Anecdotes Of Big Cats And Other Beasts - free ebook by David Alec Wilson

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Anecdotes Of Big Cats And Other Beasts

David Alec Wilson

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Anecdotes of Big Cats and Other Beasts

Anecdotes of Big Cats and Other Beasts

BY DAVID WILSON METHUEN &amp; CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON First Published in 1910 This book may be translated into any language without payment. The ideal hunter, like the ideal soldier or mountaineer, seaman or worker of any kind, “leaves nothing to chance”; yet in anticipating events he realises the limits of human foresight and remains continually wide-awake. Wellington has quoted Marshal Wrede’s report of Napoleon’s way of doing—to do from day to day what the circumstances requi

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I. Three Men Together

I. Three Men Together

Whether you are hunting thieves or tigers, you proceed by good guessing based on knowledge. There is no real difference between what is pompously called scientific reasoning and plain common-sense, as Huxley has elaborately shown. Thieves and tigers have their habits, like all living things, and need to eat to live. One of the commonest successful ways of coming to close quarters with “Mr Stripes” is to go to where he has been killing lately, and lie in ambush. If you persevere in doing that in

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II. The Wonderful Escape of “Tiger-Hill”

II. The Wonderful Escape of “Tiger-Hill”

I am sorry to say it is more than twenty years since I began to listen to stories of tigers and leopards in Burma; and even more since I first made acquaintance with the beasts myself. I do not expect to see any more now, except in a Zoo. So perhaps it is time to note what has been learned, to re-tell the best of what I have heard, and in short do for others what others in days gone by have done for me. I have always considered that the man who keeps a good story fresh is the greatest of public

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III. Sherlock Holmes in a Wood

III. Sherlock Holmes in a Wood

On 20th April 1895, being engaged in Forest Settlement work among the low hills abutting on the south the mountain barrier between Burma and Assam, I was aroused, as I sat reading in a tent in the afternoon, by a signal. It meant that my colleague, Mr Bruce, the Deputy Conservator of Forests, who had gone out to shoot pigeons for dinner, either was or expected soon to be in contact with tiger, and wished me to join him—which I did, at a run. He was near the camp. The tigers thereabouts are more

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1. Tigers in the Air

1. Tigers in the Air

No doubt the tigers saw us many a time, though we saw none of them. The villagers, in order to feel safe, went about in twos and threes or in larger parties, like London policemen in the slums. Whenever two parties met, they discussed the latest news of tigers. Among a crowd of items, I well recollect that both Mr Dickinson, the Conservator, and Mr Bruce had much to tell me about the fine performances of C. W. Allan of their department that year there, and of his experiences in 1894. As “half a

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2. Tigers Victorious

2. Tigers Victorious

“During the month of March, 1894, I had to go out into the Kubo Valley, in the Kindat Forest Division, Upper Chindwin, to do the demarcation of the Khanpat Reserve. On the 16th I arrived at the village of Thinzin and halted there the 17th to collect coolies to do the work, which I found to be no easy matter. On inquiring the reason, I was told that there was a man-eater tiger in that part of the forest, and that it had killed three men within the last six weeks, and that people were afraid to go

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3. Working Alongside

3. Working Alongside

“On the morning of the 18th March some twenty men turned up, and the Thugyi informed me that the others would follow. So I made a move and got as far as the Khanpat stream, where I halted for a bit and had breakfast and then moved on again. It was my intention to make the Pyoungbok camp that day, as I was told it had a fence round it, made by the patrols to keep out the tiger. But the coolies would not move fast enough, so I camped on the Nanpalon stream. “After seeing the camp pitched and every

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4. At very Close Quarters

4. At very Close Quarters

“On seeing that the tiger was round our camp I took extra precautions and made all the men stop in one place just behind my tent; and gave orders to my Indian servants to have their dinner early, and to sleep with the Burmese coolies. My cook, an Indian, would not stop near the Burmans, though told to do so several times. He had his kitchen fire just in front of my tent. However, I told him he must sleep with the other men. The other Indians also told him not to be [ 37 ] a fool and stay away by

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5. The Charge of the Tigress

5. The Charge of the Tigress

Coming to 1909, there is an episode in his Shikar-Book about a tigress, which for various reasons may be transcribed:— “... 14th April.—I started up to inspect the Banbwebin fire line ... accompanied by my wife ... an Indian and two Burmans.... After we had gone about five miles up the ... path, ... we heard bamboos being broken. The Burmans said there must be a herd of wild elephants feeding on the flowered bamboos. I thought they might possibly be bison or a rhinoceros, so walked on to see wha

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V. The Girl and the Tigress

V. The Girl and the Tigress

This is a story that has been often told; and I confess I did not believe it when I heard it in 1895, in the district where it happened. Long afterwards, in 1908, Mr G. Tilly, who had been the District Superintendent of Police on the spot at the time, told me he held a local inquiry, and was so completely satisfied of the truth of it that he recommended the payment of a reward of R100 to the girl, and the Deputy Commissioner and the Commissioner agreed with him, and the Chief Commissioner of Bur

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VI. The Old Men and the Tiger

VI. The Old Men and the Tiger

This was told me in 1908 by Mr Thomson, who as District Magistrate had held an inquest at the time upon the tragedy; and his recollections have been verified and supplemented by Mr Webb, the present District Magistrate. The depositions have, in ordinary course, been destroyed; but the details that are still recoverable seem to be sufficient. The time was 1900, and the scene was Zwettaw village, Thongwa township, not far from Rangoon. The old headman, U Myat Thin, described in confidential offici

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VII. Recovering the Corpse

VII. Recovering the Corpse

The present Deputy Commissioner of Pyapon district, Burma (Major Nethersole, 1909), is my authority for this incident, which is selected as the most remarkable of several of its kind. He investigated it on the spot, and told me of it at the time. He himself gave as many days as he could spare to hunting the tiger concerned, which killed eight men in Pyapon district before it met its fate. One of them was old Po An, the headman of Eyya village. “Eyya” or “Irra” is the first part of the name of ou

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VIII. The Inspector’s Escape

VIII. The Inspector’s Escape

It was about February 1891, and on the left or eastern bank of the Sittang River in Toungoo district, Lower Burma, that an inspector of police was riding northwards along a cart-road, through the woods, as the daylight was quitting the sky, and “suddenly,” to use his own words, “I seemed, at one and the same instant, to get a terrific blow in the small of the back, and to feel the pony under me springing upwards, as if it were jumping to the sky.” He completed his description by gestures. A list

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IX. The Sound of Humanity

IX. The Sound of Humanity

The leopard, if not the boldest of all the feline tribes, is at least the best acquainted with mankind. His partiality for dogs makes him familiar with men’s villages. More than any other beast, perhaps, he is prompt to turn at bay when wounded and “charge home.” Many a man has lost his life to a wounded leopard. Yet even a leopard is daunted by the sound of humanity. In 1888 a big one was seen in a large village, not far from Maulmain, one morning. The scattered wooden houses and plentiful shru

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X. The Tiger at the Rifle-Range

X. The Tiger at the Rifle-Range

About 1891 a tiger began levying taxes on the little town of Shwegyin (Shwayjeen), in Lower Burma, where the Shwegyin river joins the big Sittang. The people were used to leopards, but tigers had ceased from troubling them so long that, as one said, “you might as well try to persuade us that the dead had arisen as that tigers had come back.” As there had always been tigers in the adjoining mountains, and the forest spread over the country, and touched the town on every side but where the rivers

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1. The Buffalo and the Skunk

1. The Buffalo and the Skunk

Indeed the water buffalo known to us in Burma, also, is not smart at all. Slow, heavy and dull, amphibious in his habits, he moves like a very fat pig, with almost less agility. Slipping through the muddy slush, in the sleekness of his prime, he looks almost “like a whale?” Yes, round enough for that, and almost like a little whale, except for his awkwardness, for his legs are not yet atrophied or sea-changed, and he has only his legs to move by; and also except—a big exception—his huge horns. T

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2. Hunting the Buffalo

2. Hunting the Buffalo

On the last day of 1908, in a morning walk at Myaungmya, Lower Burma, I met two acquaintances, Messrs Dunn and M‘Kenzie, riding home. They had elected to enjoy their Christmas holidays a-hunting, and been away for several days. “Hunting what?” “Buffalo.” “I believe the buffalo is a dangerous beast to tackle.” They looked at each other in a way that showed they had an adventure to tell. They had gone with another European and a crowd of followers to a muddy island in the delta, where a wild bull

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3. Taming the Buffalo

3. Taming the Buffalo

This adventure shows how easily lives might be lost in hunting the wild buffalo, about which the herdsmen who know him best have told me what should, perhaps, be better known, were it only to prevent misunderstandings. There is not the slightest need for war between buffaloes and us. They are not natural enemies, like the tiger. They are not even troublesome to tame, like the deer. [ 89 ] “Though terrible to kill, they are easy to catch,” say the herdsmen familiar with their haunts. “You have on

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XII. The Buffalo and the Crocodile

XII. The Buffalo and the Crocodile

When the rains have all run off, and the snows of Central Asia have not begun to melt, about the middle of the dry weather, the Irrawaddy, our Burman Mississippi, runs its lowest; and in such places as Magwe, a district on the road to Mandalay, the sandbanks are conspicuous. In 1894 there was, as there often is, a sandbank in Magwe district that, starting from the eastern bank, like a dam, athwart the current, bent down the stream, like a breakwater at sea, enclosing a natural harbour between it

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XIII. A Nest of Crocodiles

XIII. A Nest of Crocodiles

In 1893 and 1894 I was Deputy Commissioner of Kyaukpyu district, which means the islands of Ramri and Cheduba, and smaller isles adjoining, and an adjacent strip of the malarious coast of Arakan. The headquarters was in the north of Ramri, and, sitting in my house there, one evening early in 1894, I heard an unusual clamour at the door. There was audibly somebody having an altercation with my servants. I went to see and hear. It was a fisherman from a far-off corner of the district. Till shortly

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XIV. Useful Snakes

XIV. Useful Snakes

In the backwoods of Thayetmyo district, Burma, in 1886, I was next to the man who was guiding a party of policemen and villagers going, in single file, on the track of robbers in arms, who had been cattle-lifting. Suddenly the guide in front held his hand behind his back as a signal to stop, and I passed on the signal. The guide began to move forward, on his toes, as noiselessly as a cat, towards something on the ground. His eyes were riveted upon it, 20 or 30 feet in front of him. To the rest o

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XV. The Tucktoo

XV. The Tucktoo

Burma is chiefly remarkable for a lizard that occasionally haunts the trees and houses there. Span-long or more, it has a head big out of all proportion compared with others of the lizard clans, and eyes that sometimes seem to follow you like owl’s eyes, and a loud voice. “Tuck-too!” it cries, “Tuck-too! Tuck-too!” without any variation, except an occasional repetition of the “oo-oo-oo” at the end, like a musician tuning his pipes. It is considered very lucky to have such a lizard in your house;

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XVI. The Kitten’s Catch

XVI. The Kitten’s Catch

He is a common grey kitten; but he is the last of a large family, and his mother is devoted to him, and takes great pains about his education. Now that he can run about, his mother fetches indoors little field-mice for him, and baby rats from the stable; and so the kitten is quickly learning the trade of all his tribe. But mother was digesting last night (11/6/09) and would not run about with him, would only flick her tail; and chasing mother’s tail became gradually monotonous for a kitten that

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1. Twice Twenty Years Ago or More

1. Twice Twenty Years Ago or More

“After all,” I said, “the size is the chief difference between leopards and common cats.” Bingham agreed, and I found he was still of the opinion that lions and tigers, leopards and jaguars, are all more nearly related than at first sight appears. He had been, as I then was, sanguine about getting evidence that they interbred, and while telling me he had never succeeded, thought another might. Indeed it should be better known that the chief difference between lions [ 120 ] and tigers is the lion

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2. A Leopard that Loved the Ladies

2. A Leopard that Loved the Ladies

Colonel Bingham had not been able to ascertain what made this leopard take early to humanity. A guess that many favoured was suggested by its life-long preference for women. The guess was that its mother had given her little ones some girls to flesh their baby fangs upon. There had been some horrible cases of that sort. One shudders to think of girls in the maws of leopards, like the little mice a tabby brings to her kittens. But, after all, many a girl meets a worse fate in a European town. The

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3. No Man Comes Amiss

3. No Man Comes Amiss

This leopard was, without an effort, catholic in its tastes, especially when hungry. It seldom ate mere venison, or touched the dogs which common leopards love, but nothing human ever came amiss. It never heeded caste. It ate woodmen. It ate policemen. It ate the village artisans, especially leather workers, caught outside the villages. It ate a holy hermit, and was fond of priests. It ate postmen. It ate pilgrims. [ 125 ] The pilgrims crowded into bigger parties on its account, and kindled fire

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4. Its Way of Doing

4. Its Way of Doing

“How could you be sure that this ‘kill’ was done by this particular leopard, and not by another?” was my frequent question, [ 126 ] variously answered, according to circumstances. It had a style of its own, one seemed to feel, after hearing a few of its exploits. There were instances of men hunting it, who were killed instead of killing; but, curiously enough, its most peculiar feat was a failure, from the leopard’s point of view. It went into a big village one day, between four and five o’clock

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5. The Final Fight

5. The Final Fight

The chief evidence that one leopard did all the “kills” credited to this one was the uninterrupted series while it lived, and the cessation, for a while, when it died. But, though practically uninterrupted in time, its killings varied in place, to the perplexity of its pursuers. More than once, when most of those who were seeking it were in one locality, ambuscading half-eaten remains, it went elsewhere, and started afresh, where it had the advantage of being unexpected. It took little pains to

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XVIII. On Heads in General

XVIII. On Heads in General

The earliest human tools were weapons too, mere sticks and stones; and perhaps the earliest great discovery, before the invention of fire and in days of infinite antiquity, was the importance of heads. The value of the discovery was due to the natural weakness of our limbs and teeth and nails. The other beasts were better provided with natural weapons and neither needed tools nor made them. The importance of heads did not concern them at all. The lions and tigers, who are regularly killing men a

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XIX. The Unfinished Speech and Dance

XIX. The Unfinished Speech and Dance

In fairness to the eloquent hero of this adventure it should be told, lest any reader does not know it, that wounded leopards are as dangerous as wounded lions or tigers. There was one that was clumsily handled by villagers in Burma a few years ago, and six men died out of those it injured; and I know a man who has told me, with a shudder, that he has twice seen a clever hunter at his side killed by a wounded leopard “charging home.” It was early in 1888, and on the plains near the mouth of the

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XX. The Big Pet Cat

XX. The Big Pet Cat

One evening in the nineties I went to dine at the house of a friend in Burma, and was unexpectedly greeted at the entrance by a leopard almost fully grown. He received me with the same restful manner of dignified armed neutrality that may be seen on the features of a domestic cat, or of an old family servant, observing a strange visitor. “Do the others know?” I asked the host, meaning the other dinner-guests, not yet arrived. “Yes, they all know him, but none of them like him, or maybe it is tha

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XXI. The Leopard that Needed a Dentist

XXI. The Leopard that Needed a Dentist

The excellent American dentist at Madras had me “at discretion” in 1908; and as he worked he began talking, in the kindly way some dentists have, about things in general, and in particular, when encouraged and led to that topic, he spoke about the science of his useful art. “What spoils the teeth is want of use,” said he. “Look at cats! What fine teeth tigers have!” “When they are young,” said I, “are you aware that tigers and leopards often die prematurely of starvation, because their teeth fai

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XXII. The Devil as a Leopard

XXII. The Devil as a Leopard

In 1891, in Shwegyin (pronounced Shwayjeen), then the headquarters of a district in Burma, but now decayed, because the railway went another road, I became aware as I sat in office of an unusual hush in the precincts of the public buildings. My messenger came uncalled into my room, and stood as if struggling to speak but unable to articulate. My head clerk, the excellent Babu Chowdry, followed him, though it was an uncommon time for him to come in. With obvious difficulty and hesitation, almost

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XXIII. The Gallant Leopard

XXIII. The Gallant Leopard

The lions and tigers and leopards cannot bring libel suits or arrange duels. So men can call them cowards with impunity, and often do; but it is not fair, and surely all who have been long enough in the woods to know better should do justice to the beasts that are dumb. Besides, there is a real joy in telling the downright truth. It is apt to have the merit of novelty, for one thing. That is why it seems right to tell in 1909 an adventure that befell three gallant officers in Upper Burma, a litt

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XXIV. A Dumb Appeal put into Words

XXIV. A Dumb Appeal put into Words

The Griffin at Temple Bar, a lump of metal like a medieval nightmare, is one of multitudinous monstrosities such as Burns described: The significance of the Griffin, however, goes deeper than the conventionality, which alone the artists deride; for it is only half an explanation to cry “conventional.” What made it “conventional?” Why did men convene to admire such an object? One has to grope among the beginnings of history to be able to guess; and for that purpose, one has to stoop to the mental

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XXV. The Fox in the Suez Canal

XXV. The Fox in the Suez Canal

One afternoon, about the end of the nineteenth century, a steamer was passing southwards through the Suez Canal, and as I sat in the shade on its deck and looked eastwards over the desert, I saw a little animal with a bushy tail running along the ridge at the canal side, keeping level with the steamer. A slight occasional glance in our direction showed that he knew we were there. At first, he appeared to be a jackal; but, when glasses were turned upon him, we agreed that he was more like the fox

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1. Elephants

1. Elephants

The news seemed to spread in the elephant world that men had ceased to shoot; for as the herd that came first went farther from the hills, seeking pastures new, the farmers who had begun to breathe freely were horrified to see new herds appear. On the morning that the first news came to me, it was followed in a few hours by reports of fresh havoc, like those that rained upon Job. “We’ll need an extra officer to measure up the damage for revenue exemptions on that account,” was the prudent remind

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2. The Baboons and the Leopard

2. The Baboons and the Leopard

It is not ill deeds alone that are done because the means to do them are in sight. The same is true of good deeds also. The elephants [ 179 ] can help each other better than most quadrupeds, because they have trunks; and so can the monkeys, because they have hands. Herein lay the primitive germ of society. Indeed there is profit in remembering this, for it follows that selfish greed, which is the root of gambling and theft of every kind, is a reversion in the scale of being, not merely to the mo

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3. The Indian Baboons and the Bear

3. The Indian Baboons and the Bear

Dr Murphy , now civil surgeon at Maubin, in the delta of Burma, where this is written, is a unique phenomenon. That is a [ 182 ] clumsy phrase to apply to any fellow-creature, but accurate. He is a perfectly popular European official—popular in spite of being an official, because he is a good doctor, spontaneously sympathetic, kind and helpful, and does not bully or grab. Two little facts may be told on the authority of the present Deputy Commissioner of Maubin district and his predecessor, to g

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4. Simla Monkeys

4. Simla Monkeys

The years go by like clouds. In 1902, Dr Murphy was no longer a schoolboy, running about Mussoorie, but a surgeon employed by Simla municipality, and familiar with the little monkeys there, who lived on Jacko Hill. They overran the town, these little men; and took every possible advantage of the toleration of the good Hindus. Perhaps it is needful to mention that Indians are so indulgent that European naturalists [ 187 ] in India are continually surprised at the slight fear of men among wild bir

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5. Co-operation

5. Co-operation

Whether or not the guess is right that in that hubbub among the monkeys in the Simla trees there was a rudimentary heresy hunt, or, in other words, that the monkeys were screeching whatever in monkey language intimated, “Bad form, bad form,” “Order, order,” it cannot be surprising to find solidarity such as theirs facilitated, or even made possible, by what can only be called [ 192 ] a kind of language. If Max Müller had been beside Dr Murphy one day in 1905 in Simla, and seen what Dr Murphy the

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XXVII. A Run for Life

XXVII. A Run for Life

In Phayre’s History of Burma it is mentioned that “the loud, deep-toned cries of the hoolook ape ... resound dismally in those dark forest solitudes, and startle the traveller ...” (ch. xxii). They would startle only those who did not recognise in the resounding “Oo-oo-oos” the voices of harmless, primitive communities of hairy little black men and women, called gibbons, the smallest of the apes that closely resemble humanity. They are probably the strongest of us all in the arms, in proportion

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XXVIII. Mother’s Love among the Monkeys

XXVIII. Mother’s Love among the Monkeys

In January 1909 a friend at Pyapon, Burma, told me that, as he was passing through an unfrequented creek near the shore there, between Rangoon and Bassein, the sudden apparition of his steam-launch alarmed a crowd of monkeys. They were on the trees, overhanging the water, and chattering loudly. They hurried away, with leaps and swings, quickly and easily, all but one. He was a very little fellow, and there was a big gap in front of him, too big for him; and so he stood shivering, about to fall.

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1. Up to Date

1. Up to Date

That is why there is little to tell in our anecdotes of modern adventures, unless when something [ 200 ] happens under primitive conditions. Never did any modern hunter have to face such danger as was faced by a bereaved old Burman grandfather in a village near Rangoon when he took a spear in his hand, and, with other old men, ran after the tiger that was carrying away his grandchild, and closed with it. These old fellows showed a spirit that makes one think better of humanity. But what are we t

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2. The Lion in Death

2. The Lion in Death

Here is a cutting from a friendly review of a recent book in the Westminster Gazette of 5th December 1908. “Our author, we have said, got no lions. Other game came to him in plenty, but the lions always evaded his gun. Yet he gives us a living picture of a lion hunt, when the harried animal, which has been trying to slink off, at last turns to bay and determines on the fight to a finish: “‘Death is the only possible conclusion. “‘Broken limbs, broken jaws, a body raked from end to end, lungs pie

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3. Killing Tigers and Apes

3. Killing Tigers and Apes

I have just been invited to invest in an electric apparatus, to be installed upon the tree one sits in, when waiting over a “kill” for the return of the tiger. The difficulty at present is to see to shoot in the dark; and this invention enables you to press a button and flood the place with electric light. If then you are moderately quick, you can shoot the beast while he is blinking at the light, as easily as if it were day. You are as safe in the tree as in a bedroom and very nearly as comfort

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4. The Happy Hunter

4. The Happy Hunter

The happiest huntsman I ever heard of was a fat little Frenchman, who was a guest in a shooting-box in the Highlands of Scotland. His host was some ex-royalty; and one morning the whole crowd were going to stalk the deer, except our hero, who stood watching their departure as cheerily as he could. “Take a gun and potter about yourself near the house,” was the parting shout to him; and after a little, finding time begin to drag, he remembered the kindly-meant advice, and shouldered a gun and went

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5. The Use of Hunting

5. The Use of Hunting

To talk of the use of hunting to-day is generally cant, like talking of the danger of it. At the expense of what is wasted in a few years upon foxes in England, it would be possible to exterminate the lions, tigers, leopards, wolves, foxes, jaguars and every other big kind of dangerous wild beasts on the face of the earth; and fewer lives need be lost in the business than went to the building of the Forth Bridge. The work might be done in a year or two; and in the same time, and still more cheap

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6. Irresistible Evolution

6. Irresistible Evolution

I saw a real hunter a few months ago (1908). He was a Eurasian, in Burma, living from hand to mouth. His clothes were of the roughest, [ 215 ] poor fellow, and his appearance showed he had to live very barely. The police said that he was kept alive by his patient mother, who “allowed him to sponge upon her.” A passion for hunting had withdrawn him from other occupations. The deer in the woods, along the muddy coast, and the rewards for an occasional leopard or tiger, I was told, enabled him to b

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1. Children of Air, in General

1. Children of Air, in General

Why not? Are not our arms better than wings, the implements of an inferior species? A very slight knowledge of anatomy is enough to let one know that nobody can have both wings and arms. The why of that is inscrutable; [ 217 ] but the fact is undeniable. The Almighty has written that in the skeletons of all creation. What fools we are, when we try to improve on the works of God! In His eyes, it is but as yesterday since our parents, with bent backs and feeble knees, came out of the wood, and, “h

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2. “Charlie Darwin”

2. “Charlie Darwin”

It was “antipathy to Darwin,” they told me, which made a reverend missionary, in the last century, exhort some neighbours of ours, some Christian Karens in Burma, to “shoot at sight” the monkeys and little apes that occasionally took a few plantains from their gardens. The loss of fruit could be minimised in other, gentler ways, as their Burman neighbours showed them. The “heathens” were so “benighted” that they spoke of the trifling losses caused by the apes exactly as the poet Burns spoke of t

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3. Running Away

3. Running Away

Nothing can really make up to a child for the loss of a mother. True mother’s love is like immeasurable space, and gives humanity its first taste of the Infinite. The fishes know it not, and hardly the crocodiles; but, as we move up the scale of being, it comes more and more into evidence. The rage of “a bear that has lost her whelps” is proverbial. I had a friend in [ 226 ] the Chitral expedition who told me that they caught the children of an unlucky she-bear; and the bereaved mother, “though

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4. Settling Down

4. Settling Down

There is an excellent man in Burma who is said to have lived many years upon nuts; and an acquaintance of his told me he had been led to the discovery that this was the ideal food, by the [ 229 ] consideration that nuts must be the staple food of monkeys. I suggested to vary his diet by a regular consumption of ants. Charlie was very fond of them. She would even pause in eating cake to pick up an ant if she saw one. I doubt if she would have done so for a nut. She used to pick up any ant, even t

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5. Teasing Tom

5. Teasing Tom

Charlie’s favourite seat was upon the veranda rail. It gave her a wide and beautiful view of the garden and the river and forests, to say nothing of the far-off mountains [ 234 ] blue, her native home, for Hylobates Hooluck is by choice a mountaineer. Indoors, without moving more than her head, by merely looking round, she could see the drawing-room, whereof the veranda was an extension, and, through wide doorways never closed, the much more interesting dining-room beyond. Dr Clark, once famous

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6. Evening and Morning

6. Evening and Morning

Ever after she returned from seeking her mother, Charlie eyed the woods like a frightened child, and vehemently plumped for civilisation. No wonder! Death is ever at hand for all beings; but in the woods it seems to press upon you. The very tigers have a recurring prospect of death by starvation, a fact which should mitigate our hatred of them, while confirming our hostility. The Lilliputian tribe of gibbons have lively days, quite full of trouble. They are so human, and yet so much weaker than

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7. Table Manners

7. Table Manners

When we were at dinner she was always asleep; but, with equal regularity, she was always impatiently awaiting us at the breakfast table. A chair was set for her, of course, but never used, except as a stepping-stone to the table. It [ 243 ] did not suit her size, and we did not have one specially made for her, as the giants did for Gulliver. She so obviously did not want it that it would have been superfluous. The knives and forks she examined curiously, but without admiration. Like the Asiatics

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8. Dogs

8. Dogs

Once it happened that Charlie was left in charge of a neighbour, as she was young and we had to go from home; and in the neighbour’s house a dog bit her. When next she saw my wife she flung her arms round my wife’s neck, and clung to her with sobs and moans, and all the gestures natural to her sex in affliction, and ever afterwards she seemed to feel that dogs were hostile. I recollect that once our house was filled with visitors, some local tin-god and official attendants, and one of the afores

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9. Equality is Equity

9. Equality is Equity

Although she went about on her hind legs, as we do, she did not despise her four-footed acquaintances, and was always intimate with the tabby, to whom she had been introduced on arrival. It was a pretty sight to watch them dip their little heads together into the saucer of milk. They always started fair, but pussy lapped the better. The milk diminished so fast that Charlie could see that her share would be the smaller one at that rate. Then tenderly but irresistibly she put her strong right arm

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10. Where Civilisation Began

10. Where Civilisation Began

But where had Charlie learned that “Equality is equity,” a rule that has been found beyond the grasp of a “common”-minded chancellor? Surely, in the family circle. Her whole character, and, in particular, the readiness to imitate, upon which I do not dwell only because everybody knows that kind of thing, was that of one who had inherited family instincts, whose ancestors had lived in families for immemorial generations. The habits of living species are slowly modified in the lapse of millenniums

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11. Filial Feeling

11. Filial Feeling

It is a common remark of Japanese philosophers, applying Western science to their Eastern histories, that filial affection is unknown to [ 252 ] the beasts, and the last feeling to develop in spiritual evolution, and consequently the first to deteriorate. That is how they have been known to explain the moral inferiority of Western civilisation; for, as lawyers, on legal-political questions, do always—of course in a perfectly honourable manner—adapt their legal principles to their politics, so do

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12. Agreeable Sensations

12. Agreeable Sensations

In the eighth book of his autobiography ( Dichtung , etc.), Goethe moralises that “with the infinite idiosyncrasy of human nature on the one side, and the infinite variety in the modes of life and pleasure on the other, it is a wonder that the human race has not worn itself out long ago.” He explains the mystery by a toughness which, it is now safe to say, must have been inherited from our arboreal ancestors, for Charlie had it in full measure. The fact was that, when she grew up, she suffered f

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13. Corroborating Aristotle & Co.

13. Corroborating Aristotle & Co.

Wondering , if not worshipping, as she blinked at the morning sun, Charlie Darwin then and all the rest of the day was continually giving opportunities of observation such as would have rejoiced the heart of Wallace. The [ 261 ] gibbons in a Zoo are more out of their element than men in a jail. They are surrounded by strange sights and sounds, and stupefied and quasi-paralysed by lack of occupation. We can learn little more from them living there than from their little bodies when they are dead.

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14. The Last Chapter

14. The Last Chapter

By May 1893, when Charlie had been about a year in her master’s house, he had been about two and a half years in the same station, in charge of the same district, doing the same kind of work. The average for the province was a few months. So he should not have been surprised that he was then, on the shortest possible notice, transferred from where he was, in the Sittang valley, in the east of Burma, to a district with headquarters on Ramri Island, off the western coast. [ 266 ] What to do with C

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1. Early Days

1. Early Days

When he is young and only learning to walk, his toes being turned in so as to suit his arboreal movements, the bear trips on his own paws and at times rolls over in a ludicrous way, as if turning [ 273 ] an unwilling somersault. After such a collapse, his next impulse naturally is to move backwards, as the safer way. But then, his eyes being set in his head like our own, he soon finds that the universe is too complex to allow indefinite blind retrogression; and so he tries again, and makes anoth

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2. Up the Chimney

2. Up the Chimney

In writing as in living, it is easier to see what is right than to do it. The biographers of Europe would agree that their proper concern was only what was characteristic of their heroes, and not the details of human life in general. “In the abstract,” they would all agree to this; yet which of them does it? The difficulty is to discover what is distinctive. If that is hard for a man who is writing about a man, it is still harder for the historian of a bear. If I were a bear, I would not have be

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3. At a Railway Station

3. At a Railway Station

The next remarkable incident was on a railway journey, on the way to Ye-U. The guard had charge of them, and kept them in their basket in his own van, where he “could have an eye upon them.” This would have been enough if they had been common wild bears, newly caught; but these were civilised animals, and while the guard kept an eye upon them, they kept two pairs of eyes on the guard. It was a single line of railway, and there were long pauses at every station, during which the guard was on the

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4. A Breakfast at Ye-U

4. A Breakfast at Ye-U

“Life belongs to the living,” say the wise. Whoever survives, must be prepared for changes; and there is no misfortune so great that a person of sense cannot draw some benefit from it. That is true at times of bears, as well as of men. For the surviving bear in this instance, the sad death of her companion was not without a pleasant result. She was delivered from her chain, and rejoiced in her liberty, like a suffragette. That is why the story of her life is interesting—and short. Incidentally,

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5. The Bear and the Perambulator

5. The Bear and the Perambulator

Her master loved her as dearly as ever any man loved a dog; and so, when he was transferred from the north of Upper to the south of Lower Burma, he took her with him. This was lucky for her. She had made a bad impression on the man who came to relieve him, although, as himself a father of children, he might have been expected to appreciate her. It was all a misunderstanding. The new man had come in advance of his family, but brought with him a perambulator, nicely upholstered; and when the gentl

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6. Life in a Country Town

6. Life in a Country Town

Their destination was Kyauktan, a Burman name that means a “ridge of rock.” As you go up the river to Rangoon a low ridge is visible, inland, on the right, almost parallel to the muddy bank, and not very far from it. It is a ridge of rock; but, in that benignant land, there seems to be something indecent, or at least savouring of skeletons, in bare rocks like those of more desolate countries; and in this instance, as usual there, you may know the rock is below, but you see only the elevated gree

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7. The Wonderful Suckling

7. The Wonderful Suckling

One of the most amusing of European ways in Burma and India is the habit of adhering to hours of work and fashions of garments that suit London. In the heat of the day the whites and their direct employees are supposed to be working hard. This leaves the best hours of the twenty-four for amusement, which is not exactly what was intended. The fashion is set by men who live in the hills. That is the secret. You cannot really ignore the sun in the Tropics, however; you can only pretend to do it. Go

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8. Harum-Scarum

8. Harum-Scarum

There were many other freaks of the bear which a kind conspiracy of silence concealed from her master as long as possible. Like other bachelors who live alone, he was not always punctual in sitting down to table. His pet had the healthy appetite of youth, and was hungry at times before dinner was ready, and then, being at home everywhere and not troubled with false pride, she naturally went to the kitchen and helped herself. It is likely that she burned or scalded herself in that way, for it is

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9. All the Rest

9. All the Rest

It was not altogether disagreeable to the bear to be left alone in the house, with only a servant or two, and nobody to correct her; but [ 301 ] she made herself unpleasant to other people. Her master found her, after every absence, “more and more savage” upon his return. These are his own words; and yet, and yet, however imperious to others or contemptuous of humanity, she was always amenable to him, and to him she was always dear. At this point, as is common in biographies, the historian who w

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10. Her Epitaph

10. Her Epitaph

It is now 1910: and already Mr Brand himself is dead; and, spinning in the official whirligig, “like the wind’s blast, never resting, homeless,” [ 305 ] the bear’s old master has long ago left Kyauktan, and been in many places. So it is natural that no monument has been put up to her memory; and, maybe, none ever will be. But the things of the spirit are so wonderfully made that words on paper may endure longer than marble or brass; wherefore, though it has not been engraved, let her epitaph be

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XXXII. A Chinese Hunter

XXXII. A Chinese Hunter

A strange and vivid glimpse by firelight into distant darkness is given by two Chinese songs, Odes i, vii, 3 and 4, in Legge’s Chinese Classics , IV, pp. 127 to 131. I have versified Mr Legge’s prose. The date was certainly more than 500, and probably 740 B.C. , and the locality northern China, probably Honan. Shuh means “younger brother,” so that, except to those who believe the commentators, which I cannot, the hero, like the poet, is anonymous,—“ The younger brother.” Both translations may b

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