Part 10

“Again I crept forward, bending and sometimes crawling beneath the thorns, to avoid the smallest noise. As I approached, the scent became stronger, until at length I felt that I must be close to the carcass. This was highly exciting. Fully prepared for a quick shot, I stealthily crept on. A tremendous roar in the dense thorns within a few feet of me suddenly brought the rifle to my shoulder; almost at the same instant I saw the three-quarters figure of either a lion or a lioness within three yards of me, on the other side of the bush under which I had been creeping. The foliage concealed the head, but I could almost have touched the shoulder with my rifle. Much depended upon the bullet, and I fired exactly through the centre of the shoulder. Another tremendous roar, and a crash in the bushes, as the animal made a bound forward, was followed by another roar and a second lion took the exact position of the last, and stood wondering at the report of the rifle, and seeking for the cause of this intrusion. This was a grand lion with a shaggy mane; but I was unloaded. Keeping my eyes fixed upon the beast, I stretched my hand back for a spare rifle; the lion remained standing, but gazing up wind with his head raised, and snuffing in the air for the scent of an enemy.

“I looked back for an instant, and saw my Tokrooris faltering about five yards behind me. I looked daggers at them, gnashing my teeth, and shaking my fist. They saw the lion, and Taber Noor, snatching a rifle from Hadji Ali, was just about to bring it, when Hassan, ashamed, ran forward--the lion disappeared at the same moment. Never was such a fine chance lost through the indecision of gun-bearers.... But where was the first lion? Some remains of the buffalo lay upon my right, and I expected to find him most probably crouching in the thorns near us. Having reloaded, I took my Reilly No. 10 rifle, and listened attentively for a sound. Presently I heard within a low growl. Taber Noor drew his sword, and with his shield before him searched for the lion, while I crept forward towards the sound, which was repeated. A loud roar, accompanied by a rush in the jungle, showed us a glimpse of the lion as he bounded off within ten or twelve yards, but I had no chance to fire. Again the low growl was repeated, and upon quietly creeping towards the spot, I saw a splendid animal crouched upon the ground, among the withered and broken grass. The lioness lay dying from the bullet wound in her shoulder. Occasionally in her rage she bit her own paw violently, and then struck and clawed the ground. A pool of blood was by her side. She was about ten yards from us, and I instructed my men to throw a clod of earth at her (there were no stones), to prove whether she could rise, while I stood ready with the rifle. She merely replied with a dull roar, and I ended her misery with a ball through the head.”

“Lions,” says Andersson, “if captured when quite young, and treated with kindness, become readily domesticated, and greatly attached to their owners, whom they follow about like dogs.” This statement is hardly worthy of its author, and the fact that these beasts are often kept in African villages, and made pets of by Asiatic rulers, does not at all warrant his sweeping assertion. He knew better than to suppose that a young wild beast did not inherit the traits of its ancestors, or that one cub was the same as another. Likewise there is no reason to doubt that he was acquainted with the incidents which constantly attend such experiments in the places mentioned. All this has already been discussed, but the lion’s place in the opinions of those who live in the same land with him, and are unprepared to meet his majesty, is a more convincing proof with respect to his character than any other that could be advanced. A very small portion of mankind respect anything that they do not fear. Wherever lions exist under the conditions mentioned, they are dreaded, and with reason, and then, very often, their “daring and audacity almost exceed belief,” according to Andersson, who after all expresses the sense of those writers in whose self-contradictory evidence they are called cowards. It was because men dreaded the lion that he became the emblem of wisdom in Assyrian sculpture and the type of courage in Hebrew poetry; that his head crowns the body of an Egyptian god, and that his form has been taken as a royal cognizance in the East and West. For no other cause is it that death is the penalty for any one but a ruler to wear his claws in Zululand, or that among the Algerian Arabs his whole body possesses magic virtues.

Lion flesh is eaten in various parts of the earth, although that counts for nothing with regard to its edibility, for men in certain phases of development eat everything. Andersson ate some (“The Okovango River”) and found it white, juicy, and “not unlike veal.” Much the same was said ages before his time in Philostratos’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and though this work is doubtless an Alexandrian forgery, the evidence in this particular is just as good as if it were authentic.

In an account of this creature it remains to say a few words more about its intellect, and the conditions under which it is developed. Given the raw material of mind as a variable quantity in all beings belonging to the same group, the difference between them, apart from that which depends upon unequal endowment, results from the degree to which the exigencies of life force individuals to use that amount of intelligence which they possess. Existence to a lion is a very different thing in one place and another; it is difficult or easy, varied or monotonous, dangerous or safe, solitary or the reverse. In other words, those adjustments of internal to external coexistences and sequences which constitute what is essential in life, may be many and great, or few and small. In either case adaptations must be made, but unequal enlargements of faculty are the necessary results. Take, for example, the average lion and place him, as he is placed in fact, under the opposite conditions of having been born and reared in a desert, or brought forth amid a cluster of villages and trained to prey upon human beings. That such specimens cannot be the same needs no saying, and if not these, then not any who are differently placed; so that to go into some large province and write about this beast as if the few individuals met with summarized all the possibilities of its race, is manifestly absurd. Actually, and as far as he goes, a lion is as much an individual as a man; like men also, the more general resemblances and differences among them which are not due to organization, depend upon their position.

Diminish the quantity of game in the area where a lion lives, and its character is altered. Take away certain objects of prey, and replace them with others, and the brute will be more or less cunning, fierce, bold, enterprising, and active. He cannot live at all, without adapting himself to the character of those beings among whom his lot is cast, and as they change so will he change also. The same is true with respect to alterations in physical conditions.

Lions vary with sex; the lioness is usually less grave and inert, but quicker, more excitable, savage and enterprising than her mate. Once when Gérard was lying in wait by a dead horse a lioness arrived with her cub, but pretended not to see the hunter. She instantly pounced on her unsuspecting whelp, drove it out of harm’s way, then made a detour, and stole silently back to kill him. This means maternal solicitude to the extent of temporary self-forgetfulness, presence of mind, rapid comprehension of the circumstances involved in an unexpected and unusual situation, determined purpose, and courage. Tigers constantly make false charges with the design of intimidating their foes; lions perhaps resort to this ruse less frequently, but they adopt other means to the same end. Much of their awe-inspiring appearance is due to causes acting independently of will; still, they deliberately attempt to excite terror. One night while Green and his friend Bonfield occupied a screen near a watering-place, a lion passed and repassed, inspecting them closely. He wished the intruders away, but thought it imprudent to attack their position, and they objected to fire because the noise would frighten away elephants for which they were waiting. Then the lion walked off a little distance, lay down facing them, and reflected on the situation. Shortly he sprang up and began to cut extraordinary capers, at the same time setting up “the most hideous noise, neither a roar nor a growl, but something between the two.”

The beast was trying to frighten off these unwelcome visitors who might keep game at a distance and interfere with his supper. No one who watches young wild beasts, and more particularly those of the cat kind, can fail to notice that they continually rehearse the chief acts of their lives under the influence of imagination. A lion’s memory is good, and he can be taught much. His judgment is excellent, and he seldom attempts what he is unable to carry out. In cold blood, prudence is one of his distinguishing characteristics, and he is also very suspicious and on the lookout for destructive devices and inventions of the only enemy he has reason to fear; that is to say, man. Thus, although parts of Africa may be said to be undermined with pitfalls, lions rarely fall into them and when this happens they often claw steps in their walls and get out. Not, however, out of the trenches dug inside of the fence round an Arab cattle pen, for there their enemies occupy its edge, and then it is seen that there are certainly occasions when lions meet inevitable death in a very dignified manner.

THE LEOPARD AND PANTHER

Those conflicting opinions we have thus far seen expressed upon the habits and characters of wild beasts, are not replaced by any unanimity upon the part of those who have described leopards and panthers. They have a less voluminous literature than the lion or elephant, but their temper and traits are disputed about in every particular, and even the place they occupy in nature.

The only difference between a panther and a leopard is one of size; or as G. P. Sanderson (“Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India”) expresses it, the distinction is the same as that existing between a “horse and a pony.” Dr. Jerdon (“Mammals of India”) states that they are merely “varieties of _Felis pardus_,” and if the species-making mania were not so prevalent, one might wonder at men who constantly met with these creatures in Asia and Africa, and yet wrote about them as if they belonged to distinct groups, and had very little in common.

Major H. A. Leveson (“Sport in Many Lands”) thus describes the panther: “This animal frequently measures eight feet in length from its nose to the end of its tail. It has a well-defined, bony ridge along the centre of its skull for the attachment of the muscles of the neck, which is not noticeable in the leopard or cheetah. The skin, which shines like silk, and is of a rich tawny or orange tan above and white underneath, is marked with seven rows of rosettes, each consisting of an assemblage of black spots, in the centre of which the tawny or fulvous ground of the coat shows distinctly through the black. Its extremities are marked with horseshoe-shaped or round black spots. Few animals can surpass the panther in point of beauty, and none in elegance or grace. His every motion is easy and flexible in the highest degree; he bounds among the rocks and woods with an agility truly surprising--now stealing along the ground with the silence of a snake, now crouching with his fore-paws extended and his head laid between them, while his chequered tail twitches impatiently, and his pale, gooseberry eyes glare mischievously upon his unsuspecting victim.” Captain J. H. Baldwin (“Large and Small Game of Bengal”) writes in much the same strain upon the specific differences between these varieties, and he is at a loss to understand how Dr. Jerdon and Mr. Blyth, Captain Hodgson and Sir Walter Elliot, can regard panthers and leopards as of the same species. The difference between their skulls--that of the leopard’s being oval, while the panther’s is round--is, he asserts, “of itself conclusive evidence upon this disputed question;” and besides that, “the two animals altogether differ from one another in size and character.”

Technical discussions have been avoided so far as it was possible to do so, but here it seems necessary to say briefly that head-measurements as a basis for classification, whether among beasts or men, have always failed; also that developed ridges and processes are for the most part merely concomitants of more massive skulls in larger animals whose muscles are of greater size; and that bulk by itself means very little, and varies in most cases very much. Finally, the coat-markings, in their minor details, of all animals whose skins are variegated, constantly differ in the same species. Among _Felidæ_ one scarcely sees two lions with like manes, or two tigers with identical stripes. As for the spotted or rosetted groups, their spots not only vary in members of specific aggregates, but even upon different sides of the same creature’s body.

Lockington (“Riverside Natural History”) states that “the leopard (including both varieties of _Felis pardus_ under this term) is very variable in size and color.” Stanley, Emin Pasha (Dr. Schnitzer), and Hissman speak of those in Somali-land as much larger than any others in Africa, yet it is certain that there is but one true species now extant, and that this includes those forms already spoken of, together with the snow leopard of the Himalayas, the long-furred, ring-marked, bushy-tailed variety of Manchuria and Corea, and the “black tiger” of India and the Malasian Archipelago, which is nothing but a panther with its colors reversed,--a “sport,” as G. A. R. Dawson (“Nilgiri Sporting Reminiscences”) calls it, and which according to him is “of a uniform dull black color, with its spots (of a fulvous tint) showing in particular lights.” Colonel A. C. McMaster proved that these dark cubs had been found in litters having the usual coloration. General Hamilton demonstrated the same thing, and Colonel Pollok (“Natural History Notes”) states that “the black panther, which is very common towards Mergeri and Tavay, is only a _lusus naturæ_.” He himself “saw a female panther near Shoaydung, with two cubs, one black and one spotted.”

The “snow leopard” is very little known on account of the solitary and inaccessible regions it inhabits. “It is the rarest event,” says Colonel F. Markham (“Shooting in the Himalayas”), “to see one, though it roams about apparently as much by day as by night. Even the shepherds who pass the whole of the summer months, year after year, in the area where it lives, that is to say, above the forests where there is little or no cover ... seldom see one.... It is surprising and unaccountable how it eludes observation.” He describes its ground color as being of a dingy white, with faint yellowish-brown markings, and represents the animal to be considerably smaller than its congeners of the hot country below. Captain Baldwin, however, saw a skin as large as a panther’s. This was “of a light gray color, with irregular black spots. There was a black line running lengthways over the hind quarters, the hair was long on the neck, and the tail was remarkably long, ringed with black, and black at the tip.”

An animal of the same species, and very like this, is confined to the equatorial belt of Africa. It is as rare as the “snow leopard,” and has only been seen once or twice. Andersson (“Lake N’gami”) reports that the “maned leopard” was mistaken by him for a lion. This name is a translation of the native title--N’gulula, and Leslie, who knew more about it than any one else, states that “a cub is gray, light, and furry.... The half-grown one, gray also, but the spots are faintly distinguishable. In the full-grown animal they are perfectly plain, but very dirty and undefined. There is also a peculiar gray hog mane.” W. H. Drummond (“Large Game and Natural History of Southern Africa”) also met with the N’gulula, and he, like Andersson, thought at first that it was a small lion, which it greatly resembled “in shape and color.”

We may now turn from the varieties of _Felis pardus_ and their external characteristics, to an investigation of those traits which have become organized in them during the long course of ages in which they have become specialized, physically and mentally, for a predatory life.

To know what an animal of this kind feeds on, and how it takes its prey, is also to know much about its structure, temper, and disposition. Neither lions nor tigers find the game upon which they subsist in trees, and the latter, therefore, rarely climb, while there is no account of the former having been seen to do so.

With the panther and leopard this is quite different. There are no climbers more expert than these beasts. As the Panama chief said to the explorer Oxenham, “Everything that has blood in it is food”; to these animals many things without blood, or at least without red blood, are food, for they eat the larva of insects, insects themselves, and birds’ eggs; likewise many fowls, from the splendid peacock to a common crow, which, as Sir Samuel Baker remarks, “lives by his wits, and is one of the cleverest birds in creation.” The panther preys on deer more commonly than any other kind of game, although it destroys reptiles, rodents, etc., and wild pigs in great numbers. Perhaps a wild boar, the “grim gray tusker” of Anglo-Indian tales and hunting songs, “laughs at a panther,” as General Shakespear (“Wild Sports of India”) declares. But all the weaker members of his race become victims to this spotted robber’s partiality for pork. Monkeys, too, from the sacred Hanuman down through all secular grades, are eaten with avidity by these animals, and they kill great quantities of them despite their cunning. There is nothing alive of which monkeys are so much afraid.

Both leopards and panthers can endure thirst much better than tigers, and the latter are cave-dwellers to a greater extent than any of the larger _Felidæ_. They only drink once in twenty-four hours, and always at night. Their retreats lie amid low, arid, rocky hills covered with underbrush, traversed by gullies whose sides have been washed out into recesses by floods, and their rocks worn away into caves by weathering or percolation. They are much more active and energetic than their striped relatives, can better endure fatigue, and are, as a rule, bolder and more enterprising.

It is very far from being a fact, however, that “the habits of leopards are invariably the same”; that is an error into which Sir Samuel Baker was betrayed by the doctrine of instinct, and which has likewise been shared by nearly every other writer upon natural history. There is a certain sameness in the behavior of such creatures, as there is in that of all classes of animals leading similar lives; but this is as much as it is possible to say. In some localities, for example, the panther is strictly nocturnal; in others it appears that he hunts during the day nearly as much as at night. In no instance is he an organic machine. Far from it; this prowling marauder is the fiercest and most adventurous of wild beasts, astute to a degree, capable of using every faculty to its fullest extent, well able to take care of itself, and fatally skilful in compassing the destruction of others; a being in every way qualified to design and execute its projects, to achieve all those ends which courage and cunning enable it to attain, and quite fit to meet the ordinary emergencies that may arise during the perpetration of its acts of rapine and bloodshed.

The panther’s cry--Gérard (“Journal des Chasseurs”) calls it a “scream”--is often heard upon Indian hillsides when darkness begins to obscure the scene. Captain Baldwin describes it as a harsh, measured coughing sound, without much timbre or resonance, rather flat, in fact, and not at all like the roar of that animal it most resembles,--the American jaguar. Like most of the _Felidæ_, this species commonly gives tongue upon leaving its lair, or, at least, has been frequently reported as doing so. This is not a point of much moment, but it is a matter of considerable importance to the inhabitants of any village that may lie in the neighborhood, whether that ominous voice dies away in the forest, or appears to be approaching their dwellings. When a panther takes to man-eating, Colonel Pollok (“Sport in British Burmah”) and Captain James Forsyth (“The Highlands of Central India”) assert, “he is far worse than a tiger.” Certainly, no records of such desperate ferocity exist in the case of any other creature of the cat kind; no other is reported to have taken like risks or to have succeeded in its fatal enterprises in the face of equal difficulties.

It is to be taken into consideration that a panther very rarely exceeds eight feet from tip to tip, or weighs more than a hundred and seventy pounds. Several writers have said that this animal’s powers of offence are scarcely inferior to those of the tiger; nevertheless, nothing is more certain than the fact that with all its great strength, its exceeding activity, and formidable armature, a panther cannot stand before a tiger for a moment. It cannot overwhelm a man instantly, bite him through the body, or crush his life out with a single blow; and yet, unless like the superstitious people whom this fell beast destroys, we can imagine demons becoming incarnated to scourge humanity, nothing more terrible and deadly than a man-eater of this class can be conceived of. Captain Forsyth thus sketches a famous panther of the Seoni district, which he was in charge of when those scenes alluded to occurred. “This brute killed, incredible as it may seem, nearly a hundred people before he was shot by a shikári. He never ate the bodies, but merely lapped the blood from the throat. His plan was, either to steal into a house at night and strangle some sleeper on his bed, stifling any outcry with his deadly grip, or to climb into the high platforms on which watchers guard their fields from deer, etc., and drag his victim thence. He was not to be balked of his prey, and when driven off from one side of a village, would hasten round to the opposite side, and secure another person in the confusion. A few moments accomplished his murderous work, and such was the devilish cunning he joined to his extraordinary boldness, that all attempts to find and shoot him were for many months unsuccessful. European sportsmen who went out, after hunting him in vain, would often find his tracks close to their tent doors in the morning.”