J. Hampden Porter

“ It is an old idea that they, and tigers also, employ them as scouts; nevertheless it would appear that the true relation has been overlooked, and that it is the jackal who uses the lion. When a lion leaves his lair he always roars, and if any jackals are in the vicinity, the sound attracts them at once; it is like an invitation to a meal, for these satellites feast upon the offal. Similarly, as the lion’s majestic form moves with long and soft but heavy tread through the gloom, every jackal that sights the grim hunter follows him. ”

“ The intense heat of noonday at that season when tiger-hunting begins—namely, in April—makes those immense woodlands as silent and lonesome, to all appearance, as if the hand of death had been laid upon them. But when the short twilight of low latitudes deepens into gloom, the air, before vacant, except for the198 wide sweep of some solitary bird of prey, is filled with the voices of feathered flocks returning to their roosts. Flying foxes cross vistas still open to the view, and great horned owls flit by on muffled wings. ”

“ Animals look like the shadows of themselves. An elephant’s motionless, gigantic235 form, looming even larger than in life, will define itself upon the sight, vanish as you gaze, and by some new effect of light, reappear in the same spot and the same position. It is like being in the enchanted forests of old romances; and such impressions can scarcely have failed to influence many whose exploits were performed amid such scenes. Leveson, in a place like this, saw the only encounter that has been described between the tiger and a bison bull. ”

“ One can scarcely look upon the poor, dispirited wretch behind the bars of a cage, without freeing it in fancy, and transferring the animal to fitting surroundings,—open spaces in jungle, where tall jowaree grass waves in the evening air, deep nálás clothed with karinda and tamarisk, vast, gloomy forests of sál and teak, magnificent mountain buttresses, upon whose crags stand the ruined fortresses of long-forgotten chiefs. The tiger of the mind, splendid and terrible is there, and we are there to meet him. ”

“ No one can foresee the issue of a contest with an elephant. It may fall to a single shot, but no matter how brave and cool and well instructed the hunter may be, how stanch are his gun-bearers, how perfect his weapons and the skill with which they are used, when that wavering trunk becomes fixed in his direction, and the huge head turns toward him, his breath is in his nostrils. ”

“ All the old cows and calves were in rear of the herd, and it was not a little comical to witness their awkward attitudes. They would stretch their ungainly necks, and shake their heads as if they did not rightly understand what was going on. Finding that if they stopped too long to indulge their curiosity, there was danger of getting separated from the fighting members of the herd, they would make a stupid, lumbering, headlong rush forward, and jostle each other in their blundering panic. ”

“ Few animals can surpass the panther in point of beauty, and none in elegance or grace. His every motion is easy and flexible in the highest degree; he bounds among the rocks and woods with an agility truly surprising—now stealing along the ground with the silence of a snake, now crouching with his fore-paws extended and his head laid between them, while his chequered tail twitches impatiently, and his pale, gooseberry eyes glare mischievously upon his unsuspecting victim. ”

“ No other wild beast confronts a body of armed men after his manner. That last parade in face of a horde of savages beneath whose assagais he is about to die, is so striking that false inferences from the sight can scarcely be avoided. It is not the “deliberate valor” of Milton we see, nor even heroic despair; it is nothing perhaps with which humanity in its nobler emotions can sympathize; but it looks as if it were, and men have yielded to their feelings and believed that it was. “Life,” says Professor Robinson, “has but one end for a lion—enjoyment. ”

“ One morning the silence was broken by blasts of cholera horns, the beating of tom-toms, and wild cries from a multitude of men—such men, however, as he knew and had frequently observed in the jungle and elsewhere. But there was now a man, mounted on an elephant, the like of which he had never seen, but whose appearance is not forgotten. ”

“ This is a very disconcerting account for those who assert that the tiger is always dazed by daylight, and a coward at all times; that he shrinks from the sight and scent of human beings, flies from the sound of the human voice, and quails before the glance of a man’s eye. ”

“ THE TIGER A tiger to the majority of men is probably the most impressive and suggestive of all animals. Apart from those traits so obvious in his appearance that they affect every one, most beholders have in their minds some material with which imagination works under the quickening influence of his deadly eye. No creature matches him in general powers of destruction; none enacts such tragedies as he, amid scenes so replete with a various interest; none sheds so much human blood. ”

“ In his realm of that ideal world so little of which has been explored by man, subjective processes transpired such as we have no clue to and no measure for. The contents of mind, however, must be derivations from experience in a wild beast as much as in a human being. What he had observed, seen, felt, and remembered in that form which his own organization conferred, were manifested characteristically: that is to say, when vivid imaginations excited, or external sense-notices aroused him, the beast of prey awoke at once. ”

“ Close to our camp lie the crumbling cedghas, shrines, tombs, and fortress palaces of a race of princes now extinct, and seated in a kiosk around whose crumbling walls half-effaced Persian and Arabic inscriptions tell of the beauty of some girl whose bright eyes closed ages ago, and whose career of ineffectual passion finds a fit emblem in the pishash, or transient dust column that glides across the plain, let us attempt to forecast the events of to-morrow. More can be foretold than one would suppose. ”

“ At length, long after the true state of things would have been fully appreciated by most other species, the herd finds out that it is always moving in a definite direction. Then a dim consciousness of the truth, which day by day becomes more vivid until it arrives at certainty, takes possession of their minds. From that time an exhibition of traits which scarcely correspond with popular views upon the elephant’s intellect is constantly made. ”

“ Gérard compared a contest on foot with a lion to a duel between adversaries armed with equally efficient weapons, but one naked and the other covered with armor in which there were only one or two spots that were not impenetrable. He intended to illustrate, not the animal’s invulnerability, of course, but the fact that its tenacity of life was such that, unless instantly killed, it would almost certainly kill its opponent. For this reason sportsmen mostly shoot from howdahs, or machans in tree-jungle. In its depths a great forest is nearly lifeless at all times. ”

“ The western half of those central Indian highlands called locally the Mykal, Máhádeo, and Sátpúra hills, is a famous haunt for elephants. In this wild birthplace of the streams that pour themselves into the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Gulf, these creatures wander in comparative security. The Gónd, Kól, and Sántál aborigines furnish the best trackers extant, except, perhaps, those mysterious Bygá or Bhúmiá, whose knowledge of woodcraft is unequalled. These small, dark, silent men have no sort of respect for an elephant’s mind or character, but they worship it from fear ”

“ But no creature’s senses can give warning of a panther’s or leopard’s approach. Few people ever heard or saw one of these beasts while coming. They steal upon their prey with the silence and certainty of death. Their stalk is the perfection of skill. The attack is rapid and fierce beyond comparison; and afterwards, unless the ground is such as will retain a trail, this animal cannot be followed. It is the most difficult to mark down of all beasts of prey, the hardest to track on account of its many tricks. No kind of game is so often hunted unsuccessfully. ”

“ Take, for example, the average lion and place him, as he is placed in fact, under the opposite conditions of having been born and reared in a desert, or brought forth amid a cluster of villages and trained to prey upon human beings. That such specimens cannot be the same needs no saying, and if not these, then not any who are differently placed; so that to go into some large province and write about this beast as if the few individuals met with summarized all the possibilities of its race, is manifestly absurd. Actually, and as far as he goes, a lion is as much an individual as a man ”

“ Some are braver than others, but as soon as we attempt to find out from the literature of this subject which are the bravest,—young or old, male or female, trained or untrained, wild or tame,—hopelessly contradictory statements crowd upon us from all sides. The highest, the most complete, the severest discipline this beast receives is in the hunting-field, and Colonel MacMaster expresses the general tenor of opinion upon its results in saying, “I have never known an elephant who could be depended upon for dangerous shooting.” ”

“ All the evidence tends the other way. Taken as it is, looked upon as a brute to whom heroism, sentiment, and high resolve must be as impossible as righteousness, the lion preserves the demeanor of courage better than any other member of the Felidæ.
Moffat, Lichtenstein, Freeman, Rath, Galton, say with W. C. Kerr (“The Far Interior”) that “when a lion is thoroughly hungry there is no limit to his audacity and daring.” Every being must have some incitement to action, and those motives which are most powerful with lions appear to be anger and appetite. ”

“ Providence has taught them to choose the most favorable ground, whether for camping or feeding, and to resort to jungles where their ponderous bodies so resemble the rocks and dark foliage that it is difficult for the sportsman to distinguish them from surrounding objects; whilst their feet are so made that not only can they tramp over any kind of ground, whether hard or soft, rough or smooth, but this without making a sound. ”

“ Without doubt, this animal is not sanguinary when compared with a panther or puma, but it is quite as likely that he is restrained from unnecessary carnage by economic views, as by any sentiment of generosity or mercy.
A lion when surprised does not usually dash away incontinently; if his retreat is not interfered with, and he has learned that firearms are more effective than his own weapons of offence, he falls back slowly. When so placed that they cannot escape, some lions die like curs, but the majority of accounts represent them as perishing gallantly. ”

“ Here, while the solemn booming of the great rock monkey sounds like a death knell, those tragedies take place which only a hunter beholds. Every creature has199 its enemy, and there is one abroad in the gloaming from which all fly. Listen! Above the sambur’s hoarse bark, the bison’s cavernous bellow, and hyæna’s unearthly cry, a deep, flat, hollow voice, thrilling with power, floats through the forest. It is a tiger rounding up deer. ”

“ No country is so favorable for his exploits as India. The endless divisions of its people into castes or professions is destructive to unanimity of feeling and combined action. The “gentle Hindu,” who is one of the most callous and unsympathetic of mankind, folds his hands when one of his co-religionists has been carried off, and says that Kali probably sent the tiger for that especial purpose, so what has he to do with it? His Mussulman acquaintance twists his mustache, and mutters, Ul-humd-ul-illa, praise be to God, this man was only an infidel, and it was his destiny! ”

“ Silently like some grim ghost, the animal may steal within shot, and fall dead at the first fire. Sometimes he bursts from a dense clump of bushes that the hunter’s sight has been unable to penetrate, and if hit, rages round the tree from which the ball came as if mad; or, if his foes be within reach, he kills or is killed. ”

“ A tiger is beyond question the most formidable of all predatory creatures when earnest in his aggressive intentions; very frequently, however, he is not so. False charges, made in order to intimidate, are more common than real ones. A tiger will bristle, and snarl, and roar, apparently with a perfect consciousness of the additional impressiveness given to his general appearance in this way. Some are, of course, braver than others; locality and their experience of human power make a wide difference between those whose characters have been formed in separate areas. ”

“ A better hunting-ground for a man-eater certainly could not be found. Thick, scrubby teak jungle closed in the road on both sides; and alongside of it for a great part of the way wound a narrow, deep watercourse, overshadowed by jámare bushes, and with here and there a small pool of water still left. I hunted along this nálá the whole way, and found many old tracks of a very large male tiger, which the shikáris declared to be those of the man-eater. ”

“ The true home of the jaguar is in the great woodlands of the Amazon. “Here,” says Lockington, “he reigns supreme; the terror of the forest, as the lion is of the desert, and the tiger of the jungle; the acknowledged and dreaded lord of man and beast.” Charles Darwin found this species in the basin of the La Plata River, living in reed belts and around lake shores. Unlike the panther, jaguars cannot live without a constant supply of water. Falconer asserts that in some places these animals subsist chiefly upon fish. ”

“ Postponing for the moment his relations with mankind, let us see what kinds of game the lion is accustomed to prey upon. No coercion can be exercised in this direction. Actual starvation might take away liberty of choice, but, as a rule, it must be admitted that a selection of this kind is significant of the opinion which an animal has of its own powers, as it also is of its boldness. The giraffe, which lions occasionally kill, is entirely defenceless: so with elands and all antelopes. ”

“ As he swung the lamp, that hung by a large ring, in the elephant’s face, and cried out ‘Roghanath Gūj, Roghanath Gūj,’ the animal seemed deeply impressed. As the light ascended for the third time towards his dazzled eyes, I darted from between my two friends, who stood covering the elephant with their guns, and drew forth the unfortunate keeper. He was terribly mangled, and quite dead.” This elephant was semi-delirious, and in that state the wild beast nature, which had been covered by a thin layer of educational polish, came out under the stimulus of some passing irritation. ”

“ The bestiarii, or wild beast fighters, were a class apart from other gladiators. So far as our meagre supply of information goes, these men did not meet a royal tiger as a Ghoorka now does; that is to say, did not trust to perfect nerve, training, and activity, to avoid the brute’s onset, and slay it by striking at advantage; they appeared in armor and actually fought with sword or spear. Considering the style in which lions and tigers combat, one cannot divine the use made of any defensive panoply, which, so far as we can judge, would seem to have been more of an encumbrance than an aid. ”

“ When we mark their timid and uncertain steps, and see how often they hesitate and stop and turn aside, the truth that “nature’s peace” is only a form of words expressive of our own misconception and blindness reveals itself most impressively. There is no peace. To hunt and be hunted, to slay and be slain, that is the cycle of all actual life. ”