Part 7
With respect to the lion of the Atlas, Major Leveson (“Hunting Grounds of the Old World”), General Daumas (“Les Chevaux du Sahara”), and Gérard (“Journal des Chasseurs”) have shown that it is larger than its congener further south. Buffon’s thirteen feet lions belong to an earlier geological period than ours; no such specimens of the cat kind are at present alive, but his tribute to the courage of the king of beasts is not perhaps altogether undeserved. Of course there is nothing in his remarks about magnanimity and the like, and as for a single lion attacking a caravan, the statement is absurd. Lions and troops of lions are described by many observers--Le Vaillant, Cumming, Oswell, Harris, Davidson, Kerr--as having forayed upon encampments in various ways, but there is no authentic account of any incident such as Buffon relates.
What he says about the animal’s deficiency in sight and scenting power is not supported in any way by facts. There is nothing in the creature’s anatomy to warrant such an assertion. Its olfactory apparatus is well developed, and as it is a beast of prey, and belongs to a family distinguished for keenness of scent, there is no reason to think that this function does not correspond with its structure. Neither is there anything, so far as the writer knows, in the better class of observations made upon lions, to indicate any deficiency in this respect. With reference to sight, if Buffon meant more than that they, as being nocturnal in habit, are at a disadvantage in the sun’s glare, it was, we must believe, a mistake upon his part. Their organ of sight is structurally of a high order; it is so placed that the range of vision is large, and no good authority has disparaged the lion’s far-sightedness, or the defining power of his eye.
None of the great cats is, however, strictly nocturnal except in places where they are constantly pursued. Lions frequently stalk or drive game while the sun is up; they see perfectly well during these hours, and it is evidently a mistake to give the primary importance commonly attributed to it to a peculiarity of vision which the _Felidæ_ have in common with other classes.
Buffon’s opinion of the use to which lions put jackals falls to the ground before facts. It is an old idea that they, and tigers also, employ them as scouts; nevertheless it would appear that the true relation has been overlooked, and that it is the jackal who uses the lion. When a lion leaves his lair he always roars, and if any jackals are in the vicinity, the sound attracts them at once; it is like an invitation to a meal, for these satellites feast upon the offal. Similarly, as the lion’s majestic form moves with long and soft but heavy tread through the gloom, every jackal that sights the grim hunter follows him.
In works on natural history lions are classed among the _educabilia_. There is, however, a certain ludicrousness in distinguishing this animal as one that can be taught. So can a flea. Every creature with a nervous system may be and is instructed in some manner. All living things so provided learn, though not necessarily through tuition, nor in all cases consciously. Dr. Maudsley’s remark (“Physiology and Pathology of the Mind”), that “a spinal cord without memory would be an idiotic spinal cord,” is full of meaning. Wherever a nervous arc exists, there is memory and the potentialities of mind. The central axis is nothing more than an integrated series of such connected arcs ending in a brain when the animal is sufficiently elevated.
A whelp is born in the spring, or towards the close of winter, a little sooner or later, as the latitude varies. Before this event the parents have fixed upon some solitary spot in which to establish themselves. The mother’s character undergoes a temporary change for the better during the period of maternity. While the pairing season lasts she is a shameless wanton, ready at any moment to abandon her mate for a stronger rival. Desperate combats accompany the lion’s courtship, in which both parties are frequently killed, and in almost all instances these are brought on by the lioness, who seems to take a savage pleasure in provoking such duels.
Gérard gives the following story, which is in all essentials a true picture of the behavior of both males and females at the time spoken of. “It was in the stags’ rutting season, and Mohammed, a great hunter of every kind of wild animal, perched himself at sunset in the boughs of an oak tree to watch for a doe that had been seen wandering in the vicinity, accompanied by several stags. The tree he climbed stood in the middle of a large clearing, and near it was a path which led into the neighboring forest. Towards midnight he saw a lioness enter this open space, followed by a red lion, with a full-grown mane, who carried the carcass of an ox. Soon after they were followed by another lion, a lioness, and three cubs. The first lioness strolled from the path, and came and laid herself down at the foot of the oak, while the lion remained in the path, and seemed to be listening to some sound as yet inaudible to the hunter.
“Mohammed soon heard a distant roaring in the forest, and the lioness immediately answered it. Then the lion commenced to roar with a voice so loud that the frightened man let his gun fall, and held fast to the branch with both hands lest he should tumble from the tree.
“As the voice of the animal heard in the distance gradually approached, the lioness welcomed him with renewed roarings, and the lion, restless, went and came from the path to her, as if he wished her to keep silence, and then, from the lioness to the path again, as if to say, ‘Let the vagabond come; he will meet his match.’
“In about an hour, a large lion as black as a wild boar stepped out of the forest and stood on the edge of the clearing in the full moonlight. The lioness raised herself up to go to him, but the lion anticipating her intention, rushed before her, and marched straight towards his adversary. With measured steps and slow they approached to within a dozen paces of each other; their great heads high in air, their tails slowly sweeping down the grass that grew around them. They crouched to the earth; a moment’s pause, and then they bounded with a roar high in air, and rolled upon the ground, locked in their last embrace.
“Their struggle was long and fearful to the involuntary witness of this midnight duel. The bones of the combatants cracked under their powerful jaws, their talons strewed the grass with entrails, and painted it red with blood, and their roarings, now guttural, now sharp and loud, told of their rage and agony.
“At the beginning of the conflict the lioness crouched low, with her eyes fixed on the gladiators, and all the while the battle raged, manifested, by the slow, cat-like motion of her tail, the pleasure she felt at the spectacle. When the scene closed, and all was still and quiet in the moonlit glade, she cautiously approached the spot, and snuffling at the bodies of her two lovers, walked leisurely away, without deigning to notice the gross but appropriate epithet Mohammed sent after her, instead of a bullet, as she went off.”
This otherwise excellent sketch loses something of its _vraisemblance_ from carelessness and inaccuracy in execution, and also from an unfortunate style, which gives to most French narratives of this kind, however true, the air of romances. Gérard knew that a doe is never accompanied for any length of time by several stags, and there can be no excuse for making a lion range the woods with an ox in his mouth.
When cubs are about two months old, they begin to forage in the vicinity of their lair. This hunting, however, is more than half play, for they are sprightly little creatures whose gambols and infantile familiarities soon become distasteful to the grave and morose nature of their father. The lion then takes up his quarters out of their reach, but at the same time near enough to come to the assistance of his family if aid should be needed. Two cubs as a rule are born together, and one of these is generally a male. If the birth be single, this is said to be invariably the case, so that the fact that males considerably outnumber females is accounted for, and with it both the wantonness of the latter, and those trials to which their consorts are exposed. The race maintains its place by the sacrifice of its weaker numbers. The strongest whelps and most powerful lions live, mate, and kill or dispossess their rivals. Sexual selection on the lionesses’ part aids this process, and the result is, as everywhere and always, that the fittest survive, and transmit their traits with a result which is in every way beneficial to the species.
A great many young ones die while cutting their teeth. If this has been accomplished safely, however, their education begins immediately after that event.
A lion does not reach maturity until the eighth year, and he lives to be about forty. At the end of his second year, however, the animal has attained considerable size, strength, and agility, while his predatory tendencies are then more freely indulged than at any subsequent period of life. Up to the time at which mutual indifference separates parents and offspring, the latter have been directed and assisted in all things. Game has been found for them, and methods of capture and killing have been illustrated. Thus far experience has brought with it only assurances of success. They have been incited to take life for practice, encouraged to act when there was no necessity for acting, guarded from the consequences of temerity and incapacity. Therefore, when separation takes place and they go forth alone, it is with an undue self-confidence which often entails disaster. Young lions are notoriously daring, destructive, and dangerous.
There are many dogmatic and differing decisions with regard to the manner in which lions seize, kill, and eat their victims, as also in respect to the degree in which their natural ferocity may be tempered by fear or discretion. There must be, of course, a family likeness among them in these particulars, but no such uniformity as has been imagined can be found in their behavior when a wide enough view is taken.
The fanciful opinion that a lion disdains to eat game that he has not stricken himself, vanishes at once. Derogatory to his dignity as it may be, the fact is that he will consume anything he finds dead, that his taste is of the most indiscriminate character, and that he is very frequently a foul feeder. “Many instances,” says Andersson (“The Lion and the Elephant”), “have come to my knowledge which show that when half famished he will not only greedily devour the leavings of other beasts, but even condescend to carrion.” In another work (“Lake N’gami”) the same author states that lions eat carrion without being “half famished.” Sir Samuel Baker (“Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia”) saw several that he knew were not pressed by hunger feeding on the putrid body of a buffalo shot by himself, and Gérard (“Journal des Chasseurs”) very nearly lost his life by a lioness who had come to feed upon the carcass of a horse in the last stages of decomposition. Lions appropriate any meat they may happen to find. “I have frequently discovered them feasting on quadrupeds that had fallen before my rifle,” remarks Colonel Cumming (“A Hunter’s Life in Africa”). Major Leveson (“Sport in Many Lands”), W. H. Drummond (“The Large Game and Natural History of Southern Africa”), Colonel Delgorgue, (“Voyage dans l’Afrique Australe”), Sir W. C. Harris, (“Wild Sports in Southern Africa”), and H. C. Selous (“A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa”), all confirm the assertion that “lions are by no means too proud to eat game killed by others.” This charge must be admitted, and it is entirely conformable with another; namely, that his majesty is one of the laziest beings alive. “Laziness, assurance, and boldness,” says Gérard, are his most conspicuous traits of character, and Moffat (“Missionary Labors and Scenes in South Africa”) adds gluttony to the list. He was “taken aback,” he assures us, by the astonishing feats in the way of gormandizing that this animal performed. It should be remembered, however, that an average beast of prey passes a life divided into alternate periods of famine and repletion, and that it is, both from habit and conformation, capable of cramming itself in a manner which almost exceeds belief.
There is hardly need to cite authorities upon the act of seizing prey, because lions do so in all those ways that different observers have severally decided to be peculiar to this beast; and it is the same with the various methods by which they kill. The whole subject of attack, whether upon man or beast, is wrapped in a mass of positive contradictions.
In India troops of lions have been known to divide themselves into sections that relieved one another at short intervals in the actual pursuit of game. As a rule, however, species belonging to this group do not, and can not, really run down prey. Their peculiar structure, adapted to bounding, climbing, and brief rushes, does not admit of a long gallop. Their limbs are too massive and short, and are not sufficiently detached from the body to give them free play. Lions have been called “the most cat-like of all cats,” and for the most part these animals ambush or stalk those creatures which they kill.
When a lion impelled by hunger leaves his lair, he sometimes has a definite object in view, but more frequently goes forth to take advantage of anything that may turn up. If the former is the case, his course is directed, as that of a man would be in like circumstances, by a previous acquaintance with the haunts and habits of the game he is after. He does not ambush a disused path to a dried-up spring, or look for a quagga in a buffalo wallow, or attempt to stalk black antelopes in the same way that he would approach cattle belonging to some Hottentot kraal.
In Africa, which is his true home, a lion “is never known to chase prey.” Having sighted it, ascertained its species, surveyed the ground, found out the direction of the wind,--preliminaries essential to any subsequent attempts to get near,--he begins to practise a set of manœuvres adapted to present conditions, and these he has learned in the literal meaning of that term. Faculty is transmitted. Knowledge is always acquired.
Having closed successfully and seized his prey, it is destroyed in a variety of ways. As a matter of fact immediate death does not invariably come to the relief of its sufferings, even in the case of those smaller creatures on which the lion preys. He does not wait, as Buffon supposed, until insensibility ensues before tearing them to pieces. Nor is it true, as Dr. Livingstone imagined, that Providence assuages the agonies of all animals thus caught, by bestowing upon the _Felidæ_ a propensity to shake their victims, and so produce a state of insensibility. How can a lion shake an ox or an eland, a horse, giraffe, buffalo, or young rhinoceros? Andersson tells us that he mistook the groans of a zebra carried past his camp by night for those of a human being, and went to the rescue. More than this, if the brute itself has any feeling about this matter,--and there is every reason to believe that it has,--all manifestations of pain heighten the pleasurable excitement it experiences in putting an animal to death. Cruelty is organized in its brain, and to a beast of prey, pity is about as possible as poetic inspiration. Love of bloodshed, exultation in carnage, immitigable ferocity, are ingrained in them all; and so far as a lion appreciates expressions of mental anguish and physical torture, they thrill his fierce spirit with a savage joy.
Gordon Cumming relates a story which shows what a human being may experience when in the clutches of a lion. His party had encamped, and “the Hottentots,” as he tells, “made their fire about fifty yards away, they, according to their custom, being satisfied with the shelter of a large bush. The evening passed away cheerfully. Soon after dark we heard elephants breaking trees in the forest across the river, and once or twice I strode away into the darkness, some distance from the fireside, to stand and listen to them. I little, at that time, dreamed of the imminent peril to which I was exposing my life, nor thought that a blood-thirsty, man-eating lion was crouching near, and watching his opportunity to spring into the kraal and consign one of us to a horrible death. About three hours after the sun went down I called to my men to come and take their coffee and supper, which was ready for them at my fire. After supper three of them returned before their comrades to their own fireside, and lay down; these were John Stofolus, Hendric, and Ruyter. In a few moments an ox came out by the gate of the kraal and walked round the back of it. Hendric and Ruyter lay on one side of the fire, under a blanket, and Stofolus lay on the other. At this moment I was sitting, taking some barley broth; our fire was very small, and the night was pitch dark and windy.
“Suddenly the appalling and murderous voice of an angry and blood-thirsty lion burst upon my ear within a few yards of us, followed by the shrieking of the Hottentots. Again and again the murderous roar of attack was repeated. We heard John and Ruyter scream, ‘The lion! the lion!’ Still, for a few moments, we thought he was but chasing one of the dogs round the kraal. But the next instant Stofolus rushed into the midst of us almost speechless with fear and horror, his eyes bursting from their sockets, and shrieked out, ‘The lion! the lion! he has got Hendric; he dragged him away from the fire beside me. I struck him with burning brands upon the head, but he would not let go his hold. Hendric is dead! O God! Hendric is dead! Let us take fire and seek him!’ The rest of my people rushed about, yelling as if they were mad. I was angry with them for their folly, and told them if they did not stand still and be quiet, the lions would have another of us, for very likely there was a troop of them. Then I ordered the dogs, which were nearly all tied, to be loosed, and the fire increased as far as it could be. I shouted Hendric’s name, but all was still. I told my men that Hendric was dead, and that a regiment of soldiers could not help him then. Hunting my dogs forward, I had everything brought within the kraal, when we lighted our fire, and closed the entrance as well as we could.
“My terrified people sat around the fire with guns in their hands, fancying at every moment that the lion would return and spring into the midst of us. When the dogs were first let go, the stupid brutes, as dogs often prove to be when most needed, instead of going at the lion, rushed fiercely at one another and fought desperately for some minutes. After this they got his wind, and going at him, disclosed his position. They kept up a continual barking until day dawned, the lion occasionally springing at them and driving them in upon the kraal. This horrible monster lay all night within forty yards of us, consuming the wretched man he had chosen for his prey. He had dragged him into a little hollow at the back of the thick bush beside which the fire was kindled, and there he remained until day broke, careless of our proximity.
“It appeared that when the unfortunate Hendric rose to drive in the ox, the lion watched him to his fireside, and he had scarcely lain down before the brute sprang upon him and Ruyter (for both were under one blanket) with his appalling roar; and, roaring as he lay, grappled him with his fearful claws, and kept biting the poor man’s chest and shoulder, all the while feeling for his neck, having got hold of which, he dragged him away backward round the brush into the dense shade.
“As the lion lay upon him he faintly cried, ‘Help me! Help me! Oh God! men, help me!’”
Here was no instinctive fear of man, no sign of the timidity so much talked about, no falling off of the victim into the dreamy languor Dr. Livingstone expatiates upon. His pain was sooner over than that of some we know of; death came when the neck was crushed, but what had he suffered previously?
There is an alleged trait of character which should be alluded to on account of the propensity displayed even by those who really know this animal to make a composite being of him--part lion and part gentleman.
Gérard is one of them. He was to some extent, no doubt, deceived by common report, and likewise misled by his knowledge of those domestic virtues that really belong to the animal. At all events he constructed a lion that bears a curious resemblance to a _raffiné_ of the famous old duelling days in France without the _seigneur’s_ levity or his lewdness. When his family, whom he has up to this time fed himself, are able to join in the chase, the lion finds the game, strikes it down, and then, with that refined self-abnegation which comports so well with his natural character, he retires to a little distance from the quarry in order that _Madame_ may be first served. This and much more to the same effect.
It happens, however, that one man, and only one to the writer’s knowledge, the Hon. W. H. Drummond, chanced to see what Gérard has depicted in colors furnished by his own fancy. His narrative of the incident from first to last is much more in accordance with the style of manners taught in the struggle for existence than the former one. One day while watching the motions of some antelopes from the summit of a grassy and rock-strewn ridge, Drummond suddenly became aware that he was not the only hunter interested in the game of that vicinity. A lioness with her whelps crouched among the herbage at a little distance, and so intent were they upon the movements of their expected prey, that he was entirely unnoticed. While awaiting events a band of quaggas passed close to some bushes at the foot of the slope, and then a lion’s form was launched upon the leading stallion, and he fell dead from a blow with the beast’s forearm.
Without any delay the lion proceeded to help himself, his family drawing near, but waiting until his appetite had been stayed. “The sultan of the desert” has a short temper when he is feeding, and on many occasions has been known to eat his wife, either in the way of reproof to her importunity at such times, or because he did not have food enough. It would seem that this lioness suspected something of the kind might occur, for she kept herself and the young ones in the background until his highness had finished, which he, not being particularly hungry, did very soon. When he had walked away and stretched himself out, the rest pressed forward, and the mother treated her offspring with scant curtesy. She pounced upon those parts she preferred, and boxed the little ones, who were struggling for a bite, out of the way whenever they incommoded her.
Thus far in the catalogue of leonine gifts and graces we have not discovered any that are peculiarly their own; on the contrary, when examined closely, those with which lions are accredited turn out to be counterfeits. Gordon Cumming says of the lion, in company with his mate and whelps, that, “at this time he knows no fear,” and in defence of his family “he will face a thousand men.” This is a rhetorical flourish, and yet now when it has become the fashion to call the creature a poltroon, the statement as it stands is better supported by proof than almost any other that has been made concerning its character. If this animal is not brave, nobody is in a position to call it cowardly. All the evidence tends the other way. Taken as it is, looked upon as a brute to whom heroism, sentiment, and high resolve must be as impossible as righteousness, the lion preserves the demeanor of courage better than any other member of the _Felidæ_.