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A BOOK OF THE WILDERNESS 
AND JUNGLE 


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“THE WATCHFULNESS OF THE ARGALI.” 


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A.BOOK OF 
THE WILDERNESS 
AND JUNGLE 


EDITED BY 


F. G. AFLALO, F.R.G.S. 


AUTHOR OF ‘‘OUR AGREEABLE FRIENDS” 


ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR AND BLACK AND WHITE 
BY E. F, CALDWELL 


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LONDON 
S. W. PARTRIDGE & CO.,.LTD. 
OLD BAILEY 


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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 
I. THE WILDERNESS 


Il. THe CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 
III]. THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 
IV. THe TAMING OF THE WILD 


V. Tue PASSING OF THE WILD 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


IN COLOUR 


‘©THE WATCHFULNESS OF THE ARGALI” 
‘* FULL ON A GREAT MOOSE” : - 


‘‘ THe BOAR THINKS LITTLE OF DRINKING 
AT THE SAME WATERHOLE ” A - 


‘* FROM THE CATTLE TO THEIR DRIVER 
WAS BUT A STEP” : ; : s 


“CLEAN THROUGH A HERD OF HARTE- 
BEEST ”” ; ; ci é ; : 


**So as TO BREAK THE LIoNn’s JAW” . 


IN BLACK AND WHITE 
‘* Anp HissED SAVAGELY AT THE BOAR ” 


‘Back CAME THE ELEPHANT IN NO END 
OF A Hurry” . 3 a : : 


‘““’THe AFRICAN RHINOCEROS USES ITS 
HorRN FOR TOssING ITS ENEMY” ‘ 


A RARE ANTELOPE é . ‘ 
THE MEAL THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 


‘*It MANAGES TO JUMP ON THE JAGUAR’S 
Back” : : ‘ , : é 


Frontispiece 


Facing page 28 


74 
104 


156 
192 


PREFACE 


A PREFACE usually explains, or professes to 
explain, why a book is written. It may, asa 
rule, be taken as read that scores of friends 
have urged the author not to keep his know- 
ledge from the world. These friends then 
expect copies of the book when it appears. I 
cannot plead any such wholesale mandate. The 
book was written at the invitation of the pub- 
lishers, and for reasons not unwelcome to those 
who write books. 

Yet I would not have set about it if it had 
not seemed to filla gap. It attempts, in fact, 
to be a kind of Nature-study book on the larger 
scale, an introduction to the study of big game 
in our overseas possessions. It is not merely 
a book of adventure with wild animals, though 
its pages contain many thrilling stories of actual 
encounters told by those who took part in them. 
But it aims at something over and above this 
sensational treatment of the subject. 


Many volumes have been published during 
9 


10 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


the last few years on what is known as Nature- 
teaching. Some of these are very good, others 
only good, and further grades need not be 
specified. All of them attempt, more or less 
successfully, to rouse an interest in wild life, 
animal and vegetable, and to moderate the 
thirst for destroying it. The rare fern is treated 
as respectfully as the rare butterfly. There can 
be no doubt whatever that the excellent Boy 
Scout movement has in great measure been 
responsible for this literature, for there is 
obvious necessity for encouraging this combi- 
nation of observation and restraint in an 
immense body of youngsters suddenly turned 
loose, often without the embargo of trespass, 
in the most peaceful corners of England. 
Therefore book after book appears in which 
the Boy Scouts (and other boys who are too 
lazy to scout) are taught to watch squirrels 
without catapulting them and count the eggs 
in the blackbird’s nest without taking them. 
This is very admirable doctrine, and, so far as 
England is concerned, it could not be bettered. 

All lads are not, however, destined to stay in 
England. Many—one might say most—of the 
best and brightest turn their eyes to other 


PREFACE II 


lands, either in adventurous ambition to see 
the world, or from sheer compulsion to make 
their way in life with greater opportunities 
than they can find in the Old Country. 
Necessity, then, and choice combine to send 
thousands of young fellows every year to India, 
Africa, Canada, or those farther colonies that 
lie on the other side of the world. In one 
sense, no doubt, the Mother Country is the 
loser by this steady drain on the best of her 
blood, and it has even been compared with the 
loss of the strongest and bravest of her man- 
hood in war. Yet there is this difference that, 
whereas those who fall in battle are gone for 
all time, many who make a career overseas 
return home to end their days. This is true 
of practically all who, as soldiers, civil servants, 
or planters, go to India; and those who, in 
the kinder climates of other outposts of the 
Empire, settle permanently in their adopted 
home, remain loyal at heart to the old country 
and rally round her when she needs them. 
This book, then, is intended as an introduc- 
tion to Nature Study in those vast territories 
beyond the seas over which the British flag is 
still kept fiying. How different are they from 


12 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


this little ‘‘Great” Britain of ours—of the 
quiet meadows with their moles and rabbits, 
little woods that would scarcely hide an 
elephant, rivers that are mere rills, lakes that 
might be ponds, and mountains little more than 
anthills when compared with the splendid 
majesty of Himalaya or the Rockies. Instead 
of such miniature scenes, we have to consider 
the Wilderness—desert, jungle, or mountain— 
vast, mysterious, in parts still untrodden by 
man, and the last stronghold of many beautiful 
or interesting creatures on the verge of dis- 
appearance. 

Here also, with some exceptions, the spirit 
of moderation should be encouraged, and 
something is said of this in the concluding 
chapter. The Passing of the Wild is inevit- 
able, but it may be indefinitely delayed by 
well-framed game-laws, which should limit the 
bag in the case of all animals save those which 
are dangerous, and which should entirely 
protect such species as are threatened with ex- 
tinction. The ‘‘Society for the Preservation 
of the Wild Fauna of the Empire” has chosen 
a clumsy title, but does admirable work in this 
direction, and an equally satisfactory spirit of 


PREFACE 13 


protection has, even at the eleventh hour, 
become apparent in the nation which drove the 
wild buffalo of the prairies off the face of the 
earth. 

At the same time, it is necessary to use 
common sense in framing these regulations 
and to recognise that the injunction to spare 
life cannot be worded as peremptorily in the 
African or Indian jungle, as, for instance, in 
Epping Forest. For one thing, many of the 
wild animals are exceedingly savage and 
dangerous. The lion, tiger, and leopard, to 
quote only three, do not hesitate to attack 
natives and annually destroy immense quantities 
of cattle, sheep, goats, and poultry. Euro- 
peans, it is true, are, as a rule, not molested 
by these animals unless they wound them first, 
though even to this immunity there are excep- 
tions. But Europeans are morally responsible 
for the safety and well-being of those whose 
birthright they administer, and they should 
consider themselves bound to shoot every lion 
or tiger they may come across, even at some 
personal risk and discomfort. In the chapter 
entitled ‘‘ Vengeance of the Wild” the reader 
will find details of terrible encounters with 


14 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


infuriated wild animals, many of them ending 
in the sportsman’s death, others involving 
escapes little short of miraculous. No one, 
after reading these stories, is likely to plead for 
the protection of lions and tigers, at any rate, 
though there are, no doubt, people who hold it 
wicked to kill a flea. 

Again, it must be borne in mind that those 
who travel in the heart of a country like Africa, 
even where sport is not the primary object of 
their expedition, must provide meat for their 
native followers as well as for themselves, and 
the negro eats a deal of meat when on the 
march. It would be ridiculous to forbid the 
shooting of antelopes, or even of an occasional 
giraffe or hippopotamus, with so many mouths 
to feed. It is easy for stay-at-home folk, with 
a butcher’s shop round the corner, to preach 
such comfortable doctrine, but out in the wild 
places life is measured by other standards than 
those that suffice the complacent folk of cities. 

Last, but not least, there is the freedom of 
sport. I am not going to insist, in the thrilling 
language of a florid prospectus recently issued 
with a sporting work of reference, that ‘‘our 
national games make national heroes,” for I 


PREFACE 15 


am of those unappreciative people who believe 
that a man may be a hero even though he has 
never watched a football match or shot a pigeon 
out ofatrap. At the same time, there can be 
very little doubt that those who have the 
courage and endurance to go into the jungle 
after tiger, or into the Himalaya after wild 
sheep, learning, as ‘they go, the virtue of 
dogged patience and the arts of woodcraft, 
stalking, intercourse with native tribesmen and 
getting over difficult country in quick time— 
these men must be valuable assets to their 
country in the hour of their country’s need. 
While, therefore, sportsmen should be sub- 
jected to fair and reasonable restraint, made to 
pay for their amusement, debarred from killing 
more than a strictly limited number of beasts, 
and utterly prohibited from shooting the 
females of some and both sexes of others, it 
would be a bad day that should see the sport 
of big game hunting unconditionally forbidden 
or, worse still, losing its attraction for English- 
men abroad. This book does not pretend to 
offer information as to camping requisites or 
rifles, though hints as to season and locality 
will here and there be found. Many adven- 


1 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


tures with dangerous game are related in its 
pages, and most of these have been specially 
contributed. There is, however, no account of 
shooting either giraffe or hippopotamus, for 
these should be shot only when meat is needed 
for the natives, and such grisly necessity does 
not fall under the head of sport. There is a 
single interesting story of an elephant hunt in 
Rhodesia. If the admission of this narrative 
should be at variance with the view expressed 
elsewhere in the book on the pity of slaying so 
grand a creature for its ivory, it must be re- 
membered that, when wounded at any rate, 
and sometimes even without provocation, an 
elephant is one of the most terrible of all wild 
animals, and, as will be seen in Chapter ITI, 
only one other, the lion, has killed so many 
men in the history of African sport and explo- 
ration. 

There will also be found an exciting narrative 
of the manner in which the native Arab hunters 
ride down the giraffe, killing the animal with 
their wonderful two-handed swords. This kind 
of hunting has not often been witnessed by 
Europeans, and this account, contributed by an 
officer who actually took part, was too interest- 


PREFACE 17 


ing to omit. Moreover, though we rightly 
regard the giraffe as a creature worthy of pro- 
tection from the tourist’s rifle, it is perfectly 
legitimate for these native swordsmen to kill it 
by such means for the sake of its meat, as the 
animal is bagged only after an arduous chase, 
not wholly free from danger. 

There is a third possibility in our relations 
with the wild creatures in addition to the alter- 
native of either killing them or leaving them in 
peace. We can tame them, and the subject is 
fraught with such interesting traditions in the 
past and such curious possibilities for the future 
that it has been thought worthy of a short 
chapter to itself, dealing not so much with the 
horse, dog, and other domestic animals familiar 
at home, as with the camel, reindeer, yak, and 
such beside as still exist in the wild state. 
There are, it is true, wild horses in a restricted 
area of Western Asia, and, in a sense also, 
there are wild dogs, but the relationship is less 
close than in the case of those named above. 

For the uninspired descriptions of some 
aspects of the Wilderness, which form the 
subject of the opening chapter, I am humbly 
apologetic. My sense of futility in making this 

B 


18 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


unavoidable attempt is the more disheartening 
because I actually have been in such places 
and even made notes of what most impressed 
me at the time and on the spot. None the less, 
they beat me, utterly. Perhaps those describe 
them best who know them least. I understand 
that the most lifelike pictures of battle and the 
most realistic accounts of executions have been 
achieved by gifted men who never witnessed 
either, and I know one writer, at any rate, who 
has given us the most convincing pictures of 
the wilderness without ever having set foot 
within a hundred miles of it. Such imagina- 
tion is a blessed gift which my fairy godmother 
withheld from me and which would have been 
better than my equipment of pencil and note- 
book and the desire to see realities. Yet I can 
only offer the wares that are in my pack. 

My heartfelt thanks are due to those who 
have helped me in the writing of this book. 
First and foremost I must thank the Editor and 
Proprietors of Zhe Feld for kind permission 
to quote from its teeming pages anecdotes of 
shtkar, and the Secretary of the Royal Colonial 
Institute for having placed at my disposal the 
files of many African and Indian periodicals. 


PREFACE 19 


Then I must record my obligations to the 
sportsmen who have so generously contri- 
buted their experiences, including Mr. Edwin 
Arnold, Mr. H. A. Bryden, Lord Egmont, Sir 
Godfrey Lagden, k.c.m.c., Major Stevenson 
Hamilton, Major Edgar Herapath, p.s.o., 
Colonel S. J. Lea, c.3., Sir William Lee- 
Warner, G.c.s.1., Dr. Tom Longstaff, Professor 
Lloyd Morgan, Major Murray, Mr. H. C. de 
la Poer, Mr. Percy Reid, Sir Henry Seton- 
Karr, c.M.G., Colonel Nevill Maskelyne Smyth, 
v.c., Colonel Williamson, Major F. G. Talbot, 
D.s.O., and many others. 


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THE WILDERNESS 


It is by no means easy, in the midst of this 
built-over, cultivated, and thickly peopled 
England of ours, to realise the great spaces of 
the wilderness. So destructive of other effects 
and impressions are the conditions of civilisa- 
tion, that there is difficulty, even for those of 
us who have known the wild places, to recall 
their appearance once we are back in cities. 
With church spires and factory chimneys 
cutting the sky in every direction, we are apt 
to forget the grander symmetry of bamboo and 
teak. The shriek of the locomotive survives 
the song of rivers, and the hum of crowds 
brings unwelcome forgetfulness of Nature’s 
silence. Here and there, even in modern Eng- 
land, in such corners of Salisbury Plain as are 
not overrun by our brave defenders, or on the 
lonely heights of misty Dartmoor, away from 
the trail of the tourist, it is still possible to 
sense something of the sweeter solitudes ; but 
such opportunities, already few, are dwindling 
every year. 
23 


24 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


The wilderness eludes me when I try to de- 
_scribe its grandeur, and I realise with profound 
humiliation the vanity of trying to introduce 
the reader to the baffling mystery of the forest 
or the haunting glare of the desert. The 
witching hour in the forest is that of dawn, 
and I have loved the cold silence of its waking 
away in the dreary timberlands of Canada and 
Russia, as well as in the luxuriant jungle of 
the Eastern tropics. Such virgin forest gives 
precious isolation from the little worries of 
men, and its desolate beauty provides a fitting 
frame for the last years on earth of many noble 
animals that are making their final stand against 
the march of civilisation in these all but im- 
penetrable thickets. It may seem a paradox, 
but lifelessness is the keynote of these forest 
scenes. 

Sir Henry Seton-Karr tells me that he once 
walked right on an old bull buffalo asleep in 
the open plains of Africa, getting to within five 
yards of the animal before it woke up. This 
he regards as a very unusual case, the only one, 
indeed, within his wide experience of many 
continents. Indeed, even where not much 
hunted, and, in consequence, not afraid of 
man, this curious alertness is typical of all 
the wild creatures. 

Though animals of the open plain depend 
mainly on their eyesight for keeping out of 


THE WILDERNESS 25 


danger, the jungle creatures owe their safety 
to scent or hearing. Sir Henry Seton-Karr 
thinks that jungle game rarely move until 
absolutely certain of the danger. He tells me 
that he once rode, in the heart of the Rocky 
Mountains, within a hundred yards of a black- 
tail buck, which stood among some trees and 
there, no doubt, thought itself hidden from 
view. The party did not happen to want the 
animal and so rode on. The buck stood so 
motionless that it might have been carved in 
stone. Just as the rest were riding out of 
sight, Sir Henry pulled up and looked steadily 
at the buck, which in a flash bounded out of 
sight. He also remembers having a driven 
red-deer hind pass him within twenty yards as 
he sat on a log in the heart of a Norwegian 
pine-forest. Had she got wind of him, she 
would have sprung high in the air and galloped 
off in another direction. Yet the cunning of 
woodland deer, when aware of danger, is 
almost uncanny. Sir Henry once saw a stag 
deliberately lie down in a pine-forest, wait 
until the drivers had passed it, and then quietly 
return to the woods and so out of danger. 
Harmony with surroundings, or what is 
sometimes, though less satisfactorily, called 
**protective colouring,’’ is very characteristic 
of many jungle creatures. The same sports- 
man assures me that even so large an animal 


26 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


as the Scandinavian elk, a greyish black deer 
standing twenty hands and weighing 1500 lbs., 
is often exceedingly difficult to see in its native 
pine-forests. The elephant of the African 
cedar-forest fits its background so perfectly 
that a sportsman has before now been known 
to see nothing of one till he suddenly became 
aware of its trunk waving gently almost over 
his head. On one occasion, indeed, Sir Henry 
himself, while hunting in an African water- 
course, nearly sat on a sixteen-feet python. 
‘*But,”’ as he quaintly adds, ‘‘the African jungle 
is full of surprises.” 

Those who have never wandered in the 
jungle, knowing it only in books of ad- 
venture, picture it alive with animals that show 
themselves at all hours. The truth is that 
they are all in hiding, and can be seen only in 
one of two ways, by either watching silently, 
or by driving the forest with a host of beaters. 
The latter, which is the more usual method 
with those in a hurry, gives only a fleeting 
glimpse of the jungle-folk under most unnatural 
conditions, as they fly panic-stricken for their 
lives. He who sits up at night in a machan 
comes nearer to the truth. 

I remember such a daybreak, in the depth 
of winter, in a Russian forest a hundred and 
fifty miles from St. Petersburg. To reach this 
outlandish spot, it had been necessary to drive 


THE WILDERNESS 27 


from the nearest station on the Trans-Siberian 
Railway in an open country cart over miles of 
snow and ice, and to be ferried, cart and all, 
across a half-frozen river at the hour of mid- 
night. It was not what might be called 
luxurious travel. Nor, at journey’s ending, 
was there soft luxury in the little hut of snow 
and boughs in which I was presently enclosed 
with my rifle and bidden to crouch till break 
of day, not even daring to smoke for fear of 
scaring the game. In the sequel, the game 
showed no appreciation of my self-denial and 
stayed away. Nota sign did I see of anything 
more terrible than a hare, though this vast 
Government forest is well stocked with bear, 
elk, wolves, and other wild animals. Yet I 
am quite as certain now as I was even in the 
disappointment and discomfort of the moment 
that the awakening of that far northern forest, 
as little birds broke into song and the feeble 
sun crimsoned the sparkling branches, more 
than repaid me for the cold and sleepless night 
that went before. 

Less rigorous, and even more attractive, is 
another picture I recall of daybreak, one 
summer’s morning, in a lonely forest of New 
Brunswick, camped on the left bank of the 
singing Miramichi. Here, in untrodden back- 
woods, I stayed for ten days, far from the 
haunts of man, poling down the stream in a 


28 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


crazy dug-out, camping each night beside some 
likely salmon pool, bathing, fishing, dozing, as 
I watched the wild creatures of an evening, 
living in unconditional surrender to the irre- 
sistible spell of the wilderness. That was the 
forest primeval that Longfellow sings of in 
‘‘Evangeline,’’ and through it ran the turbulent 
river, singing loudly as it wound along to the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence, babbling of the voyageurs 
and the coureurs des bots who are gone. Fir 
and larch and spruce and pine, with patches of 
hardwoods between, shot up tall, straight, and 
slender along both banks, and modest wild 
flowers made the clearings gay with colour. 
It is true that few of the trees showed great 
stature, for forest fires have taken heavy toll of 
the Lower Provinces, and most of the timber 
now standing is second growth, yet the peace 
of the Canadian wilderness is white magic. 
Its stillness deafens ears accustomed to the 
roar of traffic. As I lay down at night on the 
aromatic bed of fir-boughs piled by the guide, 
and lazily blinked at the last dying embers of 
the camp fire, the still darkness seemed to 
reverberate with sound, and it was not until 
after some interruption in the shape of a clumsy 
porcupine nosing among the stores, or a 
startled deer dashing through the clearing, that 
the silence made itself felt. The most en- 
trancing waterways in the backwoods are the 


ve @ 3. « EVEL (ON A GREAT MOOSE; at 


THE WILDERNESS 29 


brooks tributary to the main river and running 
to it from hill or lake beneath a lattice archway 
of greenery. Gliding silently down such a 
brook, my canoe shot one evening round a 
bend and full on a great moose that was busy 
crunching the lily-pads. So intent was the 
clumsy deer on its summer salad that a few 
moments elapsed ere the ugly head went up, 
- and then, with a defiant snort of anger at being 
disturbed, the giant went full gallop up the 
steep bank, and turned again on a hill-top to 
snort again before crashing away into the 
timber. 

Very different from these northern forests, 
yet akin with the spirit of the wilderness, is 
the eastern jungle, with its massive pillars of 
teak and bamboo and deodar, its fern-clumps 
and giant rhododendrons, and the serpentine 
creepers gay with gorgeous blooms. Here, 
too, are veritable seas of high grass, and the 
carpet is woven of ragwort, thistle, violet, 
cineraria, and other homelike flowers. Perched 
amid the hills in the forest are native villages, 
and down in the plains are ruined temples, 
steaming paddy-fields, and deserted tanks. 
The light in the eastern jungle is mystic. A 
strange, impressive gloom, in extraordinary 
contrast to the blinding glare in the open, 
pervades the aisles and transepts of Nature’s 
temples. There are times when this unearthly 


30 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


light looks green, then blue, like that of a sea- 
cavern, and there is indescribable beauty in the 
changing effects as the sunlight filters through 
the leafy screen. Over all these tropical 
scenes, over cool forest and burning desert, 
broods the pitiless brazen sky, of copper hue 
throughout the day, but passing morning and 
evening through every shade of blue, indigo, 
turquoise, and back to ultramarine, violet as 
the sun goes down over the edge of the desert, 
and, just at the last, an uncanny green. I 
have noticed this strange green ending to the 
day in two arid regions, Egypt and Arizona, 
just after the going of the sun, and never in 
the open elsewhere. 

Another scene, almost within the tropics, 
not beautiful, perhaps, but with a picturesque- 
ness of its own, is to be found among the 
swampy Keys of Florida. In the early part of 
the year, when the sun still tempers strength 
with mercy, and the mosquitoes are not yet 
alive to their opportunities, this is a very 
pleasant land to do nothing in. Laziness is 
its creed. Like the alligators and the turtles, 
mankind in that region moves only under com- 
pulsion, and always unwillingly. In these 
mangrove swamps millions of fiddler-crabs 
lie basking in the sun, scuttling back to their 
burrows when disturbed with a noise like that 
of rushing water. Heavy reptiles lurk in the 


THE WILDERNESS 31 


rank vegetation, and through evergreen cur- 
tains peep the herons and the egrets which 
Audubon described so well a hundred years 
ago, but which, alas! have been so ruthlessly 
destroyed by those who trade in feathers that 
the well-meant efforts of American societies 
organised for their protection come too late. 
Here also are bears and jaguars, though I did 
not, even in the wildest nooks of the Ever- 
glades, get a glimpse of either. Here, in the 
silent swamps, we used to dig out alligators 
amid the music of mocking-birds and the piping 
of quails, looking up from our labours at the 
heavy flight of pelicans and turkey-buzzards 
over the beaches and the more graceful soar- 
ing of fish-hawks out over the teeming 
waters. 

Very similar, and to the careless eye identical, 
are the mangrove swamps of tropical Queens- 
land. Here, however, we knew that there was 
no wild creature fiercer than the native ‘‘cat,”’ 
little more formidable than our English weasel. 
The animals most conspicuous out on the burn- 
ing plains behind the mangroves were the kan- 
garoos and wallabies, grotesque objects which, 
bounding out of reach of gun or rifle, look as 
if, embalmed in the Australian bush, they are 
survivals from some antique period before the 
dawn of history. The wooded tracts of tropical 
Queensland, as far north as Albany Pass and 


32 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Whitsunday Passage, are very beautiful, and 
the same may be said of the vegetation of 
New South Wales in the foothills of the Blue 
Mountains. Yet Australian scenes inevitably 
breathe a sadness that cannot be a figment of 
imagination, since it appeals to all except those 
who have made happy homes in the bush and 
who affectionately regard it as the most in- 
spiring forest landscape in all the world. The 
visitor, on the other hand, who has no such 
ties of sentiment to guide his judgment, finds 
horrible sameness in the miles of gums and 
wattles, with little or no undergrowth beneath ; 
and indeed wherever the eucalyptus has been 
given a new home in India, it has irretrievably 
ruined the native scenery. No one will blame 
Australians for their patriotism any more than he 
would those loyal Dutchmen who would vote the 
sand-dunes of Holland more impressive scenery 
than the Trossachs. Yet if the wild Australian 
bush has its chief attraction for Australians, the 
splendour of the Botanic Gardens in the cities 
shows that.the native flora affords material that 
Adam’s art can weave into fairy scenes unfor- 
gettable after twenty years. Not even the 
famous gardens at Buitenzoorg, in Java, or the 
better-known Cinnamon Gardens of Colombo, 
rich in spreading fig-tree and feathery bamboo, 
are more lovely than the Botanic Gardens of 
Australia. 


THE WILDERNESS 33 


All through the heat of the day silence is 
the most memorable quality of the wilderness, 
jungle, or desert, for only morning and even- 
ing, or in the time of darkness, do the beasts 
and birds make themselves heard. When the 
sun burns overhead in the pitiless sky, all 
Nature is silent, too exhausted to move. In 
early morning, it is true, the jungle is alive 
with bird-voices, and as darkness falls swiftly 
on the scene, with none of the lure of our 
northern twilight, jackals bark plaintively in 
the foothills, and a sudden scream of pain 
stabs the gloom as some tiger or leopard comes 
by its own. 

The jungle is less perilous than some people 
imagine. Beasts of prey lurk in it, no doubt, but, 
so he be well gaitered against sudden snakes, 
the European may walk there as safe as in an 
English wood. People at home find it hard 
to realise the lack of adventure. Those who 
write of their experiences are compelled, if 
they would hold the reader’s interest, to choose 
the days on which something happened. The 
other days, with nothing to distinguish one 
from another, are left out of the reckoning and 
are as if they had not been. It is as if we were 
to recall only the battles in a country’s past and 
ignore the interludes of peace. 

Darkness is another feature of the forest 
which must be known to be appreciated. Even 

c 


34 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


the heart of a wood at home is cool and shady 
on the hottest, brightest day of summer, but 
the giant trees of the tropical jungle, many of 
them two or three hundred feet in height, so 
effectually shut out the light of day that the 
effect is, as already remarked, suggestive of 
the light of sea-caves, green and ghostly ; and 
perhaps it is this dim, religious light, recalling 
old cathedrals, that has invested the forest 
with its uncanny associations. It is silent, 
solemn, wide and cold, ever reminding us of 
those submerged coal forests of ancient 
Britain, in the gloomy recesses of which 
primeval crocodiles and other vanished reptiles 
dozed beneath the spreading foliage of club- 
mosses. Of such impressive age are its 
greatest trees that the passing of nations leaves 
them unmoved. Unhappily, this restful effect 
of permanence belongs only to the forest 
primeval where the wasteful hand of man has 
not yet swung the axe and laid the monarchs 
low. The majesty of these tree giants, as I 
remember it at Wawona and elsewhere in 
California, beggars description. The great 
sequoias stand around silent and contemptuous. 
They were drinking in the sunshine five thou- 
sand years ago, and the monstrous dinotherium 
may have ended its days in their shadow, tong 
before the coming of man. What, compared 
with the lifetime of such timber, are the few 


THE WILDERNESS 35 


years that we call history? What other vitality 
do we know, animal or vegetable, equal to 
theirs, seeing that they live even after coaches 
are driven through their trunks? The outpost 
sentinels of the Californian forest are mere 
shrubs, a hundred feet or so in stature—balsam, 
cedar, fir, and pine—but some of the veterans 
measure a hundred feet round their base and 
tower nearer three hundred feet than two into 
the clear atmosphere of that beautiful region. 
Even here the visitor is impressed with the 
monotony inseparable from pine forests, which 
are green all the year and irresponsive to the 
changing seasons. The balm of their resin 
may be wholesome, yet is less agreeable than 
the mingled bouquet of English woods. Their 
groves are not made happy with the song of 
little birds. Yet they are a grand and exalting 
sight, these noblest trees on earth, and it is 
well that the American Government has 
stationed patrols of cavalry to see that no 
injury is done them. Thus, a national posses- 
sion, may they stand for all time against the 
greed of the builder! 

The wilderness, as figured in these pages, 
embraces all the wild places, from the dried-up 
veldt under the Southern Cross to the eternal 
snows of the Himalaya, and another aspect of 
it is the desert, the Garden of Allah, which, 
according to a tradition of the Bedawin, Allah 


36 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


made out of the rubbish left over at the 
Creation, planted it with prickly pear and 
aloes, peopled it with vipers and such-like 
vermin, and then laughed at the horror of its 
ugliness. This is a dreadful legend, yet it has 
in it an element of truth. There are, no doubt, 
books in which you may read of the beauty of 
the desert, since beauty is, after all, a matter 
of taste, and those whose acquaintance with 
the merciless sand comes from picture galleries 
may find it beautiful, even as comfortable lands- 
men, watching a stormy sea from the safety of 
the cliffs, find it entertaining. But ask the 
Arabs or the seamen. They will tell another 
story. On canvas, there may be splendour in 
the magic of a blood-red dawn, long before 
which the Arab has folded his tent in the 
moonlight and stolen away on his trek. There 
is wonder in the mirage, with its false imagery 
of trees and caravans that have no being 
where they seem. Yet this loveliness of the 
desert is Dead Sea Fruit to its own folk. To 
the veiled Tuaregs of the Sahara, to the 
dignified nomads beyond the Jordan, the dawn 
means another day of merciless heat, the 
mirage is an illusion that drives thirsty men to 
the verge of insanity, the sandstorm is a torture 
to any creature less resisting than a camel. 
The superstitious children of the desert look on 
it fearfully as the abode of evil jinns that love 


THE WILDERNESS 37 


to torture weak mortals. With some little 
difference of local colour, there is a dreadful 
sameness about the ‘‘bad lands”’ all the world 
over. Here is the Great Thirst : in the Plateau 
of Gobi, in the Sahara, in the burning sands of 
Arizona, or the ‘Never Never” of Australia, 
everywhere the cloudless, brazen skies, the 
pitiless sun, the parched earth. The Gardener 
has planted this waste with spiteful vegetation, 
spinifex and algarobo scrub, wait-a-bit thorn, 
saltbush, cactus, and aloes. Ghoulish vultures 
wheel in the blue on the look-out for some 
fallen camel, and lazy sand-vipers bask in the 
sun, scarcely distinguishable from the earth 
they lie on. The desert may be beautiful in 
pictures or in poetry, but the reality of it is 
horrible, and its beauty is the beauty of death. 

Each type of scenery has its characteristic 
creatures, and the influence of the soil, climate 
and vegetation on their form and character is 
part of the interesting and much-misunderstood 
subject of environment, any discussion of which 
is outside the scope of these pages. What we 
can at any rate appreciate is the association of 
jungle, desert, plain and mountain each with its 
Own appropriate group of wild animals. We 
should not, for instance, expect to find the 
majority of monkeys far from the forest. We 
should not look for a grazing animal like the 
bison in the desert, nor should we seek alpine 


38 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


animals like the sheep and goats in the plains. 
Every part of the wilderness has its appointed 
tenants, though some overlapping inevitably 
arises out of temporary changes of home on the 
part of migrants. Thus, though nothing seems 
to attract the wild sheep down to the plains, 
we find all manner of lowland game, like the 
bison and the elephant, climbing thousands of 
feet into the hills in search of cooler weather, 
fresh pastures and a respite from biting insects, 
which, if not wholly unknown, are at least less 
aggressive at the higher levels. The tiger is 
also encountered at an altitude of six or seven 
thousand feet, though with what object it 
performs such journeys is not apparent. 

The manner in which many of these creatures 
have developed certain features, among which 
various forms of foot are conspicuous, is also of 
the greatest interest. Thus we find the camel 
and giraffe with just the type of spreading foot 
suited to rapid and sure movement over the 
stony soil of the desert, and the caribou trusting 
to its splay feet to bear it at top speed over the 
snow and ice, so that it can outdistance even 
Indians on their snow-shoes without fear of 
crashing through the frozen crust in the manner 
so often fatal to the moose of the same region. 

Speaking generally, and with the aforemen- 
tioned allowance for wanderings, we expect to 
find types like the tiger, leopard, deer, bison, 


THE WILDERNESS 39 


bear and elephant in the forest; the lion and 
rhinoceros, with antelopes and other horned 
game, in the open grass plains; the giraffe, 
with antelopes and gazelles, in the desert ; and 
the wild sheep and goats, with bears, above the 
timber on the mountain-sides. The distinction 
in environment between the lion and tiger is 
sufficiently illustrated by their respective haunts 
in Asia. The Asiatic lion is confined to Persia, 
Mesopotamia and a single forest in Kathiawar. 
The lions of Gir (Kathiawar) are commonly 
spoken of as the last surviving Indian members 
of the species, a statement which implies that 
lions were at one time common elsewhere in that 
peninsula. This, however, far from being 
assured, is exceedingly improbable, for the 
steaming jungles of the East are far more suited 
to the tiger. The lion, on the other hand, 
prefers the moderately dry regions of which it 
finds such choice in Africa, though it is not 
partial to the arid desert tracts of that con- 
tinent in which the giraffe finds sanctuary from 
its most dreaded natural enemy. 

Everywhere we shall find the wild creatures 
perfectly adapted to their surroundings; not 
one single mistake in Nature’s menagerie. 
The abnormal extremes of flood or drought 
may occasion temporary suffering, but these 
are met, where possible, by migration to kinder 
conditions. The kangaroo is at home on the 


40 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


open plains. Were it driven into forest land, 
it would break its neck against low branches. 
The climbing powers of the squirrels and 
monkeys would be wasted in the plains, so we 
find them only in the jungle. The keen sight 
of the vulture is baffled by dense foliage, and 
the bird soars over open country suited to its 
strongest sense. The elephant’s trunk and the 
long neck and tongue of the giraffe are clearly 
adapted to stripping branches of their leaves. 
Whether these striking types were so created 
from the beginning, seeking the kind of environ- 
ment in which they were best qualified to find 
their food, or whether the elephant developed 
its trunk, and the giraffe stretched its neck, as 
circumstances demanded, is a matter of opinion. 
Each view has its supporters confident of their 
own case. The wisest man is he who is least 
sure. 


THE CREATURES OF THE 
WILDERNESS 


II 
THE CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 


Ir all Englishmen could spend their lives at 
home, even supposing that the prospect at- 
tracted them, they would have no reason to 
complain that their own country provided them 
with too little opportunity for either sport or 
nature-study, since, thanks in great measure 
to wise laws and also to the exclusion from 
great private estates of what our American 
friends pleasantly call ‘‘ game-hogs,” the shoot- 
ing and fishing in these islands, if in some 
respects a little artificial, are equal to those of 
any other country in Europe and superior to 
the sport of most. Few animal stories are 
more interesting than those of the fox, the 
otter, or the red deer; few birds are more 
attractive to the naturalist and sportsman than 
the red grouse; few fishes are more exciting 
to the angler, or more puzzling to the student, 
than the salmon. No continental country 
affords finer deer-stalking or salmon-fishing 
than Scotland, and in none, certainly, is the 
sport of fox-hunting better understood or more 
43 


44 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


enthusiastically enjoyed than in England. In 
their early boyhood, therefore, and also in the 
autumn of life, after long years of work given, 
it may be, to the service of their country under 
other skies, Englishmen with a taste for these 
country pleasures are singularly blest. In 
middle life, however, a large number must, at 
one time or another, go abroad, and the burden 
of exile is considerably lightened by knowing 
something of the wilderness and its animal life. 
Nor, in these days of rail and steamer, is it a 
very far cry from the elms and oaks of English 
spinneys to the deodars of the Himalaya, the 
teak forests of Burma, the cold and silent back- 
woods of Canada, or the steaming jungle of 
Central Africa. «Jt takes but a couple of weeks 
of turbine and Iécomotive to transport us from 
quiet English“fields to the rolling prairie, the 
limitless veldt, the bleak steppes, or the in- 
exorable desert. Arrived at those scenes, which 
we have known hitherto only in our boyhood’s 
books of adventure, we shall find the animals 
worthy of their setting. In place of the badger 
and weasel, we are confronted with the ponder- 
ous elephant and rhinoceros, the savage lion 
and tiger, the broad-antlered moose and grace- 
ful antelopes, heavy and treacherous wild cattle ; 
in fact, with all manner of beasts, birds, and 
reptiles, great and small, fierce or timorous, 
harmless or venomous. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 45 


An attempt is made in the present chapter 
to give some account of the habits and appear- 
ance of some of the most interesting, preference 
being given to those which the sportsman is 
most likely to encounter, either accidentally 
or of set purpose, in the wilds of India, Africa, 
Canada and other regions to which Englishmen 
commonly emigrate. This exile to foreign 
parts is usually looked upon as the penalty of 
the younger sons ; yet those who have travelled 
far and wide, shooting or fishing, or merely 
keeping their eyes and ears open to gather 
what impressions they may, find themselves 
pitying not so much the younger sons com- 
pelled to see the world as the eldest son 
privileged to stay at home. 

The first chapter of this book endeavoured 
to give some sort of picture of the wild places, 
no easy task to one whose pen fails when 
called upon to reproduce the wonders he has 
seen. We have now to consider the creatures 
which inhabit these solitudes, and we must, 
before all, try to keep a sense of proportion, 
for when we lose that we lose also all hold 
on the realities of life. Goldsmith, the poet, 
once dared to twit the great Dr. Johnson by 
saying that, if he had tried to write a dialogue 
between little fishes, he would have made them 
talk like whales. In a book that finds some- 
thing to say of both, every attempt has been 


46 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


made not to let the rats talk like the elephants, 
but to keep each in its right place is not as 
easy as perhaps it looks. Another difficulty 
is to show the animals in their wild surround- 
ings, and not as they are in the Zoological 
Gardens or Natural History Museum. I can 
assure the reader, from experience, that an old 
moose suddenly raising its immense and hideous 
face from the lily-pads, as a canoe shoots 
silently round the bend of a river and almost 
to its feet, looks not less than twenty feet high, 
as it dashes off into the forest with a crash 
like that of an avalanche. I can say this, for 
I have sat in that canoe. It is also important 
to guard against deceptive impressions formed 
under unusual conditions. There are, as a 
case in point, Indian birds gifted with voices 
which, though not perhaps equal to the night- 
ingale’s best, are by no means unpleasant 
when heard in an aviary, for the listener can 
go away when he has had enough. It is a 
very different matter for Anglo-Indians com- 
pelled to listen to these noisy fowl day after 
day as they lie sweltering in their hammocks, 
goaded by the heat and irritation of exile in 
the East; and it is hardly surprising that they 
should have dubbed one of the most familiar 
of these unconscious offenders the ‘‘ brain-fever 
bird.” 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 47 
1 INDIA 


Even were it not supremely interesting for 
the size, variety and abundance of its big game, 
India would surely be entitled to the first place 
in any English account of the creatures of the 
jungle, since it is to India that the vast majority 
of Englishmen turn for a career—military, civil, 
or mercantile—after finishing their education 
at home. Thanks partly to the religious 
objection entertained by many of the natives 
for taking life in any form, and partly to wise 
game laws enforced of recent years by the 
British rulers of the country, the wild animals 
have survived in India as in no other region so 
densely populated. 

The extent to which Indian wild animals 
have survived in the midst of a civilisation 
thousands of years old is really remarkable, 
though it is a fact with which we have grown 
so familiar that we do not always appreciate 
its significance in the relations between wild 
creatures and the natives, looking on such 
episodes as no more extraordinary than if they 
happened in newly developed districts of 
British East Africa, which, down to a few 
years ago, were unreclaimed wilderness. The 
following is a case in point. 

Early in the present year (1912) a full-grown 
panther, prowling on a much-used line in Berar, 


48 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


got caught in the cow-catcher of a passenger 
train. The driver stopped the locomotive, but 
the brute would not, or could not, descend 
from its awkward position. One of the pas- 
sengers then climbed over and emptied five 
chambers of a revolver into the panther, which, 
however, merely snarled with rage, but still 
did not leave the train. Then someone fetched 
an iron bar, which was likewise ineffectual. 
There was nothing for it but to proceed, and 
when the train had gone a short distance the 
panther got clear. It was tracked and shot 
next day, and it was found to have all five 
revolver bullets in it and to have lost one of his 
paws. This shows remarkable vitality, but 
what is still more singular is the fact of the 
animal having stayed on the line to be caught 
up in this fashion. Was it a case of fearless- 
ness or panic ? 

Those with a liking for natural history or 
sport, or, better still, for both, could hardly 
have their lines cast in more pleasant places. 
The opportunities of exciting adventure with 
dangerous game, or the milder pleasure of 
scraping acquaintance with the most attrac- 
tive bird population to be found anywhere 
in the world, more than compensate for the 
drawbacks of exile in a trying climate, and 
I never yet heard a sportsman grumble of 
the years he spent in India. If he grumbled, 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 49 


it was after returning home, coming back to a 
land that had forgotten him and that offered 
the best of its sport only to those with deep 
purses. Interesting as are the smaller children 
of the jungle to the naturalist, very little is said 
of them in these pages, and there is only 
incidental mention of Indian birds, which in- 
clude the grotesque hornbills, the tuneful sun- 
birds, the gorgeous peacock, dancing adjutant, 
and hideous vulture. Indian birds are, thanks 
to the native practice of leaving them in peace, 
singularly fearless and may therefore be studied 
more easily than the feathered folk of some 
other countries in which, alas! man has been 
the enemy and not the friend, and those who 
want a really interesting handbook by way of 
introduction cannot do better than procure a 
copy of Mr. Douglas Dewar’s F¥ungle Folk, 
.in which the author gives a most amusing 
account of his Indian friends. It is as enjoy- 
able a book on birds as any I remember 
reading. We are here concerned rather with 
the elephant and tiger, with rhinoceros and 
buffalo in the long grass of the lowlands, with 
the cunning ‘‘bison,”’ trusting sambur, and 
fighting wild boar that live in the cool forest 
glades, with the graceful blackbuck that scour 
the plains, with the black and brown bears of 
the foothills, and with the magnificent Hima- 
layan wild sheep and goats, whose branching 
D 


50 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


horns sportsmen seek in the eternal snows of 
the mountain-tops and value above all other 
trophies of the chase, if only because so much 
more time and toil have gone to their winning. 
It cannot be said that sport in India is as good 
as it was in the old days. Wild animals are 
scarcer, and wild tourists are more plentiful. 
Yet good sport is still to be had for those who 
will take the trouble to look for it, and sports- 
manship is better and cleaner in India than 
anywhere else out of England. The pot-hunt- 
ing that goes on in Africa, in spite of the 
vigilance of game-wardens, would be an 
impossibility in a densely populated, well- 
governed land like India, where, to give only 
one reason for the difference, there are no 
ivory-hunters, native or European. Of Ameri- 
can sport I say nothing. Americans like my 
friend Mr. Hornaday, superintendent of the 
Bronx Animal Park, have said enough and to 
spare, and the scarcity of wild animals in the 
United States speaks for itself. Compare the 
condition of big game in India with that of 
the United States which, with, roughly, twice 
the area, have not one third of the population. 
Yet, save in a few outlying districts and 
Government Reservations, the land is all but 
denuded of its wild animals. With India we 
may bracket the neighbouring countries of 
Ladak and Tibet, as well as the island of 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 51 


Ceylon, which, while possessing many large 
animals in common with the mainland, has no 
tiger, no rhinoceros and no brown bear. 

The immense numbers of wild animals in 
India survive even the slaughter encouraged by 
Government for the purpose of saving human 
life in the jungle. Even with such precautions, 
the death-rate of natives killed by wild animals 
is terrible, and in rgto alone no fewer than 2400 
are officially recorded as having perished in this 
way. People in India declare that many of 
these so-called deaths from wild beasts are the 
work of poisoners, but we must remember the 
great difficulty of getting reliable evidence, 
even on oath, in communities that do not set a 
very high value on truth; and wild beasts may 
occasionally furnish a convenient explanation 
of tragedies wrapped in mystery. In the same 
year, it may be mentioned, the death-roll among 
wild beasts in the official records included 1421 
tigers, 5029 leopards, 2292 bears, and over 
90,000 deadly snakes. With an annual 
slaughter on such a scale, it seems surpris- 
ing that there should be any wild animals 
left in India at all. 


THE INDIAN ELEPHANT 


The elephant is the greatest of Indian 
animals. Clever people, who like a little 
Latin with their natural history, call it maxz- 


52 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


mus (i.e. biggest), which is interesting, but 
wrong, for the African elephant, which, as will 
presently be seen, is different from its Indian 
cousin in many other respects, is also much 
the larger and heavier of the two. Still, the 
clever people say maxzmus, and there’s an end 
of it. Yet even the Indian elephant is no 
pigmy, for specimens have been known to 
measure eleven feet at the shoulder. In case 
you should ever want to know the height of 
a tame elephant when there is no ladder handy, 
it is useful to remember that twice the circum- 
ference of the forefoot gives the animal’s height 
within an inch or two. I have tested this more 
than once, and it is at once simpler and more 
accurate than the American formula for reckon- 
ing the weight of the big fish called tarpon 
with a tape measure. I mention this only for 
the sake of comparison. The formula itself is 
a nightmare. The forefoot of the elephant has 
five nails, and the hindfoot only four. 

The most conspicuous possessions of the 
elephant are its trunk and its tusks. The only 
difference is that, whereas every elephant has a 
trunk, many, both male and female, are with- 
out tusks, and the tusks of the female are, if 
present at all, generally short and insignificant- 
looking. The elephant’s trunk is, without a 
doubt, the most wonderful limb, or organ, in 
all nature, a kind of nose and arm in one. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 53 


That of the Indian elephant has a sort of 
finger at the tip, and there are two of these 
“fingers” in the trunk of the African kind. 
With the help of the finger, the Indian elephant 
is able to pick up all but the smallest articles 
off the ground, and those still smaller, such 
as grains of maize, are simply sucked into the 
trunk. So that the trunk is not merely a nose 
and an arm, but alsoa natural vacuum-cleaner, 
which takes trifles off the ground much as the 
cleaner going over a dusty drugget. Nature 
turns out curious noses, particularly in the 
birds, which, so to speak, have their nose and 
mouth in one, as well as in some of the fishes, 
which also combine the two, but I doubt 
whether there is such another combination tool 
as the elephant’s trunk. It even serves as a 
powerful weapon now and then, for, though 
they do not commonly put this sensitive organ 
to such violent uses, elephants have been 
known, as will be shown in an anecdote on a 
later page, to seize men in their trunk and to 
fling them to the ground. At the same time, 
some of the artists who flourished in the simple 
days when cameras had not yet recorded the 
facts used to allow their imagination to run 
away with them, and represented infuriated 
elephants flinging hapless men about like so 
many golf balls. That is what elephants do 
only in books. Indeed, the trunk is usually 


54 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


spared unnecessary strain, and the Govern- 
ment elephants in the Burmese teak forests, 
rolling and stacking logs with infinite patience 
and wonderful judgment, use the trunk, as a 
rule, only in steadying each log on their tusks. 
Why, indeed, should the elephant hurt his 
trunk when it is so easy to gore or trample 
his little enemy, man? That great hunter, 
F. C. Selous, was once knocked off his 
frightened horse by a wounded elephant, 
which then stood over him, where he lay 
helpless, and drove its tusks into the earth 
close to his body, one of the most extra- 
ordinary escapes on record. ‘‘Charlie,” a 
tame elephant at the Crystal Palace some 
years ago, was teased by a man with a spear 
and just trod the man to death and went quietly 
back to his quarters. For this ‘‘ Charlie’ was 
executed, which may have been the proper 
penalty for taking the law into his own feet, 
but which seemed hard lines, all the same. One 
would not have thought a mere spear could do 
much against an elephant’s hide. Elephants 
have been executed in India also for this offence, 
and I remember hearing of a case at Mhow. 
The culprit was a hundred years old, and 
several rajahs wished to ransom him, but he 
had killed many natives, so the authorities 
would not hear of reprieve. In hot weather, 
or when persecuted by flies, elephants stand 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS $55 


in water and use their trunk to squirt it over 
their backs. I have watched this performance 
on hot evenings with feelings of envy, for the 
flies troubled me also, and such a shower bath 
must have been very refreshing. 

The tusks of the elephant are true teeth in 
the upper jaw. It should be remembered that 
they are quite distinct from the horn of the 
rhinoceros, or even from the tushes of the wild 
boar. The baby elephant has ‘‘milk-tusks ” 
just as we ourselves have ‘‘ first” teeth. How 
long the tusks go on growing, no one seems to 
know for certain, though the theory in India is 
that they do so all through the animal’s life. 
As an elephant may live considerably more 
than a century, this kind of statement must be 
taken on trust, unless, of course, the yearly 
measurements of the tusks were handed on 
from father to son, which has not hitherto been 
done, but it seems inconceivable that this con- 
tinuous growth should be the case, as in even 
middle-aged Indian elephants tusks have been 
recorded measuring nearly 10 feet and weigh- 
ing over 100 lbs. Such figures, however, were 
always unusual, and to-day they would be very 
rare. Even in Africa, where single tusks have 
been taken weighing more than 150 lbs., most 
of the best have long since been made into 
billiard balls and brush handles. The tusks of 
the cow elephant in India are small. There 


56 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


are also many males without tusks at all, and 
in Ceylon, indeed, tuskers, though not un- 
common formerly, are nowadays the exception. 

The appearance of the Indian elephant is 
familiar to most of us. In colour, the skin is 
black and nearly hairless, though there are 
bristles on the tail. The tail itself is not 
decorative, and sometimes it is much dis- 
figured. One historic ‘‘rogue”’ elephant, shot 
some years ago in the Bangalore Ghats, was 
minus half of its tail, and the natives say that 
this is done in fighting other elephants. They 
must therefore bite their antagonist’s tail off, 
though they must surely have some difficulty 
in getting hold of such a wretched little object. 
‘ In Burmah there are so-called ‘‘ white” ele- 
phants. These are not in reality white at all, 
but a dirty flesh colour. Still, they have been 
called white for so many years that tourists in 
the Far East are bitterly disappointed not to 
find them as white as Polar bears. I sug- 
gested above that an ordinary spear should make 
very little impression on the elephant’s hide, 
but I ought to have remembered the misery 
these huge creatures endure from biting flies, 
to escape from which they not only stand for 
hours up to their eyes in muddy water, with 
only the tip of the trunk above the surface, but 
also clamber far up into the hills, being better 
climbers than one would think possible of such 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 57 


monsters. It must not be supposed that 
escape from their insect tormentors is the only 
purpose which prompts elephants to migrate 
to the mountains, for they also climb to great 
heights in search of suitable food when sup- 
plies fail them at the lower levels, but they 
certainly make shorter journeys above the 
plains when the flies are most troublesome. 
When, choosing the other alternative, they 
seek a water cure, they are sometimes unable 
to find depth enough to submerge animals of 
their height, and at such times they squirt the 
water out of their trunks, as mentioned above, 
and plaster themselves over with mud. This 
makes them look disgusting objects, but it 
certainly gives them peace from the tsetse and 
other venomous flies on the look out to suck 
their blood, and I am not sure that those who 
fish on Canadian rivers in summer, and suffer 
torments from the blackflies and midges, might 
not follow the elephant’s example and plaster 
a little mud on their face and hands. Such an 
experiment might be worth trying, at any rate 
when the ‘‘dope’” has given out. 

With its immense body, long and tapering 
trunk, curling tusks and straight, massive legs, 
the elephant is an extraordinary creature, 
different in size and shape from any other in 


1 A chemical preparation sold for bathing the face and 
hands and keeping biting flies at a distance. 


58 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


existence, though a pigmy compared with 
some of the mammoths that once roamed the 
frozen steppes of Siberia. I have seen the 
remains of one of these in the Natural History 
Museum at St. Petersburg. It could not, in 
life, have been a large specimen, but, with the 
hairy skin, it must have been an uncouth 
object and much more terrifying in appearance 
than even the elephants of our day. 

The senses of the elephant are much as those 
of other wild animals. It relies chiefly on its 
scent, and the trunk tells it of the approach of 
the enemy more often than either its wicked 
little short-sighted eyes or even the huge ears, 
which, in the African kind, are simply enor- 
mous, but which are also, in many elephants, 
quite incapable of hearing. It is curious, 
indeed, that the largest ears in all creation 
should belong to an animal that is almost deaf, 
but it is a fact. The sense of smell, on the 
other hand, is wonderful, and the sportsman 
stalking a wild elephant has to exercise the 
greatest caution, as, if the wind should sud- 
denly shift, blowing from him to the animal, 
it will at once smell him and either bolt away 
into the jungle or charge outright. 

The cow elephant is devoted to her young 
one, and always ready to put herself between 
it and danger. It must be confessed, on the 
other hand, that my lord, the elephant, puts the 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 59 


safety of his own skin before every other con- 
sideration. When a herd gallops out of 
danger, the bulls manfully lead the way, leav- 
ing the rest of the family to do as best they 
can. Yet even in this sauve guz peut the 
females never desert their calves. In fairness 
to the males, we should perhaps admit that 
they may realise, either from experience or by 
hearsay (who knows, after all, what tales they 
may tell each other ?), that they, and not their 
wives or children, are the chief object of the 
sportsman, though ivory-hunters in Africa 
make little or no difference between them, 
shooting all and sundry with marketable tusks. 

The daily life of a herd of elephants varies 
according to the season of the year. In the 
rains—I speak, of course, of the Indian ele- 
phant—they climb into the hills, glad to get 
out of the valleys, which are then alive with 
flies. They are always on the move, be the 
weather wet or dry, for it will easily be realised 
that creatures of such immense size and such 
hearty appetite soon exhaust the food supply, 
and in order to get sufficient juicy grasses, 
tender stems of young bamboo, and wild plan- 
tains to stay their hunger, they must travel 
far, crashing their way through the jungle, 
ripping off great strips of bark with their 
tusks, digging up trees by the roots, trampling 
down shrubs, spreading havoc and ruin in the 


60 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


ryot’s crops and gardens, spoiling whole planta- 
tions of tea and coffee, pulverising the native 
huts, and doing terrific damage, much of it in 
aimless frolic. In the heat of the day they 
rest beneath some clump of banyan trees or in 
other shade, ears flapping, bodies swaying, 
first one foot and then the other being lifted 
off the ground. At the hottest time of the 
year they seek shelter in some forest of ever- 
greens, and when asleep they do not, as some 
artists still prefer to picture them, lean against 
the trunks of trees, but lie on their sides like 
men and horses and many other tired animals, 
both wild and tame. We have got so accus- 
tomed to these elephants leaning against trees 
that I almost hesitate to destroy belief in the 
habit, but it is best to have the truth, even 
though it be less picturesque than fiction. 

For all its great size and colossal strength, 
the Indian elephant has an abject fear of man, 
and, considering what a puny figure of a man 
the average mahout, or driver, is, this docile 
submission says a good deal for the thorough- 
ness with which the natives of India have 
tamed these giants. Of this more will be said 
in a later chapter. The readiness with which 
wild elephants caught in keddahs are, with the 
help of tame ones, reduced to obedience is 
extraordinary. It is ludicrous to watch one of 
these tremendous brutes taking its punishment 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 61 


meekly from some little undersized native 
whom, if it but knew its strength, it could 
crush as we crush a wasp. That is the ele- 
phant subdued by man. Yet a wounded wild 
elephant at close quarters is a terrible adver- 
sary, and a solitary ‘‘rogue” (or gunda) will 
terrorise a whole district for weeks together, 
so that the woodmen are afraid to go far into 
the jungle and the villagers are held up as if 
undergoing a siege. Not every lonely ele- 
phant, it should be remembered, is a ‘‘rogue,”’ 
for the tuskless males (or makuas) are at times 
so bullied by their more fortunate brothers with 
tusks that they prefer, though not necessarily 
vicious, to separate themselves from the herd 
and lead a solitary existence. 

How and why an elephant turns ‘‘ rogue ”’ is 
an interesting question that is always being 
argued, but rarely answered in a satisfactory 
manner. Clearly his case is not on all fours 
with that of the man-eating tiger, which we shall 
discuss later. Nor must permanent roguery be 
confused with the passing madness known in 
India as must, under the influence of which 
one of these animals will sometimes run amok, 
as it is called, in the bazaars, killing all who do 
not get out of its way. There is an even worse 
type of elephant than the wild ‘‘rogue,’”’ and that 
is a once tame elephant that, impatient of its 
bondage, has escaped back to the jungle. Such 


62 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


an elephant at large is a dreadful fellow, for, 
like the house cat that takes to poaching in the 
woods at home, it is far more cunning than its 
wild cousins and is moreover indifferent to man, 
since in this case familiarity seems to have bred 
contempt. The only cure for such is a rifle 
bullet through the brain. As to the making of 
‘‘rogue”’ elephants, no one knows exactly how 
this comes about, though many causes have 
been suggested. My own idea, which I offer 
only for what it may be worth, is that bad 
shooting may have had something to do with 
it. This theory may, at first sight, look 
rather far-fetched, but let me explain my 
meaning. We know, from accounts furnished 
by former travellers on the White Nile and 
other inland waters, both river and lake, of 
Central Africa, that the hippopotamus was in 
those days a more peaceful, fearless and frolic- 
some creature than it is nowadays, when 
trippers have invaded those regions and have 
taken to the curious pastime of pumping lead 
into every hippopotamus that comes to the 
surface to breathe within range of their guns. 
This is a disgraceful practice and one that 
should be severely dealt with. Unfortunately, 
these holiday ‘‘sportsmen ” regard the wilder- 
ness as their own, and, not satisfied with 
desecrating its sanctuary with their uncouth 
presence, they must needs slaughter every 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 63 


creature that comes within their reach. What 
is the result? Simply, as might be expected, 
that the once inoffensive hippopotamus, smart- 
ing from its wounds (since these miserable 
marksmen rarely kill outright), has lost its 
temper, which is hardly surprising. 

Many of the aggressive acts on the part of 
the hippopotamus arise, in Sir Henry Seton- 
Karr’s opinion, from the mother’s anxiety to 
protect her calf. The wooded islands above 
the Victoria Falls have long served as a hippo- 
nursery, and the mothers apparently resent the 
presence of canoes. 

My reason for supposing that some such 
grievance may have had its share in the manu- 
facture of ‘‘rogues” is that, with very rare 
exceptions, elephants reveal, when cut up, the 
wounds and even bullets of former encounters 
withman. This is why I regard bad marksman- 
ship as a possible factor in having soured their 
tempers and driven them to brood over their 
troubles in a solitude that only makes them 
more morose and anxious to avenge themselves 
on those that persecute them. Now, there is 
an objection to this suggestion of mine which, 
in fairness, I must not overlook. The truth is 
that, save in such jungles as those of Mysore 
and Travancore, the native rulers of which 
give occasional permission to distinguished 
guests to shoot an elephant, these animals 


64 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


have not been shot in India for many years. 
Yet, as we know that elephants live for a 
hundred years or more, and as ‘‘rogues”’ are 
rarely in their first youth when shot, this 
objection does not seem insuperable. Some 
doubt exists on the question of whether the 
‘‘rogue”’ elephant is bodily expelled from the 
herd in the first instance, and the episode has 
never been actually witnessed, or has, at any 
rate, not been described by anyone who pre- 
tends to have seen it. It is, however, well 
known that ‘‘rogues” often try to rejoin the 
polite society of their kind, but that they are not 
readmitted to the community, being regarded 
by their fellows as outcasts for life. General 
Hutchinson’s view of the ‘‘rogue” is that he has 
become solitary and morose because no longer 
attractive to the females, and is, so to speak, 
cut out by the younger generation. 

Of the mind of the elephant we know, as in 
the case of other animals, less than we do of 
its body. There is, in fact, considerable 
difference of opinion as to whether it should 
be regarded as clever or stupid. Some even 
of those who know it in its own home look 
with grave doubt on the many stories told of 
its marvellous intelligence as gross exaggera- 
tion. They point, in support of their less 
flattering opinion, to the small size of its brain 
and to the readiness with which it allows itself 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 65 


to be caught in keddahs or pitfalls. Yet even 
men occasionally fall into the latter, and I 
imagine that, in elephants as in ourselves, 
there are differences and that one may be 
more intelligent than its fellows. Two of the 
most striking proofs of the cleverness of some 
elephants that I remember reading were com- 
municated to the Fze/d by Mr. C. W. A. Bruce, 
a Forest Officer in Burma. Mr. Bruce often 
watched one of them break off a branch and 
use it in its trunk to scratch some part of its 
back or sides otherwise out of reach. Still 
more remarkable was the behaviour of a run- 
away female that escaped, dragging her chain. 
No sooner did her attendant give chase than 
she promptly seized the loose end of the chain 
in her trunk, clearly with the twofold object of 
saving herself from tripping over it and of pre- 
venting the man from catching hold of it. It 
is impossible to attribute any less intelligent 
reason to her action, and, if this was not clever, 
I should like to know what is. 

I am much indebted to that distinguished 
sportsman, Sir William Lee-Warner, G.c.s.1., 
for the following interesting notes on sagacity 
and memory in elephants. After reading what 
he has to say, it is not easy to entertain any 
reasonable doubt of the cleverness which these 
animals sometimes display, and if, on other 
occasions, they seem to fall short of what we 

E 


66 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


should have expected of them, it is always 
fair to remember that we may possibly misin- 
terpret their motives and overlook reasons for 
their conduct which, though not always ap- 
parent from our limited point of view, may 
appear perfectly sound to them. I give the 
evidence in his own words : 


**In the cold weather of 1870, I was camped 
out in the District of Nasik, in the Bombay 
Presidency. At that time, the military depart- 
ment maintained a number of elephants, some 
of which were employed on what may be called 
civil duties, such as the clearance of forests, 
the destruction of wild beasts, ceremonial 
occasions of a political character, and so forth. 
A certain contingent of elephants had, on the 
occasion of Lord Mayo’s visit to Ajmer, or 
some similar function, to be sent north. Three 
elephants, one from Ahmednagar, a second 
from Khandesh, and a third from Poona, were 
to meet near my place of encampment and to 
march in company to their appointed station. 
On the arrival of the Khandesh elephant, 
which had recently been employed in tiger- 
killing operations, it was at once noticed that 
something was seriously wrong. The animal 
was clearly ill at ease. Next morning when 
one mahout had mounted his elephant, and 
another was about to mount the second, the 
Khandesh elephant suddenly broke loose 
before being mounted, roughly pushed away 
his neighbour, and, taking the mahout in his 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 67 


trunk, knocked the man’s head against the 
ground, after which he tossed the body from 
his forearm to his hind leg and stamped the 
life out of his victim. Meanwhile his own 
mahout promptly mounted the elephant whose 
mahout had been killed and, with the third 
elephant and mahout, hurried away a distance 
of a few hundred yards and then halted to see 
what would happen. What did happen, to the 
surprise of everyone, was that the riderless 
elephant came up as quietly and meekly as 
possible, and when his own mahout spoke to him 
from the neck of the animal he was riding, he 
readily obeyed the customary words of com- 
mand. So he descended, and his own elephant 
assisted him to mount, as usual, showing that 
the fit of rage was over. Such extraordinary 
conduct on this occasion was subsequently 
explained by the records of the dead mahout’s 
service. He had taken this Khandesh elephant 
to the Abyssinian War, in 1867, and from that 
campaign the poor brute returned in a terrible 
condition and covered with sores. The mahout, 
on getting back to India, was given leave and 
was subsequently given charge of another 
elephant at a distant station, never again 
meeting with the animal he had ill-treated 
until this affair in 1870. He had forgotten 
the elephant, no doubt, but the elephant had 
neither forgotten the discomforts of the Abys- 
sinian service nor forgiven the author of them. 

‘¢ Another remarkable instance of the sagacity 
of elephants came under my notice in Mysore 
in 1905, when Lord Elgin was going to 


68 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


witness a Khedah, in which wild elephants 
are driven into a series of stockades. Sir 
Sheshadri Ayer, the Minister, was remarking 
on the comparative failure of the present Indian 
head of the Khedah establishment as con- 
trasted with the success formerly achieved in 
that position by G. P. Sanderson. It ap- 
peared that the Indian director, inspired by 
humanitarian motives, avoided the destruction 
of any elephant that was seen turning back or 
escaping from a stockade. Sanderson, on the 
other hand, used invariably to shoot all such, 
on the sound principle that dead men tell no 
tales. That his view was in all probability the 
correct one is sufficiently proved by an incident 
that was related to me on this occasion. A fair 
number of elephants had been driven right 
up to the outer stockade, and one or two had 
entered by the concealed gate. Suddenly a 
fine tusker advanced to the gateway and took 
up his position under the suspended gate, 
where he proceeded to resist the entrance of 
other elephants, beating them off for a con- 
siderable time and finally leading them in a 
wild rush that broke the line of beaters. Then 
someone present remembered that on a pre- 
vious occasion an elephant, apparently the same 
one, had escaped from the outer stockade, and 
it seemed reasonable to assume that the intelli- 
gent animal had remembered and used his 
experience so as to prevent others from falling 
into the same trap. 

‘*A step further is reached when an elephant 
reasons not from experience, but from fore- 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 69 


sight. I once saw an elephant in Canada 
engaged in intercepting the logs and trunks of 
trees that were floating down a river and stack- 
ing them on the bank. The precision with 
which the logs were laid, and the ingenuity 
with which, as the stack rose in elevation, logs 
were rolled up an incline made by the elephant 
for the purpose, were remarkable. But the 
feat that astounded me most was when the ele- 
phant, while dragging a tree out of the swift 
stream in his trunk, suddenly observed another 
log coming downstream so rapidly that it must 
inevitably have swung out of reach before he 
had time to deposit his burden on the bank. 
In an instant the animal pushed the descending 
log, with his foot out of the rapid current, 
slightly upstream, and so into the slack water 
under the bank; after which, quickly depositing 
the tree on land, he caught up the log with his 
free trunk before it could sweep past him. 

‘*It seems, however, that there are times, par- 
ticularly when they have done wrong and are 
ashamed of themselves, when elephants lose 
their heads. A mahout, passing through 
Sangli in 1886, went into a cottage and set 
a child in his own place on the elephant’s neck. 
The elephant resented this pleasantry, killed 
the child, and made off. The villagers raised 
a hue-and-cry just as I happened to be riding 
through the place, and some police with fixed 
bayonets were hastily collected and marched 
with slow and regular step to where the animal 
stood. The elephant backed slowly until it 
reached the stump of a tree, where heel-chains 


70 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


and other fetters had been prepared for it. It 
was then secured without offering the slightest 
opposition, and if it was minded to resist cap- 
ture it certainly neglected an obvious precau- 
tion which experience might, one would have 
thought, have suggested as the obvious means 
of escape.” 


Those who give the elephant less than its 
due credit for intelligence will, I think, be 
inclined to reconsider their verdict after reading 
these very interesting anecdotes, which illus- 
trate the memory, ingenuity, and remorse of 
which these mighty creatures are evidently 
capable. 

I have already mentioned the fact that, 
ordinarily speaking, there is no longer ele- 
phant shooting to be had in India. The only 
chance for the sportsman in that country is to 
be asked to shoot a ‘‘rogue”’ or an elephant in 
must. The only fatal shot that can be relied 
on to kill outright is through the brain. When 
shooting from the front, the rifle is aimed at 
the ridge, or bump, midway between the eyes ; 
but in shooting from either side it is necessary 
to know the exact position of the brain, which 
is very small in proportion to the size of the 
head. All manner of diagrams have in conse- 
quence been published with a view to assisting 
the novice in making the critical shot. What 
the novice invariably does, diagram or no 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 71 


diagram, is to empty the contents of his rifle 
all over the elephant’s surface and to send it 
off screaming. There is not much time to 
lose, for if the wounded brute does not hurry 
out of range it will charge in the opposite 
direction, in which case the sportsman usually 
moves off the scene without further delibera- 
tion. A charging elephant comes on at a 
surprising pace, trunk curled high in the air, 
little eyes gleaming, great ears flapping, alto- 
gether a tremendous picture of rage and 
strength. The obstinate bravery of elephants 
fighting against odds is never more grandly or 
more pathetically illustrated than in their not 
infrequent encounters with railway trains. The 
fate of ‘‘Jumbo,” who met his death in this 
way at a time when his weight exceeded six 
tons, will long be remembered in England, 
where he had been made the hero of somewhat 
hysterical sentiment on the occasion of his sale 
to an American showman. 

Collisions of the sort between trains and 
elephants are not uncommon in India, and in 
the Malay Peninsula they were at one time 
of constant occurrence. On one occasion, the 
driver of a goods train, seeing a big tusker on 
the line ahead, first slowed down and then 
stopped his train altogether. Even this defer- 
ence to his majesty did not satisfy the elephant, 
which at once charged the engine, dashing at 


72 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


it again and again with terrific force and doing 
considerable damage. Each time the driver 
made an attempt to continue the journey, the 
enraged elephant charged with new fury, and 
the man hesitated to go full speed ahead for 
fear of derailing his train. At length, though 
not until after his head had been severely bat- 
tered, the elephant tried other tactics and 
charged backwards. Asa passenger train was 
due to follow, the driver felt that no more time 
must be lost, so he let his engine go. One of 
the wheels went over the elephant’s leg, putting 
him out of action, and he was subsequently 
shot dead by the guard of the train that 
followed. 

Such is the Indian elephant. For all its 
occasional roguery, its fits of must, and of 
rage as blind and stupid as that just narrated, 
I always like to think of it as by far the most 
impressive of living animals, the type of a 
massive dignity that should command the re- 
spect of little folk like ourselves, even though 
we have tamed it and invented rifles with 
which to destroy it. This is why, quite apart 
from the possible, not to say probable, cruelty 
involved in the training, I dislike seeing circus 
elephants made to stand on their hind legs and 
beat drums. Such foolish tricks should be 
taught to animals of less dignity, and I would 
almost as soon have contemplated the late 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 73 


Mr. Gladstone dancing a breakdown in the 
Monkey House at the Zoo. 


THE RHINOCEROS 


We know all manner of rhinoceroses best 
by the horn, or horns, on their snout. There 
are three different kinds of these animals in 
Asia and two in Africa, but as this chapter 
does not pretend to describe every animal, 
the so-called ‘‘ great” rhinoceros of Assam, 
Kooch Behar and Nepal may do duty for the 
Eastern species. It is a huge, blundering 
creature, standing about six feet high and 
carrying on its nose a single pointed horn a 
foot or more in length. The so-called ‘‘horn” 
of the rhinoceros is absolutely different from 
those of goats or cattle, being really a growth 
of hardened skin. It can, in fact, be removed 
without leaving more than a scar, which 
rapidly heals, and this actually happens to 
these animals in captivity, for they occasion- 
ally rub off their horns against the bars. Both 
sexes carry this formidable weapon, but, 
as a matter of fact, the Indian rhinoceros 
fights only with its teeth, the horn being used 
only in tearing up roots. So long as they are 
not molested, these animals are usually in- 
offensive, and when they have been known to 
charge without provocation, it has been a case 


74 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


of nerves. They are short-sighted and hard 
of hearing, and when they suddenly get wind 
of a man they are apt to charge blindly, for 
fear of being surrounded. In parts of India, 
the high grass is both board and lodging to 
the rhinoceros, which lives in it and feeds on 
it, and must, therefore, be shot from elephant- 
back, as it is not possible for anyone on foot 
to get a shot. The rhinoceros of Sumatra is 
a smaller animal, with hairy ears. It is not 
particularly courageous, but is very destructive 
in the plantations. 


THE WILD BOAR 


This animal is the joy of Indian sportsmen, 
particularly of soldiers stationed in that land, 
who find pigsticking one of their favourite 
amusements. Nowhere else do boars show 
such fight. I have seen them pretty nasty 
when maddened by spear-thrusts in the cork- 
woods near Tangier, but an old Indian boar, 
which stands some thirty inches at the shoul- 
der, is the incarnation of pluck, tushes brist- 
ling, little red eyes flashing, charging times 
and again, even with spears broken in its 
body. Though considered a dainty by both 
tigers and leopards, and, doubtless aware of 
their fondness for his flesh, the boar thinks 
little of drinking at the same waterhole as 


THE BOAR THINKS LITTLE OF DRINKING AT THE SAME WATERHOLE 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 75 


they, and these creatures must be hungry in- 
deed to molest him. 

I am indebted to a well-known sportsman for 
a remarkable illustration of the dread in which 
the wild boar is held by even the fiercest 
animals in the best of condition. There are 
people who disbelieve the accounts of how the 
pig will drink unconcernedly at a pool with 
tigers standing by, but the following ex- 
perience leaves no shadow of doubt of its 
superiority in courage to, at any rate, a 
panther :— 

_My informant was shooting in the Kinwet 
Reserve, Berars (N.W. of the Nizam’s 
Dominions), in the month of May, 1g06. On 
this particular occasion he was seated in a 
machan in a solitary tree overlooking the 
Doderi Nullah, a boulder-strewn watercourse. 
A buffalo calf had been tied up as bait for 
the notorious Gari tiger, an immense light- 
coloured and very cunning old tiger that had 
been known for more than ten years to the 
officers of Gordon’s Horse, but had never got 
caught in a beat. Even his pug-marks were 
well known, being distinguishable not alone 
by their great size, but also by the peculiarity 
of the near fore-paw being turned slightly 
inwards. 

This gentleman has no high opinion of the 
practice of shooting tigers at night from a 


76 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


machan, but admits that, in the case of hardened 
man-eaters or cattle-slayers, it is the one and 
only method offering any reasonable prospect 
of success. 

The redoubtable skzkarz Dafadar Taman 
Sing, of Gordon’s Horse, had installed him 
at an early hour in his machan, and for two 
hours he had kept silent vigil. Nothing was 
moving in the vicinity of the unsuspecting 
boda until about seven in the evening. Then, 
just as the sun was going down under the 
horizon, a big, solitary old boar came into 
view a quarter of a mile away, feeding quietly 
as he moved from point to point, and little by 
little approaching the watercourse, which at 
that point would have been some two hundred 
yards wide. Finally the boar came within 
twenty yards on the leeward side of the calf. 
Then something quite unexpected happened. 
To the horror of the watcher overhead, the 
boar faced towards the calf and, with a series 
of defiant grunts, showed every sign of charg- 
ing across the intervening boulders. It looked 
as if a tragedy was about to be enacted, and 
my correspondent, supposing that the boar had 
scented the calf and mistaken it for an enemy, 
looked round in the direction of the bait. Then 
he saw the meaning of the boar’s hitherto 
puzzling behaviour. There lay a large panther, 
which had so far contrived to keep out of sight 


“| | | AND HISSED SAVAGELY AT THE BOAR.” 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 77 


and which, having stalked to within a few feet 
of the calf, was only waiting for the darkness 
that would precede the rising. of the moon in 
order to make a meal of it. 

A battle between these warriors of the jungle 
seemed imminent, but the panther was not 
equal to it. It squirmed its way to the top of 
a boulder and hissed savagely at the boar, but 
that was all; and it was just turning to make 
off, in spite of the fact that the ground was of 
a nature to have given it the advantage, when 
a shot from the 8-bore in the machan rolled 
it over on the far side of the boulder. The 
boar apparently took in the situation at a 
glance and, after one triumphal snort, tripped 
contentedly away. 

A thunderstorm broke during the night, 
which gave the watcher the agreeable choice 
between remaining in his tree and taking his 
chance with the lightning, or descending to 
earth and chancing acollision with the Gari tiger. 

Next morning he visited, with proper caution, 
the spot at which he had last seen the panther, 
but it lay dead on the further side, and death 
had evidently been instantaneous. Its length, 
native measurement (i.e. liberally stretched), 
was g ft. 34 in. In any case, it was a large 
specimen, and as it was in excellent condition, 
such pusillanimous conduct, even in face of a 
boar, seems inexcusable. 


78 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Indeed, there are stories enough of the Indian 
boar’s pluck and vitality to fill a book by them- 
selves, though none perhaps more significant 
than one told in an old book of a boar and 
tiger being found dead side by side. As an 
illustration of the strength and vitality of these 
die-hards, the following story has struck me as 
remarkable. A sportsman came suddenly on 
an old boar in the jungle and took a snapshot, 
hitting it too far back. (It should be mentioned 
that it is etiquette in British India to shoot 
boars only in jungle-country where they cannot 
be ridden after.) The animal at once charged, 
and in such a desperate hurry that the man 
had no time to reload, but instinctively held 
his rifle, a heavy weapon, crosswise before him 
to take the shock of the charge. The boar 
took the narrow neck of the weapon, near the 
trigger, between its teeth and bit clean through 
it. Then it knocked the sportsman over and 
started ripping him with its tusks, but it was 
too badly hurt itself to do much damage, and 
soon went a little distance and sat down, 
breathing heavily, and evidently in a bad way. 
This encounter took place towards sunset quite 
near the sportsman’s bungalow, and to this he 
now managed to crawl without the boar show- 
ing further fight. Next morning he went in 
search of it, taking another rifle for safety’s 
sake, though fully expecting to find a dead 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 79 


boar. What he found was a very lively boar, 
in the same spot where he had left it, that 
actually charged him again with great fury. 
This time, however, he finished it off. Few 
other animals could lie up severely wounded 
for a whole night and then charge, apparently 
as fresh as ever, next day. Colonel William- 
son tells me that he once had a lucky shot at a 
boar, which he could only see indistinctly in 
a clump of so-called wild arrowroot. On this 
occasion also the bullet struck it too far back 
to do mortal injury, and out it came straight 
for him. The Colonel took a hurried shot 
at close range, and then, catching his feet in 
some roots, fell on his back, expecting every 
moment that the boar would be on him and 
would score his body with some of those 
L-shaped gashes that the tusks always make. 
As he jumped up he found the animal lying 
dead at his feet, the shot having penetrated 
to the brain just over the left eye. 

Like many other really brave animals, the 
boar is no bully. Leave him alone, and he 
will give you the path. I recollect riding 
one moonlight night right up to an old boar, 
with his sow and his litter, and the pigs, 
which were digging up truffles or some other 
delicacy when I came suddenly upon them, 
just galloped back to the hills, the old gentle- 
man covering their retreat. An elephant, on 


80 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


the other hand, would have shown the way. 
A wild boar strikes one as about the last 
creature on earth to make a pet of, but I 
remember hearing of a lady in India who 
brought up a small wild sow that became 
much attached to its owner. The adopted 
one even slept under her bed and did quite 
as well as a watch-dog, rushing at all intru- 
ders. It used also to go out with the dogs 
when the sahib went shooting, and was in- 
variably first on a dead bird. There was, 
indeed, only one slight drawback to the value 
of this otherwise admirable pointer, and that 
was that it always ate the bird before the 
sahib could get to it. 

[The plan on which this book is written 
precludes any detailed account of European 
wild animals, but a note may be of interest on 
the prevalence of the wild boar, which has 
been extinct in Britain since the days of Queen 
Elizabeth, in Belgium and France. As a 
matter of fact, this animal roams over most 
of Europe, though is not apparently found in 
either Holland or Scandinavia. In all rideable 
country in India it is etiquette to kill it only 
with the spear, shooting it merely in ravines 
or in jungle where the sport of pigsticking 
would be out of the question. At Howara, 
also, near Tangier, it has for many years been 
killed with the spear, and I remember a Spanish 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 81 


nobleman with large estates in Spain assuring 
me some years ago that he fully intended pre- 
serving it for the same purpose on his property, 
though whether he ever carried out his inten- 
tion I have never heard. 

Belgium is overrun with wild boars, mostly 
from the Ardennes, in hard winter weather, 
and these audacious brutes even invade the 
villages round Verviers during the heavy snow- 
storms, seeking what they may devour. Indeed, 
on one occasion a farmer was charged by one 
in broad daylight in the streets of Jalhay ; and 
the boar is so ruinous to Belgian farmers that 
it may be shot at sight without licence or 
hindrance. Occasionally it gives good sport 
when hunted with hounds. I remember an 
occasion on which, not far from Bievre, a 
falconer, who was abroad at daybreak in search 
of a lost hawk, came on an immense boar in 
apineclearing. The boar having been located, 
the local pack was quickly turned out, and the 
boar gave them a first-rate run over the snow, 
through Fleurifoy and along the banks of the 
little river that runs past it. At length the 
boar got desperate and suddenly turned on 
the horse ridden by the Master, the Baron 
de Crawhez. The Baron, however, snatched 
his horse on one side and subsequently gave 
the boar the coup de grace, though not before 
several of his best hounds had been killed by 


F 


82 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


the infuriated animal. On another occasion 
a drove of no fewer than thirteen boars was 
seen in the moonlight in the outskirts of 
Esneux, a village in the province of Liége. 

Shooting boars is not a very dangerous 
sport, because they do not, for all their pluck, 
charge unless wounded, and also because care 
is taken to post the guns in such safe spots 
that it would not much matter if they did. 
Still, accidents do occasionally happen, in spite 
of these precautions. One day the veteran 
Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria was shoot- 
ing hogs, and one of his guests missed a boar. 
The boar did not miss him, however, but laid 
him on his back and so ripped his legs that he 
was disabled for weeks at Schloss Rohrbrunn. 

The technical name for these animals in 
French venery is Jétes nozres (which suggests 
blackbeetles), and there is in that country a 
very dangerous practice of making pitfalls to 
catch them in. These traps, concealed by 
branches, are a constant source of danger to 
hunting-men. Count Joseph Lahens_ used 
to keep a pack of the famous Piqu’ Hardi 
Gascon Batards solely to hunt wild boars in 
the Landes and Gironde. These are long- 
eared, powerful hounds, standing twenty-four 
inches, and they hunt the boar with wonderful 
scent and with a courage that almost matches 
its own. | 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 83 


HORNED GAME 


There is great variety of horned game in 
India, including the ponderous ‘‘ bison” and 
buffalo, the splendid goats and sheep in the 
mountains, with sambur in the forest and ante- 
lopes on the plains. Some of the mountain 
sheep must be endowed with enormous 
strength to endure life at such altitudes. Dr. 
Longstaff tells me that, in Tibet, he has seen 
burrhel up to eighteen thousand feet, and even 
higher, and the gradients that these creatures 
have to climb for their daily food are simply 
appalling. Of all the trophies, sportsmen most 
prize the spreading horns of Ovzs polz and 
Ovis ammon, or the spiral horns of the mark- 
hor, a wild goat found in the mountains of 
Kashmir and Ladak. Like the burrhel, these 
sheep inhabit tremendous heights above sea- 
level, and they gallop over the rough and 
broken ground at an amazing pace, never 
seeming to miss their footing even when hotly 
pursued. The first two sheep grow horns 
measuring seventy-five inches and fifty inches 
respectively, and the black and twisted horns 
of the markhor may exceed sixty inches. This 
animal is found at the highest limit of the pine 
forests, along the edge of which its flocks 
graze early and late, resting during the heat 
of the day. This also is the way of the so- 


84 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


called ‘‘ ibex,” a beardless goat of the Nilgiris, 
and a ewe is always posted as sentinel while 
the rest of the herd feed or rest. The faithful 
ewe takes up a commanding position and never 
slumbers at her post, though how she is per- 
suaded not to feed or lie down with the rest is 
one of those mysteries of animal life that we 
are never likely to solve. Is it done under 
compulsion, with all manner of pains and 
penalties for carelessness, or is it a labour of 
love ? 

The high places of Asia have their wild ox 
as well; the famous yak, which inhabits Tibet 
at altitudes of fifteen thousand feet or more. 
Many herds, indeed, rarely descend below that 
level. It is found in the tame state as well as 
in the wild; butin Ladak, at any rate, there have 
been no wild yak since 1887. How, with such 
miserable fare as is provided by the starved 
grasses of the mountain-tops, the yak manages 
to grow so big and strong is a problem, yet 
there are few wild oxen finer than this massive 
brute of the mountains, standing nearly six feet 
high, with its long black horns and hair. The 
yak has been domesticated for centuries, and 
among the eccentricities of the pure-bred 
animal mention may be made of a distaste for 
corn, which it is never able to overcome. | It is 
less keen-sighted than most animals of the 
peaks, and, like the sheep and goats of the 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 85 


same lofty region, it rarely looks for trouble 
from above, so that sportsmen often make a 
long and tiring stalk so as to get above the 
game and fire down on it. The herd is always 
on the move, inspired by a restlessness which 
there is no difficulty in understanding when we 
remember how scanty Nature’s larder must be 
at those frozen heights. 

The lowland cousins of the yak are the gaur 
(which Anglo-Indians call ‘‘bison’’) and the 
buffalo. The ‘‘bison”’ likewise clambers into 
the teak and bamboo forests in the hills, feed- 
ing up to a height of six thousand feet. Most 
people are familiar with the animal, at any rate 
in the Zoo: a powerful black ox, with a greasy- 
looking hide, small feet and slender white- 
stockinged legs, neat ‘*‘breedy”’ head, and 
powerful yellow horns tipped with black. The 
finest of these horns measure over forty inches 
across. The gaur, as, with all deference to 
sporting nicknames, I prefer to call it, stands 
fully six feet at the shoulder, and is perhaps the 
most massive of all the wild cattle, as a big 
bull, in good condition, will weigh not far short 
of a ton. It does not love its neighbour as 
itself, more particularly when the neighbour is 
a European, but is one of the first among the 
wild and timid jungle-folk to desert its old 
haunts when these are invaded by civilisation, 
and to seek solitudes still more remote in which 


86 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


it can hide from the eyes (and bullets) of man. 
It has a remarkably keen sense of smell, and a 
solitary old bull will get wind of his pursuer at 
an almost incredible distance. If unwounded, 
he will take the opportunity of galloping off 
out of harm’s way, but, if hurt, he will lie in 
ambush with extraordinary cunning, and for 
this reason the gaur is one of the most danger- 
ous creatures to follow up in high grass, more 
than one sportsman having paid with his life 
for underrating the strength and tactics of the 
enemy. It even turns hunter, circling round 
the sportsmen as at times lions do, stalking him, 
in fact, and then charging with confusing sud- 
- denness from an unexpected quarter. It has 
also, now and then, been known to charge 
before a single shot is fired, but this is a risk 
to be feared rather by the silent, bare-footed 
native than by Europeans, whose substantial 
tread as they go through the crackling under- 
growth generally advertises their approach in 
time for the wild creatures to make tracks, as, 
indeed, most of them, given the chance, are 
only too willing to do. The Indian buffalo, 
which flourishes in Assam and some neigh- 
bouring countries, is a very different looking 
animal, greyer in colour and almost hairless, 
with a wider spread of horns. Unlike the 
gaur, it has no fancy for the jungle, but spends 
most of its life in the high grass of the plains 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 87 


and is very fond of wallowing in swamps and 
waterholes, as its splay feet are of wonderful 
assistance when it wants to get quickly over 
soft ground. This furnishes a favourite subject 
for heated argument as to whether the animal 
gradually developed splay feet because it liked 
walking in treacherous places, or whether, on 
the other hand, it took to marshes because it 
realised that its feet were suited to such 
conditions. To some extent, no doubt, such 
discussions show intelligence, but the ques- 
tioners would show more if they did not always 
supply the answer according to their own fancy, 
and as positively as if the matter admitted of 
no further doubt. It is a pity to be drawn into 
taking up this cocksure attitude, and is far 
better to keep an open mind. Someone has 
remarked that dogmatism is puppyism grown 
up. Anyway, it is a vice best avoided early, or 
it soon grows on us. There are so many 
clever people in the world who know everything, 
that a few of us can well afford to be ignorant 
and own up to it. Like most wild oxen, the 
buffalo has amazing vitality. Unless killed 
outright by the first or second shot it dies very 
hard. Major Talbot tells me that on one 
occasion he saw one of these animals knocked 
down four times in succession, and each time it 
scrambled to its feet and charged again. When 
at length the old warrior was skinned, its body 


88 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


was found to contain no fewer than thirteen 
Paradox bullets, and most of these had ‘* mush- 
roomed ” under the skin on the further side. 
Even experienced sportsmen have been puzzled 
by the unconcerned way in which some animals 
receive bullets in vital parts of the body. 
Indeed, these sometimes seem to take so little 
effect that beginners, who imagine that they 
held their rifle straight, are disheartened by 
the conviction that they must have missed 
altogether. I recollect the case of an old bull 
elk in Sweden, which was hit four times, after 
which he trotted quietly off into the forest. 
Yet it was afterwards discovered that two of the 
bullets had gone clean through the animal’s 
brain and two through the shoulder blades ! 
The remaining horned game of India com- 
prises all manner of deer and antelopes, though 
it is not the purpose of this book to include a 
full list. As examples of the deer, we may take 
the sambur and barasingh, while the most 
attractive and best known of the Indian ante- 
lopes is undoubtedly the blackbuck. The 
sambur, known to sportsmen in Ceylon as the 
‘elk,’ is a splendid creature, though its antlers 
do not show the ten points of our Scotch stags, 
having, in fact, no more than three. As, how- 
ever, the sambur’s antlers may measure fifty 
inches, they make a beautiful trophy. The 
animal does not appear to shed them regularly 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 89 


every year like our European deer, but some- 
times carries them for two or three seasons. 
All manner of explanations of this curious 
habit have been suggested, but no one really 
knows the reason. It is just guesswork. In 
colour, the sambur is light brown when young. 
The hind, indeed, retains the lighter colour 
throughout life, but the stag grows gradually 
darker, till old stags are nearly black. When 
angry or alarmed, this deer has a singular trick 
of making the hair on its back and neck stand 
on end, as ours is supposed to do when we see 
ghosts. The sambur is a child of the jungle, 
hating the glare of the Indian sun and hiding 
away all day in the cool bamboo glades. Like 
many other deer, it feeds up in hilly country, 
climbing to a height of fully eight thousand feet 
above sea-level. It is less suspicious than most 
of its tribe, and often, indeed, offers an easy shot 
because of the silly curiosity with which, instead 
of taking to its heels, it will stand and stare at 
the intruder. It is also less thirsty than other 
of the jungle-folk, and is found at times some 
distance from water. The majority of wild 
animals, on the other hand, are sought by 
sportsmen in the neighbourhood of river-banks 
and waterholes, and native hunters in both India 
and Africa do much damage by sitting up on 
moonlight nights, close to well-known drinking 
places, and blazing away at everything that 


g0 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


comes down to the brink, killing few, but 
wounding many. Some people always raise an 
outcry whenever anything is said against allow- 
ing natives to carry arms, but, as will presently 
be shown, it is these armed natives who, more 
particularly in Africa, are chiefly responsible 
for the disappearance of the very animals that 
we aim chiefly at protecting, so as to save them 
from the irrevocable edict of extermination, 
which has already gone forth against more than 
one beautiful and interesting wild animal in 
that continent. 

Colonel Williamson, several of whose varied 
memories of Indian sport I am privileged to 
relate in these pages, has often seen cases 
in which the well-known lack of scent in 
the majority of young animals has_ been 
the means of saving their lives. In sup- 
port of this. view, he recalled an experience 
with a young sambur. Accompanied by half a 
dozen natives from Ootacamund and _ their 
pariahs, which ran in company with his own 
spaniels, he had been shooting in some of the 
sholas (evergreen coverts which clothe the 
lovely ravines of the Nilgiris), and, having 
beaten one of them, had crossed, with the 
whole party of men and dogs, an open grassy 
space in order to try another, when he learnt 
that a woodcock had just left this second shola 
and flown across the open land to the one that 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS o1 


had already been beaten. No one willingly 
lets a woodcock off in India any more than at 
home, so back they went through the long 
grass, almost doubling on their own tracks, 
and there lay a young sambur calf, wideawake, 
but crouching close to the earth. The hind 
had doubtless hidden it there and told it in her 
own fashion to lie still, whatever happened. 
The barasingh, or swamp-deer, is a smaller 
animal, but its antlers carry many more points, 
and the brow-tines (which may be compared to 
the lowest branch of a tree) are very large and 
conspicuous. Its colour is red along the back 
and sides and white beneath. It does not, 
like the sambur, keep to the densest portions 
of the jungle, but is more often to be found 
in the high grass in open spaces between two 
woods and nowhere very far from water, which 
it needs regularly and at short intervals. For 
this reason, it is one of the worst sufferers by 
the native practice referred to above. These 
men are not first-class shots, and their arms 
and ammunition are primitive. Europeans, 
with their modern rifles and knowledge of how 
to use them, are less objectionable, yet even 
they might occasionally set the natives a better 
example than they do. At the same time, the 
worst enemy of the sambur, at any rate, is not 
man, black or white, but the dhole, or wild 
dog, with which most people must be familiar 


92 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


in Kipling’s stories, a handsome villain that 
runs down its prey in packs. From the moment 
these deadly hunters get on his trail, the stag is 
doomed and knows it, and in such terror do 
these deer go of wild dogs that they at once 
desert a district at the first sign of them. For- 
tunately, the wild dog is not afraid of man, so 
that there is not as a rule much difficulty in 
shooting it, an opportunity of doing which 
should never be missed, as these animals are 
among the worst poachers in India. Although, 
as will presently be shown, the wild dogs of 
Africa utter a note not unlike that of a fox- 
hound, the ordinary cry of these creatures is 
more like a howl, barking being an accom- 
plishment acquired in the tame state, though 
there is no record of when or how it was 
learnt. These dholes occasionally go mad, like 
elephants in must, and in that condition they 
sometimes run amok in the villages, biting men 
and goats and even, in lonely districts, attack- 
ing and killing coolies. They are not carrion- 
eaters, like the jackal, but kill their own food. 
To return, after this digression, to the bara- 
singh, it is also known as the Kashmir 
stag and is regularly shot by sportsmen in 
October, when its horns are in good con- 
dition and the herds are migrating eastwards 
through the passes and nullahs of the Hima- 
laya. The hinds and fawns, realising perhaps 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 93 


that they have nothing to fear, feed close to 
the villages of the hillmen, but the old stags 
show great caution and remain on higher 
ground, where they are among the most diffi- 
cult of all animals to stalk. 

Of Indian antelopes, the handsomest and 
best known is the blackbuck. By the way, 
only the old bucks are actually black. Young 
males and does of all ages are yellow, but as 
the buck alone is shot for the sake of its black, 
corkscrew-shaped horns, which measure about 
twenty inches in a good head, the distinction of 
colour is not widely appreciated. Though this 
antelope is a dweller in the plains, occurring 
almost all over India, from the foot of the 
Himalaya to the sea coast, it is also found in 
forest country in the Central Provinces, and it 
is here, in fact, that the finest trophies are 
bagged, those from the Madras Presidency 
being much poorer. The blackbuck is regarded 
as a very difficult animal to stalk, which is 
remarkable, considering how it makes itself at 
home among the crops and in the midst of the 
native population. It may be that, in this case, 
the neighbourhood of man has taught it caution. 
This is the antelope which the rajahs and 
nabobs used to hunt with tame ‘‘ cheetahs,” 
or hunting-leopards, and some of them used 
lynxes for the same sport, but these are no 
longer employed, and even the hunting-leopard 


94 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


has gone out of fashion in most parts of India. 
The cheetah was blindfolded and taken in a 
cart until within sight of a herd of buck. Then 
its eyes were uncovered and it was launched on 
the herd, from which it at once singled out 
a victim, hurling itself in its direction at so 
tremendous a pace as often to overtake it at 
the first onslaught. If it failed, the perform- 
ance was over, for the cheetah is not one of the 
persistent try-try-try-again order of animals, but 
sulks if baulked of its prey and does not dream 
of making another effort to catch it. It must 
be admitted that it shows wisdom in this, for, 
with such a start, the fleet-footed blackbuck 
would never allow itself to be caught. The 
hunting -leopard is nowhere very plentiful 
nowadays, though one well-known sportsman 
mentions having encountered no fewer than 
five of these animals in a district in which he 
was after bison. 


LION, TIGER, AND LEOPARD 


Coming now to the carnivorous animals of 
India, passing mention must be made of the 
Indian lion. Not everyone seems to realise, 
indeed, that there are lions anywhere out of 
Africa. The American puma, it is true, is 
known by that name in its own country, but it 
is no more a true lion than its neighbour, the 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 95 


jaguar, is a tiger, though known as such. 
But there are real lions in India, or at any rate 
in the forest of Gir, in Kathiawar. They are 
small but very fierce, and have yellow manes. 
The Nawab of Joonagur strictly preserves these 
interesting animals, though occasionally allow- 
ing distinguished visitors to shoot them. Thus, 
Ranjitsinhji, now Jam of Nawanagar, was lucky 
enough to bag one in 1904. Another hunt was 
planned for the Governor of Bombay a few years 
ago, and on this occasion one of the party, 
Major Carnegy, was killed. It is usual to 
speak of Kathiawar as the last Indian strong- 
hold of this lion of Asia, which is much more 
plentiful in the neighbouring countries of Persia 
and Mesopotamia, but as a matter of fact there 
is no evidence to show that it was ever very 
widely distributed in India proper, where, in- 
deed, the steaming swamps and gloomy jungle 
are quite unsuited to the needs of an animal 
that, if we may judge by the haunts of its 
African relative, loves sunshine and dry soil. 
It is a curious fact that tigers are all but un- 
known in the district inhabited by lions, which 
makes it impossible to say which of the rival 
monarchs would be the victor in a fight under 
natural conditions, although in menageries the 
tiger has generally proved the better of the two. 
The lions of India need not further detain us. 
They do no damage outside of the preserve in 


96 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


which they are left in peace, and they are in- 
teresting chiefly as the probable descendants of 
the lions of Bible story in the lives of Samson 
and Daniel. 

The great cat of India is the tiger, commonly 
acclaimed Lord of the Jungle. His lordship is 
not, however, undisputed. I remember read- 
ing a story in the Rangoon Gazette of a tame 
elephant pluckily rescuing its mahout from a 
tiger. Considering how mahouts often treat 
their beasts, it was an act of touching devotion. 
The man had washed the elephant as usual and 
was driving it to its feeding-ground, the animal 
walking a little in advance, when, all of a 
sudden, a tiger charged out of the jungle and 
knocked him over. The tiger then began to 
bite, and the man screamed for help. Back 
came the elephant in no end of a hurry, kick- 
ing the tiger into the air with such force that, 
on reaching the ground again, it fled for dear 
life, coughing up blood as it ran. Yet, in the 
great open-air menagerie. which we call the 
jungle, even the elephant is not always master, 
but goes in deadly fear of the rhinoceros, which, 
as Dr. Longstaff reminds me, fights differently 
from its African cousin. The African charges 
head down and tosses a man ora horse on its 
horn without difficulty. The Indian rhinoceros, 
on the contrary, charges head up and inflicts 
such fearful bites with the sharp teeth of the 


‘BACK CAME THE ELEPHANT IN NO END OF A HURRY.” 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 97 


lower jaw as to lame even an elephant in a few 
moments. 

The tiger may be less courageous than the 
lion. Several anecdotes in illustration of 
cowardice in both animals will be told in 
these pages, and, on the whole, the reputa- 
tion for greater bravery remains with the lion. . 
The tiger may even, in some districts, be less 
dreaded by the natives than its tree-climbing 
cousin, the leopard. Yet it remains, all the 
same, the most terrible creature in Asia. The 
natives of India hold it, as a rule, in such rever- 
ence’ that they rarely allow themselves to men- 
tion its name, even in a whisper. The jackal, 
in its master’s presence, utters a terror-stricken 
note utterly different from its usual howl. Even 
Europeans, armed with the latest rifle and 
ammunition, treat ‘‘Stripes” with respect, and 
those who know him best take fewest liberties 
when he is prowling around. He is the yellow 
peril of the jungle, and when he comes gliding 
sinuously through the undergrowth there is 
great commotion among the lesser brethren. 
Squirrels scritch and monkeys chatter with 
terror, peacocks and jungle-fowl scream, small 
deer fly panic-stricken out of harm’s way. I 
have seen it suggested that the dislike which 
many otherwise courageous people have for 
cats is to be regarded as a survival of the dread 
in which their monkey ancestors held tigers! 

G 


98 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


This curious. fear which many people have of 
comparatively harmless animals, though quite 
indifferent to others larger and more danger- 
ous, seems to call for explanation. Earl 
Roberts, hero of a hundred fights, is often de- 
scribed as being afraid of a cat ; and I recollect 
a case of a lady lion-tamer, who played with 
bears and lions as if they had been so many 
kittens, confessing that she ran in terror from 
a blackbeetle! This only shows how difficult 
it is to call anyone either brave or cowardly 
without closer inquiry. Fancy anyone who 
happened to see the hero of Kandahar shrink 
from a cat calling him acoward! (As a matter 
of fact—I have his own authority for the correc- 
tion—Lord Roberts is not afraid of cats, but 
merely has an intense dislike of them.) Fancy, 
even, making the same mistake about a lady 
who toyed with lions, merely because you 
happened to see her in full flight before a cock- 
roach ! 

It is not often that one comes across a story 
in which the tiger is written of with sympathy, 
as a fellow-creature and not as vermin, but I 
am able to include one such view, for which I 
have to thank Mr. Edwin Arnold. 


‘* Sometimes,” writes Mr. Arnold, ‘‘I fancy 
the wild animals know more about human 
nature than we know of theirs. All the wild 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 99 


creatures’ instincts and perceptions are in their 
native freshness, whereas ours are dulled by 
centuries of artificial surroundings. At any 
rate, | am convinced that they possess an acute 
power of recognising sympathy, on the few 
occasions when man shows any for them, and 
that they entertain a profound, childlike be- 
lief in his power to give and to take, to help, or 
to destroy, as he pleases. We must, in fact, 
seem to the beasts of the field something like 
those implacable spirits, always dreadful, 
always to be propitiated when possible, with 
which our own far-off ancestors peopled their 
woods and hills. Whenever the man-spirit 
deigns to come down from his pedestal, for- 
getting his superiority for a little while, and 
approaching the humbler creation with that 
mesmeric and infectious goodwill that the 
animals are so quick to recognise, he finds him- 
self arriving at an understanding of animals’ 
ways and thoughts that he would before have 
deemed impossible. There is no need for him 
to be a sentimentalist. Hiawatha, who knew 
the heart of every wild thing, ,alternately 
caressed and used his bow. I have gone 
many a time into the jungle with my gun and, 
on coming up with my intended victims, have 
forgotten my errand, sitting openly among 
them, delighting in their gambols and piecing 
together such fragments of their conversation 
as seemed intelligible. It is true that I re- 
turned home empty-handed, but I was well 
content that it should be so. : 

‘‘ In the man with an inborn gift of sym- 


100 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


pathy, the animals do not resent bloodthirsti- 
ness, for that, they know, is part of all Nature. 
Even though they still dread his power, they 
no more think of rejecting his friendship than 
a child would think of refusing the love of a 
parent who has both the will and the ability 
to chastise. It is not to be denied that there 
are occasions on which their belief in your 
puissance may be embarrassing and their , 
craving for your sympathy inopportune. The 
following experience will, I think, illustrate a 
case in point. 

‘‘T was walking home through the Indian 
jungle in the gathering dusk of evening and, 
when still several miles from any human habi- 
tation, I became suddenly aware of a gentle, 
measured footstep keeping pace with mine 
about a dozen yards away in the undergrowth. 
I had no weapon with me more formidable 
than a white umbrella and so proceeded 
quietly, wondering as to my companion’s 
identity. It was dark now, and a plaintive 
mewing suddenly removed all doubt. It was 
a full-grown tigress. This I knew, of course, 
from the voice, as the tiger speaks from further 
down in his throat, with a wholly different 
effect on the practised ear. To run, even had 
I been so minded, would have been absurd ; 
‘to climb a tree, equally futile. There was 
nothing therefore to be done but to walk 
quietly on, and I did it. Step by step, follow- 
ing each winding of the little path, absolutely 
invisible in the shadows, the great beast ac- 
companied me through the forest, every now 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 1o1 


and again giving one of those piteous, long- 
drawn mews so impressive in the silence. Just 
at first, I was a little nervous. I remembered 
having seen the half-eaten remains of brown 
men and women in that jungle, killed and left 
by tigers, and it was not by such a process 
that I wanted to go into eternity. In a few 
minutes, however, my nerves troubled me no 
longer. As I walked more slowly and listened 
to her voice, I became convinced that my in- 
visible friend was in trouble of some sort, and 
that she was telling me all about it and asking 
my aid. Indeed, I felt quite certain of this 
by the time we had gone half a mile, and, as 
if in response to my silent sympathy, she came 
a yard or two nearer. It may have been that 
her cub had got into difficulties—fallen in some 
waterhole, from which she could not rescue it, 
or starving in some cleft in the rocks of yonder 
peak, the inky outline of which, showing dimly 
through the tree-tops, made a barren space in 
the starlit sky. 

‘* For all the rest of that long, lonely tramp, 
I was aching to help her, but that was clearly 
impossible. I could obviously not wander 
about a jungle all through the night and at 
the tail of a disconsolate mother, whose sorrow 
was possibly vague and uncalled for. Mewing 
gently every few moments, the tigress accom- 
panied me on my homeward way, up the slopes 
and down into the hollows, her great velvet 
paws now and then cracking a twig, and over 
the rivulets, where she would pause to drink, 
never giving me a glimpse of her, but ever 


102 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


asking my help in that strange and melancholy 
voice. At last the lights of my camp-fires 
showed in the next dip. I walked on some 
fifty yards, to where the forest ended in a clear- 
ing, and then I stopped and listened. The 
mewing and footfalls had died away, and I 
knew, as well as if I could see her, that the 
tigress was sitting on her haunches in the 
last clump of bushes, sorrowfully watching 
me pass out of reach of her appeals. Poor 
creature! My heart went out to her in her 
nameless grief. It seemed as if she might be 
saying— 

*¢* You all-powerful; you, who can give and 
take ; you to whom nothing is impossible, who 
know my harmlessness and have recognised 
my grief; you who perhaps have cubs of your 
own, and yet will not come with me a little 
way—it is such a very little way—to do that 
which you could do so easily! You sympa- 
thetic? You to call yourself half-friend of the 
things that run and fly? Bah! I might as 
well have asked help from the cobra under 
that stone, or from the monkey coughing in 
the big fir-tree! See! My mood changes ; 
my tail twitches ; come back out of the moon- 
light into the shadows, and, lord though you 
be of the red fires there in the hollow, and of 
the thing that sends death over the hill-sides 
and nullahs, I will give you a tiger’s thanks 
for your discourtesy !’ 

‘* Poor tigress! I could do nothing for her, 
so I went sadly back to camp, but her troubles 
spoilt my evening, and I lay awake at a late 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 103 


hour wondering what help she had wanted and 
despising myself for having failed her.” 


The tiger is found in most parts of India, 
but it is absent from the extreme north-west 
of the peninsula, and is also unknown in 
Afghanistan and Ceylon. In appearance, it 
is utterly different from the lion, though both 
are members of the cat family. It has black 
stripes, not unlike those of zebras, on its 
orange coat, and the orange grows paler 
with age. The tail has no tuft at the end, 
like that of the lion, and the tiger is also 
without the lion’s mane, though the male 
wears a handsome ruff on his neck. A full- 
grown tiger may measure close on eleven 
feet from the tip of its snout to the tip of 
its tail, and, though there has been much 
talk of tigers measuring twelve feet, none has, 
so far, been recorded. 

The tiger’s larder is very varied. Large deer 
and small antelopes, tame cattle, jungle-fowl, 
peacocks, and even crocodiles’ eggs all figure in 
his bill of fare. His natural food is wild game, 
and with that he was doubtless satisfied in olden 
time before men and their cattle came on the 
scene to teach him other tastes. Nowadays, 
however, tigers are divided by Anglo-Indians 
under three heads—game-eaters, cattle-eaters, 
and man-eaters. As a matter of fact, not even 


104 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


the foregoing list by any means exhausts the 
tiger’s choice of food, for it is known to prey 
on bears, leopards, and even other tigers, as 
well as on buffalo, young elephants, and tapirs, 
the last being, perhaps, its favourite food in 
the Malay jungle. 

The education of the cattle-eating and 
man-eating tiger suggests problems not un- 
like that of the ‘‘rogue” elephant, already 
noticed, but the process is less wrapped in 
mystery. Antelopes are hard to catch, and 
young elephants have big mothers to defend 
them. What, as Americans would say, was 
wrong with a tender heifer from a tame flock ? 
Enterprising tigers. tried the experiment with 
the most satisfactory results. It must have been 
so easy to creep silently up to the herd, or, 
better still, to lie in ambush beside some rock 
commanding the road along which the native 
herdsman drove his charges every evening at 
sundown. To pick out a victim, spring at its 
head, grip it by the throat and break its neck, 
must have been child’s play to a tiger. Then, 
when the rest of the herd stampeded, and the 
panic-stricken native was probably half way up 
a tree, the dead beast would be dragged away 
to the jungle and there gradually devoured, 
the tiger returning to the kill more than once 
and scattering the jackals and vultures that 
ravened in his absence. So hearty a meal, 


FROM THE CATTLE TO THEIR DRIVER WAS BUT A STEP... .” 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 105 


without the fatigue of a chase or the risk of 
a fight, must have been acclaimed a vast im- 
provement on the old-fashioned way of doing 
things, and from that day forth the tiger would 
be aconfirmed cattle-eater, never more troubling 
about other food that could be procured only 
by means less simple. There is therefore 
no difficulty whatever in understanding how 
tigers came to be educated to a taste for beef, 
and the evolution of the man-eater is as evi- 
dent, since from the cattle to their driver was 
but a step, and the first man-eater may have 
killed his human victim accidentally when 
springing on one of the herd. Yet, in spite 
of this easy explanation of the man-eater as he 
is to-day, all sorts of theories have been sug- 
gested to account for him. The least fantastic 
of these is that man-eaters are aged animals, 
too slow and too feeble to hunt swifter or 
stronger game, no longer able to catch black- 
buck or to pull down a sambur, and therefore, 
in their hunger and extremity, forced to prey 
on the unarmed ryots and woodmen of the 
jungle. There is no doubt that, with wild 
animals as with tame (man included), oppor- 
tunity sometimes makes the thief, and the 
sight of these inoffensive peasants passing and 
repassing his lair might, we may easily im- 
agine, put the idea of eating one into a hungry 
tiger's head. There are, however, one or two 


1066 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


undeniable facts which do not, as we shall see, 
bear out this theory of the man-eating habit. 
The first of these is that the majority of man- 
eaters are females the recognised offender is, in 
nine Cases out of every ten, a tigress. Another 
fact, even more hostile to this view, is that 
man-eaters, when at length they meet the 
doom they so richly deserve, are by no means 
always old or infirm animals, but may, on the 
contrary, be in the prime of life and in splendid 
condition. Abundance of human food might, 
to some extent, account for their condition, 
but even such fare could hardly make an old 
tiger young again, and the man-eater does 
not, there is good reason to suppose, eat a 
great many men in the course of each year. 
A third objection to the old-age theory is the 
fact of man-eaters being practically unknown 
in the Nilgiris and in some other parts of 
India. Yet we must surely assume that tigers 
grow old in these districts as well as in those 
infested by man-eaters, even though they do 
without human food to the end of their lives. 
It might possibly be shown that the natives 
of the Nilgiris are more courageous than those 
elsewhere, or that they do not go about their 
work unarmed. I have no further information 
on the subject, but such an explanation would be 
of great interest. In its absence, we must cer- 
tainly find the foregoing theory unsatisfactory. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 107 


Not every tiger, or lion, that eats a man is a 
man-eater by habit. The true man-eater stalks 
and kills its victims without provocation. Ifa 
wounded tiger should charge and kill a man 
and then devour him, the animal was not 
necessarily a man-eater before, though such an 
experience might make one of it henceforth. 
It is somewhat remarkable that the natives of 
Africa also regard man-eating lions as old and 
worn out, and Livingstone quotes them as 
saying of an old lion, ‘‘ His teeth are worn; he 
will soon kill men.” As a matter of fact, lions 
take to man-eating less often than tigers, and 
leopards more rarely still, The man-eating 
lions, with which, as told in that extraordinary 
book of his, Zhe Man-eaters of Tsavo, Colonel 
Patterson had so much trouble while engaged 
on railway construction in Africa, took dreadful 
toll of his coolies, but the leopards destroyed 
only his sheep and goats, one of them killing a 
whole flock in a single night. If the leopard, 
with its facility for climbing trees and lying 
in wait over the jungle-paths, should take 
regularly to man-eating, it would indeed be 
a terrible scourge. It may be that this power 
of climbing saves man from its appetite, for it 
is able to catch abundance of monkeys, which, 
though much appreciated, usually escape the 
jaws of the tiger. Now and then, it is true, 
tigers do stalk monkeys, and in some parts of 


108 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


India the natives make use of this taste to get 
a tiger within shot. In order to do this, the 
native climbs into the higher branches of a tree 
close to the tiger’s lair and begins to chatter 
and to break off twigs just as monkeys do. 
This business is kept up until a stir in the 
bushes beneath betrays the tiger’s presence and 
interest in the proceedings, and then the native 
suddenly drops a bundle on the ground and 
screams. The tiger, thinking that, as some- 
times happens, a baby monkey has fallen out 
of its mother’s arms, rushes out into the open, 
and a rifle, posted in an adjoining tree, covers 
it before it has time to realise its mistake. 
Tigers stalk their prey with extraordinary 
cunning, but now and again, like all animals, 
they make a mistake which may, if turned to 
account, cost them dear. An instance of such 
an error was reported some time ago in Zhe 
Field. A sportsman was sitting one moonlight 
night in his machan, which is a platform 
erected in a tree, from which sportsmen shoot 
tigers and other game at night, and he was 
able to watch, himself unseen, the novel and 
interesting sight of a tiger stalking a sambur 
hind. He could not get a shot for a long time, 
for the simple but sufficient reason that the 
tiger kept in deep shadow. Then, quite 
unexpectedly, it made the last mistake of its 
life, for it came out into the bright moonlight. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS tog 


Off went the sambur, and crack went the rifle, 
so that the tiger lost its meal and its life at the 
same moment. It is always desirable to take 
note of these mistakes made by the jungle-folk. 
They should increase our admiration for them 
instead of lessening it. Some people pretend 
to believe that the lower animals never make 
mistakes. They are so used to saying that 
‘*to err is human” that they come to regard 
man as the only creature capable of miscalcu- 
lation. Yet animals, both wild and tame, are 
by no means infallible. Professor Lloyd 
Morgan, who has made a lifelong study of the 
mind of animals, calls my attention to the 
interesting case of some pheasant chicks cross- 
ing an open road near a wall. Suddenly, they 
stood as if struck motionless. At the same 
moment, a sparrow-hawk dashed over the top 
of the wall and easily secured one of the brood. 
Someone asked the Professor why the little 
creatures did apparently just the wrong thing 
in the circumstances. His answer was that the 
chicks had learnt to keep quite still on hearing 
a warning note from their mother and that, 
under ordinary circumstances, that would be 
the very best thing to do in presence of an 
enemy, as to run about would only betray their 
presence by the disturbance of the grass. In 
the open road, where, even keeping still, they 
were very conspicuous, running away into the 


110 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


grass was, on the other hand, their only chance 
of escape, but they could not know this, their 
instinct not taking the altered circumstances 
of the case into account. ~ This may be com- 
pared with Colonel Williamson’s story of 
the young sambur in long grass, though 
Professor Lloyd Morgan does not offer the 
same suggestion of defective scent as an aid 
to self-preservation. Then, again, we have 
the well-known case of tame dogs hunting in 
India, which, though they ought to learn 
better, never miss a chance of attacking 
cobras and other dangerous snakes. The 
manner in which leopards pursue monkeys in 
trees has been referred to. If the monkeys 
would take the simple precaution of roosting 
only in trees with near neighbours, so that, in 
case of attack, they could jump from one tree 
to the next, they would seldom be caught by 
leopards. But they are foolish enough to go 
to sleep in solitary trees, with the result that 
escape is impossible, particularly as a couple of 
panthers sometimes hunt in company, one of 
them climbing into the tree and scaring the 
monkeys so that they presently lose their heads 
and jump to the ground, only to be caught by 
the ally in waiting at the foot of the tree. 
Major F. G. Talbot, p.s.o., told me a similar 
story, in which the fact of a tree standing alone 
prevented an Indian squirrel from getting away 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 111 


from a most aggressive rook, which attacked 
the little animal vigorously. Realising that 
escape was out of the question, the squirrel kept 
up the fight for an hour, when an unlooked-for 
interruption came in the arrival of two doves, 
which immediately drove the rook off and sent 
it in headlong flight. It is not easy to under- 
stand why the doves took the squirrel’s part, 
unless, of course, they had a nest in that tree, 
though even so the squirrel would have been as 
likely a poacher as the rook. It may, of 
course, have been dictated by a chivalrous im- 
pulse to protect the weaker side, or it may, 
again, have been just love of a fight for 
fighting’s sake, though that is not a taste we 
usually associate with doves. 

Reference was made above to the machan, 
and the success of shooting from these plat- 
forms, such as it is, is due to another error of 
instinct. The tiger, though one of the most 
careful and suspicious of wild beasts, rarely 
looks up to see if there is danger overhead. 
The majority of wild beasts have the same 
peculiarity, and as, in the natural state, they 
have nothing to apprehend in that quarter, they 
never seem to learn to be on the look out for it, 
though the leopard, itself a climber, generally 
scans the trees for any sign of an enemy. 
From repeated reference to leopards climbing 
trees, the impression might be given that tigers 


112 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


are in all cases unable to do so, but this is not 
the case. Some tigers undoubtedly climb 
trees, but it cannot be regarded as a common 
habit with them as with the leopard. The 
climbers may, of course, be particularly active 
tigers. This is where so many of us are apt to 
go wrong in our ideas of wild animals. We 
do not make allowance for differences in 
individuals. We speak of a tiger being able 
to do this, or of an elephant as unable to do 
that, as if the physical and mental powers of 
every tiger or every elephant in existence were 
precisely the same. Why no individuality? 
Surely no one would dream of describing a boy 
as a two-legged animal able to turn head over 
heels or sing in tune, for, as we know, there 
have been millions of boys unable to do either. 
Why, then, ignore the same difference in four- 
footed animals? To do so in the case of 
dangerous creatures like tigers may have 
disastrous results. Some tigers, for instance, 
whether actually able to climb trees or not, 
seem able, when standing erect on their hind 
legs against the trunk of a tree, to reach much 
higher than others of apparently the same 
stature. When building a machan, it is of the 
utmost importance to ensure the sportsman’s 
safety by realising the height to which a tiger 
can reach, for, though twelve or thirteen feet 
would be more than the height of the average 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 113 


tiger in that position, the machan should be 
fully twenty feet from the ground, so that its 
occupant may take no chances. 

Passing mention has been made of the 
curious note of the jackal in presence of a 
tiger. It is very peculiar and is quite different 
from the ordinary serenade of jackals in their 
own company. Europeans look upon it as a 
note of kindly warning to the forest animals 
that the monarch is approaching and that they 
_had best clear out of his way while there is yet 
time for escape. The jungle-men know better. 
They know that, whatever may be the jackal’s 
virtues, kindness of heart is not one of them. 
It is clearly to the advantage of this humble 
hanger-on that the tiger should not be baulked 
of his prey, for when he is gorged the jackal 
has some chance of feeding on crumbs from 
the royal table. Yet we are asked to believe 
that the unselfish, tender-hearted jackal de- 
liberately does itself out of a meal by warning 
the small deer that their enemy is near. No; 
the ‘‘tiger-cry”’ of the jackal is probably a 
howl of uneasy terror, which it cannot help 
any more than tame dogs can help howling 
when frightened by anything uncanny. It is, 
indeed, only in moments of fear or pain that 
our domestic dogs forget their civilised trick of 
barking and revert to the dismal howl of their 
wild ancestors. 

H 


114 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


As a matter of fact, experienced sportsmen 
are able to tell at once whether their spaniels 
or pointers are barking at dangerous game, 
such as tiger or leopard, or at monkeys, deer, 
or jungle fowl. The note in the case of the 
former is much sharper and more suggestive of 
mingled excitement and fierceness. It is not 
therefore surprising that a similar difference of 
note should be remarked in a wild cousin of 
the dog like the jackal. 

Time was when the jackal was regarded 
as the provider of the meal for lions, tigers, 
and other royal patrons, but we know now 
that he follows instead of showing the way. 
With reference to what was said above of 
the manner in which the jackal is supposed 
to warn the weak creatures of the wilderness, I 
am aware that cattle-birds may, from one point 
of view, be regarded as betraying to the hunter 
the whereabouts of hidden buffalo; but it must 
be remembered that they likewise warn the 
buffalo of the presence of the hunter, and that, 
after all, is their natural purpose. 

The tiger is a fine swimmer and always 
keeps in the neighbourhood of water. The 
leopard, on the other hand, is not a very 
thirsty animal and, being but a poor swimmer, 
rarely, even when pursued, takes to deep or 
swift water. In Northern India tigers are 
mostly shot from the back of an elephant, as 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 115 


sport from a howdah affords most of the excite- 
ment, with very little of the risk, the worst that 
may happen (and it is quite bad enough) being 
that the elephant should take fright and 
stampede into the jungle, brushing its occu- 
pant off its back and tumbling him on the 
ground, with an infuriated tiger somewhere 
handy. This, however, is of fortunately rare 
occurrence. It is remarkable how easily two or 
three men on an elephant seem time after time 
to escape the notice of tigers and other wild 
animals on the ground. This, no doubt, is 
partly due to the tiger’s failure to look for 
danger from overhead, an omission already 
alluded to, but it is also, we may assume, the 
result of his mistaking a single elephant for a 
wild one, and therefore taking very little notice 
of it. When a number of elephants are used in 
beating up tigers, the latter are fully aware of 
the danger that threatens them, but a single 
one does not seem to excite their suspicion 
until the first shot is fired. 

Though a terrible fellow to come across 
at close quarters when wounded, the tiger 
is, under ordinary circumstances, an arrant 
coward. Give him a chance to slink away and 
he will do so. (Do not give a lion the same 
chance, for, though he does not always do 
so, he is quite likely to slink in your direc- 
tion, which is a very different matter.) Unless 


116 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


provoked, the tiger takes good care to keep 
out of the way of Europeans ; and, hard as it 
is to make the ‘‘ Griffin” (i.e. the new-comer) 
believe it, he is probably, unless a cool shot, 
far safer in the forest without a rifle than with 
one, and all the protection he needs is a pair of 
leggings and a good stick for the snakes. In 
point of fact the jungle is in reality a much 
less terrible place than our stay-at-home 
friends picture it. Half its dangers are the 
result of imagination, and most of the other 
half are the result of lying on the part of 
those who cannot bear to return home with- 
out having enjoyed, on paper at any rate, 
their share of wild adventure. The method 
of shooting tigers from a machan has been 
mentioned. This entails tying up a goat or 
some other animal for bait, and also sitting 
up all night. The sounds and sights of the 
jungle on a warm Indian night are not without 
their attraction, but the results are not as arule 
very satisfactory, as some little mistake may 
warn the tiger to stay away, or, when it comes 
in sight, the darkness may be so intense that 
it is impossible to take aim. There are even 
intrepid sportsmen who shoot tigers on foot, 
which is not a recreation for anyone with 
‘‘nerves”; and in the winding waterways of the 
Sunderbunds it is occasionally possible to get 
a shot at one from a boat. Now and again, 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 117 


indeed, these terrible animals have been killed 
with simpler weapons. Sir James Outram 
slew one with a spear, and Colonel Duff was 
equally successful with a dagger. 

We are even assured that it is possible for 
anyone who may suddenly come unarmed on a 
tiger to quell the brute by staring at it. This 
is one of the thrilling experiences I prefer read- 
ing about. It suggests memories of the re- 
doubtable Major Corker in ‘‘ Aliph Cheem’s ” 
amusing Lays of Ind, in which, as you may 
remember, the Major says: 


**T laid my Purdey down, to my shikaree’s great surprise, 
And crossed my arms and calmly stared the tiger in the 
9 ee ae 


a treatment which the valiant warrior repeated 
till the tiger lay dead in its den. Mesmeric 
powers of this order are sometimes claimed by 
vain and foolish natives, invariably with un- 
pleasant results. Thus, a Sepoy of the 33rd 
Sikhs made the experiment at the Calcutta 
Zoo not long ago, and lost most of his face for 
his trouble; and a Hindu of Bangalore was 
badly mauled on another occasion, when 
several villagers, interested spectators of the 
great man’s demonstration of his occult powers, 
suffered even more serious injuries than he did 
himself. In these days of long-range rifles, 
hunter and hunted rarely come face to face at 


118 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


sufficiently close quarters to allow of these 
hypnotic attempts, yet one or two have been 
brought to my notice. A case of the sort, re- 
ported in Zhe Field, actually occurred as 
recently as 1910. A sportsman was out with 
his shzkarz (native gillie) in the Himalaya, and 
the man was walking about ten paces ahead, 
carrying his master’s *450 rifle. They were 
proceeding slowly through a thick forest of 
cedars when, of a sudden and without warning, 
the man stopped dead. The Englishman 
stopped also, and observed that the man, 
without turning his head, was beckoning him 
and holding out the rifle. On going up to the 
shtkarz, he saw a great panther sprawling on 
a rock some thirty feet below them. The 
panther was gazing intently at the native, who 
never once took his eyes off it, and the animal 
certainly seemed either unable or unwilling to 
move. The suspense seemed to last for several 
minutes, but was in reality a matter only of 
seconds, though time enough to enable the 
sportsman to slip in his cartridges, take careful 
aim and shoot the panther dead, with a bullet 
between the shoulders. He did not feel it a 
particularly creditable achievement to shoot an 
animal apparently mesmerised, but the panther 
in question had achieved an unenviable noto- 
riety in the district as a cattle-thief, so it was 
better dead than alive. What he puzzled over 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 119 


afterwards was as to what would have happened 
if he had not had his rifle handy. Would the 
panther have slunk off, or would it have 
looked away, so as to break the spell, and then 
charged the native? The question is such an 
interesting one that it was almost a pity it had 
to remain unanswered. But in all probability 
the native preferred his employer’s solution to 
any other. One or two lion stories, bearing on 
this same influence of the human eye, will be 
told in their proper place. How far such 
power may be effectual in the wilderness 
remains an open question, but it may, in pass- 
ing, be remarked that its failure in menageries 
is no criterion whatever, since captive lions and 
tigers have, for obvious reasons, become so 
familiar with human beings as to have lost that 
fear of them which may, for aught we know, 
inspire those in the wild state that are rarely 
brought face to face with man. 

For an unarmed native to kill a tiger in its 
cave must be an unusual occurrence, but a case 
was communicated to Zhe Fzeld in which this 
actually happened, and it was certainly turning 
the tables with a vengeance. The natives in 
some parts of India have a great liking for 
roast porcupine, and, speaking from experience, 
I can say that they might do worse. When, 
therefore, they come to one of the small caves 
in which porcupines commonly lie up during 


120 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


the day they sometimes light a fire at the mouth 
of it and watch for a drowsy, half-suffocated 
porcupine to emerge. A native, with this ob- 
ject in view, once set fire to a great heap of 
brushwood piled in front of a likely looking 
cave and took up a position from which he 
could see what happened. Nothing did hap- 
pen, and, although the natives of India are 
patient beyond most men, he gave up his vigil 
at last, and tramped home disappointed with 
his bad luck. Next day he passed the cave 
again, out of curiosity, and was amazed to find, 
lying just inside the entrance, a young tigress 
suffocated to death. She dared not make a 
dash for liberty through the smoke, not only 
because she was probably afraid of the flames, 
but for the still sounder reason that she knew 
that her charge must inevitably have carried 
her over the edge of the rock to a drop of at 
least fifty feet into a deep waterhole below. 
Now and again tiger-cubs are captured 
after the death of the mother, and I am in- 
debted to a correspondent for an account of 
two such occasions, on the second of which, 
as will be seen, the smoking-out method was 
also applied, though far more scientifically 
than in the case recorded above. It played 
no part, however, in the capture of a brace 
of cubs during a Christmas shoot in 1905, in 
H.H. the Maharajah’s reserve at Sacribail, 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 121 


Mysore. My informant was walking along 
a jungle-path a couple of hours before day- 
light hoping to get a shot at sambur stags at 
dawn, when he and his two shzkarzs were 
suddenly arrested by the sound of animals 
moving in the dry bamboo leaves close by. 
They crouched down on the chance of getting 
a shot at the animals, whatever they might 
be, as they crossed a small open space imme- 
diately ahead. Suddenly they saw a tiger 
circling the party, with the object of getting 
behind and above for a spring. The English- 
man immediately put up his *500 express and 
fired at the tiger’s right shoulder, whereupon 
it vanished down a deep nullah. Just before 
daylight, a cub showed up in the tiger’s tracks 
and then retired again. Then the day came, 
and they set about following the tiger up. 
They were not long in coming on the animal, 
which proved to be a tigress. She had gone 
only a hundred yards and had then died, sit- 
ting up for all the world like one of the lions 
in Trafalgar Square and holding in her mouth 
a huge bunch of grass that she had seized in 
her rage. She must, indeed, have been in the 
act of springing when fired at, for the bullet, 
instead of penetrating behind the shoulder, 
had entered the centre of the chest, raked the 
heart and come out behind the ribs. 

It now remained to secure the cubs, and 


122 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


that afternoon they got some nets and drove 
the valley into them, capturing a fine pair of 
cubs the size of mastiffs. As soon as the nets 
were over them the villagers placed the ends 
of long bamboo poles on the cubs and sat on 
the ends of the poles so as to hinder them 
from struggling, while men went close up and 
secured them with ropes. The cubs were 
eventually presented to His Highness and 
found their way to the fine Zoological Gardens 
at Mysore. 

Within the year, two more cubs were cap- 
tured by the clever tactics of Dafadar Taman 
Sing and four other members of Gordon’s 
Horse during a shoot in the Kinwet Reserve, 
Central Provinces, under the following circum- 
stances. An officer in that regiment had shot 
and mortally wounded a tigress that was sun- 
ning herself, half asleep, in the mouth of a 
cave. She managed, however, to dash out for 
a hundred yards, along the edge of a steep 
declivity, before a second shot rolled her over, 
dead, on the rocks forty feet below. At the 
same moment a well-grown cub was seen to 
leave the cave and to go back into it, and 
arrangements were accordingly made to build 
up the exit, and, if possible, to get the cub 
next day. Further investigation revealed no 
fewer than eight caverns, each of which pos- 
sibly communicated with the rest, and there 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 123 


were numerous tracks of tiger, bear, and 
hyena. 

Taking all necessary precaution against a 
sudden charge, the party built up the eight 
entrances securely with rocks and_ timber. 
Next morning the entrance in which the cub 
had been seen overnight was carefully opened, 
and it was found necessary, after making a 
chevaux de frise of hog-spears, to enlarge this 
entrance by excavating the floor to a depth of 
more than a foot. It was then found, on 
probing the interior of the cavern, that there 
was an outer chamber, about fifteen feet in 
diameter, from which an entrance two feet 
square led to an inner chamber of considerable 
depth so far as could be judged. In the 
course of these operations, a deep growl from 
the interior announced that a tiger was at 
home, but whether it was the full-grown male 
or merely a cub could not at once be deter- 
mined. Two of the regimental shzkarzs, Naik 
Athman Sing and Sowar Jeimal Sing, now 
entered the outer chamber armed with hog- 
spears and made certain that there were no 
other exits. A number of bundles of dry grass 
were now cut and pushed, with the aid of a 
twenty-foot bamboo, into the inner chamber, 
and a torch was next lit and thrust in on the 
bamboo, while the mouth of the cavern was 
completely covered with blankets held in place 


124 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


by the cavalry sowars. Smoke soon began to 
issue through the crevices and the cave was 
soon full of it. <A tiger’s nose now rubbed 
against the blanket held by Athman Sing, 
and, thinking it must be a full-grown one, he 
quietly lowered a corner of the blanket to 
enable the officer, who was standing ready, 
to shoot it dead. On seeing, however, that 
it was only a cub, the shzkarzs fell on it with 
their blankets and, after a short struggle, suc- 
ceeded in securing it and in tying up its feet 
and jaws. A second cub now came to the 
mouth of the cave, but turned again and fell, 
stupefied, by the smoke. It was pulled out by 
the tail, tied up, and revived by fanning and 
sprinkling its face with water. This was the 
fourth occasion, by the.way, on which the 
shtkaris of Gordon’s Horse had robbed a 
tiger’s den. 

In a subsequent chapter will be found one 
or two stories in which tigers took terrible 
vengeance on those who molested them. Few 
wild animals, indeed, are more dangerous 
when wounded, in good covert, such as long 
grass, and when a man has shot thirty-six 
of them on foot, and in no other way, he 
needs to have had occasional luck even if 
he was one of the best rifle shots in India 
in his day. Colonel Williamson had one 
or two lucky chances of this kind, and one 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS. 125 


he tells me of will serve to show how fortune 
sometimes smiles on the sportsman. He was 
out one evening after deer, and he thought 
that he saw a deer of some sort standing 
in a patch of thick covert. There was the 
tawny hide and the animal seemed about the 
right height, when, suddenly, he saw that it 
was striped. It was only a few yards distant, 
but he at once fired, aiming as well as he 
could for the shoulder-blade. Then, backing 
cautiously from the covert, and never taking 
his eyes off what was behind it, he slipped 
in another cartridge and waited. There was 
neither sound nor movement, and his suspense 
was not lessened by the fact that he had sent 
a none too intelligent native for water and, 
for aught he knew, the man, who was no 
shtkart, might come blundering right on the 
wounded brute. Fortunately, the native caught 
sight of him and gathered from his attitude 
that there was something afoot. The Colonel 
had noticed, just before he saw the tiger, that 
there was an open space through the branches 
and that the covert was of no great extent, so 
he now made a circle, always with his eyes on 
the spot where he knew the tiger to be, in 
order to come up to the spot from the other 
side, where it was fairly open. What actually 
had happened, as he realised next moment to 
his surprise, was that the tiger lay on the 


126 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


ground, stretched out at full length, dead, the 
shot having taken instant effect. 

Another very remarkable piece of luck befell a 
Malay, who had the probably unique experi- 
ence of shooting two tigers dead with an old 
muzzle-loader charged with a bullet and four 
buckshot. The man saw a tiger in the jungle 
about twenty yards away, and fired at it. It 
was a reckless thing to do, but the brute fell. 
When he crept cautiously up to where it lay, 
what was his surprise to find not one dead 
animal but two, a male and female, side by 
side! This extraordinary adventure was, as 
might be expected, soon common knowledge 
in the district, and an official of the Selangor 
Museum made a careful examination of the 
dead beasts, finding that in each case a single 
shot, no larger than a pea, had gone clean 
through the heart. Such luck is all but in- 
credible, and is like that of little boys who so 
often catch the best fish in the river with the 
cheapest of tackle, while strangers to the water 
are unable to make a basket with the most 
costly outfit procurable. 


Of the Indian leopard something has inci- 
dentally been said in the foregoing account 
of the tiger. When the sportsman arrives in 
India he is told that there are several kinds of 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 127 


leopard in that country, and is cautioned to 
distinguish between the panther, the leopard, 
and the black leopard. As a matter of fact, 
leaving aside the distinct ‘‘ hunting-leopard,” 
already referred to, and the snow-leopard of 
the mountains, there is, in the whole of India, 
only one kind of leopard, though there is a 
large race and a small race, and ordinary 
leopards sometimes have a black cub in the 
same litter as others of lighter colour. The 
biggest leopard would probably not measure 
much more than eight feet from snout to tail, 
and the smaller type would fall a little short of 
six feet. Its spotted skin is as familiar as the 
tiger’s stripes. 

Of the snow-leopard, or ounce, one of the most 
beautiful of mountain carnivora, we know less 
than of its cousins in the plains. Its food must 
consist of the lambs of mountain sheep, though 
the watchfulness of the argali must be a source 
of trouble when a hungry ounce is prowling 
after a meal, and the animal must often have 
to content itself with marmots and such in- 
significant prey. 

The leopard is less frightened of man than the 
tiger, and this, with the animal’s habit of lying 
in trees, makes it an object of constant fear to 
the natives of the jungle. Attention has been 
drawn to the comparative scarcity of man- 
eating leopards, but these pests are by no 


128 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


means unknown, and, in fact, two were shot in 
the Central Provinces during the year 1g11. 
As an instance of the contempt in which these 
brutes hold the native, it was also in 1g11 that 
one broke, according to the Pzoneer Mazi, 
into the Small Arms Factory at Kirkee, one 
morning at an hour when all hands were at 
work and managed to maul a native before 
some of the Europeans could shoot it, which 
they subsequently did. The favourite meal of 
the leopard is a dog, and it is bold enough, 
when hungry, to snatch one from under its 
owner’s nose, ‘Tigers are much less given to 
stealing dogs in India than leopards, but in 
Burma they often do so. The largest leopards 
kill deer and antelopes, but the smaller prey 
on hares, monkeys, and jungle-fowl. So bitter 
is the feud between leopards and dogs, that 
not only is the leopard commonly attacked by 
wild dogs, but even a small pack of tame ones 
will, without difficulty, bring one to bay ina 
tree. It is more active during the day than the 
tiger, and is found in the mountains up to an 
elevation of eight thousand feet, which would 
be about the lowest limit of the snow-leopard, 
or ounce, a magnificent animal with a long, 
furry skin, which is thought to live as high as 
twenty thousand feet. Though both are large 
cats, the leopard and tiger differ in their manner 
of feeding, for whereas the tiger begins with the 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 129 


head and fore-quarters of its kill, the leopard 
invariably eats the hind-quarters first, nor does 
it return to the same meal as regularly as the 
tiger. It is probably the most destructive 
animal in India, and does much more damage 
to farm stock than its more powerful cousin. 
One that was eventually shot, but that, never 
having been fired at previously, displayed 
amazing boldness in its raids, was known to 
have accounted in a single year for no fewer 
than three ponies and fourteen calves and 
buffaloes, to say nothing of such smaller items 
in the bill as dogs, fowls, and goats! Like 
the tiger, the leopard is occasionally known to 
eat its own kind, and one has actually been 
seen to attack another leopard that had been 
wounded, first killing it and then eating part 
of its carcase. 

Panthers and hyenas are known to share the 
same caves, using: one entrance, but different 
compartments within. The explanation of 
this curious partnership is probably that the 
panther takes refuge in the first instance in 
the hyena’s den to bring up her family. This 
association of hyenas with panthers lends 
point to a very interesting experience that an 
acquaintance of mine had some years ago at 
a jungle hamlet in the Bhegum of Bhopal’s 
Reserves. It was a little before midnight in 
June, and some hyenas were observed feeding 

I 


130 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


ona panther’s kill. Some sloth bears shambled 
up to drink at a pool close by, but the hyenas 
frightened them off by imitating the growling 
of panthers. By way of retribution, the panther 
itself actually turned up a little later, and the 
hyenas in their turn decamped. 

When desperate with hunger, leopards are 
among the most daring of wild animals. A 
correspondent tells me of one that one night 
entered the hamlet of Jauli and was pursued 
by the natives and their dogs, running across 
an open space in the moonlight for about five 
hundred yards and then being brought to bay 
in a clump of bushes surrounding a solitary 
tree, where the animal was kept until two 
sportsmen arrived and shot it dead. 

Yet the most extraordinary instance of daring 
on the part of one of these creatures is one, for 
the story of which I am indebted to the same 
gentleman. It was in the summer of 1907 that 
he and a friend arrived after a long march at 
the Behreye Bungalow, in the midst of a jungle 
noted for man-eaters, and a native travelling 
circus, one of the entertainments most appre- 
ciated in India, had also halted at the bungalow. 
The proprietor made his obeisance to the sahibs 
and informed them that the chief rooms would 
at once be placed at their disposal. The most 
popular ‘‘turn” of the show was a combined 
performance of dogs and panthers. Two tame 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 131 


panthers, whose claws had been cut and molars 
removed as a precautionary measure, were 
caged on a cart and the dogs roamed about the 
circus encampment. The panthers, realising 
perhaps that there must be some of their friends 
in the neighbouring jungle, never ceased utter- 
ing the peculiar coughing grunt of their kind, 
and a fine wild panther actually did enter the 
camp and, standing (as his tracks subsequently 
proved) on his hind legs, carry on a lengthy 
conversation with his imprisoned relatives. 
Then, no doubt, he thought that refreshments 
should be forthcoming to celebrate the gather- 
ing of the clan. He had not far to go. At 
this moment, we may surmise, Fido (described 
by its proud owner as ‘‘the most marvellous 
intelligent performing dog in the world’) came 
on the scene and, mistaking the hungry visitor 
for one of the toothless brigade, dashed forward 
with a view to practising the ‘‘side-splitting 
clown act.” Alas, for mental culture! The 
sahibs, dining at their table less than thirty 
yards away, heard a yelp, but it was too late, 
for the harlequin intruder had gone out into the 
darkness with the ‘‘funniest clown dog ever 
seen’ in his jaws. It is interesting to remember 
that Behreye Bungalow is in the jungle called 
Seoni Chappara, the Seoni of Kipling’s Jungle 
Book. 

Leopards are plentiful in Ceylon, where, as 


132 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


there are no tigers, they are the most dangerous 
beasts of prey in the island. Dr. Longstaff 
tells me of a curious mistake made by a male 
panther, which, though the female had just 
been shot in its presence from a machan, came 
round her five minutes later, instead of making 
off into the jungle, and was shot as well. 

People have made pets of both tigers and 
leopards, in both cases as cubs, and Colonel 
Williamson, who had experience of both, is 
inclined to regard the tiger as of the two the 
more reliable. He once made a great pet of 
a young tiger in India, but, as it made a good 
deal of noise, besides alarming some of the 
neighbours, he was eventually obliged to find 
another home for the animal and gave it to 
the people’s park in Madras. Then, being 
transferred to another district, he saw no more 
of it for quite three years, when he again had 
an opportunity of seeing how it was getting on. 
At the first sound of his voice, the tiger, now 
considerably larger than when they had parted, 
came to the front of its cage and rubbed itself 
backwards and forwards against the bars, as 
cats, large as well as small, always do when 
pleased. 

He also, at another time, had a favourite 
leopard cub which at first had to be fed with 
a rag dipped in milk and water, which it 
swallowed in course of worrying the rag. It 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 133 


was a playful little creature and made great 
friends with another pet of that period, a little 
muntjac, or barking deer. The muntjac is 
armed with two very long canine teeth and is 
able, when full-grown, to use them to good 
purpose. Indeed, on one occasion Colonel 
Williamson thought he had lost a valuable 
spaniel (the breed that, more than all others, 
keeps its scent in the hottest parts of India) 
that had been ripped by one of these deer. 
First aid was, however, promptly available and 
the spaniel was on the warpath again next day. 
It bit through the rope and tracked its master up 
for miles, and he heard its voice among the 
others hunting a skola. The pet muntjac and 
the leopard were constant playmates, and when 
tifin was served the muntjac would alight 
with one bound on the table and inspect the 
food, often followed by the leopard. 

The latter, though it had never tasted any- 
thing stronger than milk and cooked meat, 
fed by hand, soon displayed its natural in- 
stincts, and when, of an evening, its owner 
sat reading, it would stalk him, creeping 
silently across the floor of the bungalow and 
suddenly springing on the back of his chair 
and pretending to bite the top of his head. 
Pretence was harmless and, as the Colonel 
says, his skull was hard enough to withstand 
such pleasantries, but the playfulness of the 


134 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


leopard nearly led to trouble. It was on the 
best of terms with all the household and quite 
friendly with the neighbours, so that it was 
allowed to roam at large without fear of 
accident. One day, however, in famine time, 
a party of natives went past the door talking 
over the high price of rice in the market, and 
a little way behind the rest trudged a woman 
with a baby in her arms. This was too good 
an opportunity to lose, and the playful leopard. 
proceeded to stalk the woman, getting close 
up before she turned her head and caught 
sight of it in the act of springing. With a 
yell, the devoted mother flung her baby on the 
ground and took to her heels, and the leopard 
alighted beside the child and proceeded, using 
no more strength than it had previously exer- 
cised unrebuked on its owner’s scalp, to bite 
its nose. The effect was, as may be imagined, 
somewhat different from that to which the 
leopard was accustomed, for back came the 
distraught mother, who had forgotten to carry 
her child out of danger, calling on all her 
gods and vowing that the baby would die. 
Fortunately Colonel Williamson was at home, 
and he at once set about bathing the infant’s 
face and soothing it into silence, which was 
more than he could do with the mother, who 
was now screaming herself into hysterics. 
However, a present of a couple of rupees 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 135 


proved helpful, and another rupee or two 
changed hands when she returned, more than 
once, to tell the sahib that he was right and 
that the child was none the worse for its fright. 
The reason why the infant got off without any 
risk of blood poisoning was that the teeth and 
claws of the tame leopard, which had never 
tasted carrion, were perfectly clean. In the 
wild state, on the other hand, the claws more 
particularly, which are grooved, get very dirty, 
and it is to clean the remains of food out of 
the grooves that tigers, leopards, and all re- 
tractile-clawed cats are so fond of digging their 
claws into the bark of trees and tearing them 
through the bark, just like the cat does with 
‘the chair legs. 


BEARS 


India has three bears, which differ consider- 
ably in their habits and appearance. The 
most familiar of the trio is the black bear, 
also called sloth bear, at any rate by those 
people who have never been chased by one. 
After such an experience they call it the black 
bear, for once they have seen the animal come 
rolling and tumbling downhill at terrific pace, 
and then bite off most of a native’s head almost 
before he has realised his danger, they realise 
that the other name is not appropriate. The 
animal has a black and shaggy coat, with 


136 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


short fur, a yellow-white horseshoe patch on 
its chest, thick lips, long tongue, and terrible 
white claws. Like the majority of bears in 
both hemispheres, it is a peaceful creature 
when let alone, its favourite food consisting 
of ‘‘ white ants,’ honey, and wild mulberries. 
The teeth and jaws can do terrific execution, 
though the formidable claws are also used in 
battle. As it is a cleaner feeder than the 
tiger or leopard, neither teeth nor claws inflict. 
the same festering wounds as theirs do. It 
spends a considerable portion of its life in 
caves and rocks, and sportsmen sometimes 
manage to get a shot at one by laying in wait 
at daybreak near the mouth of one of these 
dens, and watching for the animal to return 
from its feeding-grounds. Taken young, the 
black béar may even be made a pet, and a 
couple were kept in this way at a country 
house not far from Abergavenny. The temper 
of these animals is, however, rather uncertain, 
and caution is required in handling them. 

The true black bear is found in Kashmir and 
elsewhere in the Himalaya. Like the last 
species, it has a white collar, but the rest of 
the fur is black. This bear has been known to 
measure over six feet, without the short tail, 
so that it is larger than the sloth bear. It eats 
carrion or fruit and kills cattle, and the hill- 
men fear it more than the red bear. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 137 


The brown, or red, bear of Kashmir, though 
more given than the others to killing cattle, is 
far less dreaded by the natives. Whereas the 
sloth bear is active all the year round, the 
brown one goes into winter quarters a little 
before Christmas, coming out of hiding 
towards the end of March. Like most bears, 
and many other wild animals, it has not very 
good eyesight or hearing, but its scent is keen. 
In the summer it retires to the higher jungle, 
but later in the year it comes down to the 
cultivated area in search of grain, and is even 
found in the valleys. Nearly all bears are 
fond of decaying food, and they often bury 
the animals they kill so that the meat may 
acquire a flavour strong enough for their 
palate. 

Though quiet enough if not molested, the 
red bear can be very savage when wounded, 
and on one occasion Captain Arbuthnot and 
his shzkarz, following up a wounded bear in 
Kashmir, were both knocked flat by its charge. 
Fortunately it rushed headlong, and did not 
turn in its flight. 


JACKALS 


Jackals, though they are doubtless cowardly 
animals under ordinary. circumstances, similar 
in their behaviour to the coyote of the American 
prairies, are capable of showing bravery in 


138 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


defence of their young. A spaniel belonging 
to Colonel Williamson one day came running 
back to its master, with a jackal in hot pursuit, 
and with her were several little cubs snarling 
at the intruder with a fine show of courage. 
As a case of extraordinary and inexplicable 
behaviour on the part of a jackal, the following 
episode is of interest, even though its causes 
must be left to the reader’s imagination. One 
of these animals suddenly started careering 
round a sportsman, coming closer and closer 
until it passed within reach. He and his shzkarz 
were at a loss to account for its conduct, 
never having seen any incident of the kind 
before, and the only opinion expressed on the 
occasion was that the animal might perhaps 
have been bitten by a snake. Nearer and 
nearer it came in its circuit until, wishing 
rather to drive it off than to hurt it, the 
shikaré actually hit it over the head with the 
back of his knife, when the jackal started 
circling in the opposite direction and then 
trotted off as if cured of its foolishness. I 
distinctly recollect reading somewhere a similar 
story of an English fox, and the suggested 
explanation, unless I am mistaken, was that 
it might have been a tame animal escaped 
from captivity, but this would not apply in the 
case of the jackal. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 139 


SNAKES AND CROCODILES 


This short list of animals, which the sports- 
man is likely to meet in India, while in no way 
intended to be complete, must be brought to a 
conclusion with a few words on two orders of 
reptiles, with both of which he is certain to 
come in contact sooner or later—snakes and 
crocodiles. The krait and cobra are deadly 
reptiles, and their bite is the cause of thou- 
sands of human lives being lost every year, for 
nothing will cure the natives of going barefoot 
through the jungle. This habit is doubly 
fatal, since not only does it leave their feet and 
ankles unprotected against the venomous fangs, 
but it also means that they are continually, 
with their silent tread, coming suddenly on 
some basking snake, which, given no oppor- 
tunity of escaping, is sure to strike. When, 
on the contrary, Europeans come crashing 
through the forest, the cobra, like the tiger, 
always prefers to quit. The cobra is a familiar 
snake in books and menageries, with the curious 
hood, decorated with a pattern like a pair of 
spectacles, which it spreads when angry. The 
natural history books of other days used to tell 
us that the cobra spread its hood in order to 
scare its enemies. Such a result would be 
interesting, only, unfortunately, it happens 
only in books, for no one ever yet saw a dog 


140 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


or mongoose scared by the sight of a cobra’s 
hood. Nor, so far as we can see, is the 
snake’s venom (which is wrongly called 
‘‘poison”’) of much use to it. It may, no 
doubt, cause the death of a buffalo or boar, but it 
does not take effect at once, and the dying 
animal has ample time in which to kill the 
snake before its own hour comes. The mon- 
goose—most of us can remember Rikki-tikki— 
is a sworn foe of all the snake tribe, and par- 
ticularly of the cobra. Many remarkable 
stories are told of the plucky little creature 
and its deadly combats with cobras. Some 
say that its skin is proof against the reptile’s 
fangs ; others declare that, on being bitten, it 
rushes off to the jungle and devours a par- 
ticular herb that it knows to be an efficient 
antidote. These little efforts of the imagina- 
tion are not without interest, but Nature is 
quite wonderful enough without embroidery of 
this sort. The secret of success with the mon- 
goose is far simpler. It consists in not being 
bitten at all. Prevention is better than cure, 
and by snapping at its wriggling enemy, and 
jumping out of reach before the other can strike 
back, it gradually wears it out until, at the 
last, it is able to give one last bite and finish 
it off. I have seen snake-charmers show 
wonderful indifference when handling deadly 
snakes, but some of their courage was after- 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 141 


wards discounted when it was discovered that 
the snakes had been rendered perfectly harm- 
less by the simple process of drawing or filing 
their fangs. It happens now and again, how- 
ever, that a snake-charmer, performing with 
the genuine article, is bitten, and then he just 
dies like any other mortal. The question of 
the extent to which even the most dangerous 
snakes will attack a man without provocation 
is a matter of opinion, and travellers are by no 
means agreed on the subject. As was said 
above, it is the silent, bare-footed natives who 
run the greatest risk, and the cobra bites (it 
bites, and does zo¢ sting) less from any desire 
to kill than for fear of having its escape cut 
off. At the same time, Major Talbot writes 
that he once saw a hamadryad, a large Indian 
cobra that feeds only on other snakes, chase a 
man, who had done nothing to provoke its 
anger, and follow him for some distance. 
Why, unless, perhaps, it had its young ones to 
defend, a snake of such tastes should want to 
hunt a man is a mystery. 

Crocodiles are plentiful in most parts of 
India, and in some districts they are held 
sacred by the natives. One kind, known as 
the gharial, has a long and slender beak, and 
it is generally described in print as feeding 
only on fish, and being incapable of eating 
a human being. This sort of general descrip- 


1422 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


tion of a creature’s habits from its appearance 
was at one time very popular in books, but it 
may have its drawbacks when taken too liter- 
ally, for, as a matter of fact, gharials have 
been actually seen to carry off both men and 
cattle. Practice in such cases is better than 
theory, and it is best to give these so-called 
fish-eaters a wide berth, since there can be 
very little satisfaction to remember, at. the 
moment of being seized, that, with a beak of 
that shape, the naughty gharial ought to have 
been content with fish. In the same way it is 
usual to insist in print that the heloderm of 
Arizona and neighbouring states is the only 
venomous lizard in the wide world. It may 
be, though, curiously enough, grave doubts 
have recently been thrown on the danger of 
its bite. The fact, however, remains that there 
is a strong feeling among the natives of India 
that a lizard, known as the gozsamp, also 
gives a deadly bite. As the natives are not 
always misinformed in matters of natural 
history, it may at any rate be worth while to 
give the gozsamp the benefit of the doubt! 
There seems to be an idea that male croco- 
diles are much less numerous in the East than 
females, but this rests on a wrong interpreta- 
tion of the fact that, whereas the males remain 
out in deep water, it is the females only that 
get trapped or shot when coming ashore to 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 143 


deposit their eggs in the mud. It thus happens 
that three or four females are killed to every 
male, so people come to the hasty conclusion 
that the females are much more plentiful. The 
probability is, on the contrary, that, by remain- 
ing out of reach, the males survive in greater 
numbers than their mates. Some of the big 
tank crocodiles are very vicious, and, though 
human beings mostly keep out of their way, 
many a dog goes into their jaws. I remember 
being told of one case, though, in Ceylon, in 
which a crocodile grabbed a terrier in its teeth 
and sailed away with it. Fortunately the dog’s 
owner was on the bank, and he immediately 
put a bullet in the crocodile’s head, with the 
result that it at once dropped its prey. The 
terrier swam ashore with all its might, and the 
crocodile gave chase, but the brute was kept 
off by repeated shots fired just behind the dog. 
The terrier was badly bitten, but its wounds 
soon healed. Curiously enough, it learnt no 
lesson from its accident, but had to be forcibly 
prevented from jumping into the same tank 
again shortly afterwards. It may, of course, 
have been an uncommonly foolish terrier. | 
do not know its history. Yet this kind of story 
always occurs to me whenever I hear some 
particularly devoted admirer of dogs holding 
forth about their superiority to ourselves. It 
is difficult to imagine any man, not an idiot, 


144 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


ever again so much as putting his toe in a tank 
where he had been served in such fashion, yet 
with the terrier, at any rate, there was no 
question of once bit, twice shy. Crocodiles do 
not, as some writers seem to imagine, object 
to salt water, for they are at times only too 
common on the coast of Penang, and have > 
more than once seized bathers in the sea. 
Crocodiles and alligators show extraordinary 
boldness in many Indian tanks and rivers, 
probably because, being held sacred, they get 
a very poor idea of human beings. Now, 
sharks, on the other hand, rarely, if ever, attack 
a party of swimmers bathing and splashing 
together. It is the solitary swimmer only who 
runs serious risk from these monsters. In 
more than one tropical sea I have bathed in 
company, with the fins of large sharks cleaving 
the surface just outside the reef. I do not pre- 
tend that I liked it, but none of the others 
seemed to mind, and it was no good making a 
fuss. Moreover, the weather was hot, and the 
water was cool, so there were temptations. 
Such liberties must not, however, be taken 
with alligators. Not very long ago, the native 
crew of a liner anchored in the Hooghly were 
swimming round the ship, when suddenly an 
officer on deck noticed a huge mugger paddling 
silently up to them, its long snout showing just 
above the surface. Next instant the brute shot 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 145 


among the bathers with a terrific commotion, 
and pandemonium reigned while the lascars 
squealed and scrambled for the ladder, up 
which the last of them only just managed to 
clamber as the alligator snapped its jaws just 
clear of his feet. Meanwhile the officer was 
busy emptying the chambers of his revolver all 
round the brute, which evidently realized that 
it had been defrauded of its meal, since it 
lashed the water furiously with its great tail, 
showing every sign of disappointed rage. 


146 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


2. AFRICA 


If we still call Africa the ‘‘ Dark Continent,”’ 
it is from force of habit, for this is no longer 
anything but a courtesy title that has survived 
from the days of Livingstone and Mungo Park. 
Africa has long since been brought within 
reach of the tourist. Ladies even travel alone 
beyond rail-head in machzdlas, i.e. litters carried 
by native bearers. The Uganda Railway 
affords intimate glimpses of the Great Rift 
Valley and its big game, and it will not be 
long, at the present rate of development, before 
we have the Sleeping Car Company running 
week-end trips to Timbuctoo. Busy cities, 
with telephone and electric light, stand to-day 
where, fifty years ago, pioneers camped in the 
wilderness and heard the lion roaring for his 
prey. All this opening up of Africa by those 
who dig for gold or diamonds has not been 
without its effect on the wild life, which has 
been driven back, little by little, until, even 
within the memory of Selous and other living 
sportsmen, the buffalo and antelopes have for- 
saken haunts in which, not many years back, 
they still abounded. Nevertheless, in spite of 
the inexorable march of civilisation, which, in 
the New World, swept the buffalo and Red 
Man off the prairie in order that Americans 
might grow wheat to cram the elevators on the 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 147 


lake shores, Africa is still a marvellous museum 
of living specimens. It is not many years 
since its forests yielded the okapi, a large 
beast, suggestive of zebra and giraffe in one, 
hitherto unknown to Europeans and a mystery 
even to the natives. Many African animals, 
including the hippopotamus, zebra and giraffe, 
are found nowhere outside of the continent. 

The spell of the African forest is distinct 
from that of the jungle in India. The equa- 
torial region is more mysterious and further 
from civilisation. India has been’ under 
European rule for more than a century. Its 
jungle supports a dense human population, and 
the natives, though superstitious as all Eastern 
races are, know a good deal of the wild crea- 
tures and their ways. Railways penetrate in all 
directions, even high into the hills. There is a 
little insect in Africa known as the tsetse-fly— 
there are several kinds, but I refer to the one 
associated with the terrible disease known as 
sleeping sickness—which must always, so far 
as we Can see at present, exclude Europeans 
from thousands of square miles, but there is no 
such scourge in India. 

Even where this poisonous carrier of infec- 
tion is unknown, the climate of Africa is, in 
many parts, almost intolerable. It is less a 
question of darkness than of glare. Then, 
again, the natives are in every respect, save 


148 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


that of colour, different from the Indians. 
Most of them are negroes. Their knowledge 
of natural history amounts to very little. A 
few make brave and skilful trackers of elephant 
or lion, but of the habits of wild animals the 
vast majority know little and care less. They 
would rather have them dead than living, for 
they eat every bird, beast, and reptile in the 
land, and the traps in which they capture them, 
from the great hippopotamus down to the 
smallest gazelle, are primitive and cruel. Of 
the arts of taming wild creatures and making 
them perform useful work they have no notion. 
Cattle, sheep, and goats they keep, of course, 
and occasionally one hears of a wild dog being 
trained for the chase; but as for training an 
elephant to haul timber, or a cormorant to 
catch fish, they would scoff at the idea. 
Elephant and cormorant alike go into the pot. 

Different as are the wild animals of the two 
regions, they have also some features in 
common. Each has its lion, leopard, rhino- 
ceros, buffalo, wild boar, and monkeys. On the 
other hand, India has no giraffe, and Africa no 
deer. India has no zebra, and Africa no bear. 
India is poor in antelopes, but rich in wild 
sheep. Africa has but one wild sheep (of no 
great account), but a grander assemblage of ante- 
lopes than all the other continents put together. 

But that this book aims at giving most of its 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 149 


space to those creatures which, for purposes of 
sport, we call Big Game, first place in any 
account of African animals should belong by 
right to the great manlike apes, the gorilla and 
chimpanzee, the long-armed gibbons and dog- 
faced baboons. These ‘‘wild men of the 
woods” are, with the red-haired orang-outang 
of Borneo, the most human of all the lower 
animals. They are consequently of supreme 
interest to every naturalist who recalls the 
poet’s injunction that ‘‘the proper study of 
mankind is man.’’ In one respect, indeed, the 
apes even have the advantage. They are not 
four-footed, but four-handed, a boon which is 
best appreciated at moments when, with both 
hands full, we find ourselves seriously handi- 
capped for want of a third. Christmas shop- 
ping may be suggested as one of the occasions 
on which two or three more hands would be 
welcome. The apes do not go shopping, but 
they are able, at any rate, to move at great 
speed in the tree-tops, swinging from bough to 
bough with a grace and agility that must be 
seen to be believed. 

The most familiar monkeys in South Africa 
are the baboons, terribly destructive brutes, 
killing sheep, goats, and poultry wholesale, 
and damaging standing crops beyond all hope 
of recovery. So costly are their depredations 
that every now and then the farmers are com- 


150 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


pelled to muster and to slaughter all the baboons 
they can find, just as the farmers of Devon- 
shire organise shooting parties in the spring 
to slaughter the woodpigeons that eat their 
young clover. An old male baboon is a 
savage customer absolutely devoid of fear. 
One of these animals has been known to enter 
a lonely farm building in broad daylight, and 
when a fierce mastiff was sent to tackle the 
intruder, it was the dog that got the worst 
of the encounter. No one will blame the 
farmer for destroying these greedy and danger- 
ous neighbours of theirs, but even though not 
sacred as in India, monkeys should never be 
shot for sport. They are, above the majority 
of small animals, interesting to watch, and there 
is, or should be, something sympathetic about 
a monkey, whether in its native tree-tops or on 
a hand-organ. Moreover, these alert and 
nervous little creatures are at times of service to 
the sportsman, for, ever on the look out for 
danger, they are quick to notice the least move- 
ment of a leopard or other dangerous animal in 
the undergrowth, and their frightened chatter 
frequently betrays the whereabouts of big game 
that might otherwise escape notice. 


THE LION AND LEOPARD 


The grandest animal in all Africa, indeed 
the acknowledged king of beasts, is the lion. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 151 


Its black mane (there are maneless lions as 
well) and splendid head give it a noble appear- 
ance, which has perhaps inspired poetical 
notions of its character ; but a full-grown lion, 
measuring, it may be, nearly six feet along the 
body, with another three feet of tail, is, to my 
mind, a more imposing sight than a tiger. Yet 
comparisons between the two are perhaps un- 
necessary. There is room in the world for 
both, and it is only in Persia that the two 
meet on common ground. Those who prefer 
to regard the Bengal tiger as the more royal 
beast of the two are free to do so, and the 
impression of its sovereignty owes much to 
the superstitious reverence in which it is held 
by the natives of India. The negro has his 
debil-debil and his voodoo, but he has no such 
veneration for Nature as we find in the more 
sensitive and intelligent people of India. He 
will run from a lion as fast as his legs will 
carry him, but veneration is no part of his 
character. 

The cowardly behaviour of the tiger, which 
is rarely known to give battle without provoca- 
tion, is too generally admitted to need further 
evidence. It seems to be less widely known 
that the lion is also capable of showing the 
white feather at times, and it may be of interest 
to give one or two stories in which the king of 
beasts has shown himself anything but a king. 


132 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Colonel D. F. Lewis, c.s., tells me that 
he was travelling in the Sudan one night in 
February, 1903, with a small caravan, con- 
sisting of twelve donkeys, eight mules, two 
or three armed Sudanese, and half a dozen 
transport servants. Suddenly, at about eleven 
p.-m., when the moon was rising over the scene, 
a lion crossed in front of the caravan, not more 
than forty yards away, and stood gazing at it. 
Colonel Lewis halted the caravan, but being 
unable in the dim light to see the foresight 
of his carbine, he would not fire for fear ot 
merely wounding the animal and endangering 
the life of his followers. The lion, having 
satisfied its curiosity, walked quietly off into 
the forest. Yet, after all, this experience does 
not show the lion to be a greater coward than 
its Indian cousin, for the average tiger would 
not have come out of hiding at all until the 
caravan had passed. Not the most desperate 
and famished man-eater in the Indian jungle 
has ever been known to display the same 
cunning and audacity as the famous lions of 
Tsavo, one of which actually dragged a sleep- 
ing man through the window of a railway 
carriage. Both lions and tigers doubtless 
differ in courage, and one may be more care- 
less of danger than another. There are, 
however, occasions on which even lions seem 
to recognise man as their master. A sports- 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 153 


man suddenly found himself face to face with 
four full-grown lions. He dared not fire, for 
at most he might have killed one of the party, 
and, for aught he knew to the contrary, the 
others might have set upon him to avenge 
their comrade. So, with extraordinary presence 
of mind, he unstrapped his field-glasses, rushed 
at the lions with a loud yell, and flung the 
glasses at them. So terrified were the brutes 
by his extraordinary behaviour that all four 
turned tail and bolted into the bush. It must 
have needed remarkable nerve to run towards 
four lions in this way, and anyone less brave 
would have fired wildly at the lions or run 
away from them, either of which mistakes 
might have cost him his life. 

Another adventure of the kind, still more 
desperate in some ways, befell Mr. Percy 
Reid. He had fired at a lioness and wounded 
her, having mistaken her, in the long grass, 
for an antelope of some kind. Next moment, 
to his horror, out came the wounded lioness, 
with two others and a lion. Here, indeed, 
was a pleasant moment, the kind of moment 
in which a man sees all his past. The wounded 
beast charged, but for some reason she swerved 
to one side and missed him, looking over her 
shoulder and growling savagely as she went 
by. Then the others moved away. Mr. Reid 
asked Selous what he would have done in the 


154 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


circumstances, and that mighty hunter gave it 
as his opinion, from long and unique experience 
of these animals, that if he had managed to 
shoot one of the animals dead, the rest would 
in all probability have bolted, but that if he 
had only wounded it badly, they would have 
been just as likely to charge. 

Perhaps the most convincing case of coward- 
ice in lions is one for the story of which I am 
indebted to Mr. H. C. de la Poer (of the 
Warwickshire Regiment), and which may be 
told in his own words :— 


‘‘One morning, about eleven, when shooting 
in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, 
I climbed a steep, rocky hill to get a better 
view of the bush-covered plain below, and on 
reaching the summit, moving silently over the 
rock in felt-soled boots, I blundered right into 
a small party of lions asleep. The lion, with 
one lioness, jumped up and trotted behind 
some boulders about ten yards further on. As 
my gun-bearers were some distance behind, 
with both my rifles, I could do nothing but 
stand there and gape; and while I was thus 
occupied, a second lioness rose, literally at 
my feet, stretched herself, gave me a long 
stare, and finally walked slowly in the direc- 
tion taken by her companions. When she 
had gone a few yards, however, she stopped, 
turned broadside to me, and stared again. 
By wagging my hands furiously behind my 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 155 


back, I managed to bring up one of the men 
with a rifle, a single-barrelled weapon which, 
in view of the presence of other lions, I pre- 
ferred not to use first. My soldier orderly 
had to make a second trip to get the other, 
a double ‘450, for the other gun-bearer was 
too scared to bring it himself. All this time 
the lioness kept her position, showing no sign 
of uneasiness, and not even stirring when I 
took a step forward and sat down on a stone 
so as to take steady aim. The shot knocked 
her, dying, down the hillside, and at this the 
other two began growling and ‘ wuffing,’ but, 
to my disappointment, they did not show up. 
I gave them a few moments’ grace, and then 
went very cautiously in their direction. Coming 
round a huge boulder, I came suddenly on the 
lioness, but could see only her tail, the rest 
of her being hidden behind the rock. The 
tail was nearest to me, but just as I caught 
sight of it it gave such a swing that I feared 
the lioness must have turned and might be 
waiting to strike me down as I passed. In 
order to avoid this, I turned back and climbed 
the boulder quickly in the hope of seeing her 
below me, but, alas, I never saw her again. 
Almost immediately, however, we had a view 
of the lion trotting away in the plain below, 
some two hundred yards away, but the bush 
was so thick that a shot was out of the 
question. I saw him once again, some three 
or four hundred yards away, and, marking 
him as best I could by the trees, I left the 
hill and ran after him, but the grass was very 


156 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


high, and I saw no more of him until, a long 
way off, I saw him bounding along clean 
through a herd of hartebeest, which made 
way for him, but faced him, heads lowered.” 


This curious and interesting experience 
shows that some lions at any rate think 
discretion the better part of valour. Well, 
other kings have done the same before now! 

Just as a cow-elephant is more likely to make 
an unprovoked attack on man than a bull, soa 
lioness is far more likely to fight for her consort 
than her consort for her. Acting on this well- 
known fact, Sir Henry Seton-Karr recom- 
mends anyone coming on a lion and lioness 
together to shoot the latter first. If the lion 
be killed, the widow usually charges at once ; 
but the death of the lioness is not always re- 
sented in such violent fashion by the survivor. 

I have to thank Mr. Percy Reid for two 
other stories, of which the first, at any rate, 
shows the lion in a character anything but 
heroic. Still, this may have been a cowardly 
lion, and anyone who should emulate. the 
recklessness of Mr. Reid and his companion 
might, with a braver individual to encounter, 
pay for his temerity with his life. Mr. Reid 
was out one morning along the banks of the 
Majdi River and presently he saw, silhouetted 
on the horizon, what at first glance he took to 


’ “ig Seasag, aa 


“CLEAN THROUGH A HERD OF HARTEBEESTE.” 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 157 


be a fine wildebeest, as it had the curious 
appearance of being all neck and shoulders 
familiar in that eccentric-looking antelope. 
On looking more carefully, however, Mr. Reid 
saw that what he had taken for a wildebeest 
was in reality a magnificent lion, evidently re- 
turning from its night’s hunting to lie up in 
one of the reed-beds at the river-side. He ran 
along with the object of cutting off the lion’s 
retreat, but it was too quick for him, and he 
had only time for a hurried shot at about 
120 yards range, at the moment when it 
reached shelter. He distinctly heard the thud 
of the bullet, and the wounded lion sprang into 
the reeds with a loud grunt, It was obviously 
useless to follow it alone into its hiding-place, 
so he went back to camp and, with a friend, 
turned out the dogs and native boys, the latter 
numbering about forty and being armed with 
knives and assegais. The sportsmen had their 
rifles, and the whole company set out to beard 
the lion in his den. Mr. Reid reminds me 
that all this happened many years ago, when 
he was young and hasty, and I am bound to 
confess that he and his friend seem to have 
behaved on this occasion with a want of caution 
which, with the average wounded lion at bay, 
would have given them a poor chance of es- 
caping with their lives. The reed-bed was an 
isolated patch covering rather more than an 


1s8 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


acre, and the stems stood ten or twelve feet 
high. The first proceeding was to guard every 
likely exit through which the lion might break 
and to send the dogs in after it. The fun 
soon began; lion roaring, dogs baying, and 
every moment the men posted outside expect- 
ing the furious animal to charge. But some- 
thing quite different happened. A sharp yell 
of pain came from one of the dogs, and out 
came the pack with their tails between their 
legs. They had had enough of it. Only one, 
the best hound of them all, stuck to the enemy, 
and he, poor brute, presently limped in view 
with his back broken. It is not surprising 
that, after such an experience, nothing would 
induce the dogs to face the lion again, so Mr. 
Reid and his friend decided that there was 
nothing for it but to go in after the lion them- 
selves. A start was made, and the plan de- 
termined on was to cut two main paths at 
right-angles and then to beat each quarter of 
the covert in turn. Cutting down those tough 
reeds, each the thickness of a man’s wrist, was 
laborious work, but half a dozen of the boys 
went at it with a will, the two Englishmen 
following at their heels, rifles cocked and 
senses alert. When the party had got about 
half way, a terrific roar shook the reeds, and 
back jumped the boys, all but knocking Mr. 
Reid and his friend over in their anxiety to get 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 159 


away, and flinging their assegais about with 
so little regard for what they might hit, that 
there was worse to fear than the lion, which 
never once showed so much as its nose. They 
spent the whole day in that reed-bed with the 
brute, which often made itself heard, but was 
never seen. Once, indeed, it did break a 
short way out of covert, but quickly turned in 
again. And so the sun went down, the party 
were dead tired, and they had to give it up, 
hoping that the lion might still be in posses- 
sion next morning. They were back again at 
daybreak, but the lion’s tracks were now seen 
leading unmistakably away from the _ reed- 
bed, and, although they followed the spoor for 
a mile or more, they never set eyes on the 
animal again. That particular lion was un- 
questionably a coward, believing in the policy 
of living to fight another day, and on this 
account the more interesting by way of contrast 
with the many lions that have faced tremen- 
dous odds and died fighting. 

On the second occasion, Mr. Reid was 
luckier, though here also he ran great risk of 
being mauled, if no worse. It was in Barotse- 
land this time, and about the hour of sunset. 
He was sitting in camp and had, in fact, re- 
placed his boots and gaiters with a pair of 
slippers, previous to cooking his supper, when 
one of the camp boys came running up with 


160 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


the pleasing information that lions were after 
the donkeys. Snatching up his rifle and cart- 
ridge-belt, he ran off, followed, as luck would 
have it, by three or four of the dogs, which 
took up the scent of a lion before they had run 
a couple of hundred yards and dashed off full 
cry into the bush, with Mr. Reid at their heels. 
As he proceeded, the bush became thicker and 
thicker, and at last he had to stoop and crawl 
under it as best he could. It was so dense, 
indeed, that he could only push on with the 
greatest difficulty, though he could hear the 
dogs baying the lion in the distance. More 
than once the lion managed to break away 
from them, only to be brought to bay again a 
little farther on. The light was failing by 
now, and Mr. Reid was just thinking of giving 
up the hunt when he realised, from the sounds 
of the fray, that he must be getting very near, 
and suddenly he came on a fine lioness lying 
facing him, under a bush about ten yards away, 
with the dogs round her. It was much too 
dark to see the rifle-sights, so he took the best 
aim he could and fired. Fortunately, the bullet 
caught the lioness in the mouth and dropped 
her dead where she lay, but, with a less lucky 
shot, the result of the encounter might have 
been very different. 

It might have been thought that the disturb- 
ing spectacle of a man on a bicycle would, in 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 161 


the old days, at any rate, have been enough to 
send most wild beasts, even lions, into hiding. 
If I remember right, a well-known traveller in 
Morocco, who is now dead, once bicycled right 
against a wild boar and was charged. Nowa- 
days, no doubt, with the opening up of Africa, 
even the rare and timid okapi is familiar with 
the sight of cyclists, but twenty years ago a 
. bicycle must have been an unusual apparition 
in the African forest, and it was about that time 
that a cyclist had a very narrow escape indeed 
between Blantyre and Namazi. The story was 
as follows: It was late in the evening and dark- 
ness was falling swiftly, as it does in Africa, 
with only the faint illumination of a young 
moon. The man had dismounted and was 
pushing his machine uphill, when, suddenly, 
he heard a heavy animal of some kind moving 
in the bush close to the road. He thought 
that, at the worst, it might be a buffalo moved 
by curiosity to keep step with him, as these 
animals sometimes will. Still, the sensation 
of any wild animal of such size so close to him 
was sufficiently unpleasant to make him hurry 
as much as was possible on a bad road. When 
he was about half way up the hill, something 
prompted him to look round. It was well that 
he did so, for there, standing broadside across 
the trail and looking straight at him, was a 


full-grown lion. Even as he looked back, it 
L 


162 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


charged, growling savagely as it came bound- 
ing up the road. He made a frantic attempt 
to mount his bicycle and failed ; then failed a 
second time, the lion gaining on him all the 
while; and at last succeeded, though the 
machine wobbled so from side to side that 
the distance between man and beast dwindled 
every minute. After what seemed an inter- 
minable delay, he reached the top and flew 
down the other slope, his machine finally 
jumping a culvert, on coming to which the 
lion fortunately gave up the chase. It was, 
however, a near thing, and the cyclist made 
up his mind to indulge in no more moonlight 
rides in that neighbourhood. 

Even the motor-cycle has no terror for the 
lion. A lady and gentleman, riding on these 
machines in Central Africa, were recently 
chased by two of these animals over a distance 
of five miles. The lions showed no fear what- 
ever of the noise made by the engines, but 
galloped after them with evident intent to kill. 
The riders outdistanced them and eventually 
reached home much shaken by so trying an 
experience. 

Like its little cousin, the tame cat, the lion 
keeps its claws sheathed except in battle, so 
that its footprints never show the claw-marks. 
This fact has not always been honoured by 
artists in their realistic pictures of wild life, but 


er eee . 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 163 


they would do well to take note of it so as to 
escape the reproach of having tracked their 
lions only in the studio. The lion’s roar 
does not impress everyone alike, since some 
of us are more sensitive to sound than others. 
Thus, some folk are curiously disturbed by the 
scritching of bats, while others do not even 
hear it. Much of the terror commonly in- 
spired by the voice of the lion depends on the 
circumstances in which it is heard. Those 
who hear it in the Zoo, knowing themselves 
perfectly safe, cannot be troubled by it as were 
the Christian martyrs waiting for their dreadful 
death in the Roman amphitheatre. Heard at 
night in the forest, or on the veldt, its vibra- 
tion shakes the earth, yet some travellers have 
found it no more terrible than the booming 
note of the ostrich, and even in the lower 
animals familiarity with lions may soon breed 
contempt. The elands and buffaloes that live 
in the paddocks close to the Lion House in 
the Zoological Gardens at Regent’s Park 
munch their hay, perfectly indifferent to the 
terrific roaring close by, paying no more at- 
tention to it than they do to the strains of the 
band, though on their native veldt such music 
would send them scampering in headlong 
flight. The lion has several notes, purring on 
ordinary occasions like the great cat it is, but, 
when angry or wounded, coughing and ‘‘ wuff- 


1644 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


ing’? in much the same way as the tiger. Like 
other cats, it stalks its prey in silence, creeping 
and circling till close enough for the final 
spring. When one lion roars in the night, 
another often takes up the proud challenge. 
Then, like rival stags in a Highland glen, they 
may meet and fight it out. Colonel Andrew 
Haggard, p.s.o., tells a good story of how, on 
one occasion, in Abyssinia, this habit of 
answering the challenge nearly brought about 
a disaster in his camp. He had with him at 
that time an Egyptian staff officer, who bragged 
so continuously of his own bravery, and more 
particularly of his disdain for lions, which 
apparently had no terror for him, that the 
other natives, tired of always having to listen 
to this self-praise, set a trap for him. It so 
happened that one of the Colonel’s Abyssinian 
servants was a wonderful mimic, and his reper- 
toire, an extensive one, included a remarkably 
realistic imitation of a lion’s roar. This sug- 
gested an opportunity of putting the valiant 
Egyptian’s boasted courage to the test. One 
night, when the party were seated round the 
camp fire, a terrific roar suddenly sounded out 
of the darkness only a few paces away. So 
real was it, indeed, that even Colonel Haggard, 
who had been waiting for it, and who had also, 
by way of precaution against stampede, had 
the goats and camels tied up, gripped his 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 165 


revolver. As for the Egyptian, he fled into 
the night, leaving the party convulsed with 
laughter. So far, all had gone well, and 
everyone was much pleased with the not un- 
foreseen result of the experiment. Then the 
laughter suddenly ceased, for another roar, 
even more terrible than the first, sounded 
close to the camp. The ventriloquist had 
been sitting with the rest, but he was now 
as panic-stricken as they, for this time it was 
a real lion that had taken up the challenge, 
and he was the last to appreciate so practical 
a tribute to his talent for imitation. Fortu- 
nately, the brute was driven off before doing 
any mischief, but the evening’s comedy might 
easily have been turned to tragedy. 

Although the lion may ungrudgingly be 
acclaimed the king of beasts, there is no 
need to believe all the rubbish written about 
its nobility of disposition and, in particular, its 
alleged reluctance to kill an unarmed man. It 
is neither noble nor magnanimous, nor has its 
life on the veldt taught it any belief in plain 
living and high thinking. It is just a cat that 
hunts zebras, or even an occasional young 
hippopotamus when it can find one on land 
without its parents, instead of mice, and it is 
often a hungry cat—savage, greedy, and cun- 
ning. 

Lions are partial to a young’ giraffe, but as 


166 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


the two do not flourish in the same parts of 
Africa, the giraffe liking dry desert, where 
water is too scarce for the comfort of lions, 
they cannot often gratify their taste. Mr. 
H. A. Bryden tells me that full-grown giraffes, 
like other heavy game, sometimes manage to 
dislodge lions that have leapt upon them by 
brushing them off against the timber, and he 
saw one giraffe, at any rate, which showed 
unmistakable signs of such an encounter. 
The most extraordinary case of escape from 
lions was that of the giraffe seen by the great 
hunter of the eighteen-fifties, Andersson. It 
was attacked by no fewer than five lions at 
once, but was rescued by his natives, who 
drove the lions off. 


The African leopard has much the same 
habits and appearance as its Indian namesake, 
and, unless it be slightly smaller, may be 
regarded as the same animal. It is, as in 
India, the most destructive of all big game, 
and kills sheep and goats for the sheer pleasure 
of killing, and without any thought of eating 
its victims. The natives therefore hate it even 
more than they do the lion. A whole flock of 
sheep may be found dead at daybreak, each 
animal with a single bite in its throat and not 
one of the number devoured, the marauder 
having just slaked its thirst for blood and gone 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 167 


its way. It is not surprising, then, in view of 
its habits, that gun, trap, and poison should be 
employed against it. Yet, although given to 
slaying farm stock in this way, it will, in the 
jungle, return to a kill again and again in the 
same way as the lion and tiger. The only 
animals which we know to act differently are 
the hunting-dogs, which, after eating a small 
portion of each kill, commonly leave the rest 
to the vultures and go after other prey. The 
leopard is, as has been said in connection with 
these animals in India, quite distinct from the 
cheetah, or hunting-leopard, and the two are, 
in fact, sworn foes. A fight between them 
was once witnessed in the Government Game 
Reserve on the Crocodile River. The cheetah 
appears to have killed an antelope and was 
eating it when a leopard came on the scene 
and killed the cheetah in its turn. The African 
cheetah seems to be even scarcer than its 
Indian namesake and is rarely encountered by 
sportsmen, though one was shot during one of 
Lord Delamere’s trips in Somaliland. 


HUNTING-DOGS AND HYENAS 


The hunting-dog, which ranges over Africa 
from the Sahara to the Cape of Good Hope, 
is at times even more destructive than the 
leopard. These animals vary so much in 


168 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


colouring that, in fact, hardly two can be found, 
even out of the same pack, exactly alike. 
When on the trail they show the same indiffer- 
ence to the presence of human beings as the 
Indian dhole, and occasionally they even attack 
natives. On the other hand, cases have been 
known in which the negro, as an exception to 
his curious incapacity for taming wild creatures, 
has captured a young hunting-dog and trained 
it (like the Indian cheetah) to course antelopes. 
These dogs hunt their prey chiefly at night and 
entirely by scent, but they have also been seen 
chasing antelopes in broad daylight. They 
will run down the heaviest roan or sable, hunt- 
ing mute and snapping at the fugitive’s hocks 
till at last they are able to pull it down. The 
natives of the Gold Coast credit the hunting- 
dog with great courage and ferocity. Once, 
they say, a pack gets on the trail it never 
leaves it until it has killed, and they go so far 
as to assert that even lions and young ele- 
phants are hunted by these brutes. It may be 
that, owing to the scarcity of hunting-dogs in 
that region of Africa, they assume the terrors 
of the unknown in native eyes ; but Mr. de la 
Poer tells me that he knew of one native, at 
any rate, who had been hunted and treed by 
them, and he himself had an encounter with 
a pack which was quite exciting enough for 
the average taste. He came on about forty 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 169 


of them unexpectedly when they were lying 
down round a roan antelope that they had 
killed, and the whole pack immediately sur- 
rounded him and his orderly, snarling, barking, 
and making little jumps towards him, but 
never coming nearer than seven or eight yards. 
He was, as he readily admits, thoroughly 
scared, and no wonder, for, as his second gun- 
bearer had bolted at the first alarm, he had 
only one weapon—a single *400—and, as any- 
thing short of a Maxim would have been 
useless against such numbers, it would have 
been madness to fire. After about ten 
minutes of what seemed interminable suspense, 
they drew off, and he bagged one at ninety 
yards. On his return to camp, the dogs fol- 
lowed and made a ring round the men of about 
three hundred yards radius, calling to each 
other incessantly with a note much like a fox- 
hound’s. Then, at last, they cleared off. Mr. 
de la Poer quaintly remarks that, in his opinion, 
if they had not had their kill, his orderly’s in- 
vocations to Allah might not have been heard 
in time. 

Of hyenas Africa has three kinds—spotted, 
striped, and brown—all of them less attractive 
even than the hunting-dogs, since they are 
cowardly brutes, terrified of man, though bold 
enough to kill a sleeping native. Like the 
kea of New Zealand, hyenas have learnt their 


170 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


taste for mutton from opportunity, for before 
such food was to be had on the veldt they 
must have been content with carrion. These 
hideous ghouls always gather in the wake of 
retreating armies. Large numbers appeared 
along the line of march when the forces of the 
Mad Mullah were retiring before our cara- 
vans, and when the bloodthirsty Zulu chief, 
Chaha, had in the course of his depreda- 
tions, laid waste vast areas of South Africa, 
hyenas simply swarmed over the battlefields 
and feasted on the naked dead. In the ordin- 
ary way, hyenas are creatures of darkness, but 
they are sometimes seen abroad during the 
day. Major Kennard once witnessed a terrific 
battle between two striped hyenas in India, in 
a nullah not far from Muttra. So occupied 
were the combatants with each other that they 
took no notice whatever of him, so he shot one 
of them dead. Then the other began to worry 
it, and he shot that as well. This curious 
failure of instinct is very common in wild 
animals that fight in presence of man and 
allow themselves to be shot rather than take 
the more sensible course of forgetting their 
quarrel for the moment and escaping from the 
common danger so as to fight it out in safety 
another day. The case of duelling stags is 
a familiar one, and many a fight to the death 
has been witnessed by keepers in the High- 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 171 


lands. Where hyenas feed, there also gather 
the vultures. I have seen them come round 
a carcase in the most astonishing fashion, 
dropping out of the blue sky in a few minutes, 
though there was no sign of one _ before. 
Either the eyesight of these scavenging birds 
must be something quite beyond our concep- 
tion, or else they are gifted with some sixth 
sense of which we know nothing. The fact 
remains that unless a newly killed animal is 
instantly and effectually concealed under 
branches, the vultures are certain to mark it 
for their own long before it is cold. 


THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT 


In considering the appearance and _ habits 
of the African elephant, it will not be possible 
to treat the subject at the same length or from 
the same point of view as in the case of its 
Indian cousin, for, unfortunately, our attitude 
in respect of the two is quite different. The 
Indian elephant has long been the faithful ser- 
vant of man, and, from close association with 
its mahout, much of its life is an open book. 
In consequence, there are numerous interesting 
and authentic stories of its memory and saga- 
city, such as those related on an earlier page 
by Sir William Lee-Warner. The African 
elephant does not come before our eyes in the 
same intimate fashion. It has, unhappily, 


172 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


been regarded by mankind chiefly as the source 
of ivory, and has been killed first and studied 
afterwards, so that, while we know something 
of its body, its mind is shrouded in mystery, 
and whether it be more or less intelligent than 
the Indian kind none can say from experience. 

Reference has already been made to the fact 
that, in spite of the word maxzmus being the 
approved scientific distinction of the Indian 
species, it should by right belong to the 
African, which is much larger. Thus, the world- 
renowned ‘‘Jumbo” stood 11 feet high and 
weighed 64 tons, and wild elephants standing 
113 feet have been recorded from Abyssinia. 
More attention has been given to the length 
and weight of the tusks, which have been 
taken measuring over 11 feet and weighing 
upwards of 230 lbs. 

Something has already been said of the 
differences between the two kinds, and by way 
of recapitulation it may here be mentioned 
that the chief points to note in the African 
elephant are— 

Larger size, 

Larger ears, 

Longer and heavier tusks, 

Females bearing tusks equal to those 
of the males, 

Trunk less tapered and with two 
‘*fingers’’ instead of only one. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 173 


The African elephant is said by those who 
know both to be much fiercer and more savage 
than the Indian animal, which is hardly to be 
wondered at when we remember that the 
moment an African elephant is seen outside of 
a Government reserve it becomes a target for 
all and sundry, native and European alike. 

It is a great traveller in search of food, and 
its wanderings take it high above the plains 
and far up the green slopes of Mount Kenia. 
It is also a coarser feeder than the Indian 
kind, using one of its tusks, generally the 
right one, to prise up mimosa and other trees, 
from which it then strips twigs, leaves and 
bark. Its huge ears, at all times conspicuous, 
assume a frightful appearance when it is 
charging, for they then stand out at right 
angles to the head like the wings of some 
angry demon, and at such moments its trumpet- 
ing is nothing less than deafening. Its powers 
of eyesight and hearing are only moderately 
developed, but it has a very keen sense of 
smell.and must be stalked very carefully up- 
wind. If suddenly disturbed at close quarters, 
it is apt to charge before a shot is fired, and on 
such occasions the female is considered the 
more dangerous of the two. 

In some parts of Africa, elephants with only 
one tusk are not uncommon, and these are 
invariably the worst-tempered in the herd, per- 


174 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


haps because they smart under the handicap 
imposed on them by the want of a second tusk, 
or possibly from actual pangs of toothache. 

Mention has been made of the fact that, in 
the ordinary way, elephant -shooting is no 
longer permitted in India, and even in Africa 
the Powers, waking, as is their habit, a little 
late to their responsibilities, are at last framing 
regulations to save the remnant of these splen- 
did animals. In some districts, however, the 
big game hunter may, after taking the pre- 
scribed licence, still enjoy the supreme excite- 
ment of an encounter with the greatest animal 
on earth, running risks that not even the most 
perfect rifles can ever quite eliminate, and 
Major V. R. Whitla sends me the following 
account of a ‘‘right and left’ at these animals in 
North-Eastern Rhodesia, from which it will be 
gathered that he did not get his ivory for the 
asking : 


‘One Christmas, not long ago, I was camped 
near Ndombo’s village in North-Eastern Rho- 
desia. I had left Broken Hill, just over two 
thousand miles from Cape Town and at that 
time the terminus of the railway, early in July, 
and, after a very pleasant six months up country, 
was now on my way down to Mpika, from 
which spot a three weeks’ march would take 
me back to Broken Hill and civilisation. The 
heavy rains had set in on December 12, turning 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 175 


every small stream into a howling torrent and 
so spoiling the shooting that I had decided 
to go back. One morning, however, saw an 
abrupt change in all my plans, as my tracker, 
a local savage named Makale, brought me 
word that two of his friends had seen three big 
bull elephants a day or two before at a place 
not much more than twenty miles east of where 
we were encamped. I confess that, just at 
first, I was much inclined to doubt the story, 
as Makale, who had been with me about a 
month, had proved himself not only a first-rate 
tracker, but also a persistent liar. The friends 
were, however, produced and strenuously cross- 
examined separately by my headman Benjamin, 
and their accounts agreed so accurately that 
there seemed no further room for doubt. 

‘* The first step was to take out a new licence, 
costing £25, as all game licences in that dis- 
trict expire on December 31, and this entailed 
two long marches to Mpika, one of the stations 
in North-Eastern Rhodesia at which licences 
are issued by the authorities. 

‘*The next thing, which proved more labori- 
ous, was to get across the Nyamadzi River, 
then in full flood, as the elephants had been 
sighted near a village called Kafwimbi, about 
twenty miles away on the other side. At other 
times of year this river may be forded without 
difficulty, but the heavy rains had swelled it 
to formidable proportions, and, as no dug-out 
was to be had locally, there was nothing for 
it but to build a boat for ourselves. My men 
set to, selecting a particular tree with thick 


176 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


but flexible bark, and then removing a piece of 
this bark of the required length in one piece 
without felling the tree. The ends were then 
folded across and sewn together, the crevices 
being filled with clay, a split bamboo being 
sewn round the top to form a gunwale, and 
two or three cross-pieces being attached to 
stiffen the frame and lessen any tendency to 
collapse. Asa result of this ingenious carpen- 
tering, I was presently in possession of a light 
and watertight canoe, about 12 feet long and 
3 feet broad, capable of holding six or seven 
men. At the first launch we found that the 
current was too strong to allow of either poling 
or paddling, but my porters soon rigged up a 
long rope of plaited bark, which was fastened 
to trees low down on either bank by a man 
who managed to take one end of it and swim 
across, and by this means we got the porters 
and their loads across without accident. 

‘“We now had to make two marches to 
Kafwimbi, as the going *was bad, several 
streams, insignificant during the dry season, 
being now so big that it was found necessary 
to halt while trees were felled and laid across. 
On the second day’s march I came upon fairly 
fresh spoor of cow elephants, as well as fresh 
spoor of three rhinos, which are common in 
that part of the country. These, however, we 
did not follow, as I did not want to frighten 
the elephants away by firing at other game. 

‘On reaching Kafwimbi’s, I interviewed the 
chief, who told me that some of his men had 
seen the spoor of a very big bull elephant not 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 177 


far off the day before, and he offered to come 
with us next day to show me the ground. 
‘‘Next morning I was called at 4 a.m., but it 
was raining heavily, so that I did not make a 
start until 7, by which time the rain had 
ceased, though the sky looked threatening. 
Up to 10, we could find no fresh tracks, but 
we then met two natives who, in going from 
one village to another, told us that they had 
crossed fresh tracks of three bulls only about a 
mile back. We set off in that direction, and 
easily picked up the spoor in the soft ground. 
Owing, however, to the quantity of rain that 
had fallen during the night, it was hard to say 
exactly how old it was. I judged it to be not 
more than from twelve to eighteen hours old, 
and well worth following up, particularly as 
one, at any rate, was the spoor of a very big 
bull, the prints of his forefeet measuring just 
over 21 inches from toe to heel, whilst the other 
two measured 18 and 184 respectively. 
‘‘Owing to the water-logged state of the 
country, the going was bad and tiring, and 
much time was lost in crossing the numerous 
streams in our way, but the spoor was very 
plain and we were never at fault. After going 
a few miles, we came to a low bank of soft 
earth which bore the distinct impressions of 
the bodies of all three elephants, showing that 
they had rested there during the night or very 
early that morning. ‘This was a very interest- 
ing sight to me, as I had often been told by 
hunters that elephants never lie down to rest, 
but sleep standing or else leaning against trees, 
M 


178 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Yet here was undeniable evidence of their lying 
down, and, as a matter of fact, I had come 
across similar proof of this habit when tracking 
a solitary elephant a month earlier. 

‘* After their siesta, the three bulls had moved 
on, feeding at intervals, as was apparent from 
the way in which, though always moving in 
one direction, the tracks kept diverging and 
recrossing. We stuck to the spoor of the 
biggest, which was very easy to follow, and 
kept to it until three in the afternoon, when it 
was evident from various signs that the ele- 
phants were not far away. Soon afterwards I 
saw an elephant standing in a comparatively 
clear patch about 200 yards away on our left 
front, and at the same moment I descried a 
single zebra grazing his way slowly across this 
patch towards the forest on the far side. We, 
therefore, halted immediately under cover, so 
as to let the zebra move on, as these animals 
have a most irritating habit, the moment they 
see the hunter, of galloping wildly round in 
circles, about 150 yards distant, unavoidably 
giving the alarm to all other wild animals in 
the neighbourhood, and spoiling all chance of 
ashot. This annoying habit is shared by the 
kyang, or wild donkey, of Tibet and Ladak, 
which has in such fashion ruined many a care- 
ful stalk of mine after antelope or Ovis 
Ammon. 

‘¢Tt was fully a quarter of an hour before we 
deemed that the wretched zebra had got far 
enough into the forest to make it safe to pro- 
ceed, and during this trying interval the 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 179 


elephant must have got slight wind of us, as 
he twice faced in our direction, with ears 
cocked and trunk extended, and finally moved 
slowly off, fortunately up-wind. I had, in the 
meantime, had ample opportunity of examining 
him through my Zeiss glasses, and made him 
out to be a bull of ordinary size with tusks of 
apparently about 30 lbs. each, but I could not 
see whether the other two were in the forest 
beyond. I concluded, however, that it was 
best to follow him, on the assumption that, 
even if they were not with him, he would 
certainly be making his way to rejoin them, 
and this luckily proved to be the case, for 
when he had gone another mile he suddenly 
halted in some fairly thick cover, in which I 
was able to make out the tails and _ hind- 
quarters of two others. 

‘*T now made the four natives with me go 
back some distance and sit down, as I knew 
none of them well enough to trust him with a 
second rifle, and I preferred to advance alone, 
carrying my double ‘400 cordite ejector, to- 
wards the cover, which was straight up-wind. 
As I proceeded, the elephants went slowly for- 
ward, and on reaching the spot where they 
had previously stood, I found that the thick 
patch extended only some 50 yards farther, 
and that beyond it lay an open patch of some 
three or four acres. To my surprise I now 
saw, standing in this, within about 4o yards 
of the nearest trees, not three, but four ele- 
phants, one of them much bigger than the 
rest, and evidently the animal whose spoor I 


18 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


had been following the whole day. They were 
halted in close order, the head and shoulders 
of the big one being covered from a shot by 
the body of one of its fellows. I therefore 
sat down just inside the edge of the cover and 
examined them carefully through my glasses, 
and soon made out that they were all bulls. 
The tusks of the big one were disappointing, 
and I did not estimate them at over 50 or 60 lbs. 
apiece. Then came a tuskless bull, the first I 
had seen during six months in that part of 
Rhodesia. Of the other two, the one that I 
had first sighted alone seemed to carry short 
tusks of about 30 lbs. each, and the fourth had 
longer and thinner tusks which would prob- 
ably weigh 40 lbs. each. 

‘‘T had to wait about a quarter of an hour 
at the edge of the clearing before I could get 
a shot at the head of the biggest, but at last he 
faced in my direttion, and I took aim between 
the eye and earhole and fired. He fell to the 
shot, struggled half-way to his feet, and then 
my left barrel knocked him over again. Until 
I fired the second shot, the other elephants, 
which were standing close together, had 
scarcely moved; but on hearing the second 
report one of them turned tail and bolted, 
going nearly straight away from me, while the 
other two came at a rapid pace right for the 
little tree against which I was standing. I 
seemed to be in for a charge by the two un- 
wounded elephants, and the prospect was not 
a pleasing one, for there was not a solitary 
tree of sufficient size to have afforded shelter, 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 181 


or one that an elephant would not have knocked 
down without effort. Mature reflection after- 
wards convinced me that the animals had never 
meant charging at all, but were merely panic- 
stricken and trying to escape, choosing my 
direction by mere coincidence. Had they really 
meant mischief, they would have come on 
screaming and with trunks. curled in the air. 
They did neither, but came with trunks down 
and without uttering a sound. All the same, 
there was no time for these comforting reflec- 
tions at the moment, for in a very few seconds 
they were almost on top of me, leaving me 
barely time to reload one barrel of my rifle, 
the ejector of which fortunately worked well. 
I then fired at the chest of the leading bull, 
the one with the long, thin tusks, with the idea 
of turning him on one side. The shot was a 
lucky one, as it went through the trunk and 
lodged at the juncture of chest and neck. On 
firing, I jumped on one side, but quite un- 
necessarily as it proved, for on being hit he 
stumbled to his knees, then, immediately re- 
covering himself, went off faster than ever, 
followed, to my intense relief, by the tuskless 
one. A little later we found him stone dead 
about 150 yards from the spot, and I afterwards 
found that, when hit, he had been within ten 
paces of me! 

‘‘It was too late to cut out the tusks that 
evening, as we were a long way from camp, 
which I reached, very wet and tired, about 
seven in the evening, having covered in all 
some twenty-five miles, much of it through 


182 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


heavy mud. Next morning, my porters, sixty 
in number, accompanied by practically all the 
villagers, marched the ten or eleven miles and 
proceeded to cut up the elephants. I did not 
accompany them on this occasion, knowing 
from experience what a disgusting spectacle 
it would be, and confident also that my head- 
man would see the tusks cut out without 
injury. They were all away till the following 
morning, when they straggled back to camp 
with the tusks and meat. The tusks were as 
follows :— 


Length. Girth. Weight. 

Big Elephant—Right tusk . 5 ft. 8} in. 16}in. 52 lbs. 
Left ,, . 4.8 in. 162m. 49 Ibs. 

Small _,, Right ,, . 5 ft. 1 in. 4154in. 36 Ibs. 
Left: °: 302-308 fh © 40. 155 I0.- 97 Tos. 


‘*It must be confessed that the tusks of the 
big elephant were disappointing, as the animal 
was an uncommonly big one, and, judging 
from the appearance of his skin, of great age. 
They had evidently been broken off at some 
period, and the left one, more particularly, was 
very short. On cutting him up, the men 
found two native bullets of hammered iron in 
him.” 


The concluding remark in Major Whitla’s 
interesting story bears out what was said on an 
earlier page. Few elephants attain any great 
age without having been shot at and wounded, 
and these encounters doubtless have their 
effect on the victim’s temper. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 183 


Only one kind of African elephant has 
hitherto been generally known, but a year or 
two ago the Zast African Standard published 
particulars of a somewhat mysterious ‘‘ water- 
elephant,” as it was called, discovered by a 
Frenchman in a lake in the Congo. It seems 
to be of smaller build than the ordinary kind, 
with short ears and no tusks. Further evi- 
dence, however, seems desirable before taking 
this creature very seriously, though, in view of 
the recent discovery of the okapi, it is unsafe 
to predict that Africa may not have other sur- 
prises in store. 


RHINOCEROS 


There are—perhaps it would be more accu- 
rate to say there were—two kinds of African 
rhinoceros. The white, or square-mouthed 
kind, also named after Burchell, is all but 
extinct, and only the black kind survives in 
any numbers in the wild state. 

As a matter of fact, the ‘‘ white” rhinoceros 
of Africa no more deserves its name than the 
‘‘white”’ elephant of Burma, for it is grey, 
and the same may be said of the ‘‘black”’ 
kind. Each of them carries two horns on the 
snout. In the square-mouthed rhinoceros the 
fore-horn has been known to measure over 
62 in., whereas the longest recorded fore-horn 
in the black rhinoceros was only 44 in. In- 


184 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


deed, it is only in South and East Africa that 
it has horns of even that length. The second 
horn in both kinds is always smaller and grows 
straight, whereas the other is curved, usually 
backward, though in some specimens it points 
forward. No doubt the animal knows how to 
turn it to account, whichever way it grows, 
and, as has been mentioned above, the African 
rhinoceros uses the horn for tossing its enemy, 
whereas the Indian fights chiefly with its teeth. 

The rare ‘‘white” rhinoceros is the taller 
and heavier beast of the two, standing a little 
over 6 ft. at the shoulder, whereas the largest 
known black rhinoceros would be _ several 
inches shorter. The most conspicuous differ- 
ence between the two, however, is in neither 
size nor colouring, but in the shape of the 
upper lip, a sure cluie to the food preferred by 
the animal. In the black, the upper lip over- 
hangs the lower like a finger. In other words, 
the animal is ‘‘prehensile-lipped,” or able to 
pick leaves off bushes, browsing on acacia and 
other low trees within its reach. Burchell’s 
rhinoceros, on the other hand, has a square 
mouth and is a grazing animal, living out on 
the open plains, and not in the forests which 
are the home of the other. Its day is done. 
Its old haunts know it no more, and even 
Selous, greatest of living hunters, would be 
puzzled to find one to-day in the length and 


” 


“THE AFRICAN RHINOCEROS USES ITS HORN FOR TOSSING ITS ENEMY. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 185 


breadth of South Africa. It must be looked 
for in East Africa, and should be strictly pre- 
served. Unfortunately, Mr. Roosevelt and his 
son shot nine between them. No one can 
fairly blame these American sportsmen for 
availing themselves of the invitation to shoot 
all manner of game in British territory, but 
let us hope that those nine may be the last to 
fal] to the rifle for many a long year. 

The black rhinoceros may still be described 
as fairly plentiful as far north as Abyssinia. 
Those who have shot and watched these 
animals in the two continents where they are 
still found (time was, before the dawn of the 
period we call history, when they roamed over 
Europe) are unanimous as to their character, 
describing them as_ stupid, short-sighted, 
blundering brutes, much given to attacks of 
nerves, easily panic-stricken, and at such 
moments apt to charge blindly the moment 
they get wind of the hunter, not so much in 
malice as for fear of being surrounded. There 
will always be differences of opinion about the 
character of the lion and tiger, but no such 
uncertainty seems to invest that of the rhi- 
noceros. Fortunately its eyesight is so poor 
that its charge can easily be avoided at the 
last moment. 

Much nonsense has been written about the 
thickness of the animal’s hide, which has been 


186 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


described as capable of turning bullets even 
at short range, and it may be that these fables 
date from the days of primitive guns and in- 
sufficient charges of powder, which may have 
had no more effect on these thick-skinned 
animals than a peashooter on a pig. Modern 
ammunition, however, makes short work of 
the rhinoceros; moreover, apart from such 
vulnerability, we must remember that its hide 
cannot even withstand the attacks of the tsetse- 
fly, which feeds greedily on its blood. It is, 
nevertheless, an immensely powerful animal, 
and few others are so hard to kill ; for it dies so 
slowly that very often, when one is seemingly 
dead from spear or bullet wounds, it will rally 
and either charge the enemy or gallop away 
out of reach. The rhinoceros is said to be 
irresistibly attracted by fire. A creature of 
such bulk hardly seems comparable to a moth 
flying into the candle-flame, but it is a fact 
that, attracted in some unaccountable fashion, 
the rhinoceros sometimes charges right into a 
camp fire. Elephants have a similar habit of 
trampling on fires, with the result that they 
occasionally spread the embers, and have even 
been known in this way to set fire to native 
villages. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 187 


HIPPOPOTAMUS 


The hippopotamus is one of those few really 
ugly beasts in Nature which, if we did not 
know it to be real, we might think of as a 
creature seen only in nightmares. When we 
come to think of it, there are not very many 
quadrupeds at all events so disgusting to look 
at. The wart-hog is another, and the Tas- 
manian devil a third. In its way, however, 
the hippopotamus is without a rival, since not 
only is its face, particularly with the jaws open, 
among the most uncouth in all creation, but, 
seeing that it weighs, when full-grown, three 
or four tons, and that its length and girth are 
about the same, or approximately twelve feet, 
it has also the most ungainly figure in existence, 
being, in fact, three times as long as it is high. 
The hide is devoid of hair and studded with 
warts. The eyes are small, as are also the 
ears, which stand erect. Our name for the 
animal means ‘‘ river-horse,” and the Germans, 
with their usual passion for detail, call it by a 
word meaning ‘‘ Nile-horse” ; yet it is about as 
unlike a horse as any creature well could be. 

There is a much smaller kind in West Africa, 
a fairy-like creature weighing only three or 
four hundredweight, and little seems to be 
known of its habits. The larger species is no 
longer to be found in South Africa, where it 


188 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


was common in the old days, but still exists 
in the lakes and rivers of Central Africa, where 
tourists are unfortunately permitted to shoot it 
without making the least attempt to recover 
the body. This wickedness should be strictly 
forbidden by the captains of steamers on the 
Upper Nile, whether on Government boats or 
not. In view of the reception the hippopotamus 
meets with on coming to the surface, it is not 
surprising to learn that it spends most of its 
existence underwater, being able to remain 
below for five or ten minutes and actually 
walking on the bed of the river. A man 
standing on the edge of a swimming-bath with 
a loaded gun would soon teach even the most 
reluctant pupil to swim under water, and refer- 
ence was made on an earlier page to the un- 
fortunate effect which such treatment has had 
on the once-serene temper of these water- 
babies. I have seen it suggested by apologists 
of the tourist that this is also the work of the 
trap with which the natives of the Congo and 
Zambesi regions catch these creatures, a device 
which, while it would be unpardonably cruel 
in the hands of white men with firearms, is 
quite legitimate for unarmed blacks who have 
to keep themselves from starvation as_ best 
they can. This trap is constructed as follows : 
An immense block of wood, into the heavier 
end of which is welded a long metal harpoon, 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 189 


is hung from a tree over a spot on the bank 
where these animals are known to be in the 
habit of coming ashore. A long line, with a 
buoy at the end, is also tied to the harpoon 
and a rope is fastened across the path so that 
the animal, forcing its way past the obstacle, 
automatically releases the weighted harpoon, 
which falls on its back and pierces the hide. 
The unfortunate creature, now in great pain, 
dashes back into the water and makes frantic 
but futile efforts to rid itself of the instrument 
of torture, which, however, sticks fast, like a 
banderilla in a bull. As its movements under 
water are betrayed by the tell-tale buoy, it has 
no chance of escaping from its enemies, who 
follow in their canoes, thrusting a spear into it 
whenever it comes up to breathe. Then the 
end comes, and the great carcase is cut up 
and divided among the hungry hunters. It is 
a horrible, if necessary, business, but I do not 
believe that the practice has spoilt the temper 
of a single hippopotamus, for the simple reason 
that the victim never escapes alive. The stray 
bullet of the tourist is quite another matter, for 
it wounds the poor beast just enough to madden 
itand no more. The ‘‘sportsman” then goes 
on his way, and one more furious hippopotamus 
is added to the long list of those thirsting to 
avenge themselves on the tyrant man. 

The hippopotamus feeds chiefly on the water- 


190 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


plants of its native river or lake, but it also 
clambers on shore and makes extensive raids 
on any cultivated land in the neighbourhood, 
making short work of any plantation in its 
path and trampling underfoot what it does not 
eat. Crops over which a hippopotamus has 
wandered are of no great value that season. 
Farmers at home, who cry out now and then 
when any follower of hounds may “‘accidentally”’ 
cut off a corner of a field, should try a hippo- 
potamus or two. The hippopotamus at the 
Zoo looks peaceful enough, even when it opens 
its fearful mouth for buns and biscuits, but it 
shows a nasty temper at times. I remember 
an occasion on which it, or its predecessor, 
killed a terrier that had got into its enclosure. 
Whether it actually ate the dog, I forget; but 
if its appetite is as accommodating as that of its 
cousin the pig, there is no reason why it should 
not have done so. 


GIRAFFE AND ZEBRA 


The extraordinary resources of Africa as a 
storehouse of strange and interesting wild 
animals could hardly be more strikingly 
illustrated than by the fact that it is the only 
continent producing at once the hippopotamus 
and the giraffe, the one modelled on a baggage- 
van, the other an Eiffel Tower of an animal 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 191 


and incomparably the most graceful of all big 
game. The height of the giraffe always as- 
tonishes those who see it for the first time, and 
I always remember the amusing fascination 
which one at the Zoo had for some Moors 
whom I once showed round the Gardens, for 
although natives of the same continent, they 
had never even suspected the existence of a 
creature half again as tall as the biggest 
elephant, or eighteen feet from the ground to 
the tips of its make-believe horns. The giraffe 
is, in fact, one of those animals that could 
never be mistaken for any other, with its brown- 
splotched skin covering the little imitation 
horns, the long face and melting eyes, the 
black tongue, slender legs, and insignificant 
tail. It is with wild animals as with human 
beings. Some are full of character, while 
others are just negative, and on the whole 
the latter have the happiest time of it. 

The large eyes of the giraffe, like those of 
some fishes which inhabit the abysmal gloom 
of the deep sea, suggest keen eyesight, and 
may be contrasted with the large and erect 
ears of the little fennec which dwells in the 
same region. Keen eyesight would be useless 
to so short an animal as the fennec, and, on 
the other hand, a creature with its nose so far 
from the ground as the giraffe has little use 
for highly developed powers of scent, though 


192 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


the giraffe is by no means deficient in that 
sense. Still, it always sees the enemy first. 

It is usual to post notices in menageries 
requesting that no food be given to the 
giraffes. This is done at our own Zoo. It 
is certain that the authorities do not discourage 
the practice without good reason, for, so long 
as the recipients of such gifts do not suffer, 
there is no objection to the public amusing 
itself and at the same time paying some of the 
food-bill. The giraffe, however, is a delicate 
and costly animal, and care has to be taken 
with its digestion. At the same time it is 
a very fastidious creature, feeding in captivity 
on the best clover hay, with an occasional 
onion, bunch of tares, or lump of sugar. I 
have been told that one, at any rate, was 
known to refuse an apple out of which its 
keeper had taken a bite. Without taking the 
responsibility of this reflection on the keeper's 
teeth, I should think it very likely that a dis- 
criminating giraffe might take exception to 
the taint of tobacco. At any rate, it is to be 
hoped that, even on Bank Holidays, visitors 
will respect the notice and keep their buns and 
nuts for less delicate stomachs, as the loss of 
a giraffe is a very serious item in the year’s 
accounts. 

Out on the rolling veldt, or in the cooler 
glades of the African forest, the giraffe is a 


. «= . +. SO AS TO BREAK THE LION'S JAW . . . 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 193 


very different personality from the sluggish, 
fearless animals in the paddock at the Zoo. 
It travels far and wide in search of mimosa 
leaves, its favourite food, reaching as far as 
it can and stripping the branches with its long 
tongue, so that trees pollarded in this fashion 
to a kind of high-water mark are a common 
feature of giraffe country. The giraffe is 
fragile in appearance and timid by nature, yet, 
when suddenly attacked by a lion, it some- 
times manages to kick with such terrific force, 
with hind or fore feet, as to break the lion’s jaw. 
More often, no doubt, the lion that manages 
to get close enough for a spring must kill and 
eat his prey, but such retribution has been 
known to fall on the tyrant more than once. 
When fighting among themselves, half in 
play, or at any rate without intent to do any 
very serious damage, giraffes often butt with 
their heads and fence with their false horns, 
which are occasionally damaged in the fray. 
The giraffe’s most effective weapon is the fore- 
leg, with which it chops downwards. John 
Stromboom, a well-known trader round Lake 
Ngami many years ago, was, Mr. Bryden tells 
me, nearly killed by a wounded giraffe in this 
way. He had ridden up to it when it sud- 
denly reared on end and struck at him with 
both forelegs, missing by only a matter of 
inches. Had the blows got home, both he 
N 


194 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


and his horse would have been done for, as 
the force of such strokes from an animal that 
weighs nearly a ton must be immense. 

Unless there is urgent need for meat, these 
beautiful and inoffensive animals should never 
be shot. There is no trophy even to justify 
such ‘‘sport,” for the so-called horns are little 
better than knobs under the skin, and shoot- 
ing a giraffe is so devoid of risk as to have 
little savour for the true sportsman. During 
Mr. Roosevelt’s African trip, a cow giraffe 
even showed so little fear of the party that 
several of them were able to get up to within 
fifteen feet and pelt her with sticks and stones, 
at which she walked slowly away. That, 
surely, is not the sort of animal to shoot for 
sport! True, this particular cow was spared, 
but nine other giraffes were shot by members 
of the party. Why? 

If giraffes must be killed, as they must, no 
doubt, at times for meat, why not hunt them 
in the splendid manner of the Arab sword- 
hunters, killing them with cold steel after they 
have had a good run for their lives? Readers 
of Sir Samuel Baker’s inspiring book on the 
Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia will recall the 
prowess of the Agagzr, or sword-hunters, of 
the Hamran tribe of Arabs. Alas, the mighty 
are fallen! This once great tribe has, in the 
course of two generations, been all but exter- 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 195 


minated in the tribal warfare of Mahdiism and 
in border forays with the Abyssinians, and 
even as far back as 1899, when the benefits 
of British protection reached the Eastern Sudan, 
only one family of the Hamran clan had out- 
lived the terrible era of fire and sword, and 
was dragging out its existence in the neigh- 
bourhood of Gedaref. It is now, however, 
well known that the Agar, or sword-hunter, 
was not the monopoly of the Hamran tribe, 
but an institution in most of the noble, horse- 
riding Arab clans east of the White Nile, while 
to the west of that river, in Kordofan and south 
of Darfur, there are also mounted hunters, 
who use the sword less than the spade-bladed 
stabbing spear called £zbdzs. These intrepid 
sword-hunters, whose tactics contrast curiously 
with those of the cautious stalker armed with 
the newest pattern of rifle, use their cold steel 
on lion, elephant, or rhinoceros indiscrimi- 
nately. They usually hunt in parties of three, 
one acting as decoy and galloping in front 
of the quarry, while the other two gallop 
behind. One of these then dismounts, when 
going full speed, and hamstrings the animal 
on foot, using the sword double-handed, and 
it is then comparatively easy to finish even an 
elephant off, so helpless is it after the stroke. 
For lions they have another stroke that cuts 
clean through the spine. The giraffe, on the 


196 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


other hand, is hamstrung from the saddle by 
a cut delivered forwards and downwards, sword 
and arm in line, a few inches above the animal’s 
near hind hock. It is well known that in battle 
the Arab never loses a chance of hamstringing 
the enemy’s horses and camels. In the mélée 
he always strives to detach his adversary’s 
bridle and to fell the horse with a cut between 
its ears. In fact, many of the Dervish horses 
captured at the Battle of Firket, in 1896, were 
found to have lost their ears in Arab warfare, 
and this mutilation had clearly been the work 
of the sword-cutting at the bridle headstall, 
to protect which some horses wore head armour. 

The truly daring and magnificent sport of the 
sword-hunter has without a doubt declined from 
various Causes, among which may be reckoned 
the game laws promulgated of late years in the 
Sudan, as well as the large number of firearms, 
licensed or otherwise, now in use throughout 
that. region. Yet there are men still living 
who, armed only with cold steel, have laid 
low the African elephant, and, whatever regret 
may be felt at seeing so huge an animal 
destroyed in any circumstances, much of the 
reproach is removed when it is conquered with 
such weapons. The ability to keep calm and 
collected in face of great danger is commonly 
claimed by some nations of Northern Europe 
and America as their birthright, but those 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 197 


know better the equality of human nature 
under all skies who have shared the dangers 
and hardships of hunting wild beasts in the 
company of men of such mettle as the Arab, 
the Sikh, or the Indian Mussulman. Among 
the hardest and most skilful mounted hunters 
in the Eastern Sudan are some of the loyal 
Abu Ref tribe, as well as the fanatical Kinana 
of Sheikh Fadl el Moula and the Beni Hussein 
clan. In addition to these, there are also, in 
the big game grounds of the south-west, the 
Rizeigat of Ahmed Wad Egeil, the Humr, 
the Habbaniya, and some Bagara clans. 

The cutting power of the straight, two-edged, 
cross-hilted sword of these Arab hunters is 
amazing. In the hands of a powerful and 
skilled swordsman, such a weapon is capable 
of penetrating the hide and severing the muscle 
of the largest elephant, and Ahmet Wad Idris, 
a veteran hunter of the Beni Hussein, who 
formerly lived at Singa and who, I believe, 
accompanied Count Joseph Potocki on his 
expedition in the Eastern Sudan, was actually 
known to have cut off the hind leg of a giraffe 
above the hock at a single blow, a feat that 
might almost be deemed impossible. There 
was another mighty hunter of the kind, one 
Ramadan, son of Sheikh Abu Shetal of 
Roseires, who hunted the wild buffalo with 
hound and spear, harpooned the hippopotamus, 


1988 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


and, without firearms of any sort, slew the lion, 
elephant, and every kind of dangerous game 
in his country. This is sport indeed, and 
beside it our civilised pastime of shooting wild 
beasts with long-range rifles makes tame read- 
ing. At the same time, it must be borne in 
mind that these wild Arabs are brought up 
to such work, that their faith makes them 
more indifferent to death and pain than the 
men of other creeds, and that, even among 
them, only a few picked men are equal to 
these feats. 

Comparatively few Englishmen have taken 
part in these tribal hunting expeditions, but 
I am indebted to one of the few, a cavalry 
officer, for a most interesting account of a 
giraffe hunt, which is, however, related in 
these pages for the sake of a remarkable epi- 
sode of peculiar interest to those who love 
horses. It proves beyond doubt that the 
animal, a high-caste Arabian and the property 
of the sportsman who sent me the story, first 
knew that it had incurred blame and then 
sought to redeem its character for courage, 
which it eventually did. 

This is the story in his own words :— 


‘It was in the year 1900 that a small party 
set out from Fakki Mohammed Osman, on 
the River Dinder, the principal affluent of the 
Blue Nile, to hunt big game with spear and 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS gg 


sword. In the time of those well-loved 
Governors of the Sudan, Baker and Gordon, 
both banks of the Dinder were lined with a 
continuous succession of villages, the teeming 
population of which cultivated broad acres 
of cotton, corn, and the oil-bearing sesame. 
These nations had, however, followed the arts 
of peace, neglecting what Bacon calls ‘the 
most certain oracle of time,’ infected with the 
canker of prosperity, and blind to the necessity 
of armed combination. As a result, the entire 
riverine population was wiped out within a few 
years, so that the acacia stretched its gaunt 
arms over the ashes of their villages, and the 
wild elephant trampled underfoot the last grue- 
some evidences of their downfall. As, more- 
over, the laws of Mahdiism precluded the use 
of firearms in hunting, there was a marked 
increase of wild animals in the Sudan between 
1883 and 1898, and it was here, in the de- 
populated area reclaimed by the wilderness, 
that the sword-hunters found their opportunity. 

**On the first day out, four wart-hog boars 
were the reward of an early start. On the 
second day, the party entered the elephant 
country and bivouacked, with no other water 
available than that which was carried in skins 
on the backs of two camels. Next morning, 
leaving the camels and a spare horse in bivouac, 
the hunters set out, leading their horses. There 
were Ahmet, the veteran lightweight of the 
Beni Hussein tribe, with his black Galla pony, 
‘Shansun’; then an Arab sheikh, with his smart 
grey, ‘Bishtena’; next, two Agagzr, and myself 


200 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


with a favourite high-caste chestnut Arabian 
horse called ‘Bashom’ (i.e. the fox); and, 
lastly, two footmen carrying waterskins. We 
had gone an hour from camp without finding 
any fresh traces of elephant, so we took up the 
tracks of three giraffe that crossed the line 
at right angles. The forest consisted mainly 
of gum-bearing acacias, each about thirty feet 
high, and at every mile or two we would pass 
a watercourse, its lower level marked by the 
luxuriant verdure of large tamarind, ebony and 
adansonia trees; and the first rains, early in 
June, had carpeted the undulating slopes of 
hard loam with springy turf and wild flowers. 

“¢ After an hour’s tracking at quickened pace, 
during which we passed fresh tracks of other 
feeding giraffe, Ahmet gave the signal by 
springing into the saddle, and ‘Bashom’ 
pricked up his ears as three frightened giraffes, 
which, though fully five hundred yards away, 
had, as usual, seen the hunters before them- 
selves being sighted, began striding towards 
each other and then broke away to the left 
at a swinging canter. The riders, however, 
had a good start, and the horses were soon 
skimming over the yielding ground as if they 
were on a racecourse. One cow led away left- 
handed and was unsuccessfully ridden by the 
sheikh. The two larger animals, a light tawny 
cow and an unusually big bull with conspicu- 
ously black tessellated markings, bore straight 
on abreast. The ground now became harder 
and was covered with long dead grass, as well 
as with occasional low thorns that explained 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 201 


the pieces of leather tied over the knees and 
thighs of the Agagzr. And now it was that 
‘Bashom,’ having outdistanced the barb 
horses of the rest, had drawn within five yards 
of the bull’s near hind leg, when a powerful 
backward kick from that limb gave his rider 
a useful hint to ride wide that he was prompt 
to act on. The sword was now unsheathed 
from its place under the near flap of the saddle, 
but the giraffe, after delivering other backward 
kicks just out of reach of the sword-blade, 
managed to forge ahead. It was enabled 
to do so by the altered nature of the ground, 
which was now of that heavy black mould, 
intersected in every direction by fissures, which 
the Arabs call mushkok, and which is not 
unlike the black cotton soil of India. This 
kind of going, while suited to the large feet 
of the camel or giraffe, is very liable to bring 
a horse down unless he is extended at a free 
gallop. For this reason ‘Bashom’ was unable 
to get abreast of the giraffe’s hock, the point 
of which is more than four feet from the heel. 
So the giraffe drew ahead and vanished in the 
forest. The Agagzr now came up from behind 
and unsaddled their horses, and when, in half 
an hour, the party was joined by the two foot- 
men, who had followed on their tracks, man 
and beast drank with relish, though sparingly. 
The veterans now surveyed the Arabian horse 
and sadly gave it as their conviction that his 
failure to close with his first giraffe was due to 
timidity. He might, they admitted, be gifted 
with a surprising turn of speed, but he lacked 


202 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


spirit; and they even went as far as to say 
that his cowardice would make him not only 
useless, but a source of danger, if he were 
again allowed to accompany the Agagzr. 
‘““Now ‘Bashom,’ in common with most 
high-caste Arabians, possessed what Arabs 
call the ‘human eye,’ the type of eye, that is, 
with white surrounding the dark pupil. Those 
who know and love horses and dogs are familiar 
with this type of eye. It is the eye that smiles, 
that listens, that mourns. At this appalling 
insult from the Agagzr, ‘Bashom’s’ eye was 
as if fired with understanding. He, the com- 
rade of Arabs from his foalhood, knew the 
sting of their taunt, and for a moment there 
was reason in his glance. Read the sequel. 
‘*That same afternoon the hunters once 
more took up the tracks of the giraffes, and 
the camp was moved. On the advice of Ahmet, 
I now rode my second horse, and ‘ Bashom’ 
brought up the rear with the camels and 
Agagir, some two hundred yards behind. The 
party had just crossed a valley, when suddenly 
a giraffe was seen stalking across the front, 
not two hundred yards ahead. It took the 
beast an appreciable time to turn, and the two 
horsemen were riding it before it was in its 
stride. But, in less time than it takes to tell, 
there was a third in the race, coming up from 
behind. In a few strides, ‘Bashom’ was 
alongside his master. In vain the Hamran 
Arab who rode him tried to steady him. In 
negotiating a watercourse, the man was de- 
posited on the ground, and ‘ Bashom,’ taking 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 203 


his own line, headed straight for the giraffe, 
brushing through the thorns as if they were 
bullfinches, and taking every fallen tree-trunk 
in his stride. A new element was now intro- 
duced into this extraordinary chase in the 
shape of four hartebeest, of dark chestnut 
colour, which, startled out of a patch of scrub 
by the fugitive giraffe, joined in the procession 
until the strong running of the riderless Arabian 
scattered them to right and left. Ahmet, once 
more to the fore, now feared that the runaway 
might cross him at the critical moment and 
made one or two futile cuts with his hide-whip 
in the hope of turning the animal from his 
course ; but ‘ Bashom,’ with a snort of defiance, 
rushed headlong at the giraffe as if he meant 
to ride it off to the right from the near side. 
The terrified creature did, in fact, swerve to 
the right, but, in so doing, managed to deliver 
a knock-down blow with its near hind leg, 
which came home on the shoulder with such 
effect that poor ‘ Bashom’ turned over on his 
back as if he had been shot. Yet he had 
achieved his object, for the giraffe’s turn to the 
right undoubtedly sealed its fate. It was 
overtaken, the sword flashed from its scabbard, 
and a sweeping blow from the blade severed 
the hamstring, while a simultaneous twist to 
the left saved ‘ Blue Fire’ from being crushed 
as the bull toppled over. As the hunters dis- 
mounted to give the coup de grace, a sorry 
object trotted past the fallen foe. It was 
‘ Bashom,’ dead lame, covered with mud, and 
with the saddle turned round on his left flank, 


204 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


but he was proud in the knowledge that he 
had shown his mettle and retrieved his reputa- 
tion. 

‘‘Twelve years are gone, and ‘ Bashom’ has 
a happy home in the green fields of Essex, 
enjoying the rest that he earned so well in 
those strenuous days. It may be that, now 
and again, as his ‘human eye’ gleams with 
gratitude to his benefactress, he recalls the 
fierce scent of the battle-smoke and the flash 
of the sword.” 


The zebra, another exclusively African type, 
is a wild horse in a tiger’s skin, or as such, at any 
rate, it impresses all who see it for the first time. 
Time was, not long ago, when Africa produced 
four different kinds of zebra. But the Boers 
(being as fond of zebra meat as lions are) ex- 
terminated one of these knownas the quagga, the 
last survivor dying in captivity in 1883, so that 
(as in the case of the Little Nigger Boys) there 
are now only three. One, the mountain zebra, 
is also called the common zebra, though, as 
a matter of fact, it is very scarce, being found 
only in the high mountains of Cape Colony, 
where it is strictly preserved. Else it might 
have gone the way of the quagga. The two 
others are named after Burchell and Grévy. 
The last named, which has its home in 
Abyssinia, is also very rare, and it was said 
at the time that the market value of a fine pair 


A RARE ANTELOPE. 


The Bongo is the largest of the West African bushbucks. Little is known of its 
habits, save that the animal lives in the forest and is nocturnal. 


al a a Mc ee 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 205 


presented to Queen Victoria by Menelik could 
not have been less than £1000. Of the domes- 
tication of the zebra, which has never been very 
successful, more is said in another chapter. 
I know of one that was driven in a trap by 
a lady living near Abergavenny, and a more 
famous team was that belonging to Mr. Lionel 
Rothschild ; but the zebra in harness is a prob- 
lem that needs patience. Sportsmen shoot 
zebras only, as a rule, when their camp boys 
want meat, as the animal’s flesh, though. un- 
appreciated by Europeans, is a delicacy to the 
negro, who is also an admirer of crocodiles’ 
eggs and buzzards. Apart from this occasional 
necessity, the zebra interests the sportsman 
chiefly on account of its annoying habit of 
galloping wildly round him when he is stalk- 
ing better game and thereby giving the alarm 
to all and sundry, spoiling many a good shot 
by its eccentric behaviour. 


ANTELOPES 


The antelopes, which carry solid horns, are 
regarded in the museum as furnishing a link 
between the goats and oxen, and are, in fact, 
related to both groups, a cousinship best 
appreciated when we look at the gnu, or 
wildebeest, which is much more like an ox 
than an antelope. The variety and importance 


206 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


of Africa’s antelopes have already been referred 
to. Asia has half a dozen of no great size, 
and the two which occur in America are 
eccentric rather than attractive; but Africa 
_ has close on a hundred different kinds, ranging 
in size from the great eland, which may weigh 
two thousand pounds, down to the tiny blue- 
buck and dik-dik, which may be weighed in 
ounces. In the great hunting days of such 
pioneers as Roualeyn Gordon Cumming and 
Cornwallis Harris, vast herds of antelopes 
blackened the veldt, troops of them wheel- 
ing and galloping over the emerald-green of 
the plains with an effect that those who know 
the lifelessness of those scenes nowadays find 
it hard to believe. They are gone now, and 
their haunts have passed to the Afrikander. 
Yet the commoner kinds are still abundant in 
tracts like the Kalahari, where they can always 
enjoy comparative immunity from man. The 
horns of these beautiful animals furnish most 
of the attractive trophies of shzkar, and the 
corridors and staircases of more than one 
London club, and notably of one in St. James’s 
Square, absolutely bristle with horns of every 
type, including the straight, spiral horns of 
the eland, the sweeping weapons of the beisa 
and gemsbok, the magnificent curves of the 
roan and sable, the V-shaped crown of the 
hartebeest, and many others. There is also 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 207 


much character in the faces of these antelopes, 
and it would be difficult to confuse the pied 
black and white countenance of the gemsbok, 
the mournful face of the hartebeest, and the 
fringed forehead of the addax. Naturalists 
were long exercised by the apparent anomaly 
of so magnificent an animal as the eland 
thriving in an all but waterless waste like the 
Kalahari, which even smaller kinds seemed to 
avoid. It was Selous who, with his usual 
genius for getting information out of the natives, 
who for the most part are either reticent or 
misleading, found that the Kalahari produces 
not only water-melons and a bulb that is full 
of moisture, but also a certain bush, the leaves 
of which form the eland’s favourite food. Even 
the smallest antelopes, though feeble-looking 
little creatures, sometimes show wonderful 
courage and endurance; and Sir Godfrey 
Lagden tells me that he has known even the 
little steenbok and duiker draw hounds away 
from their young and sacrifice themselves so 
as to save the family; and he once saw a 
mountain rhebok, with one leg broken, get 
away on the other three, and actually escape 
from a pack of dogs in hot pursuit. 

The most grotesque of all the antelopes are 
the gnus, or wildebeests. Of the two kinds, 
one has a black tail and the other a white. 
To anyone unfamiliar with their identity they 


208 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


suggest wild oxen out of drawing, and their 
habits are as strange as their appearance. 
Troops of them come prancing and curveting 
about trek waggons and caravans in a manner 
that would alarm anyone unaccustomed to 
their ways, as there is something ferocious in 
the aspect of their bristling faces and thick 
manes, while their comic appearance is en- 
hanced by the bushy tail and slender legs. 
As a matter of fact, though less formidable 
than they appear, these animals are anything 
but sweet-tempered in captivity, and their 
keepers in menageries generally learn to treat 
them with distant respect. 

That antelopes, as, in fact, most wild game, 
rely for protection on scent rather than on 
either eyesight or hearing is generally recog- 
nised, though the theory is accepted by the 
majority of sportsmen that animals living on 
the open plains depend on their sight more 
than those inhabiting jungle, where they would 
be warned of the enemy’s approach by getting 
wind of him or by hearing the crackle of the 
undergrowth. That even creatures in the 
open, however, smell the enemy rather than 
see it is strikingly demonstrated by a very 
interesting episode recently communicated to 
The Field by Mr. Reginald Sharpe. 

Mr. Sharpe was watching a herd of reedbuck, 
about twelve in number, in an open glade near 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 209 


the Lujenda River, in Portuguese Nyasaland, 
when he saw a lion walking towards them 
up-wind without the slightest attempt at con- 
cealment. ‘Though the lion passed within ten 
or twelve yards of one of the bucks, and in 
full view, this animal, like the rest of the herd, 
merely stared at the intruder, but made no 
attempt to get away and showed no sign of 
alarm. Then the lion went on his way along 
a dry watercourse, disappearing from view. 
By now, however, the wind was blowing from 
him to the antelopes, which immediately dashed 
away to safety. From this curious sequel 
Mr. Sharpe reasonably concludes that they did 
not recognise the lion as a dangerous animal 
until they got wind of him. 


BUFFALO 


The Cape buffalo, though rather smaller 
than the Indian ‘‘bison,”’ is, if anything, even 
more dangerous when wounded, so that with 
sportsmen who prefer a little give and take in 
such encounters it is a great favourite. Un- 
fortunately, much of the best buffalo country, 
which lies on the east coast round the mouth 
of the Zambesi, is ‘‘fly” country, and very 
unhealthy besides, so that sportsmen can shoot 
there only in the autumn. On the other hand, 
the drawbacks of the climate act as a more 

O 


210 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


effectual protection of the buffalo than any 
game laws. Often the buffalo gives more than 
he gets, and, as will be related in a later chap- 
ter, more than one sportsman has been killed 
by these animals. An old bull buffalo is black 
and hairless, but the younger males are red. 
The ears are large and hairy, and the horns 
are wide and massive, with a helmet, or boss, 
protecting the forehead between. The largest 
known buffalo measured g ft. without the tail 
and stood over 44 ft. at the shoulder. The 
horns measured 53 in. round the curve and 
nearly 48 in. from tip to tip. But such 
figures are quite exceptional. 

Like other wild oxen, the African buffalo is 
fond of wallowing in water and of plastering 
its body with mud as protection against the 
bite of the tsetse-fly, which is said to derive 
from this source the parasite of the dreaded 
disease called rinderpest, which infects the tame 
herds and ruins the farmers, who, in conse- 
quence, clamour for the extermination of buffalo 
in their district. As one of the tsetse-flies also 
conveys the microbe of sleeping-sickness, an 
even graver plea has been raised for the destruc- 
tion of the buffalo and other big game. 
Opinions on the subject differ considerably, 
even among those qualified to write of it. 
Selous regards the buffalo and tsetse-fly as 
inseparable. Others, on the other hand, have 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 211 


gone so far as to declare that these flies, like 
mosquitoes, are only bloodsuckers by prefer- 
ence, and that, when unable to drink blood, 
they readily feed on vegetable juices. For this 
remarkable assertion there seems to be too 
little evidence, but there is, at any rate, some 
reason for thinking that these water-haunting 
insects may exist on the blood of cormorants, 
crocodiles, and other neighbours that share 
their haunts, without being in any way depen- 
dent on the buffalo. If this can be demon- 
strated, then it is obviously futile to hope that 
the extermination of the buffalo would have 
the desired effect of freeing Africa from the 
tsetse-fly, and, short of such result, the total 
suppression of so fine an animal would be a 
matter for regret. ; 
A story is told of an encounter between a 
Belgian sportsman in the Congo and a solitary 
old male buffalo, which reads less like a hunt- 
ing incident than an episode from the Spanish 
bull-ring. It seems that the Belgian had fired 
at the buffalo and missed it. His native carrier 
chose that particular moment (not a bad one) 
to bolt with the other gun and all the cartridges. 
The bull chose the same moment to charge. 
Most men of ordinary temperament would 
have made for the nearest tree; but the brave 
Belgian, scorning to turn his back on the foe, 
preferred to catch the buffalo by the horns and 


212 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


pull it to the ground, where he seems to have 
held it till his followers ran up and put an end 
to it. As the animal probably weighed five or 
six hundredweight, those may believe the story 
who like. No wonder Cesar calls the Belgians 
‘very brave” ! 


WILD SHEEP AND WART-HOG 


Allusion has already been made to Africa’s 
one wild sheep. Richer in antelopes than the 
rest of the world, it has but this single insig- 
nificant mountain sheep, the aoudad (wrongly 
called ‘‘moufflon”’) of the Atlas Mountains. 
This animal, which is much more like a goat 
than a sheep, has long reddish hair, black in- 
curved horns, measuring about 25 inches over 
the curve, and a regular bib and apron round 
its neck, and it stands a little over 3 feet at the 
shoulder. 

It is one of the sportsman’s disappointments. 
Common in almost every Zoo, from Berlin to 
Bronx, its quest in its native hills is like that of 
a needle in a haystack. I write feelingly on the 
subject, for I have not yet forgotten a hot 
summer thirteen years ago in which I clambered 
nearly 6000 feet above sea-level in its tracks 
and found no more than I might have looked 
for on the beach at Mogador. I am told that 
the high Algerian Tell is a more likely region 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 213 


to seek it in, and hope that this may be the 
case ; but I shall not pursue it again. I should, 
in fact, as soon expect to come across the wild 
elephants that used to walk along the beach 
near Tangier in the time of Hanno the Car- 
thagenian. Yet I could not have been far 
from the haunts of the aoudad, for a native 
guide pointed to a high peak, near the Castle 
of Gundafi, from which, he told me, a severe 
snowstorm had once driven a flock to take 
refuge in an outhouse, where, half-starved and 
frozen, they were presently secured by the 
Kaid’s men and held captive. In fact, few 
wild animals are more easily tamed. 

Of wild pigs, the most remarkable in Africa 
is the wart-hog, which, with its enormous 
flattened head, warty face, and great tusks in 
both jaws, is certainly the ugliest pig on earth. 
Young wart-hogs are less grotesque and more 
graceful than their parents, yet even they are 
not beautiful. The wart-hog stands about 
30 inches at the shoulder, and the tusks would 
measure, in a large specimen, 25 inches. 

The wart-hog is not as savage as it looks, 
lacking the pluck of the wild boar, though not 
hesitating to charge dogs, which stand a poor 
chance against a double array of tusks. Per- 
haps the trick which most disconcerts sports- 
men unused to it is that of bolting out of its 
burrow head over heels, looking as if it were 


214 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


charging backwards. This is very amusing to 
read of, but less satisfactory when the perform- 
ance is witnessed by someone standing over 
the burrow, who is apt to find that these gym- 
nastics bring the wart-hog’s tusks disagreeably 
near his own shins. 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 215 


3. CANADA AND SOUTH 
AMERICA 


The countries in the New World of chief 
interest to Englishmen seeking a career abroad 
are first Canada, and then British Guiana and 
neighbouring countries of South America. To 
the sportsman, on the other hand, it is Canada, 
and more particularly the western section of it 
known as British Columbia, which constitutes 
one of the most wonderful summer playgrounds 
for trout-fishing and winter playgrounds for big- 
game shooting in all the world. There is sport 
also, however, in the eastern provinces. The 
salmon rivers of Newfoundland, New Bruns- 
wick, and Quebec have a reputation unrivalled 
by even those of Scotland or Norway, and the 
caribou of Newfoundland, with moose and 
deer in New Brunswick, also attract numbers 
of sportsmen every autumn. ‘Those who go 
for the winter shooting, and not for the fishing 
in July, must, no doubt, face the rigours of a 
Canadian winter, but they are, at any rate, free 
from the terrible flies which make life all but 
unbearable in the backwoods down to the end 
of July. As the salmon-fishing of the Resti- 
gouche and other famous rivers of the North 
Shore ends by the middle of August, it is im- 
possible to keep clear of the black fly, which, 


216 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


with the midge and mosquito, is an even worse 
pest in Newfoundland. 

British Columbia has, thanks to the in- 
accessible sanctuaries high up in the Rocky 
Mountains, become the last refuge of many of 
the finest North American animals, and there 
the grizzly bear, wapiti, and bighorn still hold 
out against the rifle and other resources of a 
greedy civilisation, their survival being en- 
couraged by the Canadian Government, as 
well as by the provincial game wardens, who 
do all they can to punish poachers and to 
regulate the destruction of the wild game. The 
Canadian National Park at Banff, of which 
something is said in the concluding chapter of 
the book, is a model for all such establish- 
ments, and reflects the greatest credit on 
Canadians in general and on those responsible 
for its control in particular. 


OXEN, SHEEP AND GOATS 


The musk ox is the nearest Canadian relative 
of the bison, or buffalo, and the latter, existing 
as it does only under protection, is more 
appropriately referred to elsewhere. The musk 
ox is a native of the dreary Barren Grounds 
and the desolate shores of the Great Slave 
Lake. This wild ox of the frozen north 
stands 4} feet at the shoulder, and is, like 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 217 


other North American types, a peculiar mixture 
of several families. Though it goes by the 
name of ox, it is almost as closely related to 
the sheep, or perhaps it would be still more 
correct to regard it, strictly, as quite distinct 
from either group. Its long body is covered 
with a thick coat of very long hair, and the 
horns, which average a little over 24 inches, 
are very solid and curve downwards in a way 
unusual in horned animals. It is hunted with 
dogs and then shot while the dogs hold it at 
bay, a very poor sort of sport, if such slaughter 
can be called sport at all. 

The bighorn sheep, though still found 
throughout the Rocky Mountains, as far 
south as Mexico, is at its best in British 
Columbia, and has, in fact, so far as the 
United States are concerned, retired to all but 
inaccessible height in Wyoming and Montana, 
where its powers of climbing have so far averted 
the fate meted out to the buffalo of the plains. 
The ram stands a little over 40 inches at the 
shoulder, and the massive, wide-curved horns 
have been known to exceed 50 inches over 
the curve. They are often broken off at the 
tips, which probably occurs in fighting, though 
certainly not, as was formerly believed, by 
these animals jumping over precipices and 
alighting on their horns! This animal is pro- 
tected in British Columbia by a close time, as 


218 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


well as by licences limiting the bag. Like 
other mountain sheep, it is always on the look 
out for danger, and can, as a rule, be shot 
only from above. 

The Rocky Mountain goat is not a goat at 
all, but rather an antelope. As its horns never 
exceed 12 inches they are a wretched trophy 
compared, for instance, with those of the big- 
horn, and if sportsmen still go after the animal 
at all, it is on account of the well-known diffi- 
culty there is in reaching its haunts, which can 
be arrived at only by the most arduous clamber 
over terrible ground far above the timberline. 
Thus, whereas the bighorn is an exceedingly 
wary and difficult creature to stalk, the ‘‘ goat,” 
once found, offers no further difficulty or in- 
terest, being one of the most foolish wild 
animals in creation. It has a characteristic 
crouching attitude that is very peculiar, and 
quite unlike that of any other animal of its 
kind or size, and, though a wonderful climber, 
it lacks the quickness of movement and agility 
of other mountain game. 


An animal of the United States that must 
stand alone is the pronghorn antelope, the only 
living animal with hollow horns that are shed 
annually as deer shed their antlers. These 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 219 


horns measure about 17 inches. There are 
also peculiarities about the hair on the neck 
and body. If the bighorn is sought for its 
horns, and the ‘‘goat”’ for its inaccessibility, 
the pronghorn is shot for its flesh, which is 
delicious eating, even in summer, when so 
much other game is not worth the cooking. 
Unfortunately’ it is being fast exterminated, 
and the time cannot be far distant when, like 
the bison, it will survive only in protected 
parks; and even in the Yellowstone, where 
it is safe from the sportsman, it is being de- 
voured by wolves. The true home of the 
pronghorn is on the open grassy plains from 
Manitoba southward to Nevada and California, 
and it was even found in the Colorado desert, 
as far from regular supplies of water as the 
eland of the Kalahari. It is a delicate animal, 
and even suffers from severe winter weather. 
It is also a wary creature and must be stalked 
with infinite patience. Even so, in the absence 
of cover on the plains, it must generally be 
shot at long range. 


DEER 


The deer of Canada are of great importance 
to the sportsman, including as they do the 
moose, caribou, wapiti, mule deer, and white- 
tail, or Virginian, deer. The greatest of all 


220 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


living deer is the moose, and a bull moose will 
stand over 6 feet at the shoulder. The record 
antlers measure 554 inches, with 4o points. 
This is the same animal as the European elk, 
which is chiefly shot in Norway and Sweden, 
but which also ranges through Russia to the 
Caucasus. In Canada it is found chiefly in the 
Lower Provinces, i.e. New Brunswick, Quebec, 
and Nova Scotia. Besides being the largest, it 
is also without doubt the ugliest of deer, its 
hairy throat, flat and spreading antlers and 
huge snout giving it an ungainly and _ for- 
bidding appearance, particularly if seen sud- 
denly and unexpectedly at close quarters. In 
colour, the bull goes from black to grey, and 
the antlers are shed in the depth of winter. 
The moose feeds chiefly on young shoots of 
the birch and spruce and, in summer time, on 
lily pads, wallowing in the cool brooks and 
tearing these up wholesale, so intent on gather- 
ing its salad as to be oblivious of approaching 
canoes. As, however, the summer close time 
is strictly enforced, it runs, or should run, no 
risk of being shot with anything worse than a 
camera. I regret to say that it is precisely in 
the summer months, when the game wardens 
are off duty, that the poachers are most 
active, particularly in Madawaska County. 
The authorities do all they can to prevent 
such breach of the law, and not long ago a 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 221 


man was fined £40 for killing a cow and 
a calf. Yet the moose is holding its own in 
some districts, and even increasing in a few, 
in spite of the fact that the number shot law- 
fully by licence-holders in 1910 amounted in 
New Brunswick alone to no fewer than 2052. 

The usual way of shooting moose is by call- 
ing the bull within range of the rifle. This 
can be done only in early autumn, and the 
services of a professional caller, who uses a 
birchbark trumpet for the purpose, must be 
engaged. It is not, in any case, a very high- 
class amusement, and indeed, Colonel S. J. 
Lea, c.B., to whom I am indebted for the follow-" 
ing reminiscence of moose-calling, regards it 
frankly as ‘‘about the most poaching form of 
sport” he ever took part in. He describes it 
thus :-— 


‘*Tt was at the first full moon after Septem- 
ber 15, some years ago, that I found myself 
with two Micmac Indians in a birchbark wig- 
wam near a lake in the backwoods, not far 
from Windsor (N.S.). There were duck on 
the lake, snipe in the marshes, and ruffed 
grouse in the woods, yet not a shot was fired 
at any of these, as one of my guides had come 
across signs of moose. Our camp was pitched 
in the timber on the lake shore, and after 
dinner the guide, whose name was Andrew, 
shaped a conical horn out of birchbark, which 


222 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


he then put to his lips, and, lo! the dull- 
throated roar of a bull moose echoed through 
the still forest, rising and falling in wonderful 
imitation of the creature’s challenge. We 
listened intently, but in vain, for no answer- 
ing roar came in response. Then, after wait- 
ing for a quarter of an hour, the call was 
repeated, but again without result, so we turned 
in and lay down on the fragrant beds piled high 
with tips of hemlock. 

‘‘Next evening Andrew called again, and 
now indeed there came from afar the answering 
call. Then, after another wait, which seemed 
like an hour but could only have been a matter 
of minutes, he called once more, and again the 
answer reached us, this time from much closer 
at hand. The next sound we heard was that 
of the moose thrashing his way with his antlers 
as he came through the undergrowth. Fortu- 
nately the wind was in the right quarter, and 
still he came in our direction, when suddenly, 
perhaps a hundred yards from where we waited, 
we heard him no more, and concluded that he 
must have stopped. And now Andrew gave 
just one low grunt on his trumpet, and I 
slipped back the catch of the rifle, staring 
anxiously into the gloom, where the moonlight 
threw such fantastic shadows that it was easy 
to mistake the boughs of trees for spreading 
antlers. Suddenly, John, my other Indian, 
touched my arm and pointed towards the 
darkness. He, of course, could see the moose, 
but my eyes were not those of a Micmac, and 
it took me a moment longer to make out the 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 223 


great Roman nose and broad antlers of a large 
moose standing head on. In that dim light 
I dared not risk a shot at the animal in that 
position, but in a few minutes it turned and 
gave me the chance of a broadside. I fired, 
and the moose fell to the shot, but, although 
it had a very fine head, and although my 
licence allowed me to shoot four moose, this 
one was the first and last I cared to kill by 
such means!” 


In spite of its great strength and stature, 
the moose is said to leave a district when the 
smaller white-tailed deer comes into it, while 
the caribou, in its turn, retreats before the 
moose. The latter statement bears the stamp 
of probability, but it is not easy to believe 
that an animal of such fighting weight as a 
moose would give way before another much 
smaller member of the same family. A deer 
would not scale more than one-eighth the 
weight of a moose.. Yet we are asked to 
believe the lighter animal capable of driving 
the other before it. Facts, no doubt, are 
facts, and it seems established that the same 
district is not suited to both kinds. Yet 
there may be some other explanation than that 
commonly accepted. Is it, for instance, not 
possible that there are periodical changes in 
the vegetation, or other conditions, of a district 


224 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


which may simultaneously make it suitable to 
the needs of the smaller animal and no longer 
habitable for the larger ? 


The moose is known in Europe as the ‘‘ elk,” 
but the ‘‘elk,” so-called, of America is a very 
different animal, more correctly known as the 
wapiti, a magnificent deer, and second in size 
only to the moose itself. A big stag may 
stand 54 ft. at the shoulder, and the record 
antler is over 60 in., twenty-pointers having 
been known. The wapiti is also found in the 
Caucasus and in Manchuria. It used to be 
common on the east side of America, but has 
long been exterminated there, and now has 
its last refuge in the Rocky Mountains, both 
on the Canadian side and in Colorado and 
Montana. The finest are found in Vancouver 
Island and in the hills on the mainland 
opposite. In other days, when these animals 
were more plentiful and less suspicious of man, 
they could be ridden down and shot with re- 
volvers, much as Mr. Winans occasionally 
rides down his park deer. Nowadays, how- 
ever, the wapiti must be stalked and shot at 
comparatively long range. The herd rests 
during the greater part of the day, but also 
feeds at intervals, and the easiest time to shoot 
the stags is when they are challenging each 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 225 


other to battle royal. The wapiti does not, 
like some other deer, hide away in the gloomy 
depths of the forest, but, where not disturbed, 
prefers the edge of the timber, with open 
clearings to feed in. It grazes and browses, 
eating all manner of grasses, as well as leaves 
and twigs. 

The case of a sportsman (Sir Henry Seton- 
Karr) coming right on a sleeping buffalo has 
been quoted, and he also draws my attention 
not only to the extraordinary watchfulness of 
deer, but also to the curious habit of wapiti 
and others, when in herds, leaving the sentinel 
duty to the females. The cow wapiti is aware 
of danger in an instant. When uncertain of 
its nature or direction, she gives a warning 
bark, but the least scent, even if only picked 
up by a straggler, sends the whole herd away 
at top speed, as if moved by a single impulse, 
and always in the direction of safety. More- 
over, deer are usually able and willing to help 
one another. By way of illustrating this, Sir 
Henry recalls the following experience: ‘‘I was 
once stalking a good stag ona far-away island 
of Norway. I had watched it feed into a 
deep hollow. During the stalk, a smaller 
stag, some distance away, got wind of me. 
Now, instead of immediately bolting, as it 
might reasonably have been expected to, the 
smaller animal did his best to warn the other 

P 


226 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


of his danger by trotting up to him and trying 
to attract his attention. Unfortunately for the 
big stag (but fortunately for myself), the great 
depth of the valley into which his big friend 
had fed thwarted his gallant attempt.” 


The caribou of Canada (also found in some 
of the northern States) is the same animal as 
the European reindeer, though Americans in- 
sist on distinguishing two different kinds, the 
Barren Ground and the Woodland caribou, the 
latter being much larger and more southern 
in its range. A full-grown stag may stand 
4% ft. at the shoulder, and in Newfoundland 
even taller examples have been shot. The 
longest recorded antler is 62 in. As in the 
reindeer, both sexes carry antlers, and both, 
of course, cast them each season. 

Caribou feed on moss and lichens, also on 
cranberries and other wild fruits. The Wood- 
land caribou keeps in the same district as a 
rule, though restless at some seasons of the year; 
but the Barren Ground kind band together in 
immense herds and perform long migrations 
east and west at regular intervals, a habit 
taken advantage of by those who shoot them. 
This animal has, as already mentioned, splay 
feet, which enable it to run at great pace over 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 227 


soft ground or snow, without crashing through 
the surface crust in the manner that so often 
proves the undoing of a moose when pursued 
by hunters. It is, in consequence, when only 
slightly wounded, a difficult animal to follow 


up. 


The two other deer of North America are the 
mule deer, also called black-tailed deer, and 
the Virginian, or white-tailed, deer. The 
mule deer is found only on the western side, 
and the true black-tailed deer is restricted to 
the Pacific Slope. <A full-grown stag stands 
40 in. at the shoulder, and the antlers may 
measure 34 in. They have two V-shaped 
forks, while those of the white-tailed deer are 
distinguished by three upright spikes. The 
record antler of the white-tail is over 27 in. 
and carries fifty-two points. The mule deer 
lives in the ravines of the Rocky Mountains, 
and particularly in the broken ground of the 
foothills. It is found as far south as Cali- 
fornia, where, however, it gives way to the 
true black-tail. The Virginian deer skulks in 
the dense forests of the east and south. I 
have watched it of an evening along the banks 
of Canadian rivers in summer-time, and I once 
saw one through my glasses busy licking an 


228 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


old stranded pork barrel for the sake of the 
salt. 


BEARS 


The handsomest bear in Canada is the polar 
bear of the northern ice, a region which lies 
somewhat north of the latitude of this book. 
The grandest wild beast in the Rocky Moun- 
tains is the grizzly bear, also known as the 
silver-tip grizzly, perhaps the fiercest and 
most terrible of all bears. Like the lion and 
tiger, the grizzly will always make itself scarce 
if not molested, but when wounded or at 
bay it attacks with sudden and tremendous 
savagery. A large grizzly measures over 
8 ft. from snout to tail, and weighs over 
1000 lbs. 

The food of the grizzly bear is very varied, 
including grubs and insects, roots, berries, and 
wild fruits, as well as cattle and carrion, the 
last chiefly such putrid salmon as it can find on 
the river banks. It is a great cattle-killer, and 
in consequence of this habit a price of ten or 
fifteen dollars is put on its head in many States. 
The grizzly is still not uncommon in Wyoming 
and Colorado, but is more often shot in British 
Columbia. Its fur is at its best in May when 
the animal comes out of its cache, or winter 


quarters. 
Dr. T. G. Longstaff sends me particulars of an 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 229 


exciting encounter he had with three grizzlies 
which, to my mind, illustrates their courage, 
ferocity and, above all, extraordinary vitality 
more than any other yarn I ever remember 
hearing. 

Early in the month of September, rtg10, he 
was on the summit of the divide of Purcell 
Range, Selkirk Mountains, British Columbia, 
looking for a pass over which to get his pack- 
train. 

While prospecting, he suddenly saw three 
grizzly bears emerging from the _ tree-line 
immediately beneath him, and the party proved 
to be an old female with a couple of lusty two- 
year-olds. It is said by the Indians that grizz- 
lies do not leave their cubs before two years. 
Their natural history cannot, however, be im- 
plicitly relied on, as they also declare that 
the grizzly does not feed on porcupines, whereas 
Dr. Longstaff subsequently found that the face 
of one of the cubs was absolutely studded with 
the quills of that animal. 

When first seen, the trio of bears was far 
below him and to his left, and they were 
coming uphill at a good pace. 

He at once ran down, with his °355 Mann- 
licher-Schénauer rifle, but took too direct a 
course in his hurry to get at the bears and, 
when only two hundred yards from them, 
found himself on open ground and in full 


230 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


view of them. By this time, too, he was at 
about the same level as they, and detection 
seemed certain. However, he threw himself 
prone and tried to crawl to a position directly 
above them. They had in the meanwhile either 
seen, heard, or winded him, for they bunched 
together and looked straight in his direc- 
tion. 

As there was no cover, he opened fire. The 
first shot broke one of the female’s forelegs, 
and she rolled over and over downhill and lay 
with her legs in the air. Next moment, how- 
ever, she was up again, and rushed uphill to 
the cubs, roaring furiously. Another shot, 
far back in the ribs behind the shoulder, rolled 
her over again, and this time she went down- 
hill quite fifty yards, until her further progress 
was arrested by a little patch of brush. Think- 
ing that she was dead, Dr. Longstaff now 
turned his attention to one of the cubs and 
rolled that over as well. Then, to his amaze- 
ment, the old bear was up once more, racing 
uphill and roaring more terribly than he ever 
heard a tiger in like circumstances. He owns 
to having been rather frightened of this seem- 
ingly immortal bear, but managed to hold his 
fire till she was within a hundred or a hundred 
and fifty yards of where he lay. She seemed a 
little uncertain of his exact whereabouts and 
stood erect, swinging her sound foreleg and in 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 231 


a splendid rage. The next shot finished her, 
and she rolled far downhill, not to rise again. 
The wounded cub was meanwhile making the 
echoes ring, and another shot finished that as 
well. / 

But all was not over, for the other cub now 
came charging uphill, roaring with anger, and 
not even stopped by a shot through one of its 
forelegs, though making an even more terrific 
noise, not of pain (Dr. Longstaff has had too 
varied an experience of big game to make any 
mistake on this point) but of rage, and evidently 
meaning business if it could get at him. 
This time he waited until it was topping a rise 
only just below him, and killed it with a shot 
through the head. 

The episode impressed him with the ferocity 
displayed by the cubs. In the old bear, 
who may have had similar encounters before, it 
was hardly surprising, but in the cubs it was 
certainly unexpected. As he remarks, the bears 
were not in the least afraid of him, but he was 
undeniably afraid of them. An unarmed friend, 
who was standing on a point far above the scene 
of the conflict, saw the bears and mistook them 
at that distance for porcupines. He did not 
see Dr. Longstaff, but heard the shots and 
wondered why he was wasting his ammunition 
on porcupines! Then, though they were so 
far away as to look the size of porcupines, he 


232 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


heard their roaring, and marvelled that the 
sound could carry that distance, but no longer 
felt any surprise at the shooting. 

Even larger than the grizzly is the immense 
brown bear of Alaska and Kadiak Island, with 
shaggy brown fur and large thick claws. Speci- 
mens have been shot in prime condition weigh- 
ing 1600 lbs. This bear feeds on grass and 
also on salmon, either putrid or caught alive. 

The black bear, which occurs throughout 
Canada and as far south as Mexico, is a much 
smaller animal, weighing at its best no more 
than a third of the brown kind. It keeps out 
of the way of human beings as much as 
possible, though I have seen the recent marks 
of its claws where it stood up to sharpen them 
on the wall of a wooden shanty in constant 
occupation by sportsmen. 


WOLVES 


Canada has two wolves, the great grey 
wolf and the smaller coyote of the prairies. 

The so-called black and white wolves are 
merely southern and northern varieties of the 
grey kind, the timber wolf of the backwoods, 
which ranges from the Great Slave Lake, in 
the far north, down to the warmer climate of 
Texas and Florida. 

The grey wolf stands over 30 inches at the 


Seay. elt : ithe 


“THE MEAL THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.” 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 233 


shoulder and is still as savage by nature 
as in the early days when it terrorised the 
settlers in the Far West, though it is no longer 
so dreaded by men armed with modern rifles. 
Nevertheless, it is still a source of continual 
loss to the farmers, and its numbers seem to 
increase in spite of the reward, varying from 
two dollars to ten, paid for its destruction in 
many of the States. Though always cowardly 
when there is a chance of escape, it is a terrible 
adversary when brought to bay, and even the 
staunchest dogs may hesitate to venture within 
reach of its powerful jaws. 

There is in some quarters a regrettable 
tendency to depict the wild beasts as invari- 
ably friendly to man unless he provokes them, 
and to make light of the dangers he runs from 
them under peculiar circumstances (such as 
famine or anxiety for their young), which may 
make them abnormally aggressive. One 
popular naturalist, who lectured in England 
last spring, actually went so far as to say that 
the timber wolf of Canada never attacks man, 
a statement which it is difficult to reconcile 
with the fact of these animals having not only 
attacked but also devoured two mail-runners 
the year before! The wolf in winter rarely 
loses an opportunity, though generally it has 
to watch the meal that might have been. 

The coyote (the word is pronounced as three 


234 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


syllables, with the accent on the second) is a 
smaller animal and even more cowardly. A 
whole pack would be put to flight by one man, 
though these animals are endowed with re- 
markable cunning and even know the safety of 
a man when he is unarmed. And the coyote 
appears to have no fear of passing trains, for 
I remember looking out of the window of a 
Canadian Pacific express coming east across 
the prairie and seeing a coyote creeping up to 
a stork. I doubt whether the wolf ever got 
near its prey in such open country, but what 
most struck me at the time was its absolute 
disregard of the train, which must have passed 
within two hundred yards of it. 


* * * * * 


SOUTH AMERICA 


With the dense forests of Brazil, the Argen- 
tine pampas, the foothills and summits of the 
Andes, the banks of the longest river in the 
world, and many other widely different types 
of country, ranging from the shores of the 
sweltering .Caribbean to the frozen desolation 
of Patagonia and the Falkland Islands, South 
America might be expected to harbour great 
variety of big game. In point of fact, how- 
ever, there are not more than half a dozen 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 235 


indigenous wild animals to attract the sports- 
man, and it is doubtful whether one of these 
would of itself constitute an attraction to any- 
one not visiting the continent with some pur- 
pose other than sport. 


PUMA AND JAGUAR 


These two great cats, respectively known to 
Americans as the ‘‘tiger”’ and ‘‘lion,” are also 
found in North America, but are more charac- 
teristic of the southern continent, where they 
extend to the southern limit of Patagonia. As 
regards the United States, the jaguar is still 
found in southern Texas and the puma as far 
north as Wyoming and Montana, as well as in 
Florida, Colorado, Texas, and California. 

The puma, also called cougar, may measure 
over 5 feet in length, without the tail, which 
is another 3 feet, but this would be an un- 
commonly large specimen. The largest come 
from Colorado, and in that State also pumas 
seem to be more plentiful than elsewhere. 

The puma is hunted with dogs, which tree 
it, when it may be shot, or even knifed, with- 
out much risk to the sportsman, though a 
wounded puma may at times turn nasty and 
do considerable damage before it is despatched. 
It was said at one time that the puma was a 
kind-hearted beast, reluctant to attack a man. 


236 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


This may possibly have been the case before it 
knew the human race as well as it does now. 
Like the jaguar of the pioneer days, it may 
have been, as the Spaniards called it, amzgo 
del Cristzano, but these friendly relations have 
long since changed for the worse. It was also 
said to weep when wounded. If it wept, it 
was probably because it was hurt, but certainly 
not, as old writers used to tell us, from grief at 
man’s unkindness. 

As, however, it is as a rule a gentle creature 
in menageries, it may be that, unless ill-treated, 
it would never dream of attacking man. A 
puma may even make an affectionate pet, and 
I remember a case of one, the property of an 
Oxford undergraduate, getting loose one after- 
noon, when its owner was playing football, and 
costing him £5 by way of compensation, after 
which he reluctantly sent it to the Zoo. It is 
perhaps the best climber of all the big cats 
and a fine swimmer into the bargain. 

The jaguar, alarger and much fiercer animal, 
measuring g feet with the tail, bears strong 
resemblance to the Old World leopards, though 
the spots are arranged in a different pattern and 
the body colour is darker. There are also black 
jaguars, but these are even more shy than the 
commoner variety and are not so often bagged. 

The food of the jaguar consists of capybaras 
(the largest living rodent), tapirs, and other 


a 


j 
{ 
; 
uy 
f 
. 


o 
A 


‘““7~T MANAGES TO JUMP ON THE JAGUAR'S BA 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 237 


animals, and when such food is scarce it 
catches fish in shallow pools. Unlike the 
puma, it sometimes turns man-eater. There 
is an extraordinary and unexplained feud be- 
tween the two, and what is even more remark- 
able than their having any cause of quarrel is 
the fact that the puma, which is the lighter and 
seemingly more gentle animal, should invari- 
ably be not only the aggressor, but also the 
victor. It manages to jump on the jaguar’s back 
and to maul it terribly even where the end is 
not fatal. 


BEARS 


South America has two bears, the spectacled 
kind and another, also found in the Andes, 
which seems to be closely related, but has not 
the ‘‘spectacle”” markings. These, which give 
the animal its name, consist of white curves 
going half way round the eyes, and there are 
also white bands on the side of the face. 


DEER 


There are also at any rate two deer. The 
chief of these is the marsh deer, which lives 
on the soft ground along the banks of the 
great rivers of Brazil, a large animal standing 
about 4 feet at the shoulder. The record 
antlers are 25 inches. The most noticeable 
feature of this deer is the wide, spreading 


238 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


feet, which enable it to get over the marshy 
ground. Its face is also conspicuously long. 
The other deer of the Andes is the little 
guemal, a miniature deer, standing no more than 
38 or 40 inches at the shoulder, with antlers 
of less than 12 inches. It is a good swimmer, 
and the bucks fight desperately. An animal 
of this size is not of much account to sports- 
men who have known better, and is included 
under the head of big game only because the 
standards of shzkar in South America are 
modest. 
HUANACO 


The huanaco, or guanaco, is one of South 
America’s four equivalents of the Old World 
camels, the others being the llama, vicufia, 
and alpaca. The huanaco, which has reddish 
woolly hair, stands about 4 feet at the shoulder. 
It may be stalked and shot, but the most 
exciting method of hunting it is that of the 
gauchos, who ride it down and then fling 
their do/eadores (metal balls on long thongs of 
raw hide), so as to hobble it and bring it to the 
ground. 

THE CONDOR 


In concluding this very brief survey of South 
American game, passing mention should per- 
haps be made of the most conspicuous bird 
of the Andes, the condor, grandest of all vul- 


CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 239 


tures, with wings that, at full stretch, may 
spread 9 feet from tip to tip. 

For all its fierce appearance, the condor is by 
preference a carrion-eater, though it now and 
again attacks a fawn or young huanaco. It 
seems to find its meals entirely by sight, and 
indeed, as Darwin suggested when much 
moved by the sight of these splendid birds 
soaring over the mountains, it probably spies 
the puma killing its victim looking down from 
some tremendous altitude at which it would 
itself be quite invisible to those on earth. 


In view of the prominence given in the fore- 
going pages to so much of the Wilderness 
as lies under the British flag, the omission of 
Australia and New Zealand may seem invidious. 
If, however, we except the deerstalking in the 
latter country (and bear in mind that the deer 
are not indigenous, but imported from Europe), 
we shall find that there is nothing to attract 
the hunter of big game to the antipodes. The 
so-called sport of shooting wallabies and 
kangaroos, in which I took part many years 
ago, is not much more exciting than rabbit 
shooting in the fern brakes at home, though 
hunting these marsupials, of which I had no 
experience, doubtless gives exhilarating gallops 
across breakneck country, even if the canons 


240 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


of Australian packs would hardly have satis- 
fied Beckford or Meynell. To the studious 
naturalist, whom the zest of the chase leaves 
cold, these pouched Australian animals, sur- 
vivals from the earliest ages, may be infinitely 
more attractive than the buffalo or lion, but 
in a book devoted in great measure to tales 
of adventure they must necessarily be ignored, 
since their pursuit entails no more danger than 
that of the sheep on a farm. An old kangaroo 
may be formidable at bay, but no one armed 
with a modern rifle would need to run the risk 
of finding it in that position. 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 


————eo 


III 
THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 


Ir is no reflection on the courage of sportsmen 
to-day to admit that modern conditions make 
for safety. This is not the fault of those who 
go big game hunting. They take things as 
they find them, and it would be sheer madness 
to decline the latest rifle and ammunition de- 
vised by the ingenuity of the makers, and to trust 
to the obsolete weapons on which the hunters 
of other days had to rely. One might as well 
hunt lions with the spear used by the Nandi 
warriors, who roused the admiration of Mr. 
Roosevelt by their prowess against the king 
of beasts, or with the two-handed swords 
of the Agagir described on an earlier page. 
Even so, men of the Stone Age slew the 
shaggy aurochs with bow and arrow. Such 
sport means very close quarters, and it is said 
that one of the old elephant hunters won a 
wager by stalking a tusker up-wind and get- 
ting close enough to paint his initials on the 
animal’s flank before shooting it. Such a 
performance is unnecessarily dramatic, but 
243 


244 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


it nevertheless called for remarkable nerve and 
great knowledge of woodcraft. 

The woodcraft is discounted in these days, 
when, what with long-range rifles and powerful 
telescopes, big game shooting suggests the 
conditions of a naval duel, with the difference 
that, in the majority of cases, the enemy does 
not return your fire. 

Fortunately there is still a considerable 
element of risk. Otherwise, the shooting of 
big game would be less a sport than an exact 
science, and as such would lose much of its 
charm, for, as Lindsay Gordon wrote: 


‘* No game was ever yet worth a rap 
For an Englishman to play, 
Into which no danger, no mishap, 
Could possibly find a way.” 


The Australian poet’s verse may not rank very 
high, but the sentiment is the right one any- 
way. When arm-chair critics of sport quote 
pigeon-shooting they give us a hard nut to 
crack, but so long as men like pig-sticking and 
go on foot after tigers there is not much wrong 
with either sport or sportsmen. That the 
chances of disaster were greater in the days of 
more primitive firearms than those in use to-day 
cannot, of course, be denied. Even forty years 
ago Selous had to get so close for the shot 
that he was knocked down by an elephant and 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 245 


tossed by a buffalo. Accidents of this sort, 
and worse, still befall sportsmen, but with the 
difference that, whereas with the old weapons 
it was, as often as not, experienced sportsmen 
who suffered, disaster is nowadays generally 
the penalty of ignorance or carelessness. Yet 
not the most cautious can invariably reckon 
on immunity, for even modern rifles sometimes 
misfire, or the ejector sticks, and native gun- 
bearers have not lost their habit of bolting 
with the spare rifle at the critical moment. 
In some cases, indeed, the indifferent shoot- 
ing of their employer holds out no induce- 
ment to face the danger of a sudden charge 
in his company, and a convenient tree offers 
the greater chance of safety. Then, again, 
there is always the uncertain quantity of a 
wild animal’s cunning, which at times will 
baffle the most experienced hunter. On the 
whole, however, the cause of accident under 
modern conditions is that the sportsman 
is either using a small-bore rifle, which calls 
for more accurate shooting than he is capable 
of, or goes after a wounded animal in high 
grass without sufficient precaution against 
those arts of ambuscade of which the buffalo 
and some other creatures of the wilderness are 
masters. Other heavy game will charge sud- 
denly and blindly, not necessarily with the 
object of doing mischief, but with none the 


246 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


less disastrous results. Even antelopes at bay 
are capable of inflicting fatal wounds with 
their horns. 

The death-roll is a long one, yet the escapes 
have been more numerous than the disasters 
and certainly more wonderful. One or two of 
these have already been told in these pages, 
and it would be easy to compile an imposing 
list of men, who seem to have been born under 
a lucky star, being snatched from the jaws of 
death at the eleventh hour. Moffatt, the 
missionary, was first nearly killed by a lion 
and then trod on a cobra. Andersson, a 
mighty South African hunter in his day, was 
severely injured and all but killed by a black 
rhinoceros. Another equally famous old-time 
sportsman, William Cotton Oswell, had the 
rare and unenviable distinction of being tossed 
first by a black and then by a white rhino- 
ceros. Mr. F. C. Selous, who, as I write these 
lines, is still hunting in the wilds of Africa, 
was, at a time when even I was a schoolboy, 
nearly crushed by an elephant, which knocked 
him off his horse and knelt over him, vainly 
trying to drive its tusks through his body ; and 
he had another equally narrow escape from a 
Cape buffalo. Livingstone, seized by a lion, 
did not lose consciousness but waited for the 
end, and so numbed were his faculties by the 
horror of the situation that what he chiefly 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 247 


remembered afterwards was a sensation of 
acute curiosity as to what might be going to 
happen next ! 

Reference has been made to the fact of 
modern rifles precluding the necessity of 
coming to close grips with dangerous game. 
As a matter of fact, the unexpected is always 
happening. Big game hunting is full of un- 
rehearsed effects, and thus it is that, in spite of 
all the resources of the gunmakers, lions and 
tigers still get their own back. Yet some of 
the cordite rifles now in use do amazing work at 
long range, and in the right hands (this condi- 
tion is commonly overlooked, but it is of first 
importance in determining the result) they are 
safe to stop even the most desperate charges at 
the last moment. Mr. Roosevelt, using one 
of Holland’s small-bore cordite rifles, killed 
charging buffalo and rhinoceros with a single 
shot ; and, with one bullet from a still smaller 
weapon, the Maharaja of Kooch Behar killed 
a bull bison at eighty yards, an extraordinary 
performance when one remembers the thick- 
ness of the animal’s hide. These modern rifles 
and bullets make the old tales of rhinoceros 
hide being able to withstand shooting at even 
short range look very foolish. 

I have already suggested that the fact of 
their wisely running less risk by using modern 
weapons than their predecessors did with the 


248 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


old guns of their generation does not mean 
that sportsmen are necessarily less courageous 
to-day. They merely play the game as it 
should be played. No one goes deliberately 
into the jungle to be killed, and it would be 
amazing stupidity to behave quixotically 
towards tigers, and to give them a better 
chance of victory by a voluntary handicap of 
inferior firearms. Yet even savages recognise 
the change in the odds when their cheap fire- 
arms are substituted for the bow or spear. The 
Abyssinians have long had a regular tariff by 
which the bravery of their warriors is assessed 
by the wild animals each has killed. Killing a 
rhinoceros was formerly regarded by them as 
equivalent to killing twenty men in battle, but 
to-day it counts as equal only to five, and a 
leopard, which then did duty for five, now 
represents only one. 

As has been shown in an earlier chapter, 
some methods of shooting big game are more 
dangerous than others, and the most familiar 
gradation of safety is illustrated in tiger shoot- 
ing on foot, from a machan, or from the 
howdah. At the same time, wild beasts vary 
so much in strength and cunning that not 
always the safest methods can be relied on to 
avert danger. Lions occasionally charge right 
through the seemingly secure thorn zareebas 
behind which sportsmen shelter themselves, 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 249 


and tigers have been known to reach up on 
their hind legs and pull both sportsman and 
shtkari out of a machan that was thought to be 
well beyond their reach. Very hardy sports- 
men, who go after tigers on foot, sometimes 
sneer at the machan as a cotton-wool fashion 
of bagging these dangerous brutes without the 
least element of risk, but a case that happened 
some years ago will show that their contempt 
is not always deserved. | 

This tragedy was brought to my notice by 
Colonel Murray, p.s.o. ‘*The wounded 
tiger was tracked into a dense piece of jungle, 
and the shooters were placed in trees at one 
edge, while the beaters were moving round the 
other side. The tiger evidently saw where one 
of the shooters was placed, and, before the 
beat began, sprang up and dragged down first 
the native gunbearer and then the officer him- 
self, who was so badly clawed before assistance 
could be rendered that he died the same night.” 
Mr. Clement Le Breton, k.c., also gave me 
some particulars of a similar case of blood- 
poisoning from the bite of a tiger that caused 
the death of his brother, sometime Postmaster- 
General of Rajputana. Here was no question 
of inexperience, as he had encountered probably 
fifty tigers in the course of his Indian career. 
That is just what so often happens. Many 
accidents, it is true, are caused by ignorance of 


250 THE} WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


how the game should be played, and it is a 
game with very strict rules, any breach of which 
may cost the player his life. Often, on the 
other hand, an experienced big game hunter 
suffers like the veriest beginner. And so it 
was with Mr. Le Breton. He hit a tiger 
twice before the brute charged, and when he 
turned to take his other gun from the native 
shtkari, the man had bolted out of reach. 
Without a moment’s hesitation, Mr. Le Breton 
made for the nearest tree, and was just hauling 
himself out of reach when the tiger clawed his 
leg. It made another attempt to reach him, 
and now it managed to scratch his foot. By 
this time he was too high up for it, and it gave 
up. Unfortunately, blood - poisoning set in, 
and he died soon after. The wounds in- 
flicted by such unclean feeders as lions and 
tigers, which eat putrid carrion, are very 
poisonous, and unless antiseptic treatment is 
administered at once, they often prove fatal. 
It is the lodging of putrid food in the grooved 
claws that so often renders even a slight 
scratch ultimately fatal. Major Sandbach, k.A., 
died from the same cause after a terrible ex- 
perience with a lioness in Somaliland. The 
brute had previously bitten a native, who died 
the same night. In this encounter also, the 
Major’s shzkarz had fled with the second gun, 
and the lioness was on him at once. He thrust 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 251 


the butt of his rifle into her jaws, but she 
crunched it like matchwood. Then she seized 
his right hand and worried it so terribly that, 
by way of making her let go, he gave her his 
left. The lioness was then shot, and his men 
got him alive back to Aden, but, though he 
underwent an operation without further delay, 
the poison had got into his system and he died 
within a month. 

The lion is probably the most dangerous 
animal in Africa. At any rate, it has been 
responsible for more accidents, fatal or other- 
wise, to sportsmen than any other, and if 
South Africa has of late years played a minor 
part in the history of these tragedies, it is only 
because, during the past quarter of a century, 
Englishmen have shot ten lions in British East 
Africa and Somaliland to one bagged in the 
country south of the Zambesi. The lion, 
unless a confirmed man-eater, usually kills his 
victim and leaves him to the jackals. Man- 
eaters, however, have never been so common 
as among tigers in India, though Mr. Teale 
was killed and eaten by a lion in Mashonaland 
about twenty years ago, and the terrible doings 
of the Tsavo lions, which devoured both coolies 
and white men, have already been referred to. 
The list of Europeans killed by lions makes 
gloomy reading and is too long to quote at 
length. Man-eaters commonly attack without 


252 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


provocation, and a transport rider named Horn 
was attacked by one in North-West Rhodesia. 
The Indian lions of Kathiawar have claimed 
few victims because they are rarely molested, 
but Major Carnegy was killed by one of them 
during a shoot organised for the Governor of 
Bombay. 

There have been some extraordinary escapes 
from lions. In some of these cases the lion 
gave its victim one bite and then dropped him. 
Captain A. Saunders had a stroke of luck in 
this way, for a lion, after seizing him and 
carrying him some distance, suddenly let him 
drop, for no accountable reason, and then 
walked away, leaving him only a little damaged 
by the encounter. Lieutenant Molony, R.a., 
had an equally wonderful escape from a lion, 
though subsequently he fell fighting in Uganda. 
He had wounded a lion, which charged him 
and knocked him down. He lay on the ground, 
face downwards, and, shielding his head with 
his arms as best he could, waiting for the end ; 
but the lion just gave him one bite in the back 
and moved off. It is certainly remarkable that 
Selous, who must, in the course of his long 
African experience, which began when most 
of my generation were at school, and few 
of the next were born, have shot scores of 
lions, was never damaged by one, though, as 
already related, he was all but knocked out of 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 253 


the race by both elephant and buffalo. Lord 
Delamere was badly mauled by a lion in 
Somaliland, but escaped with his life. A 
sadder case was that of one of the Mashonaland 
Pioneers, in the time of Cecil Rhodes. A lion 
got into his tent one night and bit off one of 
his hands. The lion was driven off, but the 
poor fellow died of his wounds. <A yet more 
recent victim of a lion was Mr. Grey, brother 
of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In 1908 
a Canadian trooper in the Transvaal Police, 
named Eagle, a man of very powerful physique, 
was killed by a lioness, though not before he 
had kicked her to the point of death. - 

Of all the stories of escape from lions after 
being seized, none, I think, equals that of 
Mr. Wolhuter, a Transvaal game ranger, on 
August 26th, 1903. As told by himself in the 
Journal of the Soctety for the Preservation 
of the Wild Fauna of the Empire, the story 
was as follows: It seems that he was riding 
alone, about an hour after sunset, with a big 
rough-haired dog. Suddenly the dog ran 
forwards, barking, and Mr. Wolhuter saw 
some indistinct forms moving in the bush 
alongside the road, which he took to be reed- 
buck, or at any rate some sort of antelope. 
The last animal he thought of was a lion, as, 
curiously enough, he had been on the look out 
for lions for some time and always without 


254 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


success. Well, had he only known it, he was 
going to have his fill of lions that evening. 
No sooner, in fact, had he whistled to the dog 
to come back than he saw a lion on his right, 
preparing to spring on him. There was no 
time to put up his rifle, but he instinctively 
snatched his horse round and thereby saved it, 
for the lion, missing its mark, merely clawed 
it as he passed. The horse bounded forward 
and unseated its rider, galloping away, with 
the lion in pursuit and the dog after the lion. 
Meanwhile Mr. Wolhuter fell almost into the 
jaws of a second lion. It seemed, indeed, to 
catch him almost before he reached the ground, 
seizing him by his right shoulder and trotting 
with him a couple of hundred yards to the foot 
of a high tree. He had none of the pleasant 
oblivion to pain recalled by Livingstone when 
in a similar predicament, but suffered agonies 
and thought that his end had surely come. 
Suddenly an inspiration came to him in his 
dark hour. He remembered the great sheath- 
knife that he carried at his right hip. It 
might, for all he knew, have fallen out in the 
scuffle, as it was always loose. Moreover, the 
lion had his right arm in its teeth. Yet, with 
great presence of mind, he managed to reach 
behind him with his left hand, and to his relief 
it grasped the handle of the knife. He then 
coolly stabbed the lion twice in the heart and 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 255 


once in the throat, and the brute, mortally 
wounded and bleeding to death, dropped its 
prey and staggered away. Shouting at it, to 
complete its confusion, Mr. Wolhuter backed 
towards the tree, up which he clambered as 
quickly as he could in his condition. He was 
only just in time, for, though the wounded lion 
had no more fight left in it, the other, having 
failed to come up with the horse, now returned, 
probably thinking to share the meal. It was, 
however, closely followed by the dog, and that 
gallant brute worried it so effectually that it 
too retired. Mr. Wolhuter, now thoroughly 
exhausted, was eventually rescued from the 
tree, with great difficulty, by his native servants, 
and, though he suffered badly from shock and 
blood-poisoning, he ultimately recovered from 
an adventure that must be unique in the annals 
of African sport. In his opinion, these lions 
were not man-eaters, but were probably after 
the horse. As that had gone off, with one lion 
in pursuit, the other probably took what it 
could get and turned its attention to the rider. 
As a post-mortem examination of the dead lion 
showed that it must have been starving, this 
was in all probability the correct view of the 
case. 

The strength and cunning of the African 
elephant make it less dangerous only than the 
lion, and it has had many victims, including 


256 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Prince Rospoli in Somaliland and Colonel 
Armstrong in Uganda, while it was in Uganda 
also that Mr. York was killed by an elephant 
that he had hit with both barrels. He madea 
dash for the nearest tree, but the enraged 
monster was too quick for him. Mr. F. L. 
James was killed by an elephant on the West 
Coast of Africa. He had wounded the animal 
and was following it up in very high grass, 
when it suddenly charged and ran its tusk right 
through his chest, so that he died within the 
hour. Mr. Ingram was killed under similar 
circumstances, and it is a sad, but interesting 
fact, that a well-known sportsman, Mr. Lort 
Phillips, was present on both occasions. An 
Englishman named Firmin was killed by an 
elephant in Matabeleland; another named Attrill 
by a female elephant in the Addo Bush, and the 
elephant’s victims also include the Swedish 
traveller, Wahlberg, and, most recently of all, 
Mr. Gerald Longden. Other sportsmen have 
been more fortunate, though escape from such 
encounters is rare. The extraordinary luck of 
Selous has already been noticed, and the late 
Mr. Arthur Neumann had a still closer shave, 
for a cow elephant knocked him over on one 
occasion before he could put up his rifle, and 
then she knelt over him and drove her tusk 
through his arm and ribs, breaking several 
of the latter. That he was not killed on 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 257 


the spot is little less than miraculous. It is 
well known that elephants often seek to avenge 
their dead. Major F. G. Talbot tells me that, 
having on one occasion shot an elephant, he 
was serenaded all that night by several others 
which had assembled for the purpose outside 
the dak bungalow in which he was sleeping. 
A somewhat similar story was published in Zhe 
Field. It seems that a bull elephant had 
been shot and cut up, and its remains were 
taken on a cart to a neighbouring rest-house. 
Its mate followed up the trail, broke the cart to 
pieces, and threw the remains in the road in 
front of the gate. 

The tiger has also claimed many victims, yet 
in less number than the lion and the elephant. 
Of natives it kills more than are ever counted, but 
natives run peculiar risks with which Europeans 
need not reckon. Among Europeans killed by 
tigers mention may be made of Lieutenant 
Grant, Mr. Lewis Gordon, and Captain Sexton, 
and I heard of another case during the present 
year. The list of those who have been terribly 
mauled by these animals is a much longer one, 
the best-known case being that of the late 
Colonel Sir E. Bradford. In these encounters, 
it must be admitted, the sportsman’s reckless 
disregard of danger is often the tiger’s best 
ally. I have to thank Major Murray for the 


following story of how, as a case in point, an 
R 


258 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


officer was badly wounded through his own 
want of caution in circumstances which should 
have dictated extreme prudence. Major Murray 
was having the jungle beaten one evening, 
towards some machans in which he and his 
friends were to be posted, and earlier in the 
day he walked a little way into the jungle in 
order to see that his instructions had been 
carefully carried out, as the least mistake in 
constructing sachans is certain to spoil sport. 
Suddenly a tiger appeared. He raised his rifle 
and fired, wounding the animal, which at once 
retreated into a neighbouring ravine. Being 
familiar with the ways of wounded tigers, he 
had the good sense not to follow it alone, but 
went back to camp and told a brother officer 
what had happened. Unfortunately, he was 
persuaded against his better judgment by the 
latter, who insisted on their returning at once 
to finish off the tiger; so back they went and 
found the animal lying under a bush in the 
ravine. Major Murray now fired again, and 
again hit it, whereupon it charged. The other 
now got in two shots, both of them hitting the 
tiger in the neck, but failing to stop it, as a 
result of which he was badly mauled before his 
friend could shoot it dead. This wanton risk 
of life and limb is a pity. No one can help 
admiring the courage which makes little of even 
so formidable an adversary as a wounded tiger, 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 259 


but those who play the terrible game of the 
jungle should play to win. After all, a single 
human life is worth a great many tigers. 

Only last year a European, a mere lad, had 
a wonderful escape from a tigerin Burma. As 
the story is told in the Pzoneer Mazl, he was 
out near Hmawbi after deer, with two com- 
panions, and the party met a number of natives, 
armed with spears, who besought them to shoot 
a tiger that had been caught in a trap. The 
hero of the adventure set out with some of the 
native spearmen to do what they asked, but it 
soon became apparent that the tiger had got 
loose. Quite suddenly it stood before them, 
snarling and growling, with portions of the 
broken trap hanging by the chain to its neck. 
The animal’s right foreleg was also broken, and 
if it had not been handicapped in this manner 
it would assuredly have been the young 
sportsman’s last encounter with tigers. The 
spearman who was showing the way fainted 
without further delay, and the other natives 
made their way into the higher branches of 
neighbouring trees with equal promptness. The 
boy and the tiger were left face to face. The 
boy fired, the tiger fell; but it was on its 
feet again and upon him like a flash. It got 
his left leg in its teeth and crushed it terribly, 
and it also clawed his right knee and thigh. 
The boy fell on the guide, who at this moment 


260 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


fortunately (though not for himself) recovered 
consciousness and staggered away. The tiger, 
reluctant to see another course of his dinner 
escape, dropped the boy and hurried after the 
native. It was found dead next day, and the 
boy recovered slowly but surely from his 
wounds. 

The leopard is another very dangerous beast. 
The natives dread it everywhere, for it is less 
cowardly than the tiger, more indifferent to the 
presence of man, and also able to climb trees 
and attack from above, which is a serious matter 
in the jungle. Many Englishmen have been 
mauled by leopards in both Africa and India. 
Captain Stigand, N.A.R., was one of the victims 
in Africa, and Major Barras (15th Bombay 
Infantry) had a bad encounter of the kind in 
the Deccan. Mr. Van der Byl, one of those 
sportsmen who have been at close grips with 
the leopard and escaped, gave me some par- 
ticulars of his adventure, which occurred in 
Rhodesia. He owes his life, in fact, to a lucky 
shot of his, which knocked out the leopard’s 
two long canine teeth at the moment of its 
charge. He had wounded it with his Mann- 
licher, and he followed it up, both of them 
running their hardest. When the animal had 
gone about three hundred yards, it dis- 
appeared from sight, and, as he afterwards 
concluded, must have sat down and waited 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 261 


for him, for as soon as he came within thirty 
yards of it, the brute charged straight at him. 
In this desperate pass, and without time to take 
deliberate aim, Mr. Van der By] fired full in its 
face, with the lucky result alluded to above. 
Nextmoment the leopard seized him and bit him 
badly, when one of his native servants ran up 
and pluckily killed it withanaxe. Had the long 
teeth not been knocked out of either jaw, the 
leopard would have bitten fatally. From this 
and other experiences, Mr. Van der Byl has 
- arrived at the opinion that a wounded leopard 
is even more likely to charge than most beasts. 

Bears are not the most dangerous brutes in 
the wilderness, but a wounded ‘‘ sloth” - bear 
sometimes comes rolling downhill on its enemy 
at an extraordinary pace and inflicts dreadful 
face-wounds with its teeth and claws. Many 
of the jungle-men in parts of India bear elo- 
quent testimony to its savagery. General 
Kinloch told me a story of one of these 
bears killing an officer in the R.A. and a 
forest officer, and General Gatacre mentioned 
that Mr. Neave, of the Indian Civil Service, 
was so badly mauled by one many years ago 
that he too died of his wounds. The grizzly 
bear is the fiercest and most dreaded of all the 
tribe, which is not surprising when we remem- 
ber that it can still charge and kill a man even 
after it has been shot through the heart. Mr. 


262 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Caspar Whitney once told me an extraordinary 
story which proves this. Some thirty years 
ago, in the State of New Mexico, a prospector, 
named Boyd, was so badly bitten by a grizzly 
bear that he died a fortnight after the accident. 
The two of them were out for meat, and the 
bear charged suddenly out of covert. Boyd 
shot it, as was afterwards discovered, clean 
through the heart, but it rushed at him and 
did terrible execution before Mr. Whitney 
could put a bullet through its brain. Female 
bears, with cubs to defend, are even more 
dangerous than the wounded animals of either 
sex, and I remember being told in the Cau- 
casus that, only a year or two before, a she- 
bear, who had been robbed of her cubs, had 
killed two Russians, members of a scientific 
expedition exploring that range. 

The buffalo and bison are also a source of 
great danger, chiefly because of the cunning 
with which, when wounded, they lie in am- 
bush, circle round their pursuer, unseen by 
him in the high grass, and suddenly, without 
warning, dash out on him from a wholly un- 
expected quarter. The Cape buffalo, indeed, 
seems always to have regarded the vengeance 
of the wild as its special mission. It was one 
of these animals that tossed Selous and killed 
his horse in 1874, and, some years later, Mr. 
Thomson all but suffered the same fate in 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 263 


Masailand. Von Koppenfels, the explorer, 
was another of the African buffalo’s victims, 
and Mr. de Fries was badly gored by one, but 
recovered. Two very sad cases of sportsmen 
being killed by buffalo occurred in 1876 and 
1889. In the first of these, Mr. Robert Rus- 
sell was killed while on a hunting expedition 
with his friend, Mr. Guy Dawnay, while in the 
second, Mr. Dawnay himself fell a victim to 
a wounded bull of the same species. The 
circumstances of these tragedies were not quite 
the same. It seems that Russell wounded his 
buffalo in.open ground, with not even a tree 
handy in case of a sudden charge. The charge 
came and was, unfortunately, fatal, for by the 
time Dawnay could get to the spot there lay 
his friend and the buffalo side by side and both 
dead. ‘Thirteen years later, unwarned by his 
friend’s fate, poor Dawnay also paid the 
supreme penalty of shzkar. Having followed 
up a wounded buffalo in thick bush, under the 
shadow of Kilimanjaro, he was gored by the 
crafty brute, which had kept quite still in the 
high grass, never moving till he had passed 
its hiding-place, when it suddenly rushed out 
at him. Curiously enough, he had often been 
heard to express the conviction, after a very 
wide experience of big game in both Africa 
and India, that of all wild animals the African 
buffalo was the most dangerous! It seems a 


2644 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


cruel irony of fate that one imbued with such 
respect for these animals should in the end be 
killed by one! According to Selous, the Cape 
buffalo used, in days before they had been 
much hunted, to be unsuspicious, peaceful 
animals, and there were untrodden wilds in 
which, when the white man first shot game in 
them, he found it difficult to induce the buffalo 
to move out of his path, just as, not long 
ago, I heard of a fox in Devonshire which the 
huntsman had to flick three times with his 
whip before it would move. All this friendly 
feeling is gone in the Africa of to-day. War 
has been declared these many years. On the 
whole, it goes against the wild creatures, but 
now and again the persecuted buffalo gets its 
own back. 

It is not only the great carnivora or heavy 
wild oxen that are dangerous. Even wounded 
antelopes must be approached with caution, if 
only out of regard for the terrible weapons 
with which they are equipped. A sable ante- 
lope has been seen to kill a native, transfixing 
him with one sweeping blow of its curved 
horns. A waterbuck once killed a Canadian 
of immense strength. He had wounded the 
animal and, as it lay still on the ground, he 
imprudently stooped to lift it from the ground. 
With one supreme effort, the dying animal 
jerked back its head and drove one of its horns 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 265 


into his leg, whereupon death ensued from 
blood-poisoning. Lord. Egmont tells me of a 
lively encounter which he recently had with a 
male bushbuck, from the worst consequences 
of which he was saved by the courage of a 
friend’s dog which happened to be with him at 
the time. Here is the account in his own 
words : 


‘“While out one day with a party of friends 
driving bushbuck on the south coast of Natal, 
I was posted on a ridge of land between two 
large patches of bush. I had foolishly loaded 
my breechloader with two different cartridges. 
In the right barrel I had a ‘looper’ cartridge, 
which only holds about eight very large shot, 
and in the left a cartridge with No. 6 shot, 
which are suitable for Awztz, or small buck. 
An zinkonka, or male bushbuck, broke out of 
the covert above me, and then swung round to 
my right at the moment when I fired my right 
barrel, with the result that only a couple of the 
big shot hit him. This, without inflicting any 
serious damage, enraged the animal, which at 
once charged me. Forgetting that there were 
only small shot in the other barrel, I fired 
straight at his face as he came at me, and 
when he was still perhaps twenty-five yards 
away. This turned him, for he dashed down 
into the dense bush behind me. Disliking to 
let a wounded buck get away, I followed, 
keeping to the narrow path that led through the 
middle of the scrub. Before I got to the buck, 


266 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


it became evident that a big dog belonging to 
a friend of mine—a big white lurcher, a cross 
between a bull terrier and a Kaffir dog—had 
the animal at bay, so I slipped in two more 
looper cartridges and then came suddenly on 
the two of them. The moment the buck 
caught sight of me, it charged clean over the 
dog and came right at me. The bush was too 
thick to allow of my dodging the charge by 
stepping aside, and there was time to get my 
gun up, so I just threw myself backwards into 
the thick prickly bushes. Next moment I re- 
ceived a tremendous blow in the lower part of 
my waistcoat and thought I was pierced and 
done for. The buck then turned to charge 
again, but the plucky lurcher dashed in and 
seized it by the nose. This gave me my 
chance, and I shot the animal. I then looked 
to see the extent of my own damage, and was 
surprised to find that it amounted to nothing 
at all. The reason why I got off so easily was 
that the animal was doubly handicapped, since 
not only had one of its horns been broken off 
short for some time, but my charge of small 
shot must also have all but blinded it.” 


More dangerous than even the floods of 
African rivers are the crocodiles that hide 
effectually in their muddy water. Two very 
remarkable cases of escape from crocodiles are 
recorded in Zhe Field. In one of these, a 
Mr. Barnes was crossing a muddy stream in 
Rhodesia in pursuit of a wounded elephant 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 267 


when a crocodile seized him by the leg. What 
he did, without a moment’s hesitation, was to 
put the muzzle of his gun under water and 
fire. The crocodile let go and made no further 
attempt to molest him. The other case, which 
happened to a native, was even more extra- 
ordinary. The native had been seized by a 
crocodile in the Niger. First it took him by 
the legs. Then it let go, and at last it 
took hold of him again. The boy, with 
great presence of mind, stuck his thumbs 
hard into its eyes, which had the desired 
effect of making it loose its hold once and for 
all. He was terribly bitten about the head 
and arms, but he managed to recover. 


The vengeance of the wild is a risk that 
sportsmen take without grumbling. In fact, 
it lends flavour to big game hunting, and it 
will last until there are no more wild creatures 
left to shoot. It is a fair risk, and it would 
be a fairer if the vengeance always fell on the 
real culprit. Unfortunately, this is not the 
case. A reckless tourist blazes away at all 
manner of animals, wounding an elephant or 
a hippopotamus without taking the trouble to 
follow it up. The enraged animal then wreaks 
its vengeance on the next human being who 
passes that way. For this reason, as also on 


268 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


humane grounds, it behoves every sportsman 
to let no wounded animal go free. There 
may, and there will, be occasional cases in 
which this is impracticable, but they should 
be admitted as seldom as possible. The ‘in- 
terruption of nightfall when following up 
wounded game is frequently made an excuse, 
but in such cases the sportsman may have 
been to blame in firing late in the day at an 
animal he was not sure of killing. One thing 
is certain, and that is that between ourselves 
and at any rate the great carnivora it is war 
to the knife. The fear of man is still on every 
beast so long as he leaves it unmolested, but 
a wounded lion loses all fear in its one thought 
of revenge. 


HE WIL 


OF T 


TH 


IV 
THE TAMING OF THE WILD 


First came the gardener, Adam; then Cain, 
tiller of the ground; last, Abel, ‘‘keeper of 
sheep.”’ Some people believe, for reasons best 
known to themselves, that man bent the wild 
animals to his will before he grew vegetables ; 
but why should we suppose that the possession 
of domestic animals came before agriculture ? 
The Swiss Lake Dwellings, to which we owe 
so much of our knowledge of human life before 
the period we call History, contain, even in 
the Stone Age, relics of both corn and cattle, 
without any indication of which came first. 
Personally, I would rather trust the evidence 
of Genesis.. Not until Adam had been put in 
the garden ‘‘to dress it and to keep it,” not 
before Cain had helped his father in such 
simple gardening, perhaps improving on his 
methods, as young people will, do we come to 
the shepherd Abel. Not until after the Deluge 
do we find Abraham on trek with his horses 
and his camels. The ‘‘happy family” in the 
Ark makes very superior folk smile. How, 
271 


272 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


they ask, could the lion and the lamb exist 
in the same boat? The answer is perfectly 
obvious. Terror of the rising waters made a 
common bond. The same thing, on a smaller 
scale, has been seen again and again in flood- 
time, when the most unlikely fellow-travellers 
are found crowded on floating wreckage, the 
strong too terrified to molest the weak, and 
the weak forgetting even their natural enemics 
in their all-absorbing fear of drowning. As 
Tennyson says : 
‘* Lion and stoat have isled together, fool, 
In time of flood.” 


Fire, like flood, draws the most ill-assorted 
fugitives together, and when a forest fire sweeps 
across the open, it drives before it an amazing 
stampede, lions and fawns fleeing side by side, 
eager only to outstrip the death that roars and 
blazes at their heels. 

First, then, we may assume, came agrti- 
culture in its crudest form. Adam dug, no 
doubt, with his hands. Cain may have used 
flints. Then would have come the inspiration 
to attract and tame some of the less formidable 
wild animals of Western Asia, making them do 
useful work. The males were killed for food. 
The ewe and cow gave milk. The skins of 
both were used for clothing. We cannot know 
which was the first animal to come under man’s 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 273 


dominion. One view, more widely accepted 
than it deserves, is that he tamed horses first, 
and then used them in the capture of others 
less swift to escape. But, in the first place, so 
fleet a creature as the wild horse must have 
been the most difficult to catch. In the second, 
it would not have been of the least use to its 
owner in chasing such mountain types as sheep 
and goats, the ownership of which is clearly 
of great antiquity. These had to be followed 
on foot. A case of a flock of wild African 
mountain sheep being caught and tamed during 
severe winter weather has been told in these 
pages, and the lambs and ewes would doubt- 
less have been secured most easily. An animal 
like the sheep would, in fact, have made a 
good subject for man’s earliest experiments in 
taming the wild. Here, again, common sense 
and the Book of Genesis agree. They often do. 

To some extent, no doubt, the taming of 
wild animals would be increasingly difficult as 
time went on, for they would lose that trust and 
confidence which seems to have inspired them 
even in the early days of navigation. It is said 
that the first canaries ever seen by sailors 
perched fearlessly on the men’s shoulders, and 
the penguins of the antarctic ice are still 
stupidly unafraid. Even the jaguar was known 
of old as amzgo del Cristiano. The jaguar did 
not know the Spaniard then, It does now. 

S 


274 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


The word ‘‘taming”’ means something over 
and above merely accustoming wild animals to 
the presence of man and teaching them to take 
food and to allow themselves to be handled. 
This is done in every Zoo, and is, after all, no 
more than any schoolboy does with his ‘‘ pets.” 
All manner of singular creatures are made pets 
of, and one of the most curious I ever heard 
of was an immense South African rat, which 
Major Herapath saw at the front in the Boer 
War. He tells me that when he first saw the 
animal it was sitting on the saddle of one of the 
drivers of a gun team. The battery was 
inspanned, in readiness to move at a moment’s 
notice, but the drivers were dismounted. The 
rat's story was rather pathetic. It had belonged 
to a Boer who was taken prisoner at Paardeberg, 
and it had always lived on its owner’s saddle. 
The Boer had been much attached to his pet 
rat and, not knowing where he might be sent, 
or what would become of it, he had given it to 
the driver, begging him to be kind to it. 
Fortunately the Boer rat took a great fancy to 
the enemy, and whenever the gun was on the 
move, even when galloping, it would nestle 
securely on the inside of the man’s leg just above 
the knee. When, however, he dismounted, the 
rat stayed on the saddle. Yet it was by no 
means friendly to anyone but its new owner, 
and when Major Herapath tried to make 


ee 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 275 


friends, it showed its teeth. Whenarat shows 
its teeth, a little distance lends enchantment to 
the view. 

Nor is even the employment of an animal to 
do useful work quite all that is meant by 
domestication. It is only so much of it as is 
comprised in taming. The Indian elephant is 
the faithful servant of man, carrying him in 
the jungle, either on errands of peace or in 
operations against tigers, stacking his timber in 
the teak forests of Burma and elsewhere, and 
even feeding the saws in the Chinese timber 
yards at Rangoon with logs, using both tusks 
and trunk and very rarely getting foul of the 
machinery. Yet the Indian elephant has not 
appreciably changed in appearance during all 
its centuries of domestication. It is outwardly 
the same to-day as its wild kinsmen in the 
jungle. If, on the other hand, we compare the 
woolly sheep of our English pastures with the 
straight-haired sheep of the Himalaya, we shall 
find their coats as unlike as the heads of a 
negro and a Norwegian. It is really difficult 
to believe that a South Down ewe and an Ovis 
Ammon are members of the same family. 
Humped Indian cattle, English bulldogs, mas- 
sive shire horses and Yorkshire pigs are quite 
different in appearance from any wild animal 
in existence, and their transformation has been 
the work of untold centuries. Such change is 


276 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


ostensibly for the better, though it would be 
hard to point to the improvement of the donkey 
in a coster’s cart on the splendid-looking wild 
ass of Somaliland, and, unless viewed from the 
standpoint of the farmer, our tame cattle and 
pigs are poor specimens to look at compared 
with their magnificent cousins of the wilderness. 

Man’s prerogative of dominion over the fish 
of the sea could be exercised in one way only. 
First he caught and then he atethem. But his 
sway ‘‘over all the earth” bore a higher inter- 
pretation than the savage right to kill. No 
doubt he was a hunter before becoming a 
pastoralist, but the arts of the pastoralist are 
nobler than those of the chase. The negro was 
never a tamer of the wild. He has, of course, 
owned herds and flocks, and he has even been 
known to train an occasional hunting-dog to 
assist him in killing other animals. As a 
rule, the pastoral life is associated with a gentle 
disposition, and shepherds are rarely warriors. 
Yet there are exceptions to this rule, and the 
Somali herdsman is not only a born fighter, but 
also a merciless robber of all weaker than him- 
self, so that his peaceful occupation has not 
moulded his character. The lack of physical 
strength in many of the Asiatic races most 
noted for their domesticated animals is a strong 
argument in favour of will-power as the chief 
factor in the taming of the wild. Many a 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 277 


mahout, from whose uplifted finger huge 
elephants cringe in terror, is an abject little 
figure of a man, and the undersized Todas 
quell their fierce buffaloes with a glance, though 
Europeans dare not go near them for fear of 
being trampled. I have seen little children in 
Syria, along the valley of the Jordan, tyran- 
nising over their bad-tempered buffaloes and 
making no greater account of them than if they 
were sheep; and those who know the Eskimos 
of the Arctic Circle tell us that the savage 
sledge-dogs allow themselves to be cuffed and 
kicked by the fearless children in a manner 
that they would never tolerate from a European 
hand. 

The negro, then, is a failure in this respect. 
He can destroy, but he cannot subdue. The 
Arab, on the other hand, who has invaded 
Africa from his home in the East, is a master 
of the art. With him he brought the camel. 
Had he been established in the land sooner, he 
might even have saved the African elephant, 
though it is doubtful whether anything short 
of the arts of the Hindu would have availed. 
The destruction of the wild elephant of Africa 
and the employment of the tame elephant of 
India show the difference not indeed between 
the elephants, but between the negro and 
Hindu. The black groom may coerce, but 
it takes the mahout to cajole. It is perhaps 


278 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


too late to domesticate the African elephant on 
a considerable scale. It seems to be a matter 
of argument whether the war elephants with 
which Hannibal crossed the Alps were African 
or Indian, but in all probability they were the 
latter. Yet experiments have proved that, with 
proper treatment, the African elephant is as 
patient and docile as the Indian. The famous 
“Jumbo ” was quite as amenable to his keeper's 
influence as the Indian elephants in the same 
building, and in the French Congo baby 
African elephants have been taught to draw 
carts. Unfortunately the greed for ivory sealed 
the fate of the grandest animal on earth. It is 
useless to blame individual hunters. English, 
Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian and negro, they 
have all wallowed in the blood of elephants 
for centuries, and the native alone had the 
excuse of needing the meat to save himself 
from starving. 

The case of the African elephant is worth a 
little further consideration. I do not say that 
the giant unites in its tremendous frame all the 
virtues of the horse, ass, mule, and the rest. 
It is slow in its movements, and it is very 
expensive to feed. Yet, as we have daily 
proof in India, it can do work that is beyond 
any other animal. If it costs five times as 
much as a horse for its day’s keep, it carries 
ten times the load. Nor, it must be re- 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 279 


membered, is the cost of keeping an elephant in 
a menagerie any clue to what it would cost 
in the jungle. The elephant can carry half a 
ton for hours at a stretch, and over short 
distances it can carry three times that burden. 
Its speed may not be great, but its endurance 
is remarkable. There are swampy tracts in 
the heart of Africa, which we are gradually 
reclaiming, and here, in spite of its tremendous 
weight, its caution and surefootedness would 
give it the advantage over many draught 
animals of lighter build. Not only, like the 
horse and camel, can it pull or carry, but, 
unlike any other animal, it can also push logs 
or other weights with its powerful forehead, 
being able, it is said (though on the authority 
of what test I have never been able to discover) 
to push far more than it can pull. Its trunk, 
moreover, is an organ at once so strong and 
so delicate as is unequalled elsewhere in the 
animal world. Writers of other days used to 
describe the elephant as exclusively a dweller 
in the plains. In the absence of further 
evidence, it did not occur to them to associate 
so huge a beast with the power of climbing the 
sides of mountains, but we now know that 
elephants ascend to a considerable height up the 
slopes of Kenia and Kilimanjaro, and this sug- 
gests that the animal may be used for mountain 
transport where mules are not available for 


280 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


the work. The elephant feeds on the march, 
tearing up juicy tussocks or pulling down 
leafy boughs without stopping. To all its 
virtues in life may be added a value after 
death far in excess of that of any other animal. 
The dreadful waste of this noble creature, 
hitherto regarded only as so many tons of meat 
and pounds of ivory, has certainly been a crime 
past forgiveness. Is it also past atonement ? 
If anything is to be done, it must be done 
at once. In the first place, the trade in 
elephant ivory must be put an end to by in- 
ternational agreement. It is clearly useless 
to prohibit the slaughter of elephants in the 
territories of one Power if their tusks are 
valuable merchandise at the ports of another. 
Ivory is not a necessary of life. Even were 
it a foodstuff of the masses, the elephant 
should no longer be slain to provide it. It is, 
on the contrary, only a luxury for the making 
of billiard balls or toilet articles, for which 
bonzoline and ebony serve respectively quite 
as well. We shall never again see elephants 
roaming, as once they did, south of the Zam- 
besi, but the remnant might at any rate be 
saved for all time in Government Reserves 
farther north, and experiments might even be - 
inaugurated in taming the younger members 
of the herds with a view to their employment 
in clearing the African forest, and thus, even 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 281 


at the last, redeeming those responsible for 
the partition of Africa from the reproach of 
having completed the evil wrought by their 
predecessors. For these experiments mahouts 
should be imported from India at Government 
expense, and a eddah outfit, with tame 
elephants and their attendants, might also be 
introduced so as to capture the wild elephants 
and subject them to the influences found irre- 
sistible in the East. It remains, of course, 
to be seen whether the blandishments of the 
Indian keddah elephant would have the same 
effect on individuals of the other species, but 
the experiment is, at any rate, worth trying, 
and if the State would not spend the necessary 
money, some South African millionaire might, 
without feeling the cost, place a sufficient sum 
at the disposal of one of our colonial governors 
and thus do something for Africa really worthy 
of his reputation, 


The camel, which we know from India west- 
ward as far as the Atlantic coast, making itself 
at home from Port Said to Mogador, might 
strike the careless observer as the typical 
domestic animal of Africa, but both the camel 
and the ‘‘ native’ who tamed it came originally 
from Asia, and both are well suited to the 
Sahara, where patience, long-suffering, and 
philosophic indifference to the blows of fortune 


282 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


are called for more frequently than in happier 
lands. Azsmet is the Arab’s creed, and 
it is written on the face of the camel. I 
imagine that there are happy camels, but I 
never saw one show any pleasure on its face. 
Those who have camped for weeks with the 
camel and its driver are struck by the strong 
resemblance between the two. Was it St. 
Augustine who said that we are all God’s 
beasts? At any rate, the camel answers the 
description in more senses than one. When 
travelling with a camel caravan, I have en- 
deavoured to show the brutes kindness and 
consideration. I have insisted on the men 
loading and driving them more gently than 
is their wont. I have seen that they got their 
evening barley before going to my tent to dine. 
I have even attempted overtures, such as 
patting their shaggy necks. It would be quite 
as satisfactory, for all the response they make 
to such caresses, to pat the tyre of a motor 
bicycle, and much less risky. Admirers of the 
animal say that its dirty habits and treacherous 
nature in Morocco are the fault of its Arab 
taskmasters. Yet, though the Moor often treats 
his camel brutally, I understand from Major 
Baden-Powell that even the well-cared-for 
regimental camel, of which he had consider- 
able experience in the Egyptian campaign, 
is no better. In parts of Asia, it is true, a 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 283 


closer bond of sympathy unites the camel and 
its owner, and, according to Kipling, the 
Bikaneer men have bred ‘‘thieves’ camels,” 
which, in place of gurgling and groaning 
whenever they rise or kneel, are perfectly silent 
lest they should betray the whereabouts of 
their rascally masters. A silent camel would 
be a boon at times when the restless bubbling 
and muttering of the brutes keep one awake 
half the night. As they exist in Morocco, the 
camel and camelman are muchthe same. They 
belong to the sand and stones of the plains 
and are useless in the lighter air of the 
mountains, where they must be replaced by 
the muleteer and his mule. The great virtue 
of the camel is its extraordinary endurance, 
and that, in the climatic conditions in which 
it is required, covers a multitude of sins. It 
may lack the fire and dash of the barb, or the 
gentle manner of the ass, or the comfortable 
ambling gait of the mule. Yet the ‘‘ship of 
the desert” is sun-proof and indomitable. 
True, unlike other ships, it comes to grief in 
water, or even on wet ground, collapsing irre- 
coverably ; but in dry weather it is unequalled, 
carrying its four hundredweight day and night, 
swinging along in the heat of the noonday sun 
or in the bitter cold of the desert night. 
That it is out of action in rainy weather 
matters little in the Sahara, where rain is rare, 


284 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


and we do not want camels for use in Lapland 
any more than we need reindeer in Kordofan. 
If it does not live exactly on air, the humblest 
and most meagre of fare serves its purpose. 
It smacks its pendulous lips over such dread- 
ful vegetables as prickly pear, oleander, arte- 
misia or tamarisk. It revels in mimosa or 
salsola. Thanks to the wonderful storage 
apparatus in its stomach, it can go without 
water for days together. Its working life lasts 
twenty-five years. When its hour is near, its 
Moslem owner finishes it off with his knife, 
else he would not be permitted by Koranic 
law to eat its flesh, for animals that die a 
natural death are not accounted clean food by 
followers of the Prophet. In life the female 
camel provides her master with milk for him- 
self and his young horses, camel’s milk being 
considered excellent nourishment for swift 
steeds of noble race. In death, her skin 
makes splendid covering for the tents of the 
desert men, and her flesh is eaten with relish. 
The flesh of a young camel is not to be 
despised. Of that of one that has worked by 
the sweat of its brow for twenty-five years 
let others speak who know, but the Arab is 
little more of an epicure than his camel and 
doubtless appreciates its flavour. 

All the camel’s greatness is in its body. Its 
mind, when not a blank, seems hideous. We 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 285 


may, of course, misjudge the creature, even 
after long spells in its company, but even its 
apparent cheerfulness in adversity seems to be 
nothing more than stupid indifference, while 
its treachery and ingratitude soon make them- 
selves felt. 

Most camels are yellow in colour, of a hue 
that is eminently protective in the desert. Now 
and again, away from the cities, the traveller 
may see a white one, but it is never for 
sale. In early summer these animals lose the 
heavier coat of hair, which shielded them — 
against the intense cold of winter nights, for 
Nature looks well after the deer and camels, 
and changes their winter and summer clothing 
for them. 

The saddle camel, or méharz, is of superior 
breed to the jemeel, or commoner baggage 
animal. This tall, leggy animal, with the deep 
chest, powerful shoulders, and muscular hind- 
quarters, is the dromedary. Many people 
seem to think that the word dromedary has 
reference to the number of humps on the crea- 
ture’s back, but this is not the case. It is the 
shaggy Bactrian camel of Central Asia that 
carries two humps, and the Arabian, which is 
the familiar kind from the plains of India to 
the cornfields of Morocco, that has only one. 

The camel has been used in warfare from the 
earliest times, and we read of it in the engage- 


286 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


ment in which David routed the Amalekites. 
The first general of modern times to see its 
possibilities was Napoleon, whose flying camel 
columns were imitated by Napier in Sind, 
where he had at one time no fewer than twenty- 
five thousand. The Gordon Highlanders rode 
on camels in the Indian Mutiny, each trooper 
with a native driver, and the Scots Greys had 
their camel corps in 1885, each beast carrying 
two men and their kit. The French, who, with 
their Algerian experience, have had unrivalled 
opportunities of testing the camel in war, use it 
on their punitive expeditions in combination 
with horses. The camels are led with the 
horses until the moment when the enemy is 
sighted. Then the men are transferred to the 
camels and are thus able to charge on fresh 
mounts. In these African wars the hardy 
character of the camel makes it simply invalu- 
able. It is no fair-weather friend. It goes day 
and night. It eats and drinks if there are food 
and water; if there are not, it goes without. Its 
feet are impervious to the heat of the burning 
sand. If the hot wind blows up from the 
desert, the camel simply shuts its eyes and 
nostrils, just as we might close the windows of 
a house to keep out the dust. The swiftest 
camel will easily cover a hundred miles in ten 
or eleven hours, though it should not be ex- 
pected, when travelling at that pace, to carry 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 287 


more than 250 lbs., including its rider. The 
slower baggage camel, on the other hand, 
going on level ground, takes four hundred- 
weight, equally divided in two panniers. I 
understand from one who served with the 
Suakin Field Force that the camels imported 
from India were much more satisfactory 
throughout the campaign than those from 
Egypt. This is remarkable, as the assumption 
would naturally be that the animal born in the 
country would be better fitted to do the work 
required of it in that climate. But the result 
proved otherwise. 7 

Camels have been introduced into various 
countries, even as far as Australia. They were 
long employed on farms in both Italy and 
Spain, but not with lasting success. The 
natives of both countries are slow to adopt new 
ideas, and the mule and ass were probably 
sufficient for their needs. America also had its 
fit of enthusiasm for the camel, though, like 
some other popular crazes in that country, it 
died a natural death. 

The llama, the equivalent of the camel in 
South America, is another surefooted beast of 
burden, priceless for transport in the Andes, 
but not apparently, so far as its moral character 
goes, showing any marked improvement on its 
Asiatic cousin. 

The only horned animals, at any rate south 


288 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


of the frozen lands, familiar in harness are 
oxen. The yak, in Tibet, and the buffalo, in 
Turkey, are the common draught animals in 
everyday use, and the Tibetans even ride their 
yaks, though I never saw a Turk astride a 
water buffalo, save only little children at play. 
The yak has lately been introduced into Mani- 
toba, the Duke of Bedford having presented 
six of these animals to the Canadian Govern- 
ment as the nucleus of an interesting experi- 
ment. If the animal should justify the expec- 
tations of Mr. Thomson Seton and defy alike 
frostbite and the mosquito— Canada’s chief 
menace to her visitors—future generations of 
Canadians will be confronted with the curious 
spectacle of these fine Asiatic oxen grazing on 
the prairies once trampled by the buffalo. 
These oxen are slow but surefooted, docile, 
and amenable to discipline. The yak has the 
great advantage of being available for moun- 
tain transport, whereas the majority of oxen are 
used only for ploughing or road traction in the 
plains: Their strength is enormous. The yak, 
it is true, carries only three hundredweight in 
the hills, but some of the loads drawn, willingly 
or otherwise, by buffaloes over the stony roads 
in Turkey must be tremendous. On the whole, 
the Turks treat their animals far better than 
the majority of European nations, particularly 
those that dwell along the shores of the Medi- 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 289 


terranean. This they appear to do more from 
a common-sense view that it pays than from 
any motive of sentiment. I never saw a Turk, 
old or young, pet or fondle his horse as you 
may see even rough drovers do in England, 
but, on the other hand, there is none of the 
spiteful cruelty only too common on the dusty 
roads of Italy or the Peninsula. Winter 
visitors to the beautiful island of Madeira will 
not need any reminder of the brutal manner in 
which the natives goad the little bullocks that 
drag sledges laden with fat tourists up the steep 
roads to the hotels and guznéas in the hills. It 
is a disgusting sight, and the R.S.P.C.A. 
might, with great advantage to the bullocks, 
establish a branch at Funchal. If it could 
enlist the co-operation of the authorities, under 
pressure from the English tourists to whom the 
island owes so much, it would soon have its 
hands full of prosecutions. 

One other horned animal must be mentioned 
as a most important beast of burden in the 
boreal climates suited to its constitution, and 
that is the reindeer, the one and only member 
of its family in which the hind also carries 
antlers. It is an improvement even on the 
- camel, for, in addition to providing its owner 
with labour during its life and, after its death, 
with meat and a serviceable hide, it yields oil 
with which to light the darkness of the 

T 


290 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


northern winter. Like the camel, also, it can 
make a sufficient meal of Nature’s leavings, 
and any old patch of moss or lichen not too 
deep under the snow to be dug out with its 
hoofs is uncovered and eaten. 

Two reindeer, harnessed in a sledge, can 
pull six or seven hundredweight over hard 
snow. Such is their work in winter. In the 
summer-time they are either ridden or used as 
pack animals, each of them carrying at least 
a hundredweight and a half. Thousands of 
Siberian reindeer have been imported by the 
American Government into the wilds of Alaska, 
and their timely introduction has_ probably 
been the means of saving the Eskimos from 
the extinction to which they seemed doomed 
when whaling expeditions had scoured their 
coasts andexhausted their supply of natural food. 

To the frozen north likewise belong the 
sledge-dogs, particularly valuable in those 
regions because, being meat-eaters, they can 
be fed on the blubber and waste of whale or 
walrus, or on fish, whereby the forage problem 
is solved without the trouble of transport. 
Both the large Eskimo dog, which is very 
close kinsman to the wolf, and the smaller and 
handsomer Samoyede have been tamed in this 
way, and their domestication must be of ancient 
date, for old bone carvings show them drawing 
sledges. Arctic explorers have used them at 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 291 


the Poles. McClintock, Nansen, and Peary 
all owed much to their sledge-dogs and readily 
admit their indebtedness to these enduring 
animals. Six of them, harnessed to a sledge, 
will go seven miles an hour pulling six or 
seven hundredweight, and an average perform- 
ance of forty miles a day has been maintained 
over a distance of two thousand miles. The 
‘*huskies”’ of the Indians are extraordinary 
workers, but are also vicious brutes and very 
unfriendly towards strangers. Yet the children 
cuff and kick them without fear, and the dogs 
never turn on them. In summer-time, when 
there is no work for them to do, the packs are 
turned adrift and run wild, but at the begin- 
ning of winter, driven probably by the increas- 
ing difficulty of foraging for themselves, they 
return to their old quarters and take up their 
burden again. They do not seem to need 
regular rations, and can pick fishbones clean 
in a manner more suggestive of wolves than 
tame dogs. Their worst disease is a form of 
madness, which makes them useless for work, 
but does not infect anyone they bite in the 
same way as the rabies of southern breeds. 
Draught dogs are also used by the street 
hawkers in the cities of Belgium, and to a 
lesser extent in France. In Antwerp and 
Ghent they are a familiar sight pulling milk 
carts or vegetable barrows. They are not so 


292 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


inhumanely treated as some tourists hastily 
assume, and their lot has been much improved 
by the prizes given by the authorities for the 
best-kept dog every year. The harness is 
admirable, distributing the strain and allowing 
the animal to lie down when tired. Though 
few of the present generation seem to remem- 
ber the fact, draught dogs were common in 
the streets of London until prohibited by law. 
It is an open question whether their abolition 
was called for by popular sentiment against 
real or imaginary cruelty, or whether it resulted 
from the more prosaic complaints of the noise 
made by their barking at Covent Garden 
Market at daybreak, which must certainly 
have been very annoying to residents in that 
quarter of the town. Whatever the cause, 
they were declared henceforth illegal. Per- 
haps this sweeping edict was a _ mistake. 
Sweeping edicts often are. With proper 
supervision of their treatment, and with due 
attention on the part of the vigilant officials 
of the R.S.P.C.A., many of our big breeds 
would be all the better for a little hard work. 
As it is, our mastiffs and great Danes are 
merely ornamental, degenerating rapidly for 
want of exercise to brace their muscles and 
keep them in condition. 

Some animals have been reduced to a state 
that is best described as half tame. Such are 


* THE TAMING OF THE WILD 293 


the eagles and falcons used by sportsmen in 
hawking all manner of game, from gazelles to 
rooks, and the so-called ‘‘cheetah”’ of Indian 
rajahs, which has more than once been referred 
to in these pages. How tame the captive 
eagles of Kirghiz falconers may be at home 
I have no knowledge, but if one may judge of 
their manners by those of ‘‘tame” hawks in 
mews, as I remember them at the King’s 
House, Lyndhurst, they are hardly pets for 
the stranger to toy with as he might with love- 
birds. The latest suggested use for eagles, 
which sounds almost too fantastic to be taken 
seriously, is for attack on aeroplanesand dirigible 
balloons in time of war. It is said that French 
officers at Nice have actually been engaged in 
training the birds, by means of baits, to swoop 
on anything in the shape of a balloon or 
flying-machine. It might not be impossible 
to train them in this way, but what would 
the occupants of air-craft be doing to allow 
the eagles to come near enough to do any 
damage? The cheetah, or hunting-leopard, is 
also harmless only to his own keeper. It is 
taken when quite young, chiefly by setting 
nooses round the foot of a tree on which these 
animals are known to sharpen their claws, a 
habit they share with all cats large and small. 
The process of taming is a slow and difficult 
business, and its success depends in great 


294 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


measure on the continuous chatter of native 
women and children, who are able to raise 
such a clamour as would daze an elephant. 
Bound and blindfold, the captive is given very 
little food, and is subjected day after day to 
this ordeal, so that, as might be expected, it 
soon loses all its spirit, and the village children 
are able to make a playmate of it without run- 
ning any risk. Nevertheless, Europeans may 
be advised to treat the grown-up animal with 
respect, for any misplaced confidence will be 
found wrong policy. A most interesting ex- 
periment was tried in the Paris Zoo not long 
ago with one of these hunting-leopards. The 
animal was suddenly brought close to the bars 
of a paddock containing two wildebeests. The 
leopard immediately crouched in the attitude 
of a cat about to spring, and the antelopes, on 
their side, plainly showed their dread of the 
intruder. The strangeness of this conduct lies 
in the fact that neither animal could previously 
have ever seen the other, for the wildebeests 
had been born in captivity in a park, and the 
cheetah had been caught very young in a 
region of Africa where there are no longer 
any wildebeests. It had, moreover, also been 
reared in captivity, and had never been trained 
for the chase. Yet instinct at once asserted 
itself irresistibly on either side. The antelopes 
recognised their hereditary enemy, and the 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 205 


leopard realised that these were creatures that 
it was expected to kill. 

The cormorant and. otter, which eastern 
fishermen train as allies, are also no more than 
half tame, and the same may be said of the 
more homely case of the silkworm. The 
worm, it is true, spins its silk, and the moth 
lays her eggs, for the owner’s benefit, but we 
cannot regard these unresponsive insects as 
recognising those who look after them to the 
same extent as bees are known to do. 

It is a remarkable fact that when animals 
that have been tamed revert to the wild 
state, they seem to run wilder than _ ever. 
Indeed, these ‘‘feral’’ animals, as they are 
called, are generally better dead than alive, 
for the mischief of which they are capable 
is almost incredible. Our own house cats 
escape to the woods and live by poaching, and 
these are the worst enemies the keeper has to 
reckon with, giving him far more trouble than 
such natural poachers as the fox and stoat. A 
solitary elephant, escaped from captivity, is 
sometimes more destructive than even the 
ordinary ‘‘rogue.” There are many cases of so- 
called ‘‘ wild” cattle, camels and horses, which 
are in reality only descended from tame stock. 
Thus Australia has no native animal of its own 
larger than the kangaroo, and the ancestors 
of the ‘‘ wild cattle” in the extreme north of 


296 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Queensland were left there by the Dutch when 
they abandoned their settlement at Port Dar- 
win, to which they had brought over the 
buffaloes from Sumatra. The same may be 
said of the wild camels of Andalusia, which 
originated in some that were imported by a 
Spanish grandee to work on his estate. 

Other creatures have been tamed on a small 
scale. The eland, grandest of all antelopes, 
has been driven in harness, and its strength 
must certainly be prodigious. That handsome 
striped horse the zebra has also been sub- 
dued, though neither of these achievements 
was the work of the negro, who contented 
himself with catching them in pitfalls, or 
shooting them with poisoned arrows, and then 
eating them. We may, of course, from our 
superior pinnacle of civilisation, condemn the 
negro, but we should in fairness remember 
that at times he must kill game or starve. 
And what sort of example, after all, do we 
set this primitive son of Africa? Simply doing 
for amusement what he does to keep alive. 
The zebra is not everyone’s choice of a do- 
mestic animal, though it has been seen in 
harness even in this country. Now and then 
wild zebras show every inclination to fraternise 
with farm animals, and there was a case of one 
attaching itself to the cattle on a farm in Zulu- 
land, making itself quite at home, and refusing 


THE TAMING OF THE WILD 297 


to be driven away by the dogs. As a rule, 
however, the zebra is an uncertain quantity 
when it comes to handling it. I have seen 
six or eight men spending the best part of a 
quarter of an hour in throwing one and getting 
on its bit and bridle, and it was a lively sight. 
On one occasion a ‘‘tame”’ zebra was known 
to go up to a man who lay asleep on the 
ground and bite his ear off. The man had 
done the zebra no harm, and we may assume 
that the zebra bore no malice. It was just 
playfulness. 

It would be unreasonable, no doubt, to argue 
from this particular case the unfitness of the 
whole race of zebras, but the fact is beyond 
dispute that they are vicious as they are hand- 
some, evil-minded brutes, better suited, in fact, 
to the circus ring than to the serious business 
of everyday work. Nothing but a shortage of 
horses could warrant increased attention to the 
taming of the zebra, and the coming of the 
motor-car has in great measure superseded 
them both. 

Such are the animals which man has tamed 
to do his work. We do not, in these days of 
mechanical traction, want any new animals in 
harness. Even horses are falling into disuse, 
and will soon be seen only in the hunting-field, 
since the enjoyment of riding for its own sake 
has gone out of fashion, and our vans and 


298 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


omnibuses are driven by petrol. If we feel 
any regret that more of the wild animals 
should not have been tamed, it is on purely 
sentimental grounds, for we know that this is 
their one chance of survival. The revelations 
of the cave remains clearly show that it was 
not until man had learnt to tame the horse for 
work that he left off killing it for food. It 
was when he discovered that horses could be 
ridden that he was content to eat other animals 
that could not. 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD 


V 
THE PASSING OF THE WILD 


PEOPLE grieve over the breaking of some valued 
piece of old china, which probably took but a 
few hours to make, and which may possibly be 
replaced. What, then, shall be said of the 
extinction of a species which took untold 
thousands of years in the moulding, and which 
can never more be seen alive? A few grains 
of powder, and a few more of lead, undo in 
sixty seconds the work of sixty centuries. 

The wild creatures are going, slowly but 
surely. The Powers concerned in the parti- 
tion of Africa have, a little late in the day, 
made game laws to protect the little that is 
left of the hordes of oxen, antelope, and ele- 
phants that once abounded in that continent ; 
and the American Government, moved, after 
long indifference, by the eloquence of Mr. 
Hornaday and other enthusiasts, has likewise 
established sanctuaries for two or three threat- 
ened species of the New World. In a country 
like the United States, where beef is cheap 
and wild game no longer forms the daily food 

301 


302 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


of even the protected Indians, themselves 
likely to share the fate of the buffalo they slew 
so mercilessly on the rolling prairie, the forma- 
tion of these Game Reserves offers little or no 
difficulty beyond the expense of their main- 
tenance and policing. In Africa, on the con- 
trary, where there are still many millions of 
negroes who have to live by their bow and 
spear, constant trouble arises, and the authori- 
ties are confronted with protests and objections, 
chiefly on the ground that these Reserves 
encourage two very different enemies of man, 
the lion and the tsetse-fly. There is, it is true, 
much difference of opinion regarding the actual 
connection between this terrible insect and the 
preservation of buffalo and other big game, 
but, until at any rate the truth has been estab- 
lished beyond all doubt by scientific inquiry, 
public opinion will be hard to convince. The 
dread of the tsetse-fly arises from the fact that 
it is Nature’s appointed carrier not only of 
rinderpest, a cattle disease ruinous to the 
farmers, but also of sleeping-sickness, that 
mysterious and hitherto incurable malady 
which does not even spare white men, and 
which inflicts terrible damage on the natives. 
As regards the lion, however, there can be no 
two opinions. The king of beasts is invested 
with a good deal of romance in story-books, 
and, viewed from a disinterested standpoint, 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD = 303 


he is a magnificent creature ; but in the eyes 
of the farmer he is just as much vermin as the 
fox in England. While, therefore, persons 
who do not live in Africa, and who can see 
the lion when they want to in its cage at the 
Zoo, would probably hail the extinction of the 
lion with dismay, the farmers and stockowners 
on the spot would feel nothing but satisfaction 
if the last lion in Africa were shot, trapped, or 
poisoned. The natives, it is true, suffer much 
less from the lion than those of India do from 
the tiger, if only because in many parts the 
lion inhabits open country, in which sudden 
ambush is more difficult than in the jungle. 
It is even said that some of the Bushmen live, 
like jackals, on scraps from the lion’s table, 
and these would be the only mourners at the 
death of the last. A century ago lions must 
have swarmed over South Africa, abounding 
in parts of the country where none have been 
seen these twenty years. The Boers, when 
trekking out of Cape Colony in the eighteen- 
thirties, slew no fewer than 380, and large 
numbers were also slain by the Moselekatse 
and other fighting tribes. Lions can never 
again become a menace to human life in the 
more settled parts of South Africa, though, 
even on the beaten track, an accident is oc- 
casionally reported. Yet the dominion of the 
lion was very different in the days of the 


304 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


pioneers. They found the lions hunting in 
bands and killing immense numbers of ante- 
lopes, and whole tribes of natives were even 
compelled to live in trees so as to be safe from 
them. The extent to which they preyed on 
antelopes was such that every sportsman who 
bagged half a dozen lions must have been the 
means of saving the lives of hundreds of 
antelopes. 

Dangerous beasts, like warlike tribes, cannot 
be exterminated in a day, and even reduction 
of their numbers is full of difficulty. The 
most familiar case of legislating for the suppres- 
sion of noxious beasts and reptiles is that of 
the Indian Government, which pays out 
immense sums every year for the destruction 
of wild beasts and venomous snakes, a warfare 
of civilised man against his natural enemies 
which Sir Alfred Lyall regards as the per- 
petuation of a blood feud. There is sudden 
death in the path of the native who goes bare- 
foot, and every year twenty thousand victims 
are slain by the cobra and krait, while tigers 
and leopards account for two or three thousand 
more. This mortality continues, even though 
Government pays out two hundred thousand 
rupees a year in rewards. It is inconceivable 
that the maintenance of Game Reserves should 
seriously encourage the survival of lions, for 
there can never be any question of prohibiting 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD — 305 


the shooting of these animals, even within the 
Reserve itself, so that it may, in a sense, 
be regarded as a bait to bring them within 
reach. 

Man is a hunting animal. Where he kills 
wild animals for sport only, he can be made to 
pay dearly for his amusement; his bag can be 
limited to one or two heads of each animal; 
and he can be altogether prevented from shoot- 
ing certain creatures that are becoming rare. 
Where, on the other hand, he kills wild 
animals to save himself from starvation, it is 
not only difficult, but would be actually in- 
human, to put any difficulty in his way. The 
distinction is well shown in the view which 
Provincial Governments in Canada take of the 
porcupine. This familiar animal has many 
virtues to commend it. It is slow in its move- 
ments and easily caught. For all its formid- 
able armour of quills, it is quickly killed by a 
blow on its sensitive nose. Roasted over a 
slow fire of leaves and birch-bark, it makes a 
very excellent dish. To a hungry man who 
has lost his way in the Canadian forest there 
can be few more welcome finds, and the 
authorities are so alive to the value of the 
‘Lost Man’s Friend,” as it is appropriately 
called, that a heavy fine is imposed on any- 
one who kills a porcupine unless he is in need 
of meat. 

U 


306 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


The causes that have led to the total dis- 
appearance of some wild animals, and to the 
serious dwindling in the numbers of others, 
within the last hundred years are many and 
various. The sportsman is only one of them, 
and in the opinion of those best qualified to 
judge he is not even the greatest offender. So 
far as Africa goes—and it is with Africa that 
we are chiefly concerned in this glimpse at the 
passing of the wild—ivory-hunters, native and 
European, doomed the African elephant and 
incidentally shot antelopes wholesale to feed 
their camp. I have a very interesting letter on 
this subject from Major Stevenson-Hamilton, 
Warden of the Transvaal Game Reserve, in 
which he says: 


‘* Personally, I consider that purely sporting 
expeditions make but little permanent differ- 
ence to the status of the big game. British 
East Africa, at present overrun by tourist- 
sportsmen, many of whom are but little con- 
versant with the ethics of this kind of hunting, 
perhaps forms an exception. We cannot over- 
look the dreadful tales of destruction of the most 
wanton kind, wrought by individuals who, from 
their position, might have been expected to 
know better, but, after all, these are isolated 
and may be regarded as exceptional. 

‘* Two factors, I think, conduce to extermina- 
tion. The rest may be taken as merely sub- 
sidiary. 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD — 307 


‘‘ These are: 


‘*(1) Trade in ivory, skins, and horns (and, 
in South Africa, in the dried meat known 
as ‘biltong’), mainly supplied by white 
hunters, professional or semi-profes- 
sional, though natives armed with guns 
are also constantly employed in some 
parts. The extermination of big game 
in the high veldt really dates from the 
days when biltong, horns, and hides 
acquired a value in the coast towns. The 
Boer farmers would have taken another 
half-century to extirpate the wild animals 
if they had killed game only for their 
own consumption. Professional hunting 
is still in vogue on a large scale in 
Portuguese territory, as well as in 
German East Africa and the Belgian 
possessions, and there is a section of 
the settlers in British East Africa and 
British Nyasaland that desires to see it 
introduced. 


**(2) Natives equipped with firearms. Nearly 
all the game in sections of Mozambique 
and the Zambesi Co.’s territory has 
been exterminated during the last twenty 
years without European assistance. 
Many of the natives are excellent shots. 
What their firearms lack in quality 
they make up in number, and the hunters 
live on the spot. Save when engaged 
by European traders, this hunting is 


308 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


mainly for domestic purposes. It is 
only since they have acquired firearms 
that the natives have been able to effect 
any appreciable diminution in the num- 
bers of the game, which were not sen- 
sibly reduced by the huge drives and 
annual hunts formerly in vogue. 


‘As regards firearms generally, far 
more damage is done by wounding than 
by killing outright, especially on the 
part of Europeans. It is my belief 
that, more particularly since the intro- 
duction of small-bore rifles, three or 
four animals at the least escape to die for 
each one that is bagged. When the 
man behind the gun is incompetent, the 
proportion of wounded is naturally 
greater. Rinderpest is, not without 
reason, blamed for much of the diminu- 
tion of big game, but a species left to 
itself would recover from an epidemic in 
less time than that covered by a human 
generation, provided sufficient breeding 
stock survived.” 


Major Stevenson-Hamilton’s allusion to 
epidemics suggests passing reference to this 
factor in the dying out of wild animals in 
South Africa. Rinderpest, which, like ‘‘ horse- 
sickness,” has more than once crossed the 
Zambesi, depopulating vast regions of their 
game, is said to be conveyed wholly through 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD — 309 


the agency of the tsetse-fly, and it seems to 
have been communicated from the tame herds 
to the wild with terrible results. The tsetse, 
like the mosquito, is an insect which haunts 
water, and in consequence the buffalo, inyala, 
koodoo, and other creatures of thirsty habits 
suffered worst, whereas the _ thick-skinned 
rhinoceros was almost immune from _ the 
disease. 

As already mentioned, lions must have been 
terribly destructive to the antelopes, and the 
same may be said of the packs of hunting- 
dogs that can run down and kill even an 
eland. 

There are other influences which have killed 
off the big game. We need not go back to 
the climatic changes of the earth which swept 
away the giant reptiles, leaving man’s heritage 
free from such nightmares. It is, however, 
obvious that the big game of Europe, with the 
single exception of the Scandinavian elk, has 
retreated before the march of civilisation. With 
the cutting down of forests and draining of 
marshes and building of towns, not to mention 
the operations of agriculture and the farming 
of sheep and cattle, there is no longer room 
for the bear, boar and wolf. The North 
American bison had to go in like manner. 
Its extermination is generally attributed to the 
railway gangers and to the trade in its meat 


310 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


and hides ; but in any case, even had it been 
spared another decade, it would have had to 
disappear in order that the prairies might be 
prepared for the greatest wheat crops the world 
has ever seen. Sentiment is a pleasant luxury, 
but it may be a costly one, and it must give 
way to the growing needs of a great nation. 
It is impossible to think of these thundering 
herds of dangerous wild oxen still in possession _ 
of the prairies. They might just as well have 
been left to the Red Indians. From a less 
sternly practical standpoint, no doubt, there is 
something horrible in the fate that so swiftly 
overtook the ‘‘ buffalo.” Within the memory 
of living men there were still two or three 
millions of these splendid creatures left in the 
wild state, for it is on record that, as late as 
the winter of 1878-9, two hundred thousand 
buffalo hides were shipped to Europe, and a 
year or two earlier more than four thousand of 
these animals were slain in the Yellowstone 
Park, which has now for many years been a 
sanctuary for all wild life. As a result of this 
hurried slaughter of an animal that, for all its 
size and strength, was easily ridden down and 
shot wholesale, not more than two or three 
thousand American buffaloes are left alive on 
earth and even these are no more than half 
wild, since they live, under more or less con- 
tinual observation, in the State parks of Canada 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD © 311 


and the United States. Onesuch herd is domi- 
ciled in Canada’s National Park at Banff, in 
the heart of the Rocky Mountains, where I 
have stood less than fifty yards from them 
without suspecting their presence till an official 
showed them to me. The Park has a fine 
muster of them, including the Flathead herd, 
four or five hundred strong, which was pur- 
chased by the Canadian Government for 
£40,000. Curiously enough, this famous 
herd was Canadian by descent, as its four 
original members, which were still living at 
the time of my visit, had been driven over the 
border into Montana in 1873, the year that 
witnessed the virtual extinction of the great 
southern herd which had been cut off from the 
northern herd by the building of the trans- 
continental railway six years earlier. They 
have a beautiful home at Banff, planted with 
dense thickets of spruce and larch and carpeted 
with columbine and the characteristic American 
flower known as ‘‘ Indian Paintbrush.” It is 
also pleasant to reflect, without boasting, that 
the reserve at Banff is nearly twice the size of 
the Yellowstone Park and, in fact, the biggest 
sanctuary in the New World. How it may 
compare for size with some of the projected 
extensions of animal sanctuaries in British 
Africa I have no knowledge. These ‘‘ parks”’ 
must not be confused in the reader’s mind with 


312 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


those trim lawns grazed by tame deer and en- 
closed in palings which represent our notion 
of parks at home. The park at Banff covers 
three and a half million acres and is therefore 
equal in extent to nearly all three ridings of 
Yorkshire together. Within it are busy mining 
cities, deep lakes, mighty rivers, mountains ten 
thousand feet high, impenetrable bush, and 
hundreds of miles of horse trails. In such a 
wilderness the buffalo, moose, and elk can lead 
an existence as peaceful as they did before 
man came on the scene to break up their 
homes. There is another small herd in the 
Yellowstone Park, though poachers have suc- 
ceeded in taking toll of it, so that few remain ; 
but a third herd, which roams at large in some 
wild country near the Great Slave Lake, and 
a small band in the Wichita Forest are still 
doing well. The European bison is protected 
in much the same way by the Prince of Pless, 
in Silesia. This species was threatened with 
extinction, having been reduced from nearly 
two thousand survivors in 1857 to less than 
five hundred in 1892. The total has again 
reached nearly fifteen hundred, half of these 
being protected by H.M. the Tsar in his 
forests of Bielowitza and Swisslotsch. This 
magnificent bison is not, as sometimes stated, 
the same animal as the ancient aurochs, which 
man hunted in the Stone Age. That type, 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD — 313 


regarded as the ancestor of our farm cattle, is 
long since extinct. 

The absolute and irrevocable extinction of 
an animal is obviously more regrettable, at 
any rate on sentimental grounds, than its 
disappearance from areas in which it once 
abounded. The wild boar and the bear have 
long since been exterminated from the island 
of Britain, where no one wants them back ; 
but they survive in neighbouring continental 
countries. On the other hand, the true quagga 
of South Africa, the Antarctic wolf of the Falk- 
land Islands, and the sea-cow (named after 
Steller) of the Behring Sea are specifically as 
dead as the dodo and the great auk. They 
can never be restored, and all that remains 
of them is in the museums. The manner of 
their disappearance may be told in a few words. 

The true quagga, an animal closely resem- 
bling existing zebras, was exterminated by the 
Boers, who slew it for the sake of its flesh, 
and the last living individual died in captivity 
in the year 1883. As it seems, from contem- 
porary evidence, to have been more amenable 
in harness than other zebras, it is a pity that 
the Boers should have been allowed to drive it 
off the face of the earth. 

The existence of the Falkland Islands wolf 
came to an abrupt end in 1876. Great numbers 
of these animals were killed by the Gauchos, 


314 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


whose meat the hungry wolves stole in the 
most audacious manner. Even more were 
slaughtered for their skins, which, though not 
taking high rank as furs, had a market value 
that made the chase worth while. The final 
blow at the Antarctic wolf was struck by 
the Scotch settlers, whose sheep suffered so 
severely from its attacks that the farmers were 
not long in poisoning the remnant of the wolf 
population. Reports of survivors were brought 
home by travellers long after the creature was 
extinct, but these were in every case dis- 
proved. 

Steller’s sea-cow, a gigantic cousin of the 
manatee and dugong, was first butchered to 
feed the shipwrecked crews of Behring’s expe- 
dition in search of the North-West Passage, 
and Steller was the naturalist and doctor 
on board the explorer’s ship. Other sailors 
and hunters then slaughtered the unfortunate 
creature, which was compelled to visit the 
shallow creeks in order to browse on the 
seaweeds that it could not find in the deeper 
water, and the result was that the last was 
seen alive in 1854. Here, then, we have three 
animals, of very different haunts and habits, 
exterminated by man during the nineteenth 
century. Two of them furnished food, and 
the third came under the head of vermin ; and 
it is, apart from his love of sport, with one or 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD © 315 


other of these objects that man kills most of 
the wild animals. The wolves, indeed, offered 
irresistible temptation, since they combined two 
of these conditions, devouring the farmer’s 
sheep when alive and yielding saleable skins 
after death. No one, in fact, can reasonably 
regret their disappearance. 

In fact, with the possible exception of the 
beavers and squirrels, which may do appreci- 
able damage in other ways, the majority of the 
animals killed for their skins are enemies of 
the stockowner. Bear, ermine, lynx, marten, 
mink and otter are among them, and of their 
skins, with those of the beavers, the Hudson’s 
Bay Fur Company’s warehouse at Montreal 
has been known to receive nearly 135,000 in 
a single year. This seems a terrible toll to 
take, but at the same time these animals do 
irreparable damage during their lifetime, and 
this makes it less outrageous to kill them for 
the sake of their warm and beautiful skins. 
No such excuse can be found for the plume- 
hunters, or rather for the silly fashion that gives 
them profitable occupation. These assassins 
have devastated the groves of Florida and 
the forests of South America with disastrous 
results. Less than half a century ago, myriads 
of snow-white egrets were still to be seen 
wading along the muddy creeks that open 
on the Gulf of Mexico, and humming-birds 


316 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


swarmed in the forests of Brazil. ‘To-day the 
latter are rare where once their jewelled plum- 
age was a sight so common as to attract little 
notice, and of egrets no fewer than a million 
and a half have been known to be slain in a 
single year. 

Civilised nations, waking up to the fate that 
has overtaken some creatures and that threatens 
others no less interesting, regretting the quagga 
and anxious to avert the same doom from the 
‘‘white”’ rhinoceros, are taking counsel as to 
how this praiseworthy object may best be 
attained. They are, it must be confessed, a 
little late in their deliberations, for much of the 
mischief has already been done, but it may be 
that game sanctuaries will be the means of 
preventing more. It is, of course, essential 
that these reserves should be as little artificial 
as possible, the animals being left to forage 
for themselves, else they would soon lose their 
wild habits and degenerate into mere park 
animals, like the so-called wild cattle of Chil- 
lingham, Chartley, Vaynol and other breeds. 
I say nothing against these park cattle. I 
had those at Vaynol under close observation 
for a week, and they are such interesting sur- 
vivors of an ancient race that their owners have 
made the nation their debtors for the care with 
which they have preserved them. Yet no one 
would compare them to the genuine wild oxen 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD — 317 


of the wilderness, since their very whiteness is 
the result of artificial selection. Something 
can be done in this way on even a small scale. 
Two Boer farmers, for instance, have long 
preserved the black wildebeest, which is else- 
where extinct, on their farms in the Orange 
Free State. Had they not done so, it is prob- 
able that the South African War, which had 
disastrous effects on the antelope population 
of that region, would have sounded the knell of 
the species. 

A condition of success in this scheme of 
sanctuaries is that the animals should be pre- 
served in their natural: haunts. Only in their 
native climate can they remain wild in the true 
sense of the word. Transplanted to other 
homes, they become virtually animals in cap- 
tivity. Save as an interesting hobby of private 
individuals, like the Duke of Bedford, not 
much can be said in favour of proposals to set 
wapiti, eland, or other exotic deer and ante- 
lopes at liberty in English woodlands, and 
they are not, at any rate, a proper enterprise 
for national support. Apart from the vagaries 
of the British climate, which is something 
quite different from that to which these animals 
are accustomed in their own homes, ours is a 
small island, and the migrations which these 
creatures make at different seasons of the year 
would soon bring them to the seashore, 


318 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


It is in South Africa that the passing of the 
wild has most extensively been accomplished 
under the eyes of men still living. What a 
spectacle must have met the eyes of the great 
hunter Cornwallis Harris, who, in the year 
1836, only three-quarters of a century ago, 
actually shot springbok on the road between 
Graaf Reinet and Grahamstown, and who on 
one occasion saw so many quaggas, wildebeest 
and hartebeest that he described the face of the 
country as chequered black and white with the 
moving herds, and calculated that he could 
not be looking at less than fifteen thousand 
head of game! What of the Transvaal to-day? 
The elephant, rhinoceros and eland are gone, 
exterminated for the most part by the Boers. 
There was every excuse for the way in which 
they slaughtered wild animals during the war, 
for they must often have been hard pressed 
for food. Those, however, who best know the 
Boer hunters in time of peace declare that they 
have no sense of honour or spirit of sport, but 
evade every game law the moment they are 
out of sight of a policeman, slaying wantonly 
like wild dogs, and camping close to the 
Portuguese border, so that they can escape 
from justice, from whichever side of it detec- 
tion comes. It was the Boers, too, who 
destroyed all the once-abundant game of Natal, 
trekking after meat in the foothills of the 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD — 319 


Drakensberg, and killing every animal they 
came across. Nor, as will have been gathered 
from Major Stevenson-Hamilton’s remarks on 
the subject, can the part played by the native 
in the story of African game be ignored. 
Selous also regards the native in possession of 
firearms as the worst offender of all, and he 
ought to know. Kind people at home, with a 
mania for championing their coloured brothers, 
insist that the native should on no account be 
hindered from killing wild animals that provide 
meat for his larder. At first sight, this plea 
looks reasonable, but the truth of the matter 
is that most of the natives who shoot game 
are paid for their services. Not one of the 
great settled tribes of the Matabele country 
between the Zambesi and Limpopo are regular 
meat-eaters. They do not even kill their own 
cattle for food, though they eat all that die 
from natural causes, and, if these are too long 
dying, the native would kill an occasional 
antelope or buffalo with his own primitive 
weapons, which are therefore sufficient for his 
domestic purposes. The possession of a gun 
or rifle merely enables him to do this with less 
exertion and in shorter time, and there is no 
object in encouraging laziness in native races 
for whom time has no value. The destructive 
powers of armed natives are sufficiently proved, 
if such evidence were needed, by the continued 


320 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


decrease in the number of elephants in parts 
of Africa where white ivory hunters, of whom 
the late A. H. Neumann was one of the last, 
no longer operate. It is, in fact, the native 
hunters who to-day supply the market with 
nine-tenths of the ivory that changes hands at 
the great sales. 

The massacre of elephants, cows as well as 
bulls, has been conducted without restraint. 
In India, where the shooting of elephants, other 
than certified ‘‘rogues,” has been forbidden 
for the past thirty years, the animal has main- 
tained its numbers, though Sanderson’s pre- 
diction that the prohibition would eventually 
have to be removed has not so far been ful- 
filled. Formerly, however, though so easily 
tamed in the service of man, the Indian elephant 
was destroyed as wantonly as the African in 
our day, and Sir Victor Brooke alludes in 
passing to the shooting of five in three hours 
one morning before breakfast. The African 
elephant, which is not protected to the same 
extent, is in desperate straits. The greed for 
ivory seems undiminished. One firm of cutlers 
alone admitted, not many years ago, having 
taken the tusks of between twelve and fifteen 
hundred elephants every year, in addition to 
which regular demand it kept no less than 
eight tons of ivory in reserve. Neumann 
bagged fourteen of these huge creatures, most 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD © 321 


of them cows, in an afternoon, and a native, 
armed with a rifle, destroyed seventeen in 
Somaliland in one day. And all for what? 
That we may brush our hair with ivory-backed 
brushes and play billiards with ivory balls. 
So long as the bristles are good, it makes 
no difference whatever with what material 
the brushes are backed, and ebony is quite 
as decorative. As for billiard balls, it is quite 
as easy, with practice, to play the game with 
those made of bonzoline and other substitutes. 

The rhinoceros, for the butchery of which 
there is even less commercial justification, has 
been treated in the same fashion. Andersson 
once killed eight of these huge brutes in five 
hours, and even Mr. Roosevelt and his son 
shot no fewer than nine of the vanishing 
‘‘white” kind on their African trip. I have 
the warmest personal regard for the strenuous 
ex-President, but it would have been still 
warmer if he had taken only one of these 
heads back to his country. 

One of the factors in the diminution of big 
game of late years has been the wonderful 
improvement in the machinery devised for its 
slaughter. When it is remembered that a 
*450 Winchester, charged with ninety grains 
of powder and three hundred grains of lead, 
can send a bullet clean through eight inches 
of hard wood at fifty yards range, it will be 


x 


322 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


seen how little chance even  thick-skinned 
animals stand against such weapons. 

The work of extermination is going on all 
around, and not merely in the big game 
countries with which we are here chiefly con- 
cerned. Unfortunately, the rarer a creature 
becomes the higher is the price put on it by 
collectors, who thus bribe hordes of robbers 
to invade Nature’s sanctuaries in search of 
their ill-gotten booty. The large copper 
butterfly and many beautiful orchids were 
exterminated in this way. Nor are even 
dangerous animals without their uses, and 
the American Government has found itself 
compelled to protect the Florida alligator 
from the greed of the skin-hunters, because 
it was realised that the disappearance of the 
alligator was followed by an intolerable in- 
crease in the numbers of rats and other rodents 
ruinous to the crops. The case of the fur-seal 
does not come within the scope of a book con- 
cerned with big game, any more than that of 
the whalebone whale, but both have been 
wastefully slaughtered, the disappearance of 
the seal having been the subject of inter- 
national conferences and conventions for the 
more thrifty conduct of pelagic sealing. 

As has been shown, there are three means 
of staying the destruction of big game. The 
first is by imposing a heavy licence, whereby 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD = 323 


the sportsman is not only made to contribute 
to the cost of game reserves, but is restricted 
as to the number of each animal he may kill. 
The second is by ordaining a close season, 
which may last, like our close seasons at 
home, for only part of each year, or which, 
in cases where it is desired to let a threatened 
species re-establish itself, may extend over a 
number of years, during which that species 
is contraband. The third is by closing speci- 
fied areas, which thereby become sanctuaries in 
which wild animals may live in peace. 

The success or failure of game laws, speak- 
ing generally, is a matter too wide to allow 
of discussion in these pages, and the political 
aspect of such restrictions is still further from 
the scope of the book. Without these laws, 
however, it is safe to say that not only our 
pheasants and partridges, but also all manner 
of other wild creatures which live in the woods 
would long ago have become as extinct as the 
bear and wolf. In ‘‘free’”’ countries, like Italy 
and France, where the game belongs for the 
most part to the people, it is a possession in 
name only, for the game is gone. Such 
simple game laws as those which suffice in 
England are obviously not applicable to those 
forests and deserts in which big game still find 
their last refuge. At the same time there are 
tracts of continental Europe which bear so 


324 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


close a resemblance to the wilderness in other 
continents that a brief glance at European 
ideals of preservation may help us to arrive 
at the best means of achieving the same object 
elsewhere. 

Shooting rights on the Continent mostly go 
with ownership, though in Central Europe 
there is a system of joining small holdings, 
each of two or three hundred acres, and put- 
ting the sporting rights up to public auction. 
The average close time lasts, as with us, six 
months, but longer periods are prescribed in 
the case of a few animals that it is particularly 
desired to protect. In Switzerland there is, 
as in America, some confusion, owing to the 
clashing of the Federal law with the more 
local enactments of the Cantons. The general 
Federal close time lasts a little more than six 
months, and the Cantons have power to close 
entire areas for indefinite periods. Much of 
this power has been wisely exerted for the 
better protection of the chamois, and it is a 
pity that similar enlightened efforts were not 
in time to save the steinbock, or ibex, of the 
Alps, which survives only in the preserves 
of the King of Italy. 

In Spain, save in the royal preserves, the 
destruction of wild game is unchecked, and 
poaching is carried on openly. 

Turkey looks on wild animals with char- 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD _ 325 


acteristic Moslem indifference, and any re- 
strictions on indiscriminate shooting are framed 
rather to put difficulties in the way of carrying 
arms, though much even of this restraint has 
disappeared since the Constitution. 

The case of the elk, in Norway and Sweden, 
is perhaps of greatest interest to English 
sportsmen, who have long looked on Scandi- 
navia as a playground that affords exceptional 
shooting and fishing. Until recently, that 
splendid ‘deer was not protected, and in 1894 
a thousand elk were shot in Norway alone. 
Native opinion wakes slowly in the north, but 
it seems at length to have realised that the elk 
was falling off in numbers, and, what was of 
more practical interest, that it was being slain 
by rich foreigners who might be willing to pay 
for their amusement. The Storthing accord- 
ingly raised the tax on such sport, with the 
twofold result that the extermination of the 
elk has been indefinitely averted, and the not 
too prosperous treasury of the country has 
likewise benefited. Formerly the elk in 
Sweden was protected for various periods, but 
the new regulation in Norway is much more 
effectual, as the animal can now be shot only 
during twenty days of the year, beginning on 
the tenth of September. 

Many of the States of America have fol- 
lowed the French example of taxing the 


326 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


foreigner more heavily for his sport than the 
native. Otherwise, there is no ‘‘native ques- 
tion” in America, for the Red Indian, where 
not kept as a park animal in Government 
Reservations, is in a fair way of following the 
buffalo. Nor is the native question a difficulty 
in framing the game laws of India, since not 
by any means all of the natives eat meat, and 
the vast majority outside of the cities follow 
the more peaceful occupation of agriculture. 
In Africa, on the other hand, as has already 
been pointed out, the meat-eating natives are 
a factor of some complexity. The opinions of 
authorities have already been quoted as hold- 
ing armed natives to be the worst offenders, 
and no game law could be effectual that did 
not take their operations into account. 

-Morocco is practically the only settled 
country in Africa without game laws, and 
when the French have completed the ‘‘pacific 
penetration,’ as it is called, of that country, 
they will probably frame restrictions for the 
protection of the aoudad and gazelle. These 
are, with wild boar, the only game to be taken 
into account, for the bear and stag of the 
Atlas (or of that portion of the range, at any 
rate, within the borders of Morocco) are either 
imaginary or extinct. Mohammedans do not 
approve of game laws any more than they 
concern themselves with forestry. It may be 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD — 327 


that their fatalism condemns such provision 
for future generations, and that they hold 
themselves privileged to slay every animal and 
cut down every tree for use at the moment and 
without thought of those who come after. 

Elsewhere in Africa close times, reserved 
areas, and expensive licences limiting the bag 
have been in force for the last twenty years 
or more; but such game laws, which may 
work smoothly enough in small and well- 
policed countries elsewhere, are often nugatory 
in the interior of a vast continent like Africa. 
As a case of the ease with which such regula- 
tions may be evaded, mention may be made 
of the prohibition of exporting ivory or trophies 
from the coast ports during nine months out 
of the twelve. This is admirable on the face 
of it, but what is to prevent hunters collecting 
such material during those months and then 
taking them down to the coast as soon as the 
close time is ended? Again, it is well that 
large sums should be exacted for these big 
game licences; but, on the other hand, the 
very fact of having paid so much money induces 
the licensee to get his money’s worth. 

The game laws of both North America and 
South Africa are very complicated, but some 
of the provisions are of general interest. Thus 
antelopes are protected throughout the summer 
months in the Transvaal, Zululand, Swaziland, 


328 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Natal, and the Orange Free State. Licences 
may cost as much as 475 in Bechuanaland 
and £50 in Portuguese South-East Africa, but 
the sums, as well as the close times, are con- 
stantly being altered. It is pleasant to observe 
that the penalties for infringement of these 
laws are really exacted from white men, two 
of whom, some years ago, served a year’s im- 
prisonment in default of paying fines of £120 
for shooting two white rhinoceroses on a 
reserve in Zululand. 

In Canada, where, again, we have Dominion 
law and Provincial law, there is a very com- 
plicated system of regulations. The deer, 
goats, and sheep of British Columbia are 
protected absolutely during nine months of the 
year, and non-residents have to take out a 
licence costing fifty dollars and allowing them 
to shoot, in each season, only two bull moose, 
two bull wapiti, ten deer, and five caribou, 
mountain-goat and mountain-sheep. Thus, 
with such restrictions, gunners no longer flock 
to British Columbia, as they did formerly, to 
make a business of killing. Visitors to New 
Brunswick have to take out a licence costing 
twenty dollars. There is some confusion in 
the matter of fishing licences, and on one 
occasion, when salmon fishing in the Miram- 
ichi, I was compelled to take out a Provincial 
licence, whereas others of my acquaintance 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD — 329 


were exempted. The game licence in New- 
foundland is the most expensive of all, costing 
a hundred dollars. This is excessive, and one 
would view it more favourably if residents 
also had to take out a licence instead of being 
free to shoot as they please at very slight cost. 

In India and Ceylon, very strict game laws 
have for some years been in force. In the 
Central Provinces, for instance, the cheetul 
and bison are specially protected, each licensee 
being allowed to shoot only two of each, 
whereas there is no limit in the case of nilgai 
or four-horned deer, or, of course, in that of 
tigers, bears, or leopards. 

In Kashmir, yak and musk-deer are abso- 
lutely protected, and certain nullahs are closed 
against shooting. A licence, costing sixty 
rupees, allows the holder to make a limited 
bag, including one Ovis Ammon, one serow, 
one Tibetan gazelle, two markhor, six ibex, 
and so forth. Curiously enough, the number 
of brown bears is also restricted to six, but 
there is no limit for black bears. That is the 
summer licence. A winter licence is issued at 
half the cost, permitting the killing of a pro- 
portionate number of animals. : 

In the Nilgiris, the game laws are somewhat 
different. A shooting and fishing licence costs 
fifty rupees for the year. There is no limit to 
the bag, but no one may shoot the females or 


330 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


immature males of the bison, sambur, spotted 
deer, antelope, or ibex, and even mature males 
of sambur and spotted deer may not be shot 
if they have cast their antlers, or if their ant- 
lers are in velvet. The Governor in Council 
has power to fix approved close seasons from 
time to time, but landowners are at all times 
allowed to kill any animal that destroys their 
crops. 

In Ceylon, ‘elk ” (i.e. sambur), spotted deer, 
and red deer are protected in most of the pro- 
vinces from June 1st to October 31st, though 
in the Northern Province the close time is 
shorter by two months, and in the North- 
Western Province by one month. No shooting 
is allowed between sunset and sunrise, and 
a game licence costs only three and a half 
rupees. A special licence, costing a hundred 
rupees, must be taken out to shoot an ele- 
phant, but no tuskers may be shot. A licence 
to shoot a buffalo costs twenty-five rupees. 
This issue of special licences allowing the 
holder to shoot one particular animal is in 
general vogue, but it has its drawback, for 
its tendency is to encourage commercial- 
minded people to blaze away until they get 
value for their money. If, on the other hand, 
the money were payable only by results, at so 
much for each specimen, the gunner would be 
more inclined to hold his hand until sure of 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD 331 


killing the game. Any measure, however good 
its intention, which prompts careless shooting, 
and the consequent wounding of animals that 
get away to die, is to be condemned. 

The protection of big game, before it is too 
late, isa problem of not only sporting, but also 
scientific interest. Even looking at the matter 
economically, abundance of big game must 
always be an asset to the natives, who earn 
better pay as shzkarzs than in any of their 
other occupations, added to which wealthy 
sportsmen spend large sums of money on pro- 
visions and fodder. The scientific importance 
of some of these wild animals is also beyond 
all question. Who would have dreamt, a 
hundred years ago, that the study of a group 
of insects, heretofore regarded only as tor- 
mentors, would have solved the problems of 
yellow fever and malaria? Who would have 
thought it possible, a little later, to trace the 
carriage of sleeping-sickness to the tsetse-fly ? 
We can never tell what may be learnt from the 
wild animals until we have studied them, and 
they cannot be studied after they have ceased 
to breathe. Even in the bird world, the dodo, 
great auk, and moa were exterminated almost 
before they had been described. To have 
driven these birds out of existence without 
even taking the trouble to know all that there 
was to know about them is a disgrace to 


332 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


civilisation. Science cries shame on this bar- 
barous destruction of wild creatures without 
a thought for the species. Humanity cries 
aloud against the spoilers, and they are equally 
condemned by the economist. It is no argu- 
ment to say that these animals have their market 
value when dead, for that only strengthens the 
case of those who plead for their protection 
for the benefit of future generations. 

Unfortunately, it is not only those who make 
their living by shooting elephants and other 
animals who are to blame for the present 
state of affairs. That, of itself, would be bad 
enough, but it is worse to think that much of 
the scarcity of big game to-day is due to the 
greed for trophies. Everyone wants to beat 
the records of his predecessors and to kill 
either more or larger specimens than they. 
This is playing to the gallery, and is quite 
unworthy of the best traditions of shzkar. It 
is true that the crowd does not applaud the 
gunner as it does the footballer, but it can 
gape in silly admiration at the trophies he 
brings home, without even making certain that 
he shot them himself. 

The twentieth century has been already 
marked by much activity among those con- 
cerned in preserving the wild creatures from 
oblivion. At the dawn of it M. Foa, a French 
lion-hunter of distinction, suggested a kind of 


THE PASSING OF THE WILD = 333 


Zoological Peace Conference, at which the 
nations who have made Africa their own 
might sink their other differences and discuss 
the best means of saving what is left. When 
the earth was younger, forest, plain, and 
mountain were a paradise of big game. It 
would be futile to hope for the restoration 
of such conditions; it would, indeed, be im- 
politic to attempt it; and it might even be un- 
desirable to realise it. Yet we should hesitate 
before we recklessly throw away the little that 
has escaped destruction. 


oe 


Ie 


INDEX 


Africa, 146-214 

— Natives of (see Negro) 

— Protection of wild animals 
in, 301-4, 306-9, 320-1, 326-7 

Agagir, Sword-play of the, 194- 
204 

Alaska, Brown bear of, 232 

—, Reindeer introduced into, 290 

Alligators, Digging out, 31 

—, Protection of, 322 

America, Sport in, 50 

Amigo del Cristiano (jaguar), 
236, 273 

Andersson, Narrow escape from 
rhinoceros, 246 

—, Rhinoceros slaughtered by, 
321 

Animals as they are, 46 

Antarctic wolf, Extermination 
of the, 313, 314 

Antelopes, 205-9 

Antlers of moose, 220; of sam- 
bur, 88 ; of wapiti, 224 

Aoudad, Difficulty of finding, 
212 

Apes and monkeys, 149 

Arab, Domestic animals of the, 
277 

— sword-hunters, 194-204 

Arbuthnot, Capt. (adventure 
with red bear), 137 

et Sean Wild boar in the, 

I 

Argali and snow-leopard, 127 

Arizona, Venomous lizard of, 142 

Armstrong, Col. (killed by ele- 
phant), 256 


Arnold, Mr. Edwin (quoted), 
98 

Asia, Animals of, and Africa 
compared, 148 

Ass, Wild, 276 

Assam, Buffalo in, 86 

—, Rhinoceros of, 73 

Atlas Mountains, Stalking wild 
sheep in the, 212 

Audubon, 31 

Australia, Animals of, 31, 239, 
240 

—, Camels in, 287 

—, “Wild” cattle in, 295 

Australian scenery, Sadness of, 
32 


Baboons, Destructiveness of, 
149 

Baden-Powell, Major (quoted), 
282 

“ Bad Lands,” The, 37 

Baker, Sir Samuel, 194 

Banff, National Park at, 216, 311 

Barasingh (or Swamp - deer), 
Habits of, 91 

Barras, Major (killed by a 
leopard), 260 

Bears, Indian, 135-7 

—, North American, 25, 27, 30, 
228-32 

—, South American, 237 

—, Sportsmen killed by, 261 

Belgium, Draught-dogs in, 291, 
292 

—, Wild boars in, 81 

Berar, 47 


335 


336 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Bible evidence of domestic 
animals, 271 

—, Lions in the, 96 

Bicyclist pursued by a lion, 161 

Bighorn sheep, Broken horns 
of, 217 

Bikaneer camels, 283 

Birds of India, 49 

Bird song, Varying apprecia- 
tion of, 46 

Bison, Case of the American, 


309 
—, Protection of European, 312 
“ Bison,” 83; at high altitudes, 
85; cunning of, 86; scent in, 
86 


Black Bear, Food of, 136 

Blackbuck, Colour of, 93 ; habits 
of, 93; hunting with cheetah, 
93, 94 

Black fly in Canada, 215 

Blacktail deer escaping notice, 
2 

Blood-poisoning from bites and 
scratches, 135, 250, 251 

Boar as a pet, 80; courage of, 
74; hunting, 81; in Belgium 
and France, 80, 81; match 
for panther, 75 

Boarhounds in France, 82 

Boers exterminate the quagga, 
204 

— protect black wildebeest, 317 

— slaughter lions, 303 

Boleadores, Use of the, 238 

Botanic gardens of Australia, 32 

Bradford, The late Col. Sir E. 
(mauled by a tiger), 257 

“ Brain-fever bird,’ The, 46 

Britain, Sport in, 43 

British Columbia, game laws 
of, 328 

— Empire, Sport in the, 45 

Bronx Animal Park, The, 50 

Brown Bear of Alaska, 232 ; of 
India, 137 

Bruce, Mr. C. W. A. (quoted), 
65 


Bryden, Mr. H. A. (quoted), 


193 
Buffalo and tsetse fly, 210, 211 
— asleep, 24 
— in Syria, 277 
— in Turkey, 288 
—, Size and appearance of, 210 
—, Sportsmen killed by, 263 
—, Vitality of, 87 
Buitenzoorg, 32 
Bulldogs, 275 
Burchell’s zebra, 204 
Bushbuck, Encounter with a, 
265 


California, A forest in, 34, 35 

Camel, Colour of, 285 ; in Aus- 
tralia, 287; in Italy, 287; in 
Spain, 287 ; in warfare, 285-7 ; 
mind of, 285; taming of, 17, 
281-7 ; uses of, 284 

Canada, Animals of, 215-34; 
backwoods of, 24, 27; black- 
flies in, 215; game laws of, 
328 ; yak introduced into, 288 

Caribou evicted by moose, 223 ; 
feet of, 38, 226; habits of 
woodland and barren ground, 
226 

Carnegy, Major (killed by an 
Indian lion), 95, 252 

Cats, Lord Roberts and, 98; 
poaching, 295 

Cattle-birds warn buffalo, 114 

— British “ wild,” 316 

Caucasus, Bears in the, 262 

Cave remains, Evidence of, 297 

Ceylon, Absence of tiger from, 
51; animals of, 51; game 
laws in, 330; leopard in, 131; 
sambur, known as “elk,” in, 
88 

Cheetah and wildebeest in Paris 
Zoo, 294; fight between 
leopard and, 167; hunting 
blackbuck with, 93, 94; 
method of capturing young, 
293; taming, 293, 294 


INDEX 


Circus, Elephants in a, 72 

—, panthers in a, 128 

Civilisation, Retreat of wild 
animals before, 309 

Cobra, Bite of the, 139; hood 
of, 139 

Condor, Wonderful eyesight of, 
239 

Congo, Buffalo in the, 211; 
elephants tamed in the, 278 ; 
water-elephant in the, 183 

Cormorant trained to catch fish, 
295 

Coyote, Cunning of the, 234 

Crocodiles attacking bathers, 
144; escapes from, 266, 267 ; 
females thought to be more 
plentiful than males (explana- 
tion of this), 142; in the sea, 
144; seizing dogs, 143; and 
human beings, 266, 267 


“ Dark Continent,” The, 146 

Dartmoor, Solitude of, 23 

Dawnay, Mr. Guy (killed by a 
buffalo), 263 

Deer of India, 88-93 ; of North 
America, 219-28; of South 
America, 237, 238 

Deer-stalking, 43 

de Fries, Mr. 
buffalo), 263 

Delamere, Lord (mauled by a 
lion), 253 

Desert, The, 35 

Dewar, Mr. Douglas (book on 
Indian birds), 49 

Dhole (see Dogs) 

Dogs, Draught-, 291 ; seized by 
crocodiles, 143 ; by leopards, 
128 ; wild, 17, 91 

Domestic animals, 17, 84, 148, 
205, 271-98 

Donkey and wild ass _ con- 
trasted, 276 


(gored by a 


Eagles trained to attack aéro- 
planes, 293 
Y 


337 


E ake lfrican Standard (quoted), 
103 

Eastern jungle, The, 29 

Egmont, Lord (quoted), 265 

Egrets, Slaughter of, 315 

Eland in harness, 296 ; 3 in the 
Kalahari, 207 

Elephant, African, case of the, 
277-81, 320; compared with 
Indian, 172, 277; food of, 
173; mind of, 171; protec- 
tion of, 174; senses of, 172 ; 
shooting i in Rhodesia, 174-82 ; 
size of, 172 ; sportsmen killed 
by, 256; tusks of, 182; with 
only one tusk, 173 

— Indian, afraid of rhinoceros, 
96 ; attitude when asleep, 60; 
collision with railway train, 
71; courage of cows and 
cowardice of bulls, 58 ; deaf- 
ness of, 58; destructiveness 
of, 59; difficulty of distin- 
guishing in jungle, 26; do- 
mestication of, 275, 277; 
executed for manslaughter, 
54; fear of man, 60; food of, 
59; forefoot and height, 52; 
in a Circus, 72; in Burmese 
teak forests, 54; intelligence 
of, 64-70; migration of, 57; 
persecuted by flies, 64; 
“rogue,” 61-4; shooting, 320; 
tail lost in fighting, 56; trunk 
of, 52-4; tusks of, 55 ; “white,” 
6 


5 

Elk, Difficulty of distinguish- 
ing, 26; protection of, 325; 
vitality of, 88 

“Elk” in America, 224; in 
Ceylon, 88 

Environment, 37, 39 

Equatorial jungle, 147 

Everglades, Animal life in the, 
31 

Extinct types, 331 

Eye, Power of the human, 
118 


338 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Fennec, Long ears of the, 191 

Feral animals, 295 

Field, The (quoted), 18, 65, 108, 
118, 119, 208, 257, 266 

Firearms, Natives with, 307 

Flood and fire, Animals making 
common cause in, 272 

Florida, Extermination of egrets 
in, 315; Keys of, 30; protec- 
tion of alligators in, 322 

“Fly” country, 209 

Foa, M. (proposal for game 
protection), 332 

Foreign service, Compensations 
of, 44, 45, 48 

Forest fires, 28 

Four-handed animals, 149 

Foxhunting, 43 

France, Hunting wild boar in, 

2 


Fur animals, Slaughter of, 315 


Game laws, 323-3! 

Garden of Allah, Arab tradition 
of the, 35-7 

Genesis, Evidence of the Book 
of, 270, 273 

Gharial, Beak of the, 141 

—, Food of the, 142 

Gir, Lions of, 39 

Giraffe and lion, 166, 193; at 
play, 193 ; food of, 192 ; hunt- 
ing and shooting, 16, 17, 194- 
204; keen eyesight of, I9g1 ; 
remarkable appearance of, 191 

Gotsamp, Venom of the, 142 

Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson, 
Anecdote of, 45 

Gordon, Adam Lindsay (quoted), 
244 

cr Cumming, Roualeyn, 
2 

Gordon, Mr. Lewis (killed by a 
tiger), 257 

Gordon’s horse, 122, 124 

Grant, Lieut. (killed by a tiger), 


2 
Great Rift Valley, 146 


“ Great Thirst,” The, 37 

Grévy’s zebra, 204 

Grey, Mr. (killed by a lion), 253 

Grizzly bear, Adventure with, 
229; food_of, 228; savagery 
of, 228 ; vitality of, 261 

Guemal, Small size of, 238 


Hamadryad, Man chased by a, 


141 

Hannibal, Elephants used by, 
278 

Harris, Cornwallis, 206, 318 

Heloderm, Venom of the, 142 

Herapath, Major (quoted), 274 

Hippopotamus, _ Destructive- 
ness of, 190 ; in West Africa, 
187; native trap for, 188; 
persecution of, 16, 62, 63, 188 ; 
ugliness of, 187 

Hooghly, Crocodiles attacking 
bathers in the, 144 

Hornaday, W. T., 50, 301 

Horns of rhinoceros, 73, 183 ; of 
wild sheep, 83 ; of giraffe, 191 

Horse, Domesticated, 273, 297 

—, Wild, 17 

Howdah, Shooting from the, 
115, 248 

Huanaco, Hunting the, 238 

Humming-birds, Slaughter of, 
316 

Hunting-dogs, Adventure with, 
168; destructiveness of, 168, 


309 
Hunting-leopard, 93, 127 
“Huskies” (Indian  sledge- 
dogs), 291 
Hutchinson, General (quoted), 


64 

Hyenas, Battle between striped, 
170 

—, Cowardice of, 169 

—, Habits of, 170 

— imitating growl of panther 
to frighten bears, 130 

— sharing cave with panther, 
129 


INDEX 


India, 47-145; abundance of 
wild animals in, 47; game 
laws of, 326, 329, 330; lions 
in, 95 ; natives of, 47, 51, 89, 
90, 119; sport in, 50 

ae Mutiny, Camels in the, 
286 

Ingram, Mr. (killed by an ele- 
phant), 256 

Italy, Camels in, 287 

Ivory-hunters, Greed of, 278, 
320 


Jackal, Courage shown by a, 
138 ; curious behaviour of a, 
138 ; note of the, 97, 113 

Jaguar, Enmity between puma 
and, 237; food of, 236; for- 
mer friendliness of, 273 

James, Mr. F. L. (killed by an 
elephant), 256 

Jemeel (baggage camel), 285 

Joonagur, Nawab of (preserves 
Indian lions), 95 

“Jumbo,” Death of, 71 

Jungle Folk, 49 

Jungle, Characteristics of the, 
33> 49, 116 

Jungle Book, The, 131 


Kadiak Island, Brown bear of, 


232 

Kalahari, Elands thriving in 
the, 207 

Kangaroo shooting, 239 

Kashmir, 83; game laws of, 
329; “stag” of, 92 ; bears in, 
136, 137 

Kathiawar, Lions in, 39, 252 

Keddah, 65 

Kipling, 131, 283 

Krait, Bite of the, 139 


Ladak, 50, 83 

Lagden, Sir Godfrey (quoted), 
207 

Lays of Ind, 117 

Lea, Col. S. J. (quoted), 221 


339 


Le Breton, Mr. (killed by a 
tiger), 250 

Lee-Warner, Sir William (on 
intelligence in elephants), 65- 
70 

Leopard as a pet, 132 ; cannibal 
tastes of, 129; destructiveness 
of, 13, 129, 166; different 
kinds of, 127; fight between 
cheetah and, 167; man-eat- 
ing, 128; method of catch- 
ing monkeys adopted by, 110; 
narrow escape from, 260; 
preying on dogs, 128, 131; 
sportsmen killed by, 260 

Lewis, Col. D. F. (encounter 
with lion), 152 

Lions, Alleged magnanimity of, 
165; and giraffe, 166; com- 
pared with tiger, 97, 151; 
destructiveness of, 13, 304; 
female braver than male, 156 ; 
Indian, 95; in the Bible, 106 ; 
man-eating, 107; maneless, 
150; occasional cowardice of, 
151-9; pursuing cyclists, 161, 
162; range of, 39; remark- 
able adventure with, 253, roar 
of, 163; slaughtered by Boers, 
303; sportsmen killed by, 
250-3 

Livingstone, 146, 246 

Llama, 238, 287 

London, Draught-dogs in, 292 

Longden, Mr. Gerald (killed by 
an elephant), 256 

Longstaff, Dr. T. (quoted), 83, 
96, 132, 228 

“Lost Man’s Friend,” The, 303 

Lyall, Sir Alfred (quoted), 304 


Machan, Shooting from a, 26, 
76, 77, 108, 111, 248, 249 

Machilla, Travel by, 146 

McClintock, Sledge-dogs used 
by, 291 

Madeira, Cruelty to bullocks in, 
289 


340 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Mahout, 60, 66, 67, 2773; res- 
cued from tiger by elephant, 


97 

Mammoth, Siberian, 58 

Man-eater, Evolution of the, 
104-7; scarce in Nilgiris, 
106 ; sex of, 106 

Man-eaters of Tsavo, The, 107, 
251 

Mancions lions, 150 

Mangrove swamps, Animal life 
in the, 31 

Markhor, Horns of the, 83 

Marsh Deer, 237 

“ Maximus” wrongly applied 
to the Indian elephant, 52 

Méhari (swift camel), 285 

Mesmerising tigers, 117 

Mesopotamia, Lions in, 95 

Mhow, Elephant executed at, 54 

Migrations, Animal, 38, 85, 86 

Miramichi, The River, 27 

Mistakes made by animals, 109 

Moffatt (narrow escape from 
cobra and lion), 246 

Molony, Lieut. (mauled by lion), 
252 

Mongoose, Tactics of the, 140 

Monkeys betray the where- 
abouts of big game, 150; 
preyed on by tigers, 108; by 
leopards, 110 

Moose, Calling, 221-3 ; disturb- 
ing a, 29; evicted by white- 
tailed deer, 223 ; food of, 220; 
identical with European elk, 
220; poached in summer 
months, 220 

Morgan, Prof. Lloyd (quoted), 
109 

Mosquitoes in Newfoundland, 
216 

Mountain transport, Elephants 
used for, 279 ; yaks for, 288 

Mule deer, Range of, 227 

Muntjac as a pet, 133; teeth of, 


133 
Murray, Colonel (quoted), 249 


Murray, Major (quoted), 257 
ote ox, Method of hunting, 


217 
“ Must” in elephants, 61 
Mysore, Elephant shooting in, 
63 


Nandi lion-hunters, 243 

Nansen, Sledge-dogs used by, 
291 

Nature-teaching, Io, II 

Neave, Mr. (killed by a sloth 
bear), 261 

Negro, Ways of the, 14, 148, 151, 
276, 277, 296, 307, 319 

Nepal, Rhinoceros in, 73 

“Never Never,” the, 37 

Neumann, Mr. Arthur (gored by 
an elephant), 256, 320 

New Brunswick, Game laws of, 
328 

Newfoundland, Mosquitoes in, 
216 

“ Nile-horse,” 187 

Nilgiris, Game laws in the, 329 


Okapi, Discovery of the, 147 

Oswell (tossed by black and 
white rhinoceros), 246 

Otter trained to catch fish, 295 

Outram, Sir James (adventure 
with a tiger), 117 

Ovis ammon and O. poli, 83 


Panther afraid of wild boar, 75 ; 
and hyena sharing same cave, 
129 ; on a railway, 47 

Park, Mungo, 146 

Patterson, Colonel, to 

Peary, Sledge-dogs used by, 291 

Penang, Crocodiles on the 
coast of, 144 

Penguins, Fearlessness of, 273 

Persia, Lions in, 95 

Pet animals, 80, 132, 133, 136, 
274 

Pigsticking, 74, 80 

Pioneer Mail (quoted), 128, 259 


— 


INDEX 


Pitfalls for wild boar, 82 

Poer, Mr. H. C. de la (adven- 
ture with lions), 154 

Porcupine in camp, 28 ; protec- 
tion of, 305 

Pronghorn antelope in the Yel- 
lowstone, 219 

Protective colouring, 25 

Puma, Alleged friendliness of, 
236; enmity between jaguar 
and, 237; hunting with dogs, 


* 235 
Python, Encounter with a, 26 


Quagga exterminated by Boers, 
204, 313 

Queensland, Mangrove swamps 
in, 31 


Railway trains, Encounters be- 
tween wild animals and, 47, 
48, 71,72 

Rangoon Gazette (quoted), 96 

“ Ranjitsinhji” bags an Indian 
lion, 95 

Rat, A tame, 274 

Red Bear, 137 

Reedbuck and lion, 208 

Reid, Mr. Percy (adventures 
with lions), 153, 156-60 

Reindeer, Taming of the, 17, 
289, 290 

Restigouche, Salmon-fishing in 
the, 215 

Rhinoceros, attracted by camp 
fires, 186; elephant afraid of, 
96; horns of, 73, 183; im- 
mune from rinderpest, 309 ; 
methods of fighting, 73, 184 ; 
nervousness of, 75, 185; 
slaughter of, 321; square- 
mouthed, 184, 185 

Rhodesia, Elephant-shooting in, 
16, 174-82 

Rifles andammunition, Perform- 
ances with modern, 247, 321 

Rinderpest, Depredations of, 
308, 309 


341 


Roberts, Lord (and cats), 98 

Rocky Mountain goat, Foolish- 
ness of the, 218 

“Rogue” elephants, Theories 
concerning, 61-4, 295 

Rook and squirrel, Fight be- 
tween, III 

Roosevelt, Giraffe shot by, 194 ; 
rhinoceros shot by, 185, 321 

Rospoli, Prince (killed by an 
elephant), 194 

Royal Colonial Institute, The, 
18 

Royal Society for Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals, 289, 292 

Russell, Mr. Robert (killed by 
a buffalo), 263 

Russian forest, Daybreak in a, 
26, 27 


Sable antelope, Native killed by 
a, 264 

Salisbury Plain, Solitude of, 23 

Salmon-fishing, 43 

Sambur, Antlers of, 88; young 
(escaping notice), 91 

Sanctuaries for big game, 301, 


311 

Sandbach, Major (killed by a 
lioness), 250 

Saunders, Capt. A. (bitten by a 
lion), 252 

Sea, Crocodiles attacking bath- 
ers in the, 144 

Selous, F. C. Mr.,_ early 
memories of, 146 ; encounters 
with wild beasts, 184, 244, 
246, 252, 262; on armed 
native question, 319; on 
buffalo and tsetse-fly, 210; on 
character of buffalo, 264; on 
eland flourishing in the Kala- 
hari, 207 

Sense of proportion, Importance 
of a, 45 

Senses of wild animals, 24, 25 

Sentinels, Wild animals as, 84 

Seoni, 131 


342 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 


Seton-Karr, Sir H. (quoted), 
24, 25, 26, 63, 156, 225 

Sharpe, Mr. Reginald (quoted), 
208 


Sheep, Domestication of the, 
273, 275; wild, 83, 217 

“‘ Ship of the desert,” 283 

Sledge-dogs and Eskimo chil- 
dren, 277, 291 

Sleeping Sickness, Ravages of, 
147 

Sloth bear as a pet, 136; food of, 
136; inappropriate name of, 
135 

Snake-charmers, 141 

Snakes, Venom of, 140 

Snow-leopard, 127 

Society for the Preservation of 
the Wild Faunaof the Empire, 
12 

Somali herdsman a fighter, 276 

South America poor in big 
game, 234 

Spain, Camels in, 287, 296; 
game laws of, 324 

Sport, The freedom of, 14 


Squirrel and rook, Fight be- | 


tween, III 

Stags, Duels between, 170 

Steinbok, Courage of the, 207 

Steller’s Sea-cow, Extermina- 
tion of, 314 

Stevenson - Hamilton, 
(quoted), 306, 31 

Stigand, Capt. 
leopard), 260 

Stromboom (encounter 
giraffe), 193 

Suakin Field Force, 287 

Sunderbunds, Tiger-shooting in 
the, 116 

Swamp-deer (see Barasingh) 

Sweden, Elk in, 88 

Swiss Lake Dwellings, 
dences of the, 271 

Switzerland, Game laws of, 324 

Sword-hunters, Arab, 16 

Syria, Tame buffaloes in, 277 


Major 
ee 
(killed by 


with 


Evi- 


Talbot, Major (quoted), 87, 110, 
141, 257 ; 

Taming, Meaning of, 274 

Tangier, Pigsticking near, 74 

Teale, Mr. (killed and eaten by 
a lion), 251 

Thomson, Mr. (tossed by a 
buffalo), 262 

Thomson-Seton, Mr. (quoted), 
288 

Tibet, 50, 84 

Tiger, able to climb, 112 ; and 
swim, 114, 

—, Adventures with, 258, 259 

— as pet, 132 

—, Cowardice of, 115 

— cubs taken alive, 120 

—, Destructiveness of, 13 


- —, Food of, 103 


— in the Sunderbunds, 116 

— killed by unarmed native, 
119; with spear and dagger, 
117 

—, Lion compared with, 97 

—s method of catching mon- 
keys, 108; and of eating 
victim, 128 

—, Mesmerising a, 117 

— routed by elephant, 96 

— shooting in Mysore, 121 

—, Sportsmen killed by, 257 

—s, two, at one shot, 126 

“Tiger-cry” of the jackal, 
113 

Todas and their buffaloes, 277 

Transvaal, Extermination of big 
game in the, 318; Game Re- 
serve, 306 

Travancore, Elephant-shooting 
in, 63 

Travel, Easy conditions of mo- 
dern, 44. 

Trophies, Greed for, 332 

Tsavo, Man-eating lions at, 107, 
152 

Tsetse-fly, The, 147, 309 

Turkey, Game laws of, 324; 
Treatment of horses in, 289 


INDEX 


Uganda Railway, 146 
United States, Game laws of 
the, 326 


Van der Byl, Mr. P. B. (adven- 
ture with a leopard), 260, 261, 

Venom of lizards, 142; of, 
snakes, 140 

Ventriloquist, An Abyssinian, 
164 

Virginian deer in Canada, 227 

Von Koppenfels (killed by a 
buffalo), 263 \ 

Vulture, Marvellous eyesight of 
the, 171 


Wahlberg (killed by 
elephant), 256 

Wapiti-shooting, 224 

Warfare, Camels in, 285, 286; 
elephants in, 278 

Wart-hog, Appearance 
habits of, 213 

Waterbuck, Man killed by a, 264 

“ Water-elephant,” Newly-dis- 
covered, 183 


an 


and 


343 


“White” elephant, 56; rhino- 
ceros, 183 

hide ats Mr. Caspar (quoted), 
262 

Wild boar, dog, sheep, etc. (see 
Boar, Dog, Sheep) 

Wildebeest and cheetah in Paris 
Zoo, 294; grotesque appear- 
ance of, 208; protection of 
black, 317 

Wilderness, The, 17 

Williamson, Colonel (quoted), 
Se et 110, 124, 132, 133, 134, 
I 


3 
Wolhuter, Mr. (remarkable ad- 
venture with two lions), 253 
Wolves attacking man, 233 


Yak in Canada,” 288; size and 
strength of, 84; taming of, 17, 
84, 288 

fa Mr. (killed by anelephant), 
25 


Zebra, 204, 205; in harness, 297 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


Our Agreeable Friends 


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