to cope with their own bears. An Englishman there is admitted to a bear-hunting expedition as receiving rather than conferring a favour. His behaviour in the frost, his gait in snow-shoes, his pluck when it comes to facing the bear, and his pertinacity when it is a brute-family whose quarters are broken up, are all appreciated by Scandinavian comrades; but only a weak settlement of peasants, infested by a strong party of bears, would ask a foreigner’s aid in dealing with the enemy. It is far otherwise in tropical countries.
In reading of South African sporting, or of missionary travel, one is pretty sure to come upon some narrative of a dreadful pair of lions which come prowling about a village at night, carrying away one valuable ox or horse after another, and killing the people, till nobody ventures out, and the village is in despair. Then, if an Englishman is heard of, anywhere within the reach of rumour, a deputation waits on him to implore him to come and take these lions in hand. It seems as if success always followed. Perhaps it does; or if not, the failure may be set down among the accidents of the journey. Whatever the special ability of the Englishman may be (which seems to be merely a matter of sufficient or insufficient practice), there is evidently a full faith in the Englishman’s courage and coolness in all native minds, wherever his services are invoked.
In Ceylon, the British gun and its sporting owner are an institution, raised up in opposition to the natural curse of the wild elephants. When the peasants hear the crash in the jungle at nightfall, and feel the tread which shakes the ground, they know what is coming. In the morning the fences are broken down, the crops are trampled, the young trees are snapt off or uprooted. There is a prospect of ruin within a wide circuit, unless active measures are speedily taken against the enemy.
True sportsmen in Ceylon think such a case as this as much a matter of course, as the rat hunts in the barn at home, in their school days. They soon cure the elephant, or the pair or family of elephants, of doing mischief; and while they are about it, they may perhaps have to tell, on going back to business, that they have “bagged” seven, or nine, or eleven elephants. They consider it “quite a simple thing,” when once in practice. There is a spot behind the ear through which the small brain of the animal is most easily reached; and the sportsman who knows how to aim can make sure of his “bag” with scarcely more risk and trouble than our squires encounter on the 1st of September. The secret of the case once known, the adepts make themselves merry with the mistakes of the unskilled; as happened when two Englishmen in Ceylon, returning from making prey of (I think) twenty-three elephants, found in their newspapers from home the account of the slaying of poor Chuny, the mad elephant at Exeter Change. While two gentlemen had quietly “bagged” twenty-three elephants, without any help or public notice, the one elephant in London had had pounds upon pounds of poison,—large draughts of prussic acid making him only somewhat uncomfortable for a little time,—and at last, after many hours of danger to the public, the poor animal was fired at by a line of soldiers, and received 120 balls before he died. The gentlemen remarked that it was a pity that somebody at Exeter Change did not know of the thin space behind the ear, and may be excused for laughing at the array of soldiers. But it should always be remembered that a training,—a severe and perilous training,—has to be gone through before our sportsmen can attain the ease and comparative security which enable them at last to take the high ground they hold. What concerns us here is the strong instinct of antagonism and wild warfare which is requisite to carry a man, first into such a training, and then through it.
We are reminded of this very painfully every few months by the stories which come over from India of some fine young officer, or some married man, whose life is precious, having been terribly injured, or killed, by a tiger. I have just been reading an account of two such accidents which have happened this spring. In the one case three Englishmen went out alone, to deal with a tiger which had killed a bullock. One of them, Major Brownlow, of the Saharampore Canals, is severely mauled, the tiger having sprung on him after his shot had missed. He owes his life to the vigour with which one of his comrades beat the creature about the head, inducing it to retreat; for they missed killing it after all. The other case is worse. An engineer of the public works at Roorkee, Mr. Harris, a man with a wife and four children, went forth against a tiger on foot, because he had once shot a tiger in that way. A mounted comrade could not get his elephant to approach: and the attendants could do nothing to separate the beast from its prey. The poor fellow was cruelly torn and crunched, and died in a few hours, after a leg had been amputated.
Such a catastrophe seems rather to send more men out into the wilderness, than to keep them out of danger. I observe that there are appeals made now to English sportsmen to rid two districts of their plague of tigers; and I have no doubt the appeal will be answered.
All security of living seems gone at Singapore, from a disagreeable habit which the tigers have got of swimming over from the mainland. Scores of people are destroyed every year: and labourers outside the town are apt to disappear, and be seen no more, unless in the shape of a few bones, with some remains of clothing, in the jungle. Singapore asks whether Englishmen, who will go anywhere for sport, will not go there, and revel in the abundance of tigers? The same question is hinted in regard to the Sonderbunds,—the low, swampy lands in the delta of the Ganges, where improvement is now penetrating in the shape of roads, and a new or enlarged port by which a new branch of the Hooghly will be brought into prominence. Those lands have a fertility without limit; and the natives can live there. They might send us cotton, of the true Sea-island quality, to any amount; and this is only one of many products which would be enormously profitable to both countries. But the Sonderbunds are like the very home of the tigers; and they make it a real difficulty to utilise the