Part 11

"The wild ones tamed are safest of all." (It should be noted that the domestic buffalo is dangerous occasionally, and people are sometimes hurt or killed by them.)

"Don't they notice that men caught them?"

"They're not clever enough for that."

"Don't they try to escape?"

"Never. Why should they? They have all they want. It is our business to keep them contented, and it's easy."

"Their calves are at times obstreperous," a man added, after a pause, and the others agreed, but said, "All you need do, at the worst, is to cut their horns, that is, cut off the tips."

"Why not do that to all the calves? There's somebody killed or hurt by buffaloes every year in Burma."

"The glory of a buffalo is his horns. It would be wrong, because it would not be natural to blunt them. We would never do it unless we could not help it, when a particular beast is bad."

"It's too much bother, I suppose."

"No, it's easy. But it does not look natural. The buffalo with his horns blunted is disfigured, and seems to feel it."

"No, no, it's not natural at all," said one after the other, with emphasis.

"How do you hunt the buffalo?"

"We never hunt the buffalo. No Burman ever did. At any rate, none ever does now. It is much safer and easier to catch and tame them; and it pays better."

A buffalo went by as our talk was ending; and on its withers was sitting a little boy of six or seven years of age, drumming merrily on its broad neck with his heels. At sight of us, he signified to it, by slaps and shouts, to move aside, so as not to splash us; and the big buffalo gently obeyed.

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 and the bank. This little harbour was shoaled at its southern or open end by the silting sands in the water eddying there; but for most of its length it was deep enough to be as comfortable for the cattle as if the whole enclosure had been made for their convenience.

It was all a big buffalo-wallow one afternoon that year (1894). One after another, scores of long-horned buffaloes had subsided into it, like submarines, leaving little but their nostrils on the surface. Men and women stood about on the bank, and children were bathing at the water's edge. Suddenly a splashing drew all eyes. It takes much to excite a buffalo. Even their manner of fighting is more than elephantine. I stood and watched a duel among them lately (1908), but never will again. It was perhaps the most leisurely battle that human being could endure to watch. But there, in 1894, men stared in wonder at a huge cow-buffalo splashing distractedly southwards from the extreme upper end of the pool. They soon saw she was chasing a crocodile that was carrying off her calf. Finding herself distanced in the water, she took to the shore, and galloped like a cart-horse in a hurry.

"I don't know," said an onlooker, "whether we could have reached the shoal in time to be of any use, but when we saw the old cow going like that, we thought it best to stand aside."

This was wise. The buffalo is enormous, and might easily kill a man by inadvertence, and a big crocodile, such as they said this was, though not so overwhelming, is otherwise dangerous. It does not seem to have been ascertained how old a crocodile can be. It seems to live to a great age, once it passes safely through the dangers of adolescence, and to continue growing bigger the longer it lives, like a tree. In Arakan I had seen some Indian coins that had ceased to be current for about a century, and were then, in 1893, recovered from the stomach of a patriarchal crocodile. The likeliest guess was that he had got this trouble in his stomach--for such it probably was to him--by eating one of the corpses that furnished such plenteous feeding to his tribe in the wars in Arakan, more than a century before. There was nothing certain, of course, except the age of the coins and the fact that they were found in his stomach, and he might have eaten another beast that had eaten the corpse, or he might have recently dined upon an Arakanese archæologist, but it is at least as likely that he had been suffering--if he suffered--a hundred years, for the headlong gluttony of youth.

A Sanskrit proverb runs:

When lion and striped tiger fight a bout, It's best to leave these two to fight it out.

So the Burmans felt as they watched the march of events:

When buffalo and crocodile debate, The thing for man to do is--stand and wait.

They had not to wait long.

"It was the nicest thing I ever saw in my life," said a man to me, his voice almost trembling with enthusiasm months afterwards. "I never heard tell of a thing like it. She went along the bank like a dog, in spite of her size. We ran to see better. Some say she made for the water, when she came abreast of the crocodile, but seeing the crocodile go by, drew back and galloped on again. I did not see that. We all saw the finish. She took the water at the shoal and stood waiting, like a cat. Of course the cattle knew the place, but fancy the old cow reflecting that the crocodile would need to cross the shoal to reach deep water.

"At first, while she stood waiting, we thought she was too late, as the enemy had gone below the surface, but soon we saw the stiff-necked crocodile, not looking round, slowly dragging the calf and itself over the sand, in front of the old cow. Ha, ha! She waited for the right moment, just like a cat; then charged, like a buffalo; and then we saw the great crocodile wriggling high in the air, spitted and tossed as easily as if it had been only a puppy. The horns both went clean through the middle of its body, and came out again."

I forget the fate of the calf, but they told me the taste of the crocodile's flesh. The nicest bits were near the tail. So I know that the crocodile died.