Part 12

The story of the enterprise, so far as it has yet appeared, is given in a connected form in the last report of the Smithsonian Institution of Washington. Mr. Corbin is a “railway king,” who owned a property on Long Island. There he amused himself by keeping a few deer at his home-farm, not in a park, but much as antelopes, elands, and bison are kept in the Queen’s stock-yard with the domestic cattle at Windsor. This was in 1886. Six years later Mr. Corbin conceived and carried out an idea for extending his deer-farm on a scale which a comparison with some of the forest areas most familiar to Englishmen, scarcely enables us to grasp. He bought twenty-two thousand acres in a compact block, and to these he subsequently added an adjacent territory of eight thousand acres more, and reserved them as a sanctuary for all such of the large game of North America—with the exception of bears, pumas, wolves, and foxes—as could be obtained to stock the ground. The area so reserved is larger by a quarter than the twenty-two thousand acres of the Forest of Dean. Windsor Forest contains barely fourteen thousand acres, and the New Forest alone of the ancient game-preserves of the Crown exceeds it in dimensions. But all these are forests in the proper sense, not enclosed parks, the animals of which are fenced in and protected. The Corbin preserve is a true park, surrounded with a fence high enough to confine a wapiti, and strong enough to resist the charge of a bull bison, and entered by nine gates, each under the supervision of a resident warder. Contrasted with an English park, it differs alike in dimensions and general purpose. Here the object of the enclosure is to surround the mansion with a wild domain in which deer may run wild within certain limits, and trees reach their finest proportions without formality. The park and its contents are really subordinate to the daily pleasure and convenience of the resident owner, though in some cases, notably that of Warwick Castle, small and ancient deer-parks exist at a distance from the mansion, and form preserves much in the spirit of Mr. Corbin’s forest. But this enclosure of thirty-five square miles in a ring-fence must be without a rival either in modern or ancient history, though perhaps the “paradises” of the Persian satraps, “filled with all kinds of wild beasts and trees,” watered by numerous streams and enclosed by walls—parks like that in which Xenophon and the Greek captains were led to expect that the army of the great king was lying in wait to destroy them—may have approached it in size.

The modern “paradise” lies in New Hampshire, almost the northernmost of the old States, on the Atlantic slope, between Vermont and Maine, and incloses a portion of the “White Mountains” and hill-lands, running northwards from the Alleghanies to the banks of the St. Lawrence, east of Montreal. It is a temperate and well-wooded region, and water is abundant. The park itself contains two large pools of twenty and thirty acres, and nearly two miles of streams, with timber of all sizes, and good pasture-land. Bison, beaver, and deer should all find favourable conditions in such a spot. The work of stocking the park was doubtless made easy by the owner’s indifference to expense; £80,000 were laid out on the purchase of the land and the costly fencing alone; but Mr. Corbin was fortunate in being able to obtain twenty-five bison from the few survivors of the wild herds to start his “buffalo ranch.” Those bred in the paddocks of England during the last fifteen years have steadily deteriorated in size and stamina, the cows growing yearly more “weedy” and less prolific; but there must be some source, not generally known, from which they can still be bought, though at a high price. Cross, the Liverpool dealer, is said to have sold ten cows two years ago, and those in Mr. Corbin’s preserve show a disposition to increase and multiply. The history of the Chillingham and Chartley wild cattle, which, though inbred for generations, remain vigorous and prolific when allowed to live their natural life in parks not a tenth of the area of that in which the bison now roam, gives good ground for hoping that the existence of the bison may now be prolonged for such time as American sentiment may think fit to preserve them. Besides the bison, the original stock in the Corbin Park includes sixty wapiti deer, or “elk,” as they are called throughout North America; seventy deer, probably the black-tailed deer of the Rocky Mountains; six cariboo, the American reindeer; six of the rare prong-horned antelopes; twelve moose, or elk proper; eighteen wild boars, and by this time, it is hoped, a colony of beavers. Of these, the moose, the antelope, and the beaver must soon be extinct species, unless protected by some such means as Mr. Corbin has chosen to preserve them. The cariboo seems to have migrated beyond the extreme margin of human habitation. Though rapidly disappearing in the North-West, immense herds were seen last summer by explorers in the almost unknown “barren lands,” fringing the Arctic Sea, and the mouths of the Coppermine and Fish rivers. The hunters employed in the capture of the various deer were fortunate enough to discover a “moose yard” in the deep snows of northern Canada, in which three hundred animals were collected on the area which they had stamped down and made safe for movement amidst the snow. Six of these were found isolated from the herd, and adroitly frightened into the deep snow, in which they were easily captured, the weight of the animals breaking through the crust of ice above, and leaving them helpless. These were sent with others a distance of two thousand miles by train in four days; but neither they nor any of the deer would feed while in the train, and several of them died either in transit or after their arrival. Twenty deer were also killed in a railway collision. But more than two hundred animals were before long collected in what is to be their permanent home, and the wapiti alone have already doubled in number.

The limits to be set to the increase of each species, should the experiment prove successful in all or most cases, will no doubt be matter for careful inquiry. Large as the area is at their disposal, the space required by wild animals is far larger than that which suffices for domestic creatures. The three acres of good land which is supposed to suffice for the poor man’s cow, expands to twenty-five acres of the best deer-forest as the yearly keep of a single stag; and, setting the increased size of bison, moose, and wapiti against the better pasturage of the New Hampshire hills, it is probable that the proportion of game to acreage in Corbin Park cannot safely be increased beyond the limits which experience shows to be necessary in the forest of Blair Athole. Two of the species, the moose and the beaver, live entirely on the branches of trees. The beavers are far more destructive than the moose, and will soon level all the timber near the streams. A single family in the Island of Bute cut down one hundred and eighty-seven large trees in ten years, and it is not likely that they will be less industrious in what was once their native home. Twenty thousand hawthorn-trees have been imported from England to be planted, not as a vast and beautiful feature in the landscape of the park, an experiment well worthy of the author of the enterprise, but as a hedge to take the place of the wire fencing which now surrounds the enclosure. The beavers will soon convey the thorn-trees to their “lodges,” and make an easy road for the escape of the rest of the colony.

Nothing is said of the removal of human occupiers from this area, though it seems improbable that such favourable soil should be void of inhabitants, even if the exhaustion of the land in the old States, and the movements of the inhabitants westward, has been as rapid as recent observers would have us believe. New Hampshire is a small state; yet we hear no protests against the exclusion of population from an area one-third of that of the New Forest. On the contrary, the project seems welcomed as suggesting a new employment for millionaires. Preservation of every kind is costly, and, as a rule, makes no return in a case in which sentiment, and not prudence, suggests it. When States intervene, it is generally too late, and there is always a suspicion that the rights of the poor may in some way be interfered with, just as in the case of preservation by ancient land-owners, whether of game or trees, or streams or mountains. But though Mr. Corbin’s enterprise provokes no suspicion, and seems to have gratified American sentiment, he is evidently aware that time and continuity are essential for its success. The association of his son with the fortunes of the park gives a guarantee of permanence not perhaps equal to the traditions that have maintained Chillingham and Chartley, but sufficient to insure a fair trial for the experiment.

“JAMRACH’S.”

“JAMRACH’S,” the ancient and original centre of the wild-beast trade in London, lies in what is now called St. George Street, but was until late years known as Ratcliffe Highway, not many minutes’ walk beyond the Tower. It existed when the King’s lions were kept in the Tower itself, and was established thirty years before Sir Stamford Raffles conceived the notion of the Zoological Society. The shop itself is almost the oldest building in the street, far older than the docks and their lofty warehouses opposite, and dating back as far as some of the later work in the Tower itself. The main bulk of the traffic from the docks which line the river for miles below rolls past its doors, which open to receive the ship-captains’ ventures of birds and wild beasts, armour and “curios,” idols and fetishes, mummy and Dyak skulls, weapons and snake-skins, and the odd zoological _bric-à-brac_ which are part of the minor stock-in-trade of the “naturalist” salesman. The front of the shop in which these are displayed looks like an old picture. Time and varnish, with the dust of the docks, have given a rich mellow colour both to frame and contents, in curious contrast to the brilliant hues of the parrots and lories which fill the cages in the adjacent window. In the little office at the back the steady traffic in wild beasts has gone on for a hundred years, between the Jamrachs and the ship-captains in the first instance, and later with the buyers employed by Zoological Gardens and menageries. Frank Buckland, Van Ambrugh, and Mr. Bartlett, and most of the great circus and menagerie proprietors, have sat in the old Windsor chairs, and discussed the merits of new purchases, or schemes for the capture of rare and valuable animals.

Few even of the most ancient business houses of that most picturesque and characteristic part of London, the City, and the eastern wards which cluster round the Tower, have retained their old form so entirely as this. Some of the old back parlours and lobbies are still provided with the racks of blunderbusses and bayonets, which the traditions of the Gordon Riots suggested as a terror to daylight robbers, and a guarantee of security to timid depositors. Others keep upon their walls the charters and firmans granted to adventurous merchants by sultans and chieftains whose territories are now well-regulated provinces of the British Empire. But the trade of Jamrach’s has this peculiarity, that it always deals in commodities which as a rule disappear before advancing civilization, and must be drawn from beyond the ever-encroaching limits of common commerce; from the regions where the half-armed savage still robs the cubs of the Gætulian lioness, and barters his barbaric spoils for the wares of the civilized West. So in the old room at Jamrach’s, the barbaric settings have gathered almost without intention round the spot which the _nexus_ of commerce links with the rough outside edge of the white man’s world, and the dusty shields and assegais, the bolas and bows, the matchlock and two-handed swords of the rhinoceros-hunting Arabs, are mingled with sharks’ and crocodiles’ skulls, scalps and tomahawks, wampum and Indian relics, and whatever in the unnumbered lumber of the world of savage sport and warfare corresponds to the tamer accessories of the “gun-room” in our English country houses. The place of the favourite dog before the fire, to continue the simile, is of course taken by some foreign pet which is the favourite of the moment. At the time of the writer’s first visit to this naturalist’s sanctum the goddess of the hearth was a lovely little Japanese pug puppy. The little creature was covered with the long silky black and white hair which in the Japanese pug, like the Japanese bantam, takes the place of the shorter and less elegant covering of the Western breed. It was carefully clothed in a neatly-fitting flannel jacket, and apparently had all the fondness for English habits which distinguishes the cultivated classes of modern Japan. It sat up and begged, and wagged its tail like an educated little British dog, and carefully measuring the appreciation and temper of its visitor, suddenly dropped ceremony and bounded into his lap. There, after an apologetic wriggle, it curled itself up, and its master discussed the present and future of the animal trade.

A great revival in this ancient industry has recently taken place, and at the time of the writer’s visit Carl Hagenbeck, the largest owner of wild beasts in the world, and exhibitor of the model Zoological Gardens at the World’s Fair, was making a rapid inspection of the stock of animals on view, in order to make purchases for his new gardens in New York. In most forms of live-stock buying, the necessary acquaintance with the points of two or three species is sufficiently difficult to master. In the present case it was necessary not only to judge the merits of the animal, but to identify the species with certainty. But once among the stalls and cages, the “deals” for a dozen different species were made in less time and with less discussion than a Berkshire farmer would feel due to the merits of a litter of pigs. The “stables,” as the wild-beast store is called, lie away from the shop and the main street, up a narrow court, like those which run back from the north of Fleet Street. Up this passage every animal must be either driven or carried before it can be deposited in safe quarters in the store, and though its length and want of breadth lend themselves to blocking the escape of any creature which might succeed in breaking out, it must offer considerable difficulties to the transit of a large iron cage, or of a refractory camel or elephant. The lower storey of the “stables” resembles a large, well-warmed London cow-house, with antelopes, deer, or kangaroos tethered to the walls and mangers, or stalled in loose boxes, instead of Alderneys and shorthorns. An immense aoudad,[5] with wild yellow eyes, horns curving in an almost complete circle, and a thick shaggy beard continued into a fringe down its chest, and sweeping the ground between its feet, occupied the first loose-box. Most of the other pens were vacant, as a large shipment had left that day for the United States.

Footnote 5:

The Barbary sheep.

A steep flight of steps leads to the second and third storeys, in which the animals are stored, not for exhibition, but just as they have come from the ships in the docks close by. There are no fixed rows of cages for the carnivora, or wooden pens for the large birds and harmless quadrupeds, because the former are delivered in their sea-cages, and the latter have grown used to confinement, and are either tethered or confined by wattle hurdles in corners or against the walls. The gallery is warm and dark, an important element in the comfort of the nervous, night-feeding animals, and of the more savage _felidæ_, lighted only by one or two gas-jets, and redolent of sweet-scented clover-hay. The floor is encumbered with boxes of various dimensions, with all kinds of inmates, from squirrels and civet cats to pumas and panthers. The small size of the box or cage in which a large leopard or panther will live in fairly good health for several weeks makes their transport an easy matter. They curl up like a cat in a basket, and if kept quiet and in the dark, do not greatly suffer in condition. The semi-darkness, and the position of the boxes on the floor, make it difficult to see the full beauty of the prisoners within. Nor is it desirable to approach the roughly-constructed cages too closely. The animals at Jamrach’s are not the half-domesticated creatures of the Lion House at the Zoo, but the wild and savage denizens of tropical jungles, captured but not yet cowed, or even reconciled to the proximity of man. As parts of the fronts as well as the sides and backs of the cages are boarded over, the visitor naturally seeks a view from a point somewhat close to the bars—an approach which is at once converted into a sudden movement in retreat, as the animal inside appears to _explode_. A crash of claws upon the bars, a sharp, throat-splitting blast of growls, and a glimpse of white teeth and yellow-green eyes in the darkness, is the instantaneous expression of the panther’s dislike to intrusion. If the shutters are removed, and the light admitted, the beautiful creature shrinks slowly backward and downward, its soft and elastic body slowly contracting and flattening with the fluid suppleness of a python’s folds. A pretty pair of young African cheetahs in another box spat and bared their teeth with a show of high resentment which would not have discredited wild beasts of a far larger growth, and maintained a bickering sputter of repugnance and hostility till the offending gaze was withdrawn. Two large and richly-coloured Patagonian pumas, a pair of leopards, and several striped hyenas, and small jungle and civet cats occupied the same gallery. Of these, the pumas were perfectly tame, as safe to caress and as willing to be petted as a cat. They do not even catch the infection of ill-temper from other animals; and the writer observed a puma arching its back and rubbing its face against an attendant’s hand, quite unmoved by the hostile growls of the panther, its neighbour. These pumas had probably been domesticated for some time, and a certain proportion of the fiercer animals which arrive at the docks must have been in captivity for some time previous to shipment. Men who habitually deal with wild animals are quick to see the difference between the savage and the half-tamed beast. Van Ambrugh, the celebrated lion-tamer, is said to have called at Jamrach’s to purchase a leopard. He soon selected one from the boxes, and when asked how he would like it to be sent, produced a steel chain and collar from the pocket of his greatcoat. He then opened the box, dragged the leopard out, put on the collar, and hauled it down the passage and into a four-wheeled cab, in which he drove off to Astley’s with his purchase. The strange medley of animal forms in the upper chambers, the gleam of green and yellow eyes in their dusky recesses, and the juxtaposition of creatures whose natural instinct is inveterately hostile, with others which are their common prey, give to the chance menagerie at Jamrach’s a character quite distinct from any exhibited collection. The creatures are there for sale, not for show, and meantime are kept as quiet and as close together as due attention to health permits. The panthers’ room was shared by an African black-buck from the Cape, a black-tailed jackal, various kangaroos and wallabies, and a pair of demoiselle cranes. On another storey were a happy family of monkeys, lemurs, and Chinese dogs, a pair of cassowaries, a viscacha, foxes large and small, “native companion” cranes, a brown Tasmanian opossum, coatimundis, a beautifully-marked civet cat, and two small Siamese porcupines. This list, though apparently no bad nucleus for a Zoological Garden, is only a fraction of the number which is usually stored in the depôt by the docks. There is a sudden and unprecedented increase in the demand for wild animals at present, not only for the Continent, but for the United States. The stocks in most of the European Zoological Gardens have decreased of late—a shrinkage partly caused by the closure of the Soudan by the Dervishes. In America the popularity of the great menagerie at the World’s Fair has created a sudden demand for wild animals of all kinds. Circuses and private menageries are competing with the Zoological Gardens and scientific societies for rare and interesting animals, and the demand for America is far greater than for the continent of Europe. After five or six years of neglect, there is such a “boom” in the wild-beast trade as is hardly remembered. Until the expeditions which Hagenbeck and others have despatched into Central Africa, _viâ_ Berbera, and into Borneo and the West Coast of Africa, return, there is little to fall back upon but the average supply which arrives without system and in chance ships. A single purchase by an agent from the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens included a leopard, a hyena, a pair of cheetahs, a Bornean bear, antelopes, emus, and other birds. Other Zoological Gardens are being laid out and built in New York and the cities of the West; but it may be doubted whether, even from Jamrach’s, the inhabitants will readily be found to occupy them.

The frailness of the cages in which many of the animals arrive from their sea voyage is matter for some surprise. They are nearly always wooden boxes hardly stronger than a sound packing-case, with a front of strong iron rails. The secret of their safe carriage lies in their own stupidity. Like a lobster in a pot, they always endeavour to escape from the front, springing towards the light, and it is precisely at this point that the strongest part of the case, the iron bars, blocks the way. When the last black leopard arrived at the Zoo, as a present from the Duke of Newcastle, who had purchased it at Singapore when on a tour round the world, it was soon shifted from its travelling cage into the fine new den it was to occupy in the Lion House. As it was known to be a violent and savage creature, an inner lining of steel netting about eight inches across the mesh had been fixed inside the vertical bars. The leopard on being turned into the den at once made a violent spring towards the light, and pitching head-foremost against the netting screen, bulged it out to the exact contour of its face. It never seems to occur to these creatures that they could easily gnaw their way through the wooden sides of their temporary prisons and escape, like the hyena which recently maintained itself for a week in the hold of a large cargo steamer, and was kept in a good-temper by joints of prime New Zealand mutton, until on the unloading of the vessel the hyena was captured in the congenial cavern in which it had taken up its residence.