On 20th April 1895, being engaged in Forest Settlement work among the low hills abutting on the south the mountain barrier between Burma and Assam, I was aroused, as I sat reading in a tent in the afternoon, by a signal. It meant that my colleague, Mr Bruce, the Deputy Conservator of Forests, who had gone out to shoot pigeons for dinner, either was or expected soon to be in contact with tiger, and wished me to join him—which I did, at a run. He was near the camp. The tigers thereabouts are more plentiful than elsewhere in Burma. We had seen and heard abundant evidence of their proximity for weeks past, and were both anxious for a closer acquaintance.
A fat and full-grown deer was lying dead upon the stones in a stream-bed. The first guess was that a tiger, having killed, was about to eat it, but withdrew for a moment out of sight [20] at the sound of the pigeon-shooting. On this hypothesis we diligently searched in all likely directions, and made sure there was no tiger near. Then we gathered round the deer. A faint, faint smell, perceptible as we closed upon it, showed that the venison was tending to that disintegration which awaits all flesh when life departs, and answered those who were beginning to doubt if it was dead, because it lay as if it might have been asleep, and there was no sign to show how it had died.
“Twelve to twenty-four hours dead, and not killed by any tiger,” was the first unanimous conclusion, after minute inspection and confabulation; and “still fresh enough to be eaten” was the next decision, all but equally unanimous.
This satisfied most of the men; but Bruce stood silent, while they knelt round it and began to ply their knives. I stayed to await developments. Casting perplexed looks up and down the stream, Bruce ejaculated, more than once, “I would give anything to know how that beast died.” “It’s too soft to roast, but will make splendid curry,” said the cook, inspecting a joint cut from the carcass.
When the men had cut off about three times as much as would suffice to “abate their desire [21] of food,” they began obligingly to discuss what was puzzling Bruce, and in a short time, so lively are the Burmese wits, every man seemed to be as interested as himself in the apparently insoluble problem. A mystery attracts men, as a light does the moths; or, as Cicero explains it in his Offices (i.4)—“The peculiarity of man is to seek and follow after truth. So, as soon as we are relaxed from our necessary cares and concerns, what we covet is to see, to hear, and to learn something; and the knowledge of things obscure or wonderful quickly appears to us to be indispensable for our comfort and happiness.”
Wild dogs were as likely as a tiger to have killed that deer; but equally certain not to leave the dead uneaten. The wild dogs and the tigers alike are real professional hunters, who kill in order to be able to eat and live. They are not sportsmen, who kill for amusement, that is to say, for want of occupation. Besides, there were no marks discoverable of either a tiger or dogs.
The partition of the venison served the purpose of a post-mortem. When it was seen that the neck was broken, we looked at the steep ground on the northern bank and saw how the deer could have tumbled down; and “killed by a fall” was the first step to a final verdict.
[22] But why did it fall? It was useless to suggest, as one did, “committed suicide in a temporary state of insanity.” He was gravely assured on every hand that the deer, however worried, do not commit suicide.
It would be long to tell the other guesses. Nobody could find a scratch on the carcass. That alone disposed of many theories.
Bruce had for some time spoken only in interjections. His mind was working. Suddenly he cried, with the abrupt inspiration of a seer, “I have it! I have it! I see what it was. This stag and another fought for a hind on that high bank, and this was the one pushed over.”
We agreed. Some of us would have agreed to anything, being tired of the subject. But we really were convinced; and when Bruce had finished describing the probable (what a blessed word probable is, to be sure!—the probable) antlers of the victor, contrasting them with the poor young brow of the dead, there were some among us who would in a little time have been capable of describing in a witness-box the aforesaid victorious antlers as things seen and handled. It was a doubter who said, “If you’re right the tracks of the fighters must be visible yet. It cannot have been before [23] last night. The ground seems soft up there, and there has been no rain.”
As soon as the words were spoken, as if by one consent, the men tore up the steep, Bruce shouting something that sounded like, “Right you are, for once!” On hands and knees went some; and they distributed themselves, to miss nothing, panting, puffing, all climbing as if a golden fleece awaited their joint efforts, and earnestly scanning the ground as they went. They did not compete though they vied with each other, each helping his neighbour, in a genial way; and, joyfully working together, they unconsciously illustrated the solidarity of humanity in real life.
Soon they were rejoicing and jubilating as loudly as if a heap of golden fleeces had been found, for they saw the tracks they went to seek. The duel of the stags, as it must have happened in the cool starlight of the preceding night, could be traced and rehearsed from the hieroglyphics on the ground by the sharpened wits of the village specialists, with more confidence than the incidents of a battle can be deciphered by a historian. Here it was, in a narrow glade, that they charged and grappled; there and there they struggled and pushed to and fro till one went backwards, and there at last, as you could see, one backed over [24] the steep and stumbled suddenly into death, to lie on the stones below, until we came and, anticipating other carrion-eaters, cut him up for dinner.
“And now, let’s track the victor!”
Heigh-ho! It was to face a tiger I laid down my book, and not to follow an amorous deer; but the tracks led into the stream again. “The victor went for a drink,” we said to each other, like children rejoicing to find that they can draw an inference for themselves, or rather like men who have learned, as all men do at last, how liable they are to be mistaken, and are slow to feel sure of anything till they find that others agree.
Among the stones the tracks were lost. Then I recalled how Robert the Bruce of Bannockburn had baffled the bloodhounds following him once, in his days of difficulty, by walking along a stream; and I suggested that the deer might in the same way baffle a modern Bruce. But men are more knowing than bloodhounds.
“The stag is not a water-buffalo. He’ll quench his thirst and leave the stream. Won’t he?”
“He must have done so, for he isn’t here.”
“The banks aren’t rocks. We’ll see where he left as well as where he came, won’t we?”
“Assuredly you shall, if you look long enough. I’ll stay ten minutes.”
[25] “I’ll stay till dark.”
It was not needed. The men started to seek the trail with enthusiasm; and in a few minutes there was a joyful shout and soon we were following the vanished stag, as confidently as if he were bodily in front of us, along one of the deer-paths that were a feature of these primeval woods. Our Burmans were admirable. Plain villagers, but all-round men, observant, they could notice swiftly and surely the slightest marks on the surface of the path which were signs of recent tracks. They had a rare reward. Few modern events have caused to sated Europeans the sensations they experienced when, instead of the expected jumble of many prints, to show where our wanderer rejoined his fellows, or at least his partner, they came upon the clean-picked bones and antlers of the stag at the side of the path, and a few fresh tiger-tracks that showed how he in turn had died....
“I like this, I like to get to the bottom of things. I’m glad we came,” cried Bruce. “This is the kind of thing that makes you realise what life in the forests truly is....”
“Beasts for beasts,” said his companion, “if one has to deal with beasts, the four-legged varieties here are simple and almost harmless compared to the rascals on two legs....”
[26] Bruce was urgent upon me to write out this authentic idyll of the woods which he had elucidated. I had to promise; but I did it vaguely—“when I have time,” “when I retire,” “when the spirit moves me”—so that time was not of the essence of the contract. It never occurred to me that there was any need to hurry on his account, for he was the younger man; but now I wish I had kept my promise sooner. For Bruce is dead.
In 1895, while doing Forest Settlement work in the Upper Chindwin district of Upper Burma, I lived in an atmosphere of tigers. Hardly a day passed without seeing or hearing some sign of them. It was a great disappointment, both to my companion and colleague, Mr Bruce, Deputy Conservator of Forests, and to myself to finish our long journeyings without a single encounter. We spared no pains to compass one; but we were going fast, with a troop of elephants for baggage, and were being met at many points by crowds of men on business; so that it was not a surprise, although it was a disappointment, to miss seeing “our friend the enemy” at home. The tiger, as we were well aware, might say with Tommy Atkins that he is fighting for meat and not for glory; and when, in seeking dinner, he caught sight of an enemy that seemed dangerous, he was [28] bound to behave like Brer Rabbit, to lie low and say nothing. The jungle was continuous, and in parts so thick that he might at times have been lying within spitting distance and remained unseen and unsuspected.
No doubt the tigers saw us many a time, though we saw none of them. The villagers, in order to feel safe, went about in twos and threes or in larger parties, like London policemen in the slums. Whenever two parties met, they discussed the latest news of tigers. Among a crowd of items, I well recollect that both Mr Dickinson, the Conservator, and Mr Bruce had much to tell me about the fine performances of C. W. Allan of their department that year there, and of his experiences in 1894.
As “half a word fixed, upon or near the spot, is worth a cart-load of recollection,” according to authority, I have persuaded Mr Allan, now Deputy Conservator at Henzada, to let me publish a few extracts from his Shikar-Book, a contemporary record. It may be as well to mention that, knowing him well, I believe what he wrote as firmly as if I had seen it all myself, and that it tallies completely with what was told me in 1895.
“During the month of March, 1894, I had to go out into the Kubo Valley, in the Kindat Forest Division, Upper Chindwin, to do the demarcation of the Khanpat Reserve. On the 16th I arrived at the village of Thinzin and halted there the 17th to collect coolies to do the work, which I found to be no easy matter. On inquiring the reason, I was told that there was a man-eater tiger in that part of the forest, and that it had killed three men within the last six weeks, and that people were afraid to go anywhere near the forest. This was very unpleasant news. However, the work had to be done and men must be found, so I ordered the Thugyi (village headman) to hurry up and get them, and told him that there was nothing to be afraid of as I had five guns with me and could look after the men.
“On questioning the Thugyi about the man-eater, he informed me that the first man killed was a mahout (elephant driver) employed by the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation. This man was carried off in the Pyoungbok stream. He and another man had gone out to look for their [30] elephant, which had been fettered and turned out to graze. And it was whilst following up the drag of the chain that the tiger sprang on to the mahout who was leading, and was carrying a gun on his shoulder, and carried him off. The man who was following the mahout was carrying a dah (big knife) in his hand, and was just behind the mahout. He was so taken aback that he could do nothing to save his companion, so ran away and informed some other men who were encamped close by. But they were too frightened to go and look for the mahout. And it would not have been much good their going, for by the time they got to the place the tiger would have finished his meal and moved off.
“The second man carried off was also a mahout in the service of the B. B. T. C. He was also carried off much in the same manner from the Nansawin stream, and within ten days of the date the first man was killed. This mahout was out with a party of some six men hunting for fish in the stream, when the tiger sprang on to him from the bank and carried him off before the other men could do anything. They too did not attempt to save their comrade, but made tracks out of that stream as fast as their legs could carry them.
“The third man killed was a Burmese policeman. [31] A party of six constables were out on patrol, and had camped for the night under a large teak tree between the Pyoungbok and Nansawin streams. About four o’clock in the morning one of the men had got up and lit a fire, and put on a pot of rice to boil for their breakfast, and had lain down again beside the other men, intending to have another forty winks. He had barely laid himself down when a tiger sneaked up behind the tree they were sleeping under and seized the end man by the waist and carried him off. The poor man shouted for all he was worth, ‘Shoot, shoot, the tiger is carrying me off.’ This roused the others and they picked up their guns and tried to shoot, but the powder or caps being damp, the charges would not go off. They, however, put on fresh caps and eventually got the guns to shoot. After this they fired several shots and shouted, but the man’s cries had stopped, so they judged that he must have been killed.
“The constables waited at their camp till daylight, and then went off to the camp of some Burmese elephant drivers, which was about three miles off, and made them collect their elephants, some seventeen in number, and then returned and looked for their comrade. They found the remains within a couple of hundred yards of their night’s [32] camp. The tiger had finished its meal and had gone off. The Thugyi informed me that although several shots had been fired in the direction the tiger had gone it was not frightened, and sat there and finished its meal.
“Hearing all this, I did not wonder at the men not wanting to go into the forest. However, the work had to be done and go I must. Though I must admit I did not quite appreciate the job.”
“On the morning of the 18th March some twenty men turned up, and the Thugyi informed me that the others would follow. So I made a move and got as far as the Khanpat stream, where I halted for a bit and had breakfast and then moved on again. It was my intention to make the Pyoungbok camp that day, as I was told it had a fence round it, made by the patrols to keep out the tiger. But the coolies would not move fast enough, so I camped on the Nanpalon stream.
“After seeing the camp pitched and everything in place, I told my clerk to make all the men stay together, and not to let any men go about the [33] forest in ones and twos, for fear of the tiger. I also told him to have a big fire burning and to keep a watch of five men at the fire and to relieve them every two hours, and to call me in case of an alarm.
“I turned into bed at about nine o’clock, and had not been in bed ten minutes when the clerk came and called me, saying the tiger had come. I jumped out of bed, and taking my rifle ran out. The men at the fire told me that a pony tied near them began to get very restless, and kept looking towards the stream, so they got up and looked, and saw the tiger not twenty paces off, ready to rush at them. I asked where it had gone to on being found out. They replied that it had gone down into the stream.
“Whilst I was talking to the men, one man, who was looking in the direction of the stream, said, ‘Look, sir, there it is, going up the bank,’ and sure enough there it was, about seventy yards off, going across the bed of the stream. I had a shot and it sprang up the bank, and just as it was disappearing I fired a second shot. All the men said I had hit it, and Maung Kyaw Nya, my forester, was for going and looking for blood, but I thought this too dangerous and would not let him go. The next morning we got up early and went and had a look [34] at the place where the tiger had been standing when I fired at it. I found where both the bullets had struck the ground. They were both clean misses, and had struck below the tiger and between its legs.”
(N.B.—Mr Allan was and is one of the best
hunters in Burma; but, in firing in the dark, one
cannot see one’s sights, and so the best of shots
makes misses.—D. W.)
“For the next three days nothing happened and
the coolies seemed to have got over their fright
and were working well.
“On the 23rd I moved camp to a place on the Nansawin stream. The forest there was very dense and I did not at all like the idea of camping there, but as that was the only place where there was water, I had a place cleared and pitched my tent, and then went out to inspect the work. I gave orders to Maung Kyaw Nya to go ahead and pick out the way the line of demarcation should go in, and also to see how far the Thonhmwason” (that is, Three-Waters-Meeting, a camping-place where three streams met) “was from my camp of that day.
“At 3 p.m. a man came to me from the camp and said that Mg. Kyaw Nya had returned, as he had been chased by a tiger. On my return to [35] camp in the evening I sent for Kyaw Nya and questioned him as to why he had not carried out my order. He replied that he and two other men were going along the foot of the hill following the boundary, when they came on to a half-eaten sambur (big deer). They were going to take the flesh and bring it to camp for their dinner, when they heard a rustling in the leaves, and on looking round saw a tiger coming to see what they wanted with its dinner. The men, seeing the tiger coming, dropped the sambur and went for all they were worth, till they got out into the bed of the stream, and then came down it to my camp.
“I thought the men were afraid to go out by themselves to locate the boundary, and had invented the yarn about the tiger. Mg. Kyaw Nya said, ‘If you do not believe me, sir, I will show you the place.’
“On the morning of the 25th I went out with Mg. Kyaw Nya and three or four men, and they took me to the place where the tiger’s kill had been, and sure enough there had been a kill there, but it had been finished off during the night and there was nothing but the skull and feet left. On my return to camp I had tea, and was thinking of tying out a goat and sitting up for the tiger, but I did not like the idea of having to get off the [36] machan (platform made in a tree) and come back to the tent in the dark, so I gave it up.”
(Another objection, fatal to this plan, was that
the men would have been afraid to stay in the
camp at night by themselves.—D. W.)
“About 4 p.m. the men were returning from work,
when I heard a great shouting not far from camp,
so went out in the direction and met them returning.
The forester in charge informed me that a
tiger had charged out at the line of men and had
tried to take one from the centre, and that the
man had thrown his dah (big knife) at the beast,
on which it bolted back into the grass.”
“On seeing that the tiger was round our camp I took extra precautions and made all the men stop in one place just behind my tent; and gave orders to my Indian servants to have their dinner early, and to sleep with the Burmese coolies. My cook, an Indian, would not stop near the Burmans, though told to do so several times. He had his kitchen fire just in front of my tent. However, I told him he must sleep with the other men. The other Indians also told him not to be [37] a fool and stay away by himself. To them he replied that he was not afraid, and that if it was his fate the tiger would have him. He said, ‘If it takes me, it will be a case of one crunch and all will be over,’ and this is just what happened.
“I was having dinner early, before it got quite dark, so as to get the men together. The cook had given me my soup and had cleared the plate and put a roast fowl before me, and had gone back to the fire and was standing with a knife in his hand watching the pudding on the fire.
“I was just carving the chicken, when I heard the cook give a frightened cry, and on looking up I saw the tiger spring on to the cook. In jumping up I upset the table and the lamp on it, also a glass of beer that had just been poured out for me, and ran out shouting at the tiger, and threw my table knife at it. My dogs, two terriers and a spaniel, were sitting by my table, and jumped up and ran after the tiger with me and attacked it. One terrier and the spaniel were killed on the spot, and the other dog got away. In spite of this the tiger went off with the cook. I thought the tiger had got the cook by the back, but the sweeper who was standing close by with my goats” (that is to say, had been there when the tiger came), “said it had got him by the head, and so it turned out to be the case.
[38] “On hearing me shout, the sweeper ran into the tent and got my rifle and cartridges and handed them to me. I put in a cartridge and fired in the direction the tiger had gone, and this had the effect of making him drop the cook, but we did not know it at the time as no one would venture into the forest to look for him. This of course upset everyone in camp, and all huddled round my tent as close as they could and shouted and beat tins all night. No one would even go to replenish the fire unless I went with them, though it was not three yards from my tent. All that night the tiger kept moving round the tent and I kept it off by firing shots whenever we heard it walking in the leaves and saw its eyes shining like live coals in the dark.”
Here it may be noted that the eyes of a tiger,
shining through the blackness of the utter dark,
are a phenomenon hard to forget, if once you see
them. In this instance, whatever strange light
shone in them may have been intensified by the
glare of the camp-fire reflected in those glistening
optics. But no such addition was possible in
another case credibly reported to me and of more
recent date in the extreme north of Burma. A
tiger ventured into the sepoy lines one night, and
entering the open door of a hut, it killed and
[39]
carried away a man asleep in bed. His comrades
chased and mobbed the beast, which dropped the
corpse and escaped. The sepoys, taking counsel
together, put out the lights and hushed all noises,
as if everyone was asleep; and in fact they were
back in their huts, and the door of the dead man’s
dwelling stood open as before. Only, in ambush,
below or beside the bed, in a dark corner, a brave
man was waiting, rifle ready; and the tiger did
come back to that identical door that night, and
was shot, exactly as the sepoys had hoped. What
lingers in the memory best, of all the details of
that adventure, is that the man who lay in wait
told a magistrate, who told me, that when the
tiger came, all he saw was “the eyes in the doorway,
shining into the room like two coloured
lamps, filling the room with tinted light.” So he felt
that hiding was impossible and “banged away.”
One other remark may be intercalated, to let readers realise what is what. Even to men of experience in tiger attacks, the swift suddenness of events is a continual surprise. The tiger practises “surprise tactics,” and his attack often is, and always is when he can manage it, like a railway collision—it takes long to tell, but only a few seconds to happen.
Let us now return to Mr Allan’s journal.
[40]
“Early next morning, as soon as it was light
enough to see, I started to look for the body of
the cook, and found it not ten paces from where
he had been cooking. The jungle, as I said before,
was very thick, so we could not see it at night.”
(The tiger must have dropped the corpse when
Mr Allan fired. He had therefore lost his supper.
Probably enough that was why he continued
prowling round.—D. W.)
“The tiger had caught the cook by the head as
the sweeper had said, for one fang had gone into
his right eye and had knocked it out, another had
gone into his throat just below the chin, and two
had gone into the skull and neck at the back. So
it must have taken the whole head into its mouth,
for it was a pulp with the brains coming out.
“We dug a shallow grave for the poor old cook and buried him, and then left that forest as fast as the men could lay legs to the ground, for nothing would induce them to stop another hour.... They yelled and shouted till they got right clear of the forest.
“In leaving the forest no one wanted to be the last in the line for fear of being taken from the back, so I brought up the rear.”
It only remains to be added that in 1895, though
[41]
the tigers “remained as usual,” Mr Allan finished
the demarcation work so tragically interrupted,
and even took his wife to see the grave of the
cook.
Coming to 1909, there is an episode in his Shikar-Book about a tigress, which for various reasons may be transcribed:—
“... 14th April.—I started up to inspect the
Banbwebin fire line ... accompanied by my
wife ... an Indian and two Burmans....
After we had gone about five miles up the ...
path, ... we heard bamboos being broken. The
Burmans said there must be a herd of wild
elephants feeding on the flowered bamboos. I
thought they might possibly be bison or a
rhinoceros, so walked on to see what they really were.
The Indian was walking ahead of me, and I was
following, looking down the side of the hill from
which the sound of the bamboos being broken
came, when Barhan, the Indian peon, stopped and
said ‘Bag’ (tiger). I looked up and saw the tiger
crossing the path about sixty paces ahead of me,
so ... had a quick shot at it. On which it turned
round and came down the hill straight at me....
[42]
My wife, who was just behind me, on seeing it
come down the hill, called out, ‘It is coming.’ ...
It came on, and when less than thirty paces from
me I fired the second barrel and knocked it over.
After receiving the shot it fell and lay on the
ground, trying to drag itself towards us.... It
put its head up and snarled and showed its
teeth.... The Burmans, who were very excited,
kept on saying, ‘Give it another shot quick, or it
will get up and do for us.’ So after a bit I put in
another cartridge and walked up a few paces and
gave it a bullet in the chest and finished it off.
“After giving it a shot in the chest I walked round and got above it, and then approached cautiously with my gun at the ready to give it another shot if necessary; but after throwing a clod or two of earth at it, and finding that it did not move, I walked up and pulled its tail, and when I found that it was dead I called out to my wife, who was close by all the time, and she came up.
“We found it to be a tigress ... measuring eight feet and five inches as she lay.... The first shot had missed and the second ... caught her at the point of the shoulder. On looking at my gun, I found that the 200 yards leaf sight had got pushed up, and that made me shoot high. I [43] was carrying the gun in my right hand, but holding it across my back, and in pulling it forward in a hurry, the leaf sight had got pushed up, and I did not notice it in the excitement of the moment....
“Maung Nita, one of the Burmans who was with me, said, ‘Sir, if you had not finished her with the second shot we would all have been lying kicking on the ground.’
“As three men were not able to lift her, my wife rode back to our camp and called other eight men, and they slung her on poles and carried her into camp.
“On dissecting the tigress, I found that she had nothing in her stomach and appeared to have had no food for some time. She was evidently out shikaring (hunting), and was after the animals that I heard breaking bamboos.” ...
In a private letter to me at the time, Mr Allan
wrote:—
“... Had I missed the second shot she would have had us.... She was very angry. She was hungry and meant business. On opening her we found that she ... had evidently not had a meal for some days.” ... This illustrates a truth which is often forgotten by us. The big beasts live from [44] hand to mouth, like improvident working men. A dog may bury a bone, a tiger return to a kill, and a leopard has been known to put half a corpse or an unfinished bit of venison up a tree for security. But beyond the next meal they never look. It is only the insects of the universe, like ants and bees, or such animals as squirrels, that practise thrift. Hence arose the Jewish proverb about considering the ways of the ant in order to be wise. There is no such lesson to be learned from the cat.
One can be sorry for the tigress all the same. Think of her empty stomach, and perhaps hungry cubs in her lair; and then this big, strong Englishman, with his diabolical machinery in his hand, molesting her as she was stalking the wild cattle. “She meant business,” said he. Of course she did. Did anyone think she was hunting for amusement?
No matter now! Her body lies inert enough, a subject for their inquisitive knives to her indifferent.
Put yourself in the skin of that tigress, if you can. Think what a gunshot means to a wild beast, and consider how, when fired at, she “faced the music” in the real sense of that phrase, and went “straight at the guns,” as gallantly as the Light Brigade at Balaklava. As even the enemy notes—“After [45] receiving the shot, _it fell and lay on the ground, trying to drag itself towards us.... It put its head up and snarled and showed its teeth._” ... Was she not like the glorious Englishman, who, when his legs were cut away, still fought upon his stumps? Did any hero of Homer’s ever surpass that sorely-stricken tigress? Could any living creature have done more? And yet there are men to be found who call the big cats cowards! I never heard Mr Allan do that, nor any other man of sense who knew them well at first hand.
No wonder tigers flourished in the days of old. It is the invention of gunpowder, and then of breechloaders, that has handicapped them hopelessly. The long guerilla war between them and us has lasted for scores of millenniums; but the end is now in sight. Let us not libel the brave that are doomed to disappear. Let us not rail at the conquered. If they were fierce and strong, they were not cruel. As Nature made them, so they filled their function. They came, and chased, and conquered, impelled by hunger: and now that their hour has come they are going away. The day is at hand when the big wild cats shall all be as completely extinct as the vanished giants that wallowed in the primeval slime.
This is a story that has been often told; and I confess I did not believe it when I heard it in 1895, in the district where it happened. Long afterwards, in 1908, Mr G. Tilly, who had been the District Superintendent of Police on the spot at the time, told me he held a local inquiry, and was so completely satisfied of the truth of it that he recommended the payment of a reward of R100 to the girl, and the Deputy Commissioner and the Commissioner agreed with him, and the Chief Commissioner of Burma sanctioned the reward, which was paid. In the absence of any motive for rash credulity on the part of these officers, this might seem enough; but I happened to be acquainted with Mr Grant Brown, who is now the Deputy Commissioner of that district, called the Upper Chindwin, and wrote to him about it. He replied on 21/2/09: “... I remembered the incident quite well as told in the Rangoon Gazette, and should have included it in [47] my article on Burmese women if I had been able to remember more of the details; but I had no idea that it took place in this district. Curiously enough, the very first person I asked was the headman of the village where the thing happened. He could give me no details beyond those you mention.... The heroine is dead, and as I thought I was sure to find an account of what happened in the record-room I did not make further inquiries. A search has been made, however, without result....”
The “article” mentioned is Mr Grant Brown’s article in The Women of all Nations, by Messrs Joyce & Thomas, published by the Messrs Cassell lately.
Failing to find the record of the original inquiry held by Mr Tilly, which had perished, as a thing no longer needed, in a periodical destruction of papers, Mr Grant Brown had a new inquiry held, and the vernacular record of it is now before me. I sent a set of interrogatories, which have been answered by Ma Shway U, an eye-witness, and the head man of the village and another man, who were soon on the scene, measured the tigress and did everything else that needed to be done. None of these persons has any motive for misstatement, and the chance of mistake is infinitesimal. That [48] time has not altered their stories I can myself testify, for what they say tallies with what I was told in 1895.
Readers can now see how my doubts have been removed, and must be impatient to know what it was that I was so slow to believe. As Mr Tilly tells me the newspapers merely gave more or less abbreviated versions of his report, I have not referred to them.
The scene was Seiktha village on the Chindwin, an Upper Burman tributary of the Irrawaddy, in one of the districts that form the southern fringe of the mountains between Burma and Assam. One day in 1894 three nut-brown girls set out from Seiktha to cut firewood in the forest, making for a likely place they knew, a little south-east of their village. They carried one or two heavy knives or choppers, like butchers’ cleavers, such as are common in Burman houses.
Now if there had only been a man with them, or even a big boy, he would certainly there and then, in going and coming, have walked in front, bearing a spear or dah, a big curved knife like a sword. What makes it needful to mention a thing so obvious to us who have lived there is that Englishwomen sometimes resent, as degrading to their sex, the Oriental custom that makes the man stalk in front; [49] whereas a little reflection would show them, when familiar with plain facts of this kind, that there are reasons for it honourable to human nature. It is not as a master that a man, who is a man, precedes a woman, or goes into war, or business, or politics; but as a pioneer, protector, provider, and in short head servant. The old maid, at whom Dean Ramsay made us laugh, because she “thought a man was perfect salvation,” was moved by a wise inherited instinct, far different from what simple sophisticated persons have hitherto supposed.
On this occasion there was no man at all, and in the absence of any natural protector it was “go as you please.” A tigress in the bush saw her chance. The lightest-limbed and lightest-laden of the trio was a little girl, Mintha by name, who ran on in front. The tigress seized her and carried her away.
There is a lot, at times, in etymology. An Englishman who knows Burmese would tell you that Mintha means prince, or son of an official (min); but, as written in Burmese, without a long accent on the tha, and pronounced like an ordinary English word with the stress in front, the name Mintha has another modest meaning which you may discover from a dictionary, but can only with difficulty persuade a Burman to tell you. It means [50] Better-than-an-Official, a name curiously recalling the kind of names that were common in England in the great days of Cromwell.
“We know what judges can be made to do,” said Selden, grimly.
“We know what officials are,” the Burmans have been saying for centuries; and they class them with thieves and plagues, perhaps with more emphasis to-day than ever before. So Mintha is an unpretentious name, and so common that the little girl who bore it had probably never thought of the meaning of it, and would certainly have referred you to her mother if you had asked her about it.
She was perhaps eleven years old, but small for that age, this brown little maiden whom they called “Better-than-an-Official,” and swift and silent like a dream the tigress stepped out and picked her up and carried her away between its teeth, as a cat does a little mouse.
Her older sister, Ngway Bwin, which means Silver-blossom, a girl on the verge of womanhood, about fourteen years old, was next behind her, and beheld her taken. She quickly turned to the third girl, Shway U or Grain-of-Gold, who happened at that moment to have a chopper in her hand; and, snatching the chopper, little Silver-blossom ran at [51] the very top of her speed after the tigress. She overtook it, and lifting the big knife high above her head with both hands, she brought it down heavily on the animal’s head. It dropped little Mintha, “Better-than-an-Official,” and stood as if it were stunned. It was easy to see the need of keeping it stunned. Silver-blossom knew that that was her only chance. So hammer, hammer, hammer, cut succeeding cut, the little Burmese maiden killed the tigress.
Grain-of-Gold was the only other person near. She always said, and says still (1909), that she did nothing but look on. The village headman reported, and still reports, that the animal, which was shown to everybody in 1894, was a full-grown tigress in the prime of life, measuring “8 cubits and 2 meiks.” A cubit, in rough village measures, is still the original cubit, from the elbow to the farthest finger-tip, and a “meik” is the width of a clenched fist with the thumb standing out. So 8 cubits and 2 meiks can hardly be less than 11 or 12 feet; but the villagers measure along the curved outline of the body, so we may conclude the straight measurement was 8 or 9 feet.
The soft brown skin of Better-than-an-Official had been broken and she was a little hurt on the back of the neck and on one arm; but these injuries [52] were so slight that it is likely the tigress meant to give its cubs the pleasure of playing with her, instead of which Better-than-an-Official, saved by her sister and quickly cured of her scratches, is now reported to be living at Kule village, Mingin township. The sister, Silver-blossom herself, was quite unhurt. She became, deservedly, the pride of the countryside, but “died of a decline” ten years afterwards.
If her adventure appeared in a romance one would smile at the absurdity of the author who expected to be believed for a moment. Yet, after carefully questioning everybody concerned, Mr Tilly, who is a man of sense, believed it at the time and has never doubted it; and Mr Grant Brown, after a new local inquiry, believes it; and so do I. Let readers please themselves.
It may assist them to a right conclusion to remind them that Michelet has shown that Joan of Arc seems stranger to us than she really was because we are ignorant of history. Her performance was glorious for herself and France, one of the most glorious episodes in the history of the world; but all the same it was only the superlative of many similar doings of brave French women. Precisely in the same way it has to be remembered that, like hens emboldened to fly in the faces of [53] dogs or boys in defence of chicks, many girls in charge of brothers or sisters have been known to surpass belief in their feats of devotion. So Silver-blossom was not odd in the sense of being peculiar. She was like other brave girls, only more so.
At the same time it would be wrong to minimise what she did. It is the exact truth to say she expanded the range of human possibilities. Think of a Burmese child doing that!
Let them who know no better “explain” the miracle. The man who ceases to wonder at it does not understand it. I frankly admire the girl, and have no “explanation,” unless it be one to quote the hymn—
A pious Quaker’s phrase would have been, “God moved her.” If there is in English any better name for the Living Spirit of the Universe that surged in her heart and nerved her arm, it is not known to me. But, as a good Muslim Imam of my acquaintance once remarked to me, “There are many names for God.”
This was told me in 1908 by Mr Thomson, who as District Magistrate had held an inquest at the time upon the tragedy; and his recollections have been verified and supplemented by Mr Webb, the present District Magistrate. The depositions have, in ordinary course, been destroyed; but the details that are still recoverable seem to be sufficient.
The time was 1900, and the scene was Zwettaw village, Thongwa township, not far from Rangoon. The old headman, U Myat Thin, described in confidential official registers which he never saw as “an easy-going old Talaing“ or native of Lower Burma, was sauntering outside the village about midday, watching his grandchildren, who were playing near him. Suddenly a tiger appeared and seized and carried away his grand-daughter. That kind of thing is done with the speed of thought; and Hercules himself, in the old man’s place, could not have prevented the tiger getting the child. [55] Probably Hercules himself, if unarmed, would have done no more than the old man did, namely, run into the village and shout for help.
But who was to help? Every man and woman fit for work was away in the fields. Only the old people and children were in the village. He took a spear from his house, and three other old men like himself did likewise. The four of them followed the tiger at once, and tracked and ran with such goodwill that they overtook him, though they were too late to save the child.
One of the finest traits of character which I have noticed in Burmese villagers is their readiness to fight to recover from a wild beast the body of any person it has killed. Let a European try to take a bone from a bulldog and he may be able to guess, faintly and distantly, at what these four old men were undertaking when they closed with a famishing tiger, to fight him for his freshly-killed food. They had no firearms, no missiles of any kind, not even bows and arrows. They had nothing to rely on but each other, as, with one spirit, they attacked him, thrusting at his vitals with their spears. The fight was too unequal. He killed one of them, and with a stroke of his paw he broke the shoulder of the grandfather, and so escaped away.
The news was sent to the men in the fields, and as [56] soon as possible a new party took up the trail, including policemen with guns. They had not far to go. In the next field they found the tiger—dead. He had been gored to death by a herd of buffaloes that had been peacefully grazing there when he came among them. If he had not been wounded they would probably not have attacked him, or he would not have lingered long enough to give them a chance. So the old men had not fought in vain.
A herdsman of experience has said to me: “If the tiger was bleeding, the sight of his blood would make the buffaloes charge him.” That coincides with a red rag irritating a bull in England; but another herdsman said it was the smell, and several thought the wound made no difference. “A buffalo will not stand to be eaten by a tiger, but at sight of one stampedes, either at him or away from him.” Very likely, indeed.
“I think the grandfather recovered,” continued Mr Thomson. “I know I recommended a good reward and that it was paid.” It appears from the official registers that he was quite well before the end of the year. On 12th December 1900 the Assistant Commissioner felt bound to note, as a matter of business: “The daily pilgrimage to the local Kyaung (a Buddhist monastery) is the end [57] of his existence now, I think.” Why not? In the heroic days of Greece a time of prayer was deemed the fittest ending to a well-spent life.
It was not till 29th June 1908 that the registers tell of him what has some day to be told of us all—“Deceased. For successor see ...”
So far as can be discovered, the brave old man paid no heed whatever to the rewards, or to what was thought about him. It was right to honour such gallantry in every possible way; but the deed was one no money could have purchased, and the story is one I like to tell whenever I hear anybody who knows no better talking of the “cowardice of the Burmans.”