Part 6

Barras left Neemuch with a number of elephants, and among the rest an old friend and favorite of his, Roghanath Gūj, whose mahout, Ghassee Ram, had been in charge of him for eighteen years and thus acquired a very great influence over the animal. Colonel Barras, who had not seen this beast for some time, was at once struck by the indifference displayed to his expressions of friendliness, and to those little presents of sweets which these creatures enjoy so much. Evidently Roghanath Gūj was changed; ill, perhaps? No, said and swore his keeper, there was nothing the matter. His dulness, that sombre air which excited surprise and suspicion, was nothing more than a little irritability caused by the extremely hot weather. So Barras yielded his better judgment to greater experience, and the consequence was that the next day, while beating for a tiger, the elephant suddenly rushed upon one of the attendants, and would have killed him if the man had not taken off his turban and left it on a bush, while he himself slipped down into the shade of a deep ravine. From this time forth Roghanath Gūj was picketed by himself.

“Two days after,” says Barras, “we arrived at a small village,”--Mehra,--“and close to it there were some enormous Banyan trees, under which the elephants were secured. Opposite to them, on the other side of a small clearing, stood our little camp. Here, after a long and unsuccessful day’s beating after a wary tiger, we enjoyed our late dinner, and had just sought our couches, clad for the night in our light sleeping-suits, when a burst of affrighted cries broke upon our ears. The tumult proceeded from the direction of the great tree where Roghanath Gūj stood in solitude.

“We instantly rushed for our guns, and seized a hurricane lamp. We made all haste in our slippered feet to the scene of action. As we got within twenty yards of the elephant, Ghassee Ram (his driver) called to us to halt. The animal, he said, was obeying him, and if nothing further incensed him, he would be able to tie up his hind legs with a rope, when he would be incapable (the fore-limbs being already chained) of doing any more mischief. So we stood where we were, and waited in great anxiety, whilst we could hear the mahout uttering the word _Sōm-Sōm_, which is the order for an elephant to keep his hind quarters towards any one who may be washing, or otherwise attending to him. The night was as dark as pitch; nothing could be seen. According to the different cries of the excited people, however, it was clear that something had happened to the under-keeper of Roghanath Gūj. Some said he was dead, some that he had escaped from his terrible assailant. I called to the other elephant-keepers, but they had all gone with their animals, I knew not whither, on the first alarm.

“Meanwhile Ghassee Ram was left quite alone to deal with the enraged beast. Of course we talked to him all the time, and were prepared to rush in and fire, as well as we could, if he called upon us to do so. Every chance, however, would have been against our disabling the elephant, who, maddened by such wounds as he might have received, would have worked untold destruction during the long dark hours of a moonless night. To the pluck of Ghassee Ram must be ascribed the avoidance of such a calamity. In a few minutes, which seemed an age, the mahout called out that we might advance. We did so, and never shall I forget the weirdness of the scene that was lighted up by the bright rays of the lamp I carried.

“Under the tree, and with his back to its stem, towered the dark form of the elephant, whilst his mahout, a mere speck, stood a little to his right. No other living being was visible, but close to the animal, on the opposite side from Ghassee Ram, lay a small, shapeless object, which a second glance showed to be the missing man. The elephant, with his ears raised, seemed to be keeping guard over his victim, and would probably kill any one who should attempt to remove the body, which lay within reach of his trunk. Still, this must be done, and at once, for life might yet be lingering in the shattered frame. I therefore gave the hurricane lamp to the mahout, and ordered him to swing it up in the elephant’s face, and call out his name at the same time. Ghassee Ram, from the long habit of commanding this huge animal, had acquired some powerful tones. As he swung the lamp, that hung by a large ring, in the elephant’s face, and cried out ‘Roghanath Gūj, Roghanath Gūj,’ the animal seemed deeply impressed. As the light ascended for the third time towards his dazzled eyes, I darted from between my two friends, who stood covering the elephant with their guns, and drew forth the unfortunate keeper. He was terribly mangled, and quite dead.” This elephant was semi-delirious, and in that state the wild beast nature, which had been covered by a thin layer of educational polish, came out under the stimulus of some passing irritation. His mahout saw the man struck down, and interfered; but the animal was only restrained by his voice for a moment, and then completed the murder. He was not wholly demented, however; for Colonel Barras says, “I could not but be touched by the affection this huge creature displayed, even in his madness, towards the only two people he loved,--Ghassee Ram and myself. I fed him every day from my hand, and he never failed to clank his heavy chains, and turn round to watch me till I disappeared in my tent on leaving him.”

It is probable that many persons whose minds are made up on the subject of elephants, may see nothing in this account but a case of perversion due to disease, and will pass by the elephant’s evident power of self-restraint and discrimination as of no significance; contending that Roghanath Gūj, like all his kind, was naturally benevolent and amiable. Likewise, that the vagaries belonging to certain forms of mental alienation, temporary and chronic, are of the most eccentric and various character, and that this instance proves nothing with regard to the elephant’s inherent nature. As a mere matter of reasoning, the objection is valid, and logically it is unanswerable; but, perhaps, some of those who believe that these brutes possess virtues of which most men are nearly destitute, will inform the world why “must”-delirium or actual insanity in an elephant, always takes the form of homicidal mania.

THE LION

“From the earliest times,” says the writer on this subject in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” “few animals have been better known to man than the lion.” It is precisely because of this knowledge, for the most part purely imaginary, that the real lion is less known than almost any of the other great wild beasts. Not so much in this case on account of the paucity of facts as from a plethora of fiction, his actual character has very imperfectly come to light.

Since Aristotle there have always been naturalists who contended for two species of these animals, and sometimes more.

In Greece, classification was made on the basis of size; in Rome, upon that of color. With regard to the first, Sir Samuel Baker remarks that the lions of Cutch and Guzrat are perhaps not so large as their African congeners; but according to Dr. Jerdon (“Mammals of India”) measurements show that they are fully equal in this respect. Gérard, Livingstone, and others notice very discernible local contrasts in bulk among them in different parts of Africa itself, and it has been maintained by many that the lion grows smaller as one goes south from the Atlas. Major Smee has also been largely followed in his opinion that the Asiatic, or more particularly the Indian, lion is maneless. Dr. Blyth, however, was able to demonstrate from the specimens in the Calcutta Museum that this was not the case, and his view of the accidental character of this deficiency is no doubt the true one. Frederick Courteney Selous (“A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa”) paid particular attention to this feature, and he states that “out of fifty male lion skins, scarcely two will be found alike in the color or length of mane”; he adds that, judging from the same facts which those who multiply natural groups rely upon, “it would be as reasonable to suppose that there are twenty species as two.”

This is but a hint at those discrepancies which have arisen from attaching different values to external and secondary characteristics. Antagonisms of this kind are overabundant, still there is no doubt that wherever lions now exist, they are specifically the same. There is but one genus of lion, with a single species, whose members vary in size, skin-appendages, color, temper, and habits, with the physiography of those provinces they inhabit, and of their human population, with breed, age, temperament, special environment, and their personal experience of men and things.

Sir Samuel Baker (“The Rifle and Hound in Ceylon”) remarks in the course of his observations upon the Cingalese buffalo that no individual opinion upon the traits and disposition of an animal “can be depended upon,” unless its pursuit “has been followed as a sport by itself.” The results of many hunters’ experiences are, however, on record, and so far as facts go, we are actually possessed of a more varied and extensive acquaintance with the species than any individual contact with it would be likely to give.

There is much that is inadequate and also illusory in Gérard’s descriptions. Still, he met the formidable adversaries he encountered in a heroic spirit, and had seen them face to face too often not to be disabused of many errors. The sultan of the desert as known by him did not fear man, was not abashed in his presence, and could not be quelled by his eye. On the contrary, an attempt to stare him out of countenance was, as Sir Samuel Baker observes, the surest means to provoke an attack. Gérard’s experience carried him too far. He only knew the lions of Algeria and Oran, but he thought that these animals were the same everywhere. Such is not the case. The race is now extinct in great areas where it was once distributed. No trace of it is left in many countries of Asia Minor, and it is dying out in Western Asia and India. In some regions man has exterminated the lion or driven him away, and there are other districts where this animal has learned that the battle nearly always goes against him, and where he now has to be forced to fight. On the other hand, certain tribes cower before lions, and this does not fail to change the relations they sustain towards mankind.

This imposing animal makes its appearance in art and literature very early. Frequent mention is made of it in the Cuneiform tablets and Hebrew Scriptures. In Pentaur’s Egyptian Epic upon the War of Rameses II. against the Cheta or Hittites, lions are said to have accompanied the king’s chariot, and fought as the Greek mastiffs (the dogs of Molossos) did at Marathon, or those of the British during Cæsar’s invasion. Herodotus (“Polymnia”) states that when Xerxes’ hordes were moving in the country that lay between the rivers Nestos in Abedra, and Achelous of Acarnania, the camel trains suffered much loss from the attacks of these animals. He informs us that their range was restricted to this district, and expresses his surprise that camels, being creatures that these lions had never seen and might have been supposed to shun, were their especial victims. After Herodotus, when the Greeks began to write about everything that attracted their attention, much was said in one way or another concerning lions, but it amounted to no more than the little that can be found in Roman archives. It really seems as if classic writers left out on purpose everything that one would have cared most to know. Not even the minute and laborious scholarship of the sixteenth century, devoted as it mainly was to the explication of antiquity, has succeeded in extracting from these records any information which is at all commensurate with the opportunities afforded for observation in ancient times. The lion occupied an exceptional position then as now; he was a favorite subject for poetic allusion, for epigram, and rhetorical flourishes. But his character was as much a conventional one at that time as it is at present. This may be also seen in art, where, whether sculptured and painted, or set in mosaics, he was depicted in what were supposed to be characteristic attitudes from Persepolis and the rock tablets of Kaf to the Sea of Darkness, and from the banks of the Orontes to the cities of Africa. He impressed antiquity as he has done the modern world, and so far as disposition and personal qualities are concerned, most of what was known or thought then might have been condensed into the modern statement of his traits given in the French “_Cyclopédie_”; namely, that he was “_si fort et si courageux, qu’on l’a appellé le roi des animaux_.”

What amount of truth there is in this view we shall see; in the mean time it is natural enough to regret that those who might have accomplished so much, have in fact done so little. Varro, Columella, Aulus Gellius, and others wrote on game and hunting, but classic notices of a _venatio_ in the amphitheatre are as terse and colorless as entries in a log-book. Marsian boars, or wolves from the Apennines were the most formidable creatures an ancient Italian could find in his own country, and Virgil congratulates himself that such was the case. “_Rabidæ tigres absunt et saeva leonum semina._” But the scribblers in prose and verse who expatiated upon fish-ponds, nets, gins, snares, Celtic, Lycaonian, and Umbrian hounds, with all the appliances of petty sport, where were they while the _Ludi Circenses_ were going on? How was it that these men, who gossiped about everything, never chatted with the keepers of that great _Vivarium_ near the Prænestine gate, where there were often wild beasts enough to stock the menageries of the modern world? Why did they not tell of the fleets laden with such cargoes that came to Ostia, interview the men who brought them as they drank rough Massic together in the taverns under the Janiculum, or report the talk of those dark satellites who guarded the _vivaria_ of the Colosseum or theatre of Marcellus?

The reason was this: independently of everything else, a Roman of those days was satiated with the sight of actual slaughter until all that now fascinates the attention and enthralls the interest of a reader of adventures had become insipid. The _bestiarii_, or wild beast fighters, were a class apart from other gladiators. So far as our meagre supply of information goes, these men did not meet a royal tiger as a Ghoorka now does; that is to say, did not trust to perfect nerve, training, and activity, to avoid the brute’s onset, and slay it by striking at advantage; they appeared in armor and _actually fought_ with sword or spear. Considering the style in which lions and tigers combat, one cannot divine the use made of any defensive panoply, which, so far as we can judge, would seem to have been more of an encumbrance than an aid. An iron sword two feet long (for the much-talked-of Iberian steel was most likely only a good quality of untempered metal) could hardly have availed a hampered man in a hand-to-hand struggle of this kind, except in case of accidents that must have been of rare occurrence. Julius Cæsar’s Thessalian horsemen chased giraffes around the arena until they were exhausted, and then killed them with a dagger thrust at the junction of the spine and head; but it is safe to say that no _bestiarius_ armed with a _venabulum_ went through any performances of this kind with a black rhinoceros. Yet every formidable animal on earth perished upon “a Roman holiday.” That is, however, all we know.

It is now the fashion to say that lions are such timid creatures that they might be expected to do little injury if they got out of their cages in the presence of a crowd. When, writes Plutarch, the city of Megara was stormed by Calamus, their keepers or the authorities loosed those lions kept for the games--“opened their dens, and unchained them in the streets to stop the enemy’s onslaught. But instead of that they fell upon the citizens and tore them in such a manner that their very foes were struck with horror.” Another curious comment upon the timid and retiring behavior of these animals is found in the fact that while they were protected in Africa (preserved for the spectacles) by cruel game laws which deprived people of the natural right of self-defence, the loss of life in that province was so great that it excited compassion even in Rome, and finally led to the mitigation of these statutes by Honorius, and their final abolition during the reign of Justinian.

Moffat (“Missionary Labors and Scenes in South Africa”) had the reputation of knowing more about lions than almost any one else, and it was his opinion that eying them was a very questionable proceeding. Both he and Andersson (“The Lion and the Elephant”) say that this experiment may sometimes apparently succeed, but “under ordinary circumstances” a hungry lion “does not spend any time gazing on the human eye ... but takes the easiest and most expeditious means of making a meal of a man.” It is not very often that things so arrange themselves as to give any one a chance to try what effect can be produced in this way; still everything that could happen has happened, and combining what follows with the statements already made, it would appear that this much-talked-of personal power is a delusion.

“A lion,” writes the Hon. W. H. Drummond (“The Large Game and Natural History of South and South-east Africa”) “will seldom stand much bullying. He may and often will get out of your way, nay, even leave his prey if you approach it, and should you follow him, will perhaps do so a second time, but that is about the extent of it.” If interference is pushed further, the lion, “if a male, growls deeply, and makes his mane bristle up round him; or, if a lioness, crouches down like a cat, lays her ears back, and shows her teeth, and in most such cases, when the brute is fairly roused, a charge is inevitable whether you advance or retreat.” On the other hand, “some lions make a point of attacking every human being they meet, without provocation or apparent cause.” This is unusual, but “there are many instances of lions having evidently attacked a human being from no other cause than surprise or fear at suddenly finding themselves so close to him.... In the above cases, utter immobility and coolness will often avert an attack; for if the animal, judging by your behavior, imagines that you do not want to hurt it, it will, after trying you for several minutes, and even making one or two sham charges, often walk away and allow you to do the same.... Several instances of this have occurred within my own knowledge. A large native hunting party had gone out and were scattered among the thorns, when one of my gun-bearers, who had accompanied it, suddenly found himself face to face with a full-grown male lion, without a yard between them. He had presence of mind sufficient to stand perfectly still, without attempting to take one of the spears he carried in his left hand into the other, and after a couple of minutes the brute walked away, turning its head round every second to watch him.

“This could not be attributed to the efficacy of the human eye, as the man afterwards told me that he had not dared to raise his from the ground. This lion before going far met another native, who raised his spear, as if to throw it; upon which it instantly sprang upon him, and inflicted such wounds that he died within half an hour. I have no doubt that if this man had stood still, he would have been perfectly safe.”

A still more striking example of the fact that lions, unless hungry, enraged or alarmed, often pass man by is given by Drummond as follows: “A hunter of mine was following the trail of a herd of buffalo through some dense thickets, alone, and armed only with a single barrel. Suddenly a male lion rose out of one of them, and sitting on his hind quarters, snarled at him; he had hardly seen it when another, about three-quarters grown, showed itself within a few yards on one side, while from behind he could hear the low rumbling growl of a third. Partly turning so as to watch them all, he saw that the latter was a lioness, and that three cubs not much larger than cats were following her. He had, unawares, got into the centre of a lion family. Unfortunately, one of the cubs saw him, and without exhibiting the least fear, ran up to him; upon which its mother, in terror for her offspring, rushed up, and, as he afterwards described it, fairly danced round and round him, springing to within a yard of him, sideways, backwards, and in every way but on him. Luckily he was a man of iron nerve, and bred from the cradle in scenes like this; he therefore remained quiet, taking no more notice of the frantic behavior of the lioness than if she had not existed; for, as he said, it was a hundred to one that I did not kill the mother, and, if I had, the other two would have avenged her.” It ended by her ultimately retiring into the thicket, and watching him as he cleared out; but there can be no doubt that any hesitation, nervousness, or involuntary movement on his part would have been fatal.

In his description of the lion, Buffon (“Histoire Naturelle”) has delivered a number of opinions based upon imperfect knowledge. This animal, he says, owes its characteristics to climate alone. Lions only inhabit tropical countries, and among the denizens of hot latitudes they are “_le plus fort, le plus fier, le plus terrible de tous_.” On the Atlas Mountains, where snow sometimes falls, these beasts have neither the strength, size, courage, nor ferocity of those who roam the southern plains, and for the same reason, the lion of America, if it deserves that name, is but an inferior beast. Man has greatly circumscribed the range of _Felis leo_, and the natural character of existing varieties has been greatly changed through his inventions. Formerly lions were bolder than they are at present; still, in the Sahara and other places, it happens that “_un seul de ses lions du désert attaque souvent une caravane entière_.” Owing to its brave and magnanimous character, a lion only takes life when compelled to do so by hunger. Certain moral qualities may be said to inhere in the species at large, but there are also individual lions that add to these endowments of their race the finest personal traits. More than one species of this genus exists, and an average lion is about twelve or thirteen feet long. He is less keen of sight, and has not so good an organ of scent as other beasts of prey, and for this reason lions make use of jackals in hunting. All animals they pursue live upon the ground, and in consequence it is not customary with them to climb trees like the tiger and puma--“_il ne grimpe pas sur les arbres comme le tigre ou le puma_.” Their attack is always made from an ambush, whence the victim is sprung upon and struck down; but it is not devoured until after life is extinct.

All this, it may be repeated, is erroneous. Climate alone does not form geographical varieties. Species require to be adjusted to the whole physiography of their respective regions, and to their organic environments as well. The lion inhabits temperate latitudes where the weather is often cold, and it is on those parallels which in Africa run north and south of the equatorial belt, that he attains his highest development.