730 



CAT. 



Ganges, and the name of which signifies a forest of 

 rapidly-growing trees, form altogether a triangle, each 

 side of which is nearly two hundred miles in length, 

 or altogether it is not much less than England. This 

 may be considered as par excellence, the demesne or 

 park of Tippoo, in which he reigns in splendid but 

 ferocious majesty. It. is true that he has some subjects 

 who do not very much regard his sway upon ordinary 

 occasions, but these are not exceedingly numerous. 

 The elephant and rhinoceros are both met with in 

 this singularly blended scene of life and death ; but the 

 ground is rather soft for their heavy tread, and they 

 are consequently but rare. The gavial, or crocodile 

 of the Ganges, is however exceedingly numerous, and 

 very large ; and though but a slow and sluggish 

 animal upon land, it often makes prize of the tigers 

 when they come to the waters to drink. But, with 

 the exception of the three species now mentioned, 

 the tiger lords it over all the animals of this wide 

 region, and very often issues from it to invade the 

 plantations and even the villages which are in its 

 vicinity. Swamps and jungles of smaller dimension^ 

 are formed by the back water of all the greater rivers 

 of India, and indeed in every place where the water 

 stagnates ; and where such jungles are formed, tigers 

 are always to be met with. The greater number of 

 them keep within their jungle, because the woody 

 jungles are generally interspersed with grassy ones, 

 in which deer, antelopes, and other animals pasture ; 

 and the woods themselves afford an ample supply of 

 wild hogs, monkeys, and other animals, of all of which 

 the tigers make prey. Sometimes, however, they 

 issue from their fastnesses ; and as when they do so 

 they are generally in a state of great excitement, 

 they commit terrible ravages, and are generally 

 destroyed by the people rising en masse to hunt them, 

 and those hunts, as well as the hunting of the tiger 

 for sport, are attended with no inconsiderable danger. 

 When they make these inroads into the habitations 

 of men, or of tame animals, they kill much more than 

 they eat ; and it has thence been concluded that 

 tigers are endowed by nature with a love of slaughter 

 unknown to any other animal. It does not appear, 

 however, that this is the case ; for though the tiger 

 comes more into the settled and peopled grounds 

 than the lion, yet he is not exactly in his native ele- 

 ment there, but is excited, and generally also alarmed, 

 and therefore he does not rest to eat what he kills, but 

 goes on attacking and killing indiscriminately. In 

 his native jungles, there is no reason to believe that 

 he commits murder for the sake of murder, but 

 simply that he seeks his food according to the general 

 law observed by all animals ; and that, when fed, he 

 is in repose, and quite harmless, as well as the rest. 

 Tigers are much more numerous in those jungles 

 than perhaps any other beast of prey is in any part 

 of the world ; and as the individuals are all very like 

 each other, it is possible that this character may have 

 arisen from one tiger getting credit for having done 

 that work which was really the performance of a 

 dozen or more. 



Many of the islands and muddy banks in the 

 tiger's country are held as sacred by the superstitious 

 Hindoos, and as such, they are resorted to by 

 devotees. These devotees very often fall a prey to 

 the tigers ; but as not a few of them go to such places 

 for the express purpose of seeking death, it is possible 

 that death by a tiger, by being more brief, is attended 

 with less real suffering than starving to death in a 



; region where the atmosphere is pestilence. When 

 the water is high, and boats can pass near the trees 

 which cover these islands, such approaches are highly 

 dangerous, because a tiger will spring for a very 

 considerable distance from the jungle upon a boat lull 

 of armed men, and make off with one of them before 

 the rest have time to offer any resistance. Even 

 when parties of mounted soldiers ride too close to 

 the tiger jungles, the tiger will sometimes spring, 

 seize a horseman, and be off with him almost before 

 the others are aware of it. 



In places which are not so humid as the jungles of 

 the Sunderbunds, tigers do not attain the same size, 

 but they are more active, and on this account more 

 dangerous to the inhabitants. In the larger islands, 

 Sumatra and Java especially (we know less of the 

 interior of Borneo), these animals are highly destruc- 

 tive. They not only intercept the people in journeys 

 through the woods, and, from the nature of the 

 climate, the greater part of the surface is either wood 

 or cultivated fields, they also carry them off not only 

 from their field labour, 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 destroy the 

 whole 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 upon the tiger, he will wage a war 

 of extermination against their family ; but, on the 

 other hand, if the tiger is the aggressor, they conceive 

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

 a war of extermination against him. There is no 

 doubt some show of iniquity in this tacit code, but 

 the misfortune is, that only one of the parties can be 

 made to understand and obey it, and that 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 operation. Sumatra 

 and Java are, generally speaking, too tangled with 

 woods for admitting of tiger hunting, even with the 

 assistance 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 the force of the spring, but by the 

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

 hamstring 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 tiger will not attack an 

 elephant in front, unless by surprise), it crouches, 

 and receives him on the upper part, where the skin is 

 so tough, that the tiger can make but little impression 

 upon it, and capable of so much motion, that the 

 elephant shakes him off, and falls upon him, or stamps 

 him to death ; nor does it quit the carcass till it has 

 reduced the whole to a soft mass. Other animals, even 

 the heaviest, are carried off to the woods with the 



