One afternoon, about the end of the nineteenth century, a steamer was passing southwards through the Suez Canal, and as I sat in the shade on its deck and looked eastwards over the desert, I saw a little animal with a bushy tail running along the ridge at the canal side, keeping level with the steamer. A slight occasional glance in our direction showed that he knew we were there. At first, he appeared to be a jackal; but, when glasses were turned upon him, we agreed that he was more like the fox indigenous in the deserts and the lands adjacent, the “fennec” as it is called, the “little fox” of Scripture that is said to spoil the vines in one passage. It is a true fox; but smaller in the body and bigger in the eyes and in the ears than other foxes, and more easily tamed. By destroying vermin, he perhaps balances his account with humanity, and is no more considered an enemy than the swallow. He is said to eke out his want [172] of strength by diligence, and often escape his enemies by digging himself into safety. Needless to say, unlike many other foxes, this one digs his own hole, and is never without one, so that it must have been of him that Jesus was thinking, when He said: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head” (Matt. viii. 20).
A lady, who was watching him with delight, was afterwards sorry that she pointed him out to various idle men. She intended only to give them pleasure; and did not in time bethink her, in what their pleasure lay. Complacent cries of sham excitement were soon followed by—“ping”—a shot from the bridge; and the bright little fox ceased, suddenly, to run abreast of us, fell suddenly lame, and crawled aside.
“Well shot!” cried several raucous voices....
Some Arabs, working near, looked up to see what was being fired at, and leaned on their tools, and spoke to each other, looking, from time to time, at the steamer and in the direction of the fox. In 1886, living at Suez some days, I had had various talks with such men, seeking to sound their sentiments on things in general; and on this occasion, I felt that I knew, as well as if I had [173] heard it, that they were saying to each other—“What bloody brutes!”
What seemed to confirm this guess, was that I did overhear our Indian deck-scrapers making remarks....
Three or four days later, a fellow-passenger was still gloating over the glorious achievement. We were near the south of the Red Sea by this time. Thinking to make him sorry for the wounded beast, I said—“The fox is likely to be dead of starvation and thirst by now.”
“Ha, yes,” said he, “it isn’t likely to live much longer after a Martini bullet has perforated its thigh, ha, ha, ha!”
“People don’t shoot foxes in England.”
“They kill them in another way. They’re just as cruel.... Of course, one would rather have galloped after him; but what can you do from a ship’s deck?”
“Not gallop, certainly.” I tried another tack. “It is thought wrong, in the Highlands, I have heard, to shoot at the deer, unless you are likely to kill.”
“No?” He seemed surprised; but after a pause, he could explain the mystery. “It would spoil the venison,” said he.
“Do you think the man who shot the fox in the thigh has nothing to be sorry for?”
[174] “He could not be sure of the head. I think that, on the whole, he did very well. He was in a moving ship, and it was running.”
“Are you not sorry for the fox?”
“Not at all.”
I was tempted to say I was sorry for him; and could have said so, sincerely. But, after all, he was young, and a human being, though mentally and morally less developed than the Indian seamen or the Arab labourers. I was loath to hurt his feelings. He deserved as much consideration as—the fox. So we changed the subject.
Our Indian newspapers recently (1909) reproduced reports of a public meeting in London, which had been made remarkable by the presence of the veteran Mr Selous, who had assured inquirers that the elephants do really assist each other in distress. He doubtless gave details of many modern instances; but the newspapers omitted them. So here is one.
Towards the end of 1897, some herds of wild elephants spread far and wide over the harvest fields in Toungoo district, Burma. They had used to do that, not every year, but at intervals, for generations; but this visitation was unusually severe. The area cultivated was greater than ever before, and the villagers had been disarmed. On former occasions the elephants had gone away as soon as the men began to shoot, or even [176] to make a noise like shots, by putting bamboos into fires which they hastily kindled on the edges of the fields; but, on this occasion, the elephants merely paused a little to trumpet to each other, “I’m not hurt,” “Nor I,” “Nor I.” Then they resumed grazing at random, heeding the noises of humanity, the shouting and the rattling of tins and sticks and the bamboo-crackers, no more than the cawing of the crows.
The news seemed to spread in the elephant world that men had ceased to shoot; for as the herd that came first went farther from the hills, seeking pastures new, the farmers who had begun to breathe freely were horrified to see new herds appear. On the morning that the first news came to me, it was followed in a few hours by reports of fresh havoc, like those that rained upon Job. “We’ll need an extra officer to measure up the damage for revenue exemptions on that account,” was the prudent reminder of a responsible subordinate, expert in reeling off official rigmaroles; but I took an original plan, of which nothing was said, or ever would have been, if that newspaper report had not recalled to mind an incident too good to leave in oblivion. I took the first train to a station that [177] seemed to be the centre of the elephants’ operations; and in less than two hours a general engagement was in progress. A long line of men, including military and other policemen and carrying all the firearms of any kind available, advanced as fast as they could towards the elephants, whose demeanour and behaviour could not have been surpassed.
Whenever they discovered that the shots were now followed by bullets, they all ceased grazing, far and near, as far as the eye could reach over a spacious, level plain. They gathered into herds, and, as soon as possible, every herd, with cows and calves on the safe side and fighting males next the enemy to secure the rear, was moving towards the western hills, far quicker than a man could walk. Many of them were wounded, but none were left behind. I had not myself the luck to see, but heard from many others who saw it at the time, a sight that well might be immortalised. A big, wounded tusker had raised the men’s hopes. They knew the value of ivory, and hastened to isolate him; but two other big elephants, of which one at least was seen to be a female, ran to him and supported him, one at each side. They held him up as he limped along and joined the herd in [178] safety, and all went off together. The men were left lamenting, and admiring too.
Upon the hills, among primeval woods, the elephants that roam, intent on provender, oblivious of war, resemble the Yankees among the great powers of the world. Their superabundance of material brings water to the teeth of potentates of prey; but the herds of elephants are too terrible to tackle. They graze in peace in the cool glens, and have been known, in thirsty weather, to drink alongside a tiger. Such a thing, at least, has been reported as seen, and often inferred from tracks. Think of what must have been in the heart of the tiger, as he lapped the cool water, with an empty stomach, and eyed the elephants’ calves. But “whatsoe’er he thought, he acted right,” and departed without hostilities, undoubtedly protesting, in the language of the woods, his love of peace—which was no doubt sincere, under the circumstances.
It is not ill deeds alone that are done because the means to do them are in sight. The same is true of good deeds also. The elephants [179] can help each other better than most quadrupeds, because they have trunks; and so can the monkeys, because they have hands. Herein lay the primitive germ of society. Indeed there is profit in remembering this, for it follows that selfish greed, which is the root of gambling and theft of every kind, is a reversion in the scale of being, not merely to the monkey level, but far below it, to the level of the cats and fishes.
Be the explanation what it may, the mutual helpfulness of monkeys is well ascertained. They could hardly survive in the woods on other terms. A male baboon in Egypt has been seen to turn and face some dogs, and protect and deliver a young baboon in danger of succumbing to them. Here the remarkable thing is that it was the male that did it. Many females would fight for their young. Maternal love is the taproot of life; but the root of society is family solidarity. That the poor “dog-faced” baboon of old Egypt, unaltered for 6000 years, is able to rise so high in the social scale as this, is perhaps what is best worth knowing about him.
The leopard is the great enemy of monkeys of all kinds. This may be said to be true “all the world over,” if the American jaguar is called a kind of leopard, as it sometimes is. So it is with [180] special pleasure that one reads of an incident seen in Africa not long ago by Sir J. Percy Fitzpatrick. It occurs in the standard biography of his dog, Jock of the Bushveld, pp. 270, 271, 272, and it happened to a leopard that narrowly missed dining upon the hero, “Jock,” and so cutting short his distinguished career. Jock’s master, apparently, was a-hunting, and saw the leopard pinning a baboon with its left paw in the bottom of a stony glen; but before it could do more, a host of angry baboons descended the rocks towards it, with an uproar that even to a Fitzpatrick seemed deafening; and upon the leopard, which had one paw occupied, they “showered loose earth, stones, and debris of all sorts down with awkward underhand scrapes of their forepaws” (meaning their hands). Nearer and nearer they came, while the leopard vainly threatened them with its free forepaw. Louder and louder grew the uproar. The baboons, like old Cato and the Chinese, believed in shouting and grimacing to frighten the foe; and here they practised that. Neither Cato nor any Chinese warrior could surpass a monkey in twisting the features. The artist who tried to represent their contortions in Sir Percy’s book has done his best, but could not succeed. It is “like painting fire,” as Carlyle once said.
[181] The leopard became alarmed. It is an Indian proverb that the tigers do not count the sheep; but the baboon is not so negligible. The corpses of a chimpanzee and a lion, it has been reported (but not by Sir Percy), have been found interlocked, the chimpanzee having been disembowelled, and the lion throttled. The leopard could not know that. I confess I have doubts of the truth of the history myself. But the leopard had misgivings as the noisy crowd came nearer and nearer, and let his victim go. Sir Percy watched the triumphant baboons depart. “The crowd scrambled up the slope again,” he reports, and he tells us he believed, and so may we, what “all the Kafirs maintained, that they could see the mauled one dragged along by its arms by two others, much as a child might be helped uphill....”
It is a likely guess that the fighting baboons were the adult males of the tribe. This is a guess suggested by another interesting bit of history.
Dr Murphy, now civil surgeon at Maubin, in the delta of Burma, where this is written, is a unique phenomenon. That is a [182] clumsy phrase to apply to any fellow-creature, but accurate. He is a perfectly popular European official—popular in spite of being an official, because he is a good doctor, spontaneously sympathetic, kind and helpful, and does not bully or grab.
Two little facts may be told on the authority of the present Deputy Commissioner of Maubin district and his predecessor, to give Dr Murphy the pleasure of seeing himself as others see him, and to give strangers a glimpse of him. In 1908, when he was about to go away on sorely-needed sick leave, the good people of Maubin town, who did not realise how ill he was, got up a petition to the effect that Dr Murphy’s leave should be refused, as Maubin town could not possibly dispense with him. When he was expected to return in 1909, the Deputy Commissioner hastened to Rangoon to solicit that Dr Murphy might be posted again to Maubin. That was how he came to be in Maubin this year (1909), when he told me three pretty anecdotes, which, knowing him well, I retell now with as much confidence as if I had seen and heard with my own eyes and ears everything he told me he saw and heard.
In 1883 he and his brother were schoolboys at Mussoorie in the Himalayas; and were in the [183] habit of frequenting a glen where lived a tribe of Indian baboons, “langurs” the people name them. These are “black-faced, white-whiskered, long-tailed, big, grey monkeys, not by any means as tall as a man, but as thick in the arm.” They are a different species from the African baboons, but quite as clannish. They live on terms of neutrality with mankind, as the various tribes of men may be said to live with each other; that is to say, open hostilities are strictly avoided on both sides, and stealing is restricted to what can be done in secret. In this instance, as the stealing is all on one side, it might be said they levied tribute upon men, but they do not attack people. School children at Simla have told this writer that the “wild” baboons often sit and watch them, they and the children eyeing each other with equal curiosity.
Of course, they are not Quakers, nor even Hindus. If people flung stones at them, they would fling stones in return. The little brown fisher monkey of Burma, too, will do that. But “in deference to Hindu prejudices,” the English leave them alone, so that they have probably never noticed the English. They pay no taxes, these white-whiskered gentlemen; and reciprocate human forbearance. “Live and let live,” is their rule with [184] men, and so, in general, schoolboys hardly notice them.
Great therefore was the surprise of the two little Irishmen one day to notice the baboons in a state of excitement, jabbering loudly, and plainly preparing for battle. Their women and children were all huddled in one place, and the big males gathered in another, moving in a body. The boys, as if by instinct, followed the crowd of males “to see the fun,” whatever it might be, just as in the Highlands of Scotland, when they were inhabited, the boys used to follow the men at funerals and weddings “to see the fights.”
Their curiosity was richly rewarded. The baboons began to bait a solitary, angry bear. The boys were dangerously close to the bear before they saw him; but he did not heed them, which was lucky. A bear, encountered at random, is often “worse than a tiger,” it is said; because the tiger can always get out of the way when he wants, but the bear is so slow that he despairs of escaping, and turns and rends the man who has met him. In this case, luckily for the two little Murphys, the bear was preoccupied. The baboons swarmed noisily in the trees around and above him. The elder of the two boys, who alone saw much, said that he saw them incessantly, [185] one hard upon another, come close enough to slap the bear violently with the open palm of the hand on back or belly, on head or side, on whatever point seemed safest of access—Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Their objurgations were like the sound of a cataract. The bear was distracted, snapping and striking here and there, but always missing. The baboons relied on their agility to escape his teeth and paws, with complete success, so far as the boys saw; but the boys did not linger. They had not the feeling of security that the baboons had; and, thankful to have escaped notice, “Run, run,” cried the elder, and they ran to a safe distance. There they stood and listened; and when the thunder of the battle and the shouting indicated the bear’s retreat, the boys consulted the hillmen, and were told that these battles, which were familiar to the hillmen, always ended in that way.
The glen of the baboons was open to the south and east, sheltered and sunny, and convenient for the fields and gardens, in which the baboons could seek for change of diet. The adjoining glen of the bears had a wetter aspect. True, with all its wetness, it had many oaks whose acorns were dear to the hearts of the bears, and they meant to keep it; but why not have the other glen also? They [186] esteemed the baboons no more than the Belgians esteem the negroes. So, from time to time, an Imperialist bear invaded the land of the baboons; but the hillmen said that they did not think the same bear ever came twice. The reason was that the bear, invading, always came alone. He was too inveterate an individualist to form a Chartered Company. He did not even hunt in couples. So the invader, irresistible as he seemed, was always repulsed by the solid regiment of baboons.
Thus it is that men and baboons are taught the need of solidarity. As Benjamin Franklin quietly and sublimely remarked on 4th July 1776—“We must all hang together, else we shall all hang separately.”
The years go by like clouds. In 1902, Dr Murphy was no longer a schoolboy, running about Mussoorie, but a surgeon employed by Simla municipality, and familiar with the little monkeys there, who lived on Jacko Hill. They overran the town, these little men; and took every possible advantage of the toleration of the good Hindus. Perhaps it is needful to mention that Indians are so indulgent that European naturalists [187] in India are continually surprised at the slight fear of men among wild birds and beasts. Thus it was that “Hindu prejudice” protected the monkeys at Simla, though nobody suffered more from them than the Hindus; but even they agreed with Dr Murphy that “something must be done,” when the little men from Jacko insisted on entering his house and removing the bread from the breakfast table.
It would be a long story to tell the plans that failed. The plan that worked was beautiful in its simplicity.
Two earthen pots were buried before the eyes of the monkeys, looking on. Only the thick and narrow rims were left above ground. What this was for, no monkey could comprehend, and the more of them that gathered, the more they seemed perplexed. A “multitude of counsellors” may bring confusion instead of wisdom. It was the easiest thing in the world for any of them to put in his hand and feel the emptiness of the pots. But, why were they buried there? “Hum—hum,” none of them could tell.
When they were about to disperse and dismiss the matter, as one of the many mysterious eccentricities of men, Dr Murphy put grain into the pots in front of them. This was a sudden [188] illumination to the assembly. To keep grain safe from monkeys is one of the continual problems of Simla life. “And this is his way of doing it,” thought the monkeys to themselves.
They did not delay to show him what they thought of his device and him. It was really too ridiculous. One of their leading men came straight to the pots and put a hand into one of them, keeping his eyes on Dr Murphy. It was as easy as ever to put a hand in; but, when his clenched fist was full of grain, he could not take it out.
After one or two ineffectual attempts to withdraw his hand, he put the other hand into the other pot, which had been placed convenient for that very purpose. Perhaps, when he put in the second hand, his object was to find out what was holding the first; but when it also touched the grain, the force of habit made him grab with it also, a beautifully human trait of character; and there he stood with both his hands in chancery, meaning by chancery a place that does not readily let anything out that once comes in.
There he remained standing. It never came into his head to open his hands and withdraw them empty. He was an emblem of many an Anglo-Indian, who has “heard the East a-calling,” [189] and seeking a “soft job,” has wandered where his tribe cannot thrive, but is detained by what he has in hand, and cannot find the heart to forego. The monkey stood there, with both hands full, quite wealthy for a monkey, but a helpless prisoner. If there had been pots enough, his kinsmen would all have come and done likewise; but there were only two, and he had monopolised them; and now he had to endure the multitudinous advice of the empty-handed monkeys, and their criticism, and ...
That was not all he had to endure. Dr Murphy took a whip and proceeded to chastise him, not very severely, but sufficiently to keep him from thinking clearly in the abstract. Then the hubbub thickened round the doctor. The tribe that dwelt on Jacko gathered clamorous. Quick, from the hill and almost every tree, wherever tribesmen were who heard the news, they hastened to the great indignation meeting, all seeming to talk at once, and making hideous grimaces, at which, to their surprise, Dr Murphy laughed aloud. They did not understand his noises and grimaces; but what they could not fail to see was his indifference. Whack, whack, whack! He continued the flogging amidst a chorus of disapproval, quite equal to that of the United Press Association.
[190] The prisoner broke away. The pots had not been very strong; and in his struggles he had broken off the rims. With an earthenware bracelet on each wrist and both hands full of grain, he reached the nearest tree; and there he opened his hands and dropped the grain. “All that a man hath he will give for his life.” But in this instance, the general opinion of observers was that the grain was dropped by inadvertence, as the monkey opened his hands in haste to climb, forgetting what he held.
By a similarly inadvertent knock against the tree, he broke one of his bracelets as he went up. Well for him if he had broken both! He joined the crowd that had come to help him, with still a bracelet (of a pot’s rim) on one of his wrists. This caused an immediate revulsion of feelings. His friends became his persecutors. They crowded round him, pushing and pulling him, smacking and scratching him, and biting him till the blood came. In a few minutes that leading monkey would have been dead, and perhaps they would have been carrying his corpse to the hill, as some people said they used to do, but suddenly, as the persecuted one was floundering about, the fatal pot’s rim broke and fell in pieces to the ground. Behold, he was now as the other monkeys were, different from [191] the rest no more, but sore afflicted and in agony. They succoured him now, like a prodigal returned, and helped him gently away, leaving the kind doctor sad to see how far beyond his intentions the poor fellow had been punished. The doctor declared he would never set that trap again.
But how very human it was! To translate the fine verse of Béranger’s song (“Les Fous”)—
Whether or not the guess is right that in that hubbub among the monkeys in the Simla trees there was a rudimentary heresy hunt, or, in other words, that the monkeys were screeching whatever in monkey language intimated, “Bad form, bad form,” “Order, order,” it cannot be surprising to find solidarity such as theirs facilitated, or even made possible, by what can only be called [192] a kind of language. If Max Müller had been beside Dr Murphy one day in 1905 in Simla, and seen what Dr Murphy then saw, he would probably have abandoned the proud claim he has made for humanity to a monopoly of speech. We must be content with the more modest boast of developing it.
The doctor noticed a monkey sitting on the flat roof of a small house in Simla, where lived a man who roasted gram and sold it. The little brown fellow was visibly hankering after the gram exposed for sale on a tray before the door. He leaned over and looked long at the man beside it. Then the doctor saw him go to a short distance and confer with four or five others, two of whom returned with him, and three little heads bent over the roof to study the situation and the unconscious seller of gram.
Then one of them went down the water-pipe behind the house, walked boldly round to the front of it, and openly, before the eyes of the astonished man, took a handful and ran away. The man snatched a stick and chased him; and Dr Murphy noticed with surprise that, of two possible roads, the fugitive took the least convenient for himself, but the one that best kept the man out of sight and reach of his stall. As soon [193] as he was gone, the two remaining monkeys hurried down and helped themselves to handfuls and escaped away, to be presently rejoined by their daring colleague, who had drawn away the man.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the significance of this incident. These monkeys must somehow have been able to speak together and trust each other. To every union of several we may apply what Heraclitus said of every unit,—“Its character is its fate.” Solidarity is possible in exact proportion to the degree of honesty prevailing. So the monkeys must have had a rudimentary kind of honesty as well as a rudimentary kind of speech; and that was why they could act on Moltke’s maxim—“Erst wägen, dann wagen” (“First ponder, then dare,” or, in commoner words, “Think before you act”), and then carry out their plans and co-operate well. We would be absent-minded beggars indeed if we did not see here the germ of that tribal solidarity from which all human civilisation has gradually evolved. Let us never forget our humble beginnings, or despise our poor relations.
In Phayre’s History of Burma it is mentioned that “the loud, deep-toned cries of the hoolook ape ... resound dismally in those dark forest solitudes, and startle the traveller ...” (ch. xxii). They would startle only those who did not recognise in the resounding “Oo-oo-oos” the voices of harmless, primitive communities of hairy little black men and women, called gibbons, the smallest of the apes that closely resemble humanity. They are probably the strongest of us all in the arms, in proportion to their size; for it is on their agility in the trees that they depend to escape their enemies.
It was in an Upper Burman forest that one of them was noticed a few years ago, pursued by a leopard, which had got between him and the rest of the tribe. What handicapped the little black man—or was it a woman?—was the bareness of the trees. If the trees had been more thickly clad the spotted enemy could not have kept him in [195] sight; but, as it was, whenever the gibbon looked down, the leopard’s eyes were on him; and if he paused to rest, it seemed about to mount. “Oo-oo-oo!” On, on, on he had to go, there was no rest for the gibbon. It was like Dante’s Hell. He cried pitifully, incessantly, “Oo-oo-oo,” and his kinsfolk answered him across the glen; but, what could they do? They could no more mob a leopard than the swallows could. “Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo!”
If he could have rejoined them, however, he would have been safe; for then the leopard could not have tired him out. So said the countrymen, who explained the ways of “Mr Spots”; but in this instance the leopard was able to keep between him and the rest. The intervening space was increasing. Did the little man know some round-about way? “Oo-oo-oo!” The others answered him, as if to say, “Cheer up! Here we are, waiting for you!” “Oo-oo-oo!” His speed increased, as he went farther away, as if he were growing nervous; and surely he had lost his head for a moment when he put foot on the ground, passing a gap, thinking the enemy far enough behind. The leopard was ready for that, and seized him. Then, in that far corner of the glen, there was silence—the silence of death.
In January 1909 a friend at Pyapon, Burma, told me that, as he was passing through an unfrequented creek near the shore there, between Rangoon and Bassein, the sudden apparition of his steam-launch alarmed a crowd of monkeys. They were on the trees, overhanging the water, and chattering loudly. They hurried away, with leaps and swings, quickly and easily, all but one. He was a very little fellow, and there was a big gap in front of him, too big for him; and so he stood shivering, about to fall. His mother saw his plight, and came back and joined him. To take him was impossible. So she sat beside him; and he pressed close to her and clung to her; and she put one arm around him, and, quietly but with quivering lips, she faced the awful apparition, whistling, splashing, puffing. It passed without hurting her or her son. They suffered nothing but the fright.
[197] “Very queer they looked as we came close to them,” thought the men on the boat; but their fear was as natural as that of men who see a lion at large. It is likely, too, that that brown mother-monkey had had losses before; and a mother’s heart to feel them. Perhaps a memory of old sorrows, dimly present yet, as well as something of the sublime instinct which makes humanity at times self-sacrificing and brave, had strengthened her heart enough to let her face the immeasurable dangers of the noisy, unknown monster.
Instead of laughing at her ignorance, think of our own—how little we can ever know of her or her tribe, how utterly undecipherable, mysterious beyond any hieroglyphics, remain the lines upon her face the “multitudinous wrinkled tragedies” upon the parchment of that little brow! We pass each other close enough; but an infinite gulf divides us, a gulf deeper than that in the parable: for there is no speech across it, no signalling, no telegraphy of any kind. No communication whatever is possible between us, any more than if we lived in different solar systems. Only, we can see and admire in her a mother’s love, exactly as we can behold the flashing glories of the kingfisher’s feathers, or hear the merry music of the lark. The world is not a nightmare after all.
Why are there so few heroic tales of our brave boys a-hunting with breechloaders, may be asked. The truth is that, with modern weapons, hunting is as unromantic as work in a slaughter-house.
Men may still be wounded by teeth or claws, as I have known one who lost an arm to a tiger, and every now and then a man is killed, although he has modern weapons in his hand; but it is mostly by accident or stupidity, and nearly always by preventable accident, like getting wounded on a railway. It is painful, and may be fatal; but so rare and so preventable that to take the risk needs no more courage than to step into a train.
That is why so many lies are told. The truth is bald. I have witnessed some, and credibly heard of hundreds of hunting adventures, in the most dangerous corners of the world; and read of [199] thousands more. To see the truth, one has to allow for the many events that seem too commonplace to remember, as well as for all the tricks of slippery memory. Statistics are not available, which is helpful in a thing like this; for statistics are misleading, and can be quoted to prove anything. So every man has to generalise from what he knows; and, doing so, I concur in the opinion of those judicious persons who think that the most dangerous kinds of modern hunting are safer in every way than common coal-mining. The percentage of mortality is almost certainly a great deal smaller. Not once, so far as I have been able to believe, not once did any man, with modern weapons in his hands, do anything very heroic, or need to do it. The grit was often there; but there was no real opportunity, for it is not the mere taking of risks that makes the hero. The gambling spirit is equal to that. The hero rises above selfishness as far as above fear, and does what he sees to be right, unheeding consequences. In our long war with the beasts, which has lasted so many millenniums, we needed such men at the start, but not now. The brunt of the battle is over, and anyone can finish it.
That is why there is little to tell in our anecdotes of modern adventures, unless when something [200] happens under primitive conditions. Never did any modern hunter have to face such danger as was faced by a bereaved old Burman grandfather in a village near Rangoon when he took a spear in his hand, and, with other old men, ran after the tiger that was carrying away his grandchild, and closed with it. These old fellows showed a spirit that makes one think better of humanity. But what are we to think of the idle men with breechloaders and servants? What drives them to the field or forest? The heavy burden of life-weariness, the Nemesis of idleness and plethora. The best of them are seeking a relief from real worries, perhaps, and the others killing time, or seeking amusement. Why not? It is nonsense for any man to dictate the pleasures of another; but let us have no cant at any rate, no make-believe heroics, as if the killing of cats needed particular bravery on the part of a man with a battery.
There are few more genuine pleasures in life than that of a European officer, who is at hand to help villagers in India against leopards or tigers, and feels his gun of use; and the wounds, if any, received in that way would leave honourable scars. But such a coincidence of duty and pleasure is rare, and seldom to be got by seeking for it. It [201] is altogether a different thing from the experience of sportsmen in search of sensations.
Here is a cutting from a friendly review of a recent book in the Westminster Gazette of 5th December 1908.
“Our author, we have said, got no lions. Other game came to him in plenty, but the lions always evaded his gun. Yet he gives us a living picture of a lion hunt, when the harried animal, which has been trying to slink off, at last turns to bay and determines on the fight to a finish:
“‘Death is the only possible conclusion.
“‘Broken limbs, broken jaws, a body raked from end to end, lungs pierced through and through, entrails torn and protruding—none of these count. It must be death—instant and utter for the lion, or down goes the man, mauled by septic claws and fetid teeth, crushed and crunched, and poisoned afterwards to make doubly sure. Such are the habits of this cowardly and wicked animal.’”
Since Goldsmith described how
[202] there has been nothing to equal the humour of this imputed wickedness. A simple person might suppose that the lion paused to spit in poison, or at least deliberately poisoned his teeth and claws; whereas, of course, he merely does not clean them properly. Having to live in the backwoods of Africa, and support himself somehow, he cannot command the toilet requisites of Belgravia. Is not that wicked? And his cowardice, in not standing to be shot at, is uncommonly like that of the Boers. Why should he not avoid the enemy’s fire?
In truth, it is plain that the author, as indeed he tells us, was not describing what he saw, but repeating what he was told. His words are not a “living picture,” but, if he will allow me to say it, a bloody blur, which no more gives an idea of the real fight than the hospital beds give an idea of a battle. In the supreme hour of conflict, both sides “see red,” but not in that way. Neither thinks of wounds. There seems to be no time for that. The only thought is how to kill; and in the glad excitement the manifold details of life and all its conventions, which seem so real in cold blood, are crumpled up like stage properties in a conflagration; and all seems fair in war, and all is fair; and the issue lies with the God of battles, [203] and not with the elderly lawyers at The Hague or anywhere else.
So much the worse is it then for the lions, and so much the worse for any man or nation found unready, unprepared. Ah, if we could only regulate battles like law-courts, how different the world would be! But God knows best. It somehow must be better as it is.
If this Englishman or any other man would meet the lion on equal terms, as knight met knight in the Middle Ages, I am sure there is not a lion, young or old, in Africa, there is not a tiger in India or Burma, that would not accept the challenge with pleasure. As the challenged party would have the choice of weapons, and a sportsman could not object to fair-play, we may be sure that “Nature’s weapons” would be the lion’s choice, and the victory swift and certain for the lion, even if it rained Englishmen, to say nothing of other people.
This is an old, old story. Hercules himself had to use a club and poisoned arrows. It is by tools and co-operation that we master the other beasts. The cats are a particularly easy conquest, as they are bigoted individualists. But let us not add insult to injury, and call them cowardly because they dodge us. When next our author is at [204] Lucerne, let him step aside into the garden there and look at Thorwaldsen’s lion, cut in the living rock, and see whether it does not lift his thoughts above the shambles. The wounded lion he described, according to the reviewer, was “trying to slink off.” Thorwaldsen shows what it was seeking to die in peace. Why chase and torture him more? To get his hide? The lion-hunter, whoever he was, although he risked his life gratuitously, was like a silly child pulling a cat’s tail and a thoughtlessly cruel child, for this big cat was in mortal agony.
Machinery-murder, for beasts of every kind, including men, is now a fact inevitable, and, like everything inevitable, it bears a blessing in it, if only we submit to the will of the Almighty, and recognise what He has brought to pass. The blessing latent in this apparent affliction, perhaps, is that we may cease to admire the business of slaughter; and if so, what a stream of blessings may flow from that one.
I have just been invited to invest in an electric apparatus, to be installed upon the tree one sits in, when waiting over a “kill” for the return of the tiger. The difficulty at present is to see to shoot in the dark; and this invention enables you to press a button and flood the place with electric light. If then you are moderately quick, you can shoot the beast while he is blinking at the light, as easily as if it were day. You are as safe in the tree as in a bedroom and very nearly as comfortable on your platform. You can sleep there all night—four nights out of five at the least—when nothing happens. When the great night comes, that is to say, when the tiger comes, even then you need not lose more sleep than most passengers do in a sleeping carriage on a railway. The swing of the tree in the breeze and the rustling of the leaves make your platform a superlatively soothing bed; and as you lie back and look up at the drifting clouds, and the moon or the stars, you can feel you have the excitements of savage life, combined with all the comforts of Charing Cross; for at your side is a good fellow, willing, for a consideration, to keep watch for the tiger, better than you [206] possibly could, and to watch you, too, and take care that, in waiting, you do not roll over on your back and snore, and finally wake you when it comes. What a dramatic whisper it is in your ear—“Tiger come! Tiger come!” Nothing in any theatre can equal it! Do not be in too big a hurry to fire. There is no need to hurry, if you take care to make no noise at all, and it is well to take time to waken thoroughly, so as to aim your best. If then you fire and kill, you are contented for an hour or two. There might then even be a little danger for you, if you had made a bargain with the Devil like Faust’s (see Goethe’s text, Scene iv)—
But even in that case, the danger would be momentary. “Another” and “another” you would want; and the Devil himself could not provide them—at any rate in Burma, where the many ineffectual days and nights become intolerable, unless you have something else to do as well.
Accordingly it is the Forest officers, whose work is in the woods, who can hunt to most advantage. There was one I knew who killed many scores of tigers, mostly by “sitting up over a kill,” in the [207] manner described. I doubt if he knew the exact figure himself. It must have been over a hundred. Besides the tigers, the same man killed perhaps every kind of wild beast in the Burman forests, except only the big ape.
Here, it may be noted, for the information of those who deny the existence of that animal on the Continent, that the writer knew a Mr Bruce, Deputy Conservator of Forests, and a completely credible man, who found his camp-followers attacked by a big ape. To save human life, he shot it, and on laying out the corpse he found it little smaller than the orang-outang. This was in the Upper Chindwin, in the north of Burma; and the villagers, who professed to know it well, called it the “wild man of the woods,” which is what orang-outang means in the Malay language.
“I would have done something else,” said the man of many trophies to me. “I would not have shot the big ape—at least not within many years past. I once did shoot a monkey in a tree. I used small shot that lacerated its bowels. The poor little beast sat on the bough and held its protruding entrails in its hand and looked at me. I felt as if it was asking me ‘Why did you do that?’ I swore I’d never kill a monkey again, and never did, and never will.”
[208] This reminds one of the common report, which one would like to believe, that a great man of science is occasionally haunted by the ghosts of the apes he has slain. The generous man is prone to remorse. But it is vain. “You can’t cure the wounds your arrow has made by merely unbending your bow.”
What most needs to be told, however, for it is least suspected, is that with modern weapons and a little skill and nerve, the hunter never has to face much danger. Even accidents are rare, and mostly avoidable. There is little to fear, except monotony and malaria; and green mosquito-nets have long been available for hunters to diminish the malaria. How to diminish the monotony is a problem that remains unsolved.
In India there is less of it—I mean of the monotony. The patchiness of the forests makes the killing of cats more expeditious in India than in Burma. The poor labourers who “beat” have a little involuntary excitement. There is some real danger for them; but for nobody else. The potentates aloft, on elephants or other elevations, waiting to pull triggers, which is their function, are as safe as if they were on the bridge of a battleship, bombarding whales. The ladies could do it equally well; or the ladies’ maids. The expense [209] is multiplied a hundred or a thousand times, to increase the amusement; and that is the fashionable Indian tiger-hunting. It differs from ordinary hunting as the Spanish bull-ring differs from the slaughter-house; but, as there is room for thousands to sit in safety round the Spanish circus, and a display of courage and agility by the leading actors, a Spaniard might reasonably argue that his sort of sport was superior in every way. It certainly does supply more fun for the money.
The happiest huntsman I ever heard of was a fat little Frenchman, who was a guest in a shooting-box in the Highlands of Scotland. His host was some ex-royalty; and one morning the whole crowd were going to stalk the deer, except our hero, who stood watching their departure as cheerily as he could. “Take a gun and potter about yourself near the house,” was the parting shout to him; and after a little, finding time begin to drag, he remembered the kindly-meant advice, and shouldered a gun and went off alone.
At dinner-time, he could hardly contain himself till the others had finished telling their doings; [210] and when at last his hints had made them curious, and they asked what sport he had had, he cried: “Ah, my friends, smaller, but better than yours. Just over the top of the first hillock (petite colline), on the edge of the moor, I met a glorious herd of Scottish chamois, magnificent wild sheep (moutons sauvages), and killed half-a-dozen of them before they escaped. They must have watched you all go to a distance and felt safe. I completely surprised them.”
It was only the conventions of sport that made the fat little man ridiculous. The deer were no more wild animals than the sheep. If the deer-stalkers were real hunters, so was he. In danger and in joy, they were the same.
They tell me that this story is well-known in London. That was to be expected. It was too good not to tell. But I heard it in 1894, in the north, from a parish clergyman of superior character, who located it in ground adjacent to his parish. It is impossible that he lied. There is barely one chance in ten that he was misinformed. So, if the “French lord” concerned convinces me that he desires such “immortality” as the mention of his name would give, then his name shall be mentioned, with perhaps a few more particulars. The probabilities seem to me about ten to one [211] that the story is true. After all, a statement is not necessarily false, because it is known in London.
The pleasure of fighting big cats any brave man can feel. But wherein lies the joy of being what Lord Chesterfield despised, a poulterer? Or of butchering the deer? Why do we not all feel as kind-hearted Plutarch did that, when men are at play, the beasts that help in the fun should have a share of it? Why is there joy in dealing out death? God knows. I have felt it myself; but a man cannot really analyse his feelings. He can only pretend to do that. At times—not always of course, but often enough—our feelings are as mysterious as the stars, which we can watch and photograph, but never explain.
So, when I say God knows, I mean that there doubtless are in Nature, which is another name for the mystery of the Universe, abundant reasons, far beyond my sounding. And I do know a partial explanation, a kind of clue, which our mealy-mouthed manners make me hesitate to mention. Yet, after all, truth needs no fine excuses, and the sentiments of the natural man need no apology. There is a genuine joy in killing. Nobody needs to be ashamed of it, any more than of sneezing. It is born in us all; and to a mind [212] undeveloped, unable to imagine itself in the place of another, cruelty is a pure pleasure, the lively sensations of it not being spoiled by pity. That was how the Inquisitors enjoyed themselves, and executions were always popular. A man likes killing as naturally as he likes sugar. “Clear your minds of cant,” as Dr Johnson advised, and it is easy to see in that the true attraction of hunting. How great and genuine a joy it is I never realised till once I watched a lady crunching a praying mantis under a paper-weight, and gloating over its sufferings, just as a cousin of hers, a famous hunter, loved to dwell on his more gory glories. She was sipping a liqueur she liked a minute later, with the same beatific expression of happiness.
The good old salt, Frank Bullen, has lately been lamenting the new and unromantic ways of whaling, when the whales are chased by steamers and the harpoons driven home by gunpowder, and the whales quickly finished by bombs. Indeed, there is no blinking the fact that the fun is out of the business. A man should think himself a fool if he goes on fancying that there is danger or romance, when there is none. The whaler and the hunter, under modern conditions, are as like the old-fashioned whalers and hunters as the saloon [213] passengers in an Atlantic greyhound are like the fellow-voyagers of Columbus or Drake.
To talk of the use of hunting to-day is generally cant, like talking of the danger of it. At the expense of what is wasted in a few years upon foxes in England, it would be possible to exterminate the lions, tigers, leopards, wolves, foxes, jaguars and every other big kind of dangerous wild beasts on the face of the earth; and fewer lives need be lost in the business than went to the building of the Forth Bridge. The work might be done in a year or two; and in the same time, and still more cheaply—perhaps with a positive profit—the deer and elephants and other wild cattle might all be killed or tamed.
In Great Britain, of course, no planning would be needed. The clearing of the game there shall all be done for fun, “like winking,” as soon as the many-headed king, the multitude, decides, if it ever does decide, to end the Game Laws. It is in the Indian and Burman and American and African forests, and in the plateaux of Central Asia, that a little planning and some expense would be required, and a little brave work need to be done. Of course, [214] the present writer is not advocating such a thing. He is fond of cats; and loves wild Nature as well as Nature tamed. But let us have no cant about the business; and recognise what humanity can do in A.D. 1910.
What men go after big cats for is, in general, amusement, just as much as when they go to shoot pigeons; and the one kind of sport is intrinsically, nowadays, no more dangerous than the other. Hunting used to be a school of war; and so was archery. Both arts are equally obsolete for any such purpose. It is only among unwarlike peoples, like the English or the Chinese, that such a thing needs to be mentioned. Officers who go a-hunting are not making themselves better able to lead regiments in battle. It is well if the hunting does not make them worse. There is nothing of military art or science to be learned from sport. Gunpowder and chemicals and machinery have ended that, and made hunting to-day the same kind of thing as golf, or cricket, or any other child’s play.
I saw a real hunter a few months ago (1908). He was a Eurasian, in Burma, living from hand to mouth. His clothes were of the roughest, [215] poor fellow, and his appearance showed he had to live very barely. The police said that he was kept alive by his patient mother, who “allowed him to sponge upon her.” A passion for hunting had withdrawn him from other occupations. The deer in the woods, along the muddy coast, and the rewards for an occasional leopard or tiger, I was told, enabled him to buy ammunition and a little food. He came before me with his companions, some idle vagabond Burmans of like tastes, because, it was alleged, when other game failed, they had decided to become hunters of men—in plain words, they were robbers. As I unravelled the tangled threads of his history, I saw in it what any man, who has developed healthily, can read in his own consciousness, a summary of human evolution from hunting to stealing. From stealing to working is the next step. The hunters shall soon be all vanished from the earth; but the thieves shall be with us yet awhile.