the tiger contents himself at a pinch with beef, and judging
from his ravages he comes to like it. Getting bolder by impunity, he
ventures in some straits to attack man. He finds him a very easy prey;
he finds the flesh too, perhaps, not unlike his favourite pig.
Henceforth he becomes a 'man-eater,' the most dreaded scourge and
pestilent plague of the district. He sometimes finds an old boar a
tough customer, and never ventures to attack a buffalo unless it be
grazing alone, and away from the rest of the herd. When buffaloes are
attacked, they make common cause against their crafty and powerful
foe, and uniting together in a crescent-shaped line, their horns all
directed in a living _cheval-de-frise_ against the tiger, they rush
tumultuously at him, and fairly hunt him from the jungle. The pig,
having a short thick neck, and being tremendously muscular, is hard to
kill; but the poor inoffensive cow, with her long-neck, is generally
killed at the first blow, or so disabled that it requires little
further effort to complete the work of slaughter.
Two friends of mine once shot an enormous old tiger on a small island
in the middle of the river, during the height of the annual rains. The
brute had lost nearly all its hair from mange, and was an emaciated
sorry-looking object. From the remains on the island--the skin,
scales, and bones--they found that he must have slain and eaten
several alligators during his enforced imprisonment on the island.
They will eat alligators when pressed by hunger, and they have been
known to subsist on turtles, tortoises, iguanas, and even jackals.
Only the other day in Assam, a son of Dr. B. was severely mauled by a
tiger which sprang into the verandah after a dog. There were three
gentlemen in the verandah, and, as you may imagine, they were taken
not a little by surprise. They succeeded in bagging the tiger, but not
until poor B. was very severely hurt.
After tearing the throat open, they walk round the prostrate carcase
of their prey, growling and spitting like 'tabby' cats. They begin
their operations in earnest, invariably on the buttock. A leopard
generally eats the inner portion of the thigh first. A wolf tears open
the belly, and eats the intestines first. A vulture, hawk, or kite,
begins on the eyes; but a tiger invariably begins on the buttocks,
whether of buffalo, cow, deer, or pig. He then eats the fatty covering
round the intestines, follows that up with the liver and udder, and
works his way round systematically to the fore-quarters, leaving the
head to the last. It is frequently the only part of an animal that
they do not eat.
A 'man-eater' eats the buttocks, shoulders, and breasts first. So many
carcases are found in the jungle of animals that have died from
disease or old age, or succumbed to hurts and accidents, that the
whitened skeletons meet the eye in hundreds. But one can always tell
the kill of a tiger, and distinguish between it and the other bleached
heaps. The large bones of a tiger's kill are always broken. The broad
massive rib bones are crunched in two as easily as a dog would snap
the drumstick of a fowl. Vultures and jackals, the scavengers of the
jungle, are incapable of doing this; and when you see the fractured
large bones, you can always tell that the whiskered monarch has been
on the war-path. George S. writes me:--
'I have known a tiger devour a whole bullock to his own cheek in one
day. Early in the morning a man came to inform me he had seen a tiger
pull down a bullock. I went after the fellow late in the afternoon,
and found him in a bush not more than twenty feet square, the only
jungle he had to hide in for some distance round, and in this he had
polished off the bullock, nothing remaining save the head. The jungle
being so very small, and he having lain the whole day in it, nothing
in the way of vultures or jackals could have assisted him in finishing
off the bullock.'
When hungry they appear to bolt large masses of flesh without
masticating it. The same correspondent writes:--
'We cut out regular "fids" once from a tiger's stomach, also large
pieces of bone. Joe heard a tremendous roaring one night, which
continued till near morning, not far from Nipunneah. He went out at
dawn to look for the tiger, which he found was dead. The brute had
tried to swallow the knee-joint of a bullock, and it had stuck in his
gullet. This made him roar from pain, and eventually choked him.'
As there are two distinct varieties of wild pig in India, so there
seems to be little doubt that there are two distinct kinds of tigers.
As these have frequently crossed we find many hybrids. I cannot do
better than again quote from my obliging and observant friend George.
The two kinds he designates as 'The Royal Bengal,' and 'The Hill
Tiger,' and goes on to say:--
'As a rule the stripes of a Royal Bengal are single and dark. The
skull is widely different from that of his brother the Hill tiger,
being low in the crown, wider in the jaws, rather flat in comparison,
and the brain-pan longer with a sloping curve at the end, the crest of
the brain-pan being a concave curve.
'The Hill tiger is much more massively built; squat and thick set,
heavier in weight and larger in bulk, with shorter tail, and very
large and powerful neck, head, and shoulders. The stripes generally
are double, and of a more brownish tinge, with fawn colour between the
double stripes. The skull is high in the crown, and not quite so wide.
The brain-pan is shorter, and the crest slightly convex or nearly
straight, and the curve at the end of the skull rather abrupt.
'They never grow so long as the "Bengal," yet look twice as big.
'The crosses are very numerous, and vary according to pedigree, in
stripes, skulls, form, weight, bulk, and tail. This I find most
remarkable when I look at my collection of over 160 skulls.
'The difference is better marked in tigers than in tigresses. The
Bengal variety are not as a rule as ferocious as the Hill tiger. Being
more supple and cunning, they can easier evade their pursuers by
flight and manoeuvre than, their less agile brothers. The former,
owing to deficiency of strength, oftener meet with discomfiture, and
consequently are more wary and cunning; while the latter, prone to
carry everything before them, trust more to their strength and
courage, anticipating victory as certain.
'In some the stripes are doubled throughout, in others only partially
so, while in some they are single throughout, and some have manes to a
slight extent.'
I have no doubt this classification is correct. The tigers I have seen
in Nepaul near the hills, were sometimes almost a dull red, and at a
distance looked like a huge dun cow, while those I have seen in the
plains during our annual hunts, were of a bright tawny yellow, longer,
more lanky, and not shewing half such a bold front as their bulkier
and bolder brethren of the hills.
The length of the tiger has often given rise to fierce discussions
among sportsmen. The fertile imagination of the slayer of a solitary
'stripes,' has frequently invested the brute he has himself shot, or
seen shot, or perchance heard of as having been shot by a friend, or
the friend of a friend, with a, fabulous length, inches swelling to
feet, and dimensions growing at each repetition of the yarn, till, as
in the case of boars, the twenty-eight incher becomes a forty inch
tusker, and the eight foot tiger stretches to twelve or fourteen feet.
Purists again, sticklers for stern truth, haters of bounce or
exaggeration, have perhaps erred as much on the other side; and in
their eagerness to give the exact measurement, and avoid the very
appearance of exaggeration, they actually stretch their tape line and
refuse to measure the curves of the body, taking it in straight lines.
This I think is manifestly unfair.
Our mode of measurement in Purneah was to take the tiger as he lay
before he was put on the elephant, and measure from the tip of the
nose, over the crest of the skull, along the undulations of the body,
to the tip of the tail. That is, we followed the curvature of the
spine along the dividing ridge of the back, and always were careful
and fair in our attempts. I am of opinion that a tiger over ten feet
long is an exceptionally long one, but when I read of sportsmen
denying altogether that even that length can be attained, I can but
pity the dogmatic scepticism that refuses credence to well ascertained
and authenticated facts. I believe also that tigers are not got nearly
so large as in former days. I believe that much longer and heavier
tigers--animals larger in every way--were shot some twenty years ago
than those we can get now, but I account for this by the fact that
there is less land left waste and uncultivated. There are more roads,
ferries, and bridges, more improved communications, and in consequence
more travelling. Population and cultivation have increased; firearms
are more numerous; sport is more generally followed; shooting is much
more frequent and deadly; and, in a word, tigers have not the same
chances as they had some twenty years ago of attaining a ripe old age,
and reaching the extremest limit of their growth. The largest tigers
being also the most suspicious and wary, are only found in the
remotest recesses of the impenetrable jungles of Nepaul and the Terai,
or in those parts of the Indian wilds where the crack of the European
rifle is seldom or never heard.
It has been so loudly asserted, and so boldly maintained that no tiger
was ever shot reaching, when fairly measured (that is, measured with
the skin on, as he lay), ten feet, that I will let Mr. George again
speak for himself. Referring to the royal Bengal, he says:--
'These grow to great lengths. They have been shot as long as twelve
feet seven inches (my father shot one that length) or longer; twelve
feet seven inches, twelve feet six inches, twelve feet three inches,
twelve feet one inch, and twelve feet, have been shot and recorded in
the old sporting magazines by gentlemen of undoubted veracity in
Purneah.
'I have seen the skin of one twelve feet one inch, compared with which
the skin of one I have by me _that measured as he lay_ (the italics
are mine) eleven feet one inch, looks like the skin of a cub. The old
skin looks more like that of a huge antediluvian species in comparison
with the other.
'The twelve footer was so heavy that my uncle (C.A.S.) tells me no
number of mahouts could lift it. Several men, if they could have
approached at one and the same time, might have been able to do so,
but a sufficient number of men could not lay hold simultaneously to
move the body from the ground.
'Eventually a number of bamboos had to be cut, and placed in an
incline from the ground to the elephant's saddle while the elephant
knelt down, and up this incline the tiger had to be regularly hauled
and shoved, and so fastened on the elephant.
'He (the tiger) mauled four elephants, one of whom died the same day,
and one other had a narrow _batch_, i.e. escape, of its life.
In another communication to me, my friend goes over the same ground,
but as the matter is one of interest to sportsmen and naturalists, I
will give the extract entire. It proceeds as follows:--
'Tigers grow to great lengths, some assert to even fourteen feet. I do
not say they do not, but such cases are very rare, and require
authentication. The longest I have seen, measured as he lay, eleven
feet one inch (see "Oriental Sporting Magazine," for July, 1871, p.
308). He was seven feet nine inches from tip of nose to root of tail;
root of tail one foot three inches in circumference; round chest four
feet six inches; length of head one foot two inches; fore arm two feet
two inches; round the head two feet ten inches; length of tail three
feet four inches.
'Besides this, I have shot another eleven feet, and one ten feet
eleven inches.
'The largest tigress I have shot was at Sahareah, which measured ten
feet two inches. I shot another ten feet exactly.' (See O.S.M., Aug.,
1874, p. 358.)
'I have got the head of a tiger, shot by Joe, which measured eleven
feet five inches. It was shot at Baraila.
'The male is much bigger built in every way--length, weight, size,
&c., than the female. The males are more savage, the females more
cunning and agile. The arms, body, paws, head, skull, claws, teeth,
&c., of the female, are smaller. The tail of tigress longer; hind legs
more lanky; the prints look smaller and more contracted, and the toes
nearer together. It is said that though a large tiger may venture to
attack a buffalo, the tigress refrains from doing so, but I have found
this otherwise in my experience.
'I have kept a regular log of all tigers shot by me. The average
length of fifty-two tigers recorded in my journal is nine feet six and
a half inches (cubs excluded), and of sixty-eight tigresses (cubs
excluded), eight feet four inches.
'The average of tigers and tigresses is eight feet ten and a quarter
inches. This is excluding cubs I have taken alive.'
As to measurements, he goes on to make a few remarks, and as I cannot
improve on them I reproduce the original passage:--
'Several methods have been recommended for measuring tigers. I measure
them on the ground, or when brought to camp before skinning, and run
the tape tight along the line, beginning at the tip of the nose, along
the middle of the skull, between the ears and neck, then along the
spine to the end of the tail, taking any curves of the body.
'No doubt measurements of skull, body, tail, legs, &c., ought all to
be taken, to give an adequate idea of the tiger, and for comparing
them with one another, but this is not always feasible.'
Most of the leading sportsmen in India now-a-days are very particular
in taking the dimensions of every limb of the dead tiger. They take
his girth, length, and different proportions. Many even weigh the
tiger when it gets into camp, and no doubt this test is one of the
best that can be given for a comparison of the sizes of the different
animals slain.
Another much disputed point in the natural history of the animal, a
point on which there has been much acrimonious discussion, is the
number of young that are given at a birth. Some writers have asserted,
and stoutly maintained, that two cubs, or at the most three, is the
extreme number of young brought forth at one time.
This may be the ordinary number, but the two gentlemen I have already
alluded to have assured me, that on frequent occasions they have
picked up four actually born, and have cut out five several times, and
on one occasion six, from the womb of a tigress.
I have myself picked up four male cubs, all in one spot, with their
eyes just beginning to open, and none of their teeth through the gums.
One had been trampled to death by buffaloes, the other three were
alive and scatheless, huddled into a bush, like three immense kittens.
I kept the three for a considerable time, and eventually took them to
Calcutta and sold them for a very satisfactory price.
It seems clear, however, that the tigress frequently has four and even
five cubs. It is rare, indeed to find her accompanied by more than two
well grown cubs, very seldom three; and the inference is, that one or
two of the young tigers succumb in very early life.
The young ones do not appear to grow very quickly; they are about a
foot long when they are born; they are born blind, with very minute
hair, almost none in fact, but with the stripes already perfectly
marked on the soft supple skin; they open their eyes when they are
eight or ten days old, at which time they measure about a foot and a
half. At the age of nine months they have attained to five feet in
length, and are waxing mischievous. Tiger cubs a year old average
about five feet eight inches, tigresses some three inches or so less.
In two years they grow respectively to--the male seven feet six
inches, and the female seven feet. At about this time they leave the
mother, if they have not already done so, and commence depredations on
their own account. In fact, their education has been well attended to.
The mother teaches them to kill when they are about a year old. A
young cub that measured only six feet, and whose mother had been shot
in one of the annual beats, was killed while attacking a full grown
cow in the government pound at Dumdaha police station. When they reach
the length of six feet six inches they can kill pretty easily, and
numbers have been shot by George and other Purneah sportsmen close to
their 'kills.'
They are most daring and courageous when they have just left their
mother's care, and are cast forth to fight the battle of life for
themselves. While with the old tigress their lines have been cast in
not unpleasant places, they have seldom known hunger, and have
experienced no reverses. Accustomed to see every animal succumb to her
well planned and audacious attacks, they fancy that nothing will
withstand their onslaught. They have been known to attack a line of
elephants, and to charge most determinedly, even in this adolescent
stage.
Bye-and-bye, however, as they receive a few rude shocks from
buffaloes, or are worsted in a hand-to-hand encounter with some tough
old bull, or savage old grey boar, more especially if they get an ugly
rip or two from the sharp tusks of an infuriated fighting tusker, they
begin to be less aggressive, they learn that discretion may be the
better part of valour, and their cunning instincts are roused. In
fact, their education is progressing, and in time they instinctively
discover every wile and dodge and cunning stratagem, and display all
the wondrous subtlety of their race in procuring their prey.
Old tigers are invariably more wary, cautious, and suspicious than
young ones, and till they are fairly put to it by hunger, hurt, or
compulsion, they endeavour to keep their stripes concealed. When
brought to bay, however, there is little to reproach them with on the
score of cowardice, and it will be matter of rejoicing if you or your
elephants do not come off second best in the encounter. Even in the
last desperate case, a cunning old tiger will often make a feint, or
sham rush, or pretended charge, when his whole object is flight. If he
succeed in demoralising the line of elephants, roaring and dashing
furiously about, he will then try in the confusion to double through,
unless he is too badly wounded to be able to travel fast, in which
case he will fight to the end.
Old fellows are well acquainted with every maze and thicket in the
jungles, and they no sooner hear the elephants enter the 'bush' or
'cover' than they make off for some distant shelter. If there is no
apparent chance of this being successful, they try to steal out
laterally and outflank the line, or if that also is impossible, they
hide in some secret recess like a fox, or crouch low in some clumpy
bush, and trust to you or your elephant passing by without noticing
their presence.
It is marvellous in what sparse cover they will manage to lie up. So
admirably do their stripes mingle with the withered and charred
grass-stems and dried up stalks, that it is very difficult to detect
the dreaded robber when he is lying flat, extended, close to the
ground, so still and motionless that you cannot distinguish a tremor
or even a vibration of the grass in which he is crouching.
On one occasion George followed an old tiger through some stubble
about three feet high. It had been well trampled down too by tame
buffaloes. The tiger had been tracked into the field, and was known to
be in it. George was within ten yards of the cunning brute, and
although mounted on a tall elephant, and eagerly scanning the thin
cover with his sharpest glance, he could not discern the concealed
monster. His elephant was within four paces of it, when it sprang up
at the charge, giving a mighty roar, which however also served as its
death yell, as a bullet from George's trusty gun crashed through its
ribs and heart.
Tigers can lay themselves so flat on the ground, and lie so perfectly
motionless, that it is often a very easy thing to overlook them. On
another occasion, when the Purneah Hunt were out, a tigress that had
been shot got under some cover that was trampled down by a line of
about twenty elephants. The sportsmen knew that she had been severely
wounded, as they could tell by the gouts of blood, but there was no
sign of the body. She had disappeared. After a long search, beating
the same ground over and over again, an elephant trod on the dead body
lying under the trampled canes, and the mahout got down and discovered
her lying quite dead. She was a large animal and full grown.
On another occasion George was after a fine male tiger. He was
following up fast, but coming to a broad nullah, full of water, he
suddenly lost sight of his game. He looked up and down the bank, and
on the opposite bank, but could see no traces of the tiger. Looking
down, he saw in the water what at first he took to be a large
bull-frog. There was not a ripple on the placid stagnant surface of
the pool. He marvelled much, and just then his mahout pointed to the
supposed bull-frog, and in an excited whisper implored George to fire.
A keener look convinced George that it really was the tiger. It was
totally immersed all but the face, and lying so still that not the
faintest motion or ripple was perceptible. He fired and inflicted a
terrible wound. The tiger bounded madly forward, and George gave it
its quietus through the spine as it tried to spring up the opposite
bank.
A nearly similar case occurred to old Mr. C., one of the veteran
sportsmen of Purneah. A tiger had bolted towards a small tank or pond,
and though the line followed up in hot pursuit, the brute disappeared.
Old C., keener than the others, was loth to give up the pursuit, and
presently discerned a yellowish reflection in the clear water. Peering
more intently, he could discover the yellowish tawny outline of the
cunning animal, totally immersed in the water, save its eyes, ears,
and nose. He shot the tiger dead, and it sank to the bottom like a
stone. So perfectly had it concealed itself, that the other sportsmen
could not for the life of them imagine what old C. had fired at, till
his mahout got down and began to haul the dead animal out of the
water.
Tigers are not at all afraid of water, and are fast and powerful
swimmers. They swim much after the fashion of a horse, only the head
out of the water, and they make scarcely any ripple.
'In another case,' writes George, 'though not five yards from the
elephant, and right under me, a tiger was swimming with so slight a
ripple that I mistook it for a rat, until I saw the stripes emerge,
when I perforated his jacket with a bullet.'
Only their head remaining out of water when they are swimming, they
are very hard to hit, as shooting at an object on water is very
deceptive work as to judging distance, and a tiger's head is but a
small object to aim at when some little way off.
Old C. had another adventure with a cunning rogue, which all but ended
disastrously. He was in hot pursuit of the tiger, and, finding no
safety on land, it took to swimming in a broad unfordable piece of
water, a sort of deep lagoon. Old C. procured a boat that was handy,
and got a coolie to paddle him out after the tiger. He fired several
shots at the exposed head of the brute, but missed. He thought he
would wait till he got nearer and make a sure shot, as he had only one
bullet left in the boat. Suddenly the tiger turned round, and made
straight for the boat. Here was a quandary. Even if lie killed the
tiger with his single bullet it might upset the boat; the lagoon was
full of alligators, to say nothing of weeds, and there was no time to
get his heavy boots off. He felt his life might depend on the accuracy
of his aim. He fired, and killed the tiger stone dead within four or
five yards of the boat.
On one occasion, when out with our worthy district magistrate, Mr. S.,
I came on the tracks of what to all appearance, was a very large
tiger. They led over the sand close to the water's edge, and were very
distinct. I could see no returning marks, so I judged that the tiger
must have taken to the water. The stream was rapid and deep, and
midway to the further bank was a big, oblong-shaped, sandy islet, some
five or six hundred yards long, and having a few scrubby bushes
growing sparsely on it. We put our elephants into the rapid current,
and got across. The river here was nearly a quarter of a mile wide on
each side of the islet. As we emerged from the stream on to the island
we found fresh tracks of the tiger. They led us completely round the
circumference of the islet. The tiger had evidently been in quest of
food. The prints were fresh and very well defined. Finding that all
was barren on the sandy shore, he entered the current again, and
following up we found his imprint once more on the further bank,
several hundred yards down the stream.
One tiger was killed stone dead by a single bullet during one of our
annual hunts, and falling back into the water, it sank to the bottom
like lead. Being unable to find the animal, we beat all round the
place, till I suggested it might have been hit and fallen into the
river. One of the men was ordered to dive down, and ascertain if the
tiger was at the bottom. The river water is generally muddy, so that
the bottom cannot be seen. Divesting himself of puggree, and girding
up his loins, the diver sank gently to the bottom, but presently
reappeared in a palpable funk, puffing and blowing, and declaring that
the tiger was certainly at the bottom. The foolish fellow thought it
might be still alive. We soon disabused his mind of that idea, and had
the dead tiger hauled up to dry land.
Surprised by floods, a tiger has been known to remain for days on an
ant-hill, and even to take refuge on the branch of some large tree,
but he takes to water readily, and can swim for over a mile, and he
has been known to remain for days in from two to three feet depth of
water.
A time-honoured tiger story with old hands, used to tell how the
Soonderbund tigers got carried out to sea. If the listener was a new
arrival, or a _gobe mouche_, they would explain that the tigers in the
Soonderbunds often get carried out to sea by the retiring tide. It
would sweep them off as they were swimming from island to island in
the vast delta of Father Ganges. Only the young ones, however,
suffered this lamentable fate. The older and more wary fellows, taught
perhaps by sad experience, used always to dip their tails in, before
starting on a swim, so as to ascertain which way the tide was flowing.
If it was the flow of the tide they would boldly venture in, but if it
was ebb tide, and there was the slightest chance of their being
carried out to sea, they would patiently lie down, meditate on the
fleeting vanity of life, and like the hero of the song--
'Wait for the turn of the tide.'
Without venturing an opinion on this story, I may confidently assert,
that the tiger, unlike his humble prototype the domestic cat, is not
really afraid of water, but will take to it readily to escape a
threatened danger, or if he can achieve any object by 'paddling his
own canoe.'