410 THRILLING ADVENTURES. 



mate, the greater part of the surface is either wood or culti- 

 vated fields, they also carry them off not only from their 

 field labor, but when they are busy at the doors of their houses, 

 and even when they are inside. They will sometimes descend 

 or issue from the woods in a troop upon a village, and de- 

 stroy all the inhabitants ; and there are many places of 

 those islands where, from a sort of foolish superstition, the 

 people take no pains to thin their numbers. The general 

 superstition is, that if they make a wanton aggression on th^ 

 tiger, he will wage a war of extermination against their famiK 

 but, on the other hand, if the tiger is the aggressor, they con- 

 ceive themselves entitled, in as far as they are able, to wage 

 a war of extermination against him. There is no doubt some 

 show of equity in this tacit code, but the misfortune is, that 

 only one of the parties can be made to understand and obey 

 it, and thus it induces the people to spare those animals to 

 the destruction of many of their own lives ; the more so that, 

 from the nature of the country, there is cover for tigers in the 

 close vicinity of almost every village. The people are not, 

 however, without dexterity in the capture or destruction of 

 tigers, when once they can be induced to undertake that ope- 

 ration. Sumatra and Java are, generally speaking, too tangled 

 with woods for admitting of tiger Jmnting, even with the as- 

 sistance of elephants ; and therefore the people have recourse 

 to traps, pit-falls, and gins, in the formation of which they 

 display no inconsiderable ingenuity. * 



Though the tigers of these islands are not so heavy as those 

 which are found in the jungles of Bengal they are exceedingly 

 strong, as well as active. It is reported that they can break 

 the leg of a horse or a buffalo, not by force of the spring but 

 the mere stroke of the paw, while the bite is sufficient to ham- 

 string and cripple an elephant, and they are said to aim at 

 that part of the animal. But the elephant in a wild state, is 

 seldom to be taken unawares in this way ; and if it must 

 receive the spring of the tiger on the hinder part (and the 



