Part 13

Leopards get the advantage over a being far cleverer than any other forest animal. Monkeys of all species detest tigers, but have an intense dread of the spotted cats. They “swear” at the former, but fly from the latter, and as for men, monkeys deride them. Panthers and leopards catch these creatures in trees, on the ground, by day and by night; while they are on the alert, and in moments when an apparent absence of danger lulls these astute little beasts into a fatal feeling of security.

A cattle-lifting panther, according to Pollok and Forsyth, is more destructive than a tiger. On the great ranges where herds graze during the time when pasture is destroyed by drought in a good part of India, the depredations of these beasts cost the owners dearly, and they likewise take a constant toll from those animals, cows principally, which are kept at villages. A buffalo under ordinary circumstances is safe, even if alone; and when the herd is united to resist, even he with the stripes has not the slightest chance of success.

Cows, however, are the especial prey of panthers. In India these are of comparatively small size, and preternaturally imbecile. The Bovidæ are not a gifted family at their best, and when domestication relieves them to a great extent from the necessity of taking care of themselves, they lose much of the faculty which in wild forms is developed under the stress of necessity. Year after year, and age after age, the panther has been murdering Indian cattle in the same way, and they have never originated the slightest measure of precaution or defence. The full measure of their weakness of mind has been taken by the enemy, and when he concludes to give up hunting, except as a pastime, and live on beef, his prey may be said to come to him.

In 1863 Captain Forsyth hunted panthers on the higher Narbadá, under the auspices of an old shikári, an unspeakable scoundrel, who had killed more of them than anybody else whose exploits the annals of sport with large game perpetuate. Bamanjee (the Brahman) seems to have been exceptionally honest in his dealings with the Captain, and to have given him an opportunity, rarely accorded to the hunters whom he swindled, for making observations upon the habits and character of these beasts. Forsyth relates his experiences in a way that will serve as a summary of what has been already said about Felis pardus. “The number of these animals in the districts around Jubbulpúr is very great. The low rocky hills, ... full of hollows and caverns, and overgrown with dense scrubby cover, afford them their favorite retreats; while numbers of antelope and hog deer, goats, sheep, pariah dogs, and pigs supply them with abundant food. A large male panther will kill not very heavy cattle; but as a rule they confine themselves to the smaller animals mentioned. They seldom reside very far from villages, prowling around them at night in search of prey, and retreating to their fastnesses before daybreak. Unlike the tiger, they care little for the neighborhood of water, even in the hot weather, drinking only at night, and generally at a distance from their midday retreat.”

The scourge that a man-eating panther becomes, and those traits which make him worse than either the lion or tiger when he has taken to preying upon human beings, have been already given at some length; the following statements, however, also by Forsyth, place the panther’s enterprise and hardihood before us very vividly:--

“In my early hunting days I fell into the mistake of most sportsmen in supposing that the panther might be hunted on foot with less caution than the tiger. On two or three occasions I nearly paid dearly for the error, and I now believe that the panther is really by far a more dangerous animal to attack. He is, in the first place, much more courageous. For, though he will generally sneak away unobserved as long as he can, if once brought to close quarters he rarely fails to charge with the utmost ferocity, fighting to the very last. He is also much more active than the tiger, making immense springs clear off the ground, which the other seldom does. He can conceal himself in the most wonderful way, his spotted hide blending with the ground, and his lithe, loose form being compressible into an inconceivably small space. Further, he is so much less in depth and stoutness than a tiger, and moves so much quicker, that he is far more difficult to hit in a vital place. He can also climb trees, which the tiger cannot do, except for a small distance up a thick, sloping trunk. A few years ago a panther thus took a sportsman out of a high perch on a tree in the Chindwárá district. And, lastly, his powers of offence are scarcely inferior to those of the tiger himself, and are amply sufficient to be the death of any man he gets hold of. When stationed at Damoh, near Jubbulpúr, with a detachment of my regiment, I shot seven panthers and leopards in less than a month, within a few miles of the station, chiefly by driving them out with beaters; all of them charged that had the power to do so, but the little cherub who watches over ‘griffins’ got us out of it without damage either to myself or the beaters. One of the smaller species [Forsyth means a leopard, which, together with Byth, Jerdon, and other naturalists, he regarded as a true panther of less dimensions than the other variety], really not more than five feet long, I believe, charged me three several times up a bank to the very muzzle of my rifles (of which I luckily had a couple), falling back each time to the shot, but not thinking of trying to escape, and died at last at my feet, with her teeth fixed in the root of a small tree.

“Another jumped on my horse, while passing through some long grass, before it was fired at at all; and after being kicked off, charged my groom and gun-carrier, who barely escaped by fleeing for their lives, leaving my only gun in possession of the leopard. I had to ride to cantonments to get another rifle, and gather together some beaters. When we returned I took up my post on a rock that overlooked the patch of grass, and the beaters had scarcely commenced their noise when the leopard went at them like an arrow. An accident would certainly have happened this time had my shots failed to stop this devil incarnate before she reached them. She had cubs in the grass, which accounted for her fury; but a tigress would have abandoned them to their fate in a similar case. The last I killed was a man-eater, that took up his post among the high crops surrounding a village, and killed and dragged in women and children who ventured out of the place. He was a panther of the largest size, and had been wounded by a shikári from a tree, ... rendering him incapable of killing game. I was a week hunting him, as he was very careful not to show himself when pursued, and at last I shot him in a cow-house into which he had ventured, and killed several head of cattle before the people had courage to shut the door.”

Among other peculiarities, says Forsyth, “their indifference to water makes it extremely difficult to bring them to book; and indeed panthers are far more generally met with by accident than secured by regular hunting. When beating with elephants they are very rarely found, considering their numbers; but they must be very frequently passed at a short distance unobserved, in this kind of hunting. In 1862, I was looking for a tigress and cubs near Khápá on the Lawá River in Bétúl. Their tracks of a few days old led into a deep fissure in the rocky banks of the river, above which I went, leaving the elephant below, and threw in stones from the edge. Some way up I saw a large panther steal out at the head and sneak across the plain. He was out of shot, and I followed on his tracks, which were clear enough for a few hundred yards, till, at the crossing of a small rocky nálá (gulch) they disappeared. I could not make it out, and was returning to the elephant, when I saw the driver making signals. He had followed me up above, and had seen the panther break back along the little nálá which led into the top of the ravine, and re-enter the latter. I then went and placed myself so as to command the top of this ravine, and sent people below to fling in stones; and presently the panther broke again in the same place, this time galloping away openly across the plain. I missed with both barrels of my rifle, but turned him over with a lucky shot from a smooth-bore at more than two hundred yards. I then went up to him on the elephant, and he made feeble attempts to rise and come at me, but he was too far gone to succeed.

“The panther will charge an elephant with the greatest ferocity. In 1863, near Jubbulpúr, a party of us were beating a bamboo cover for pigs, with a view to the sticking thereof (that is to say, riding them down and spearing them from the saddle); my elephant was with the beaters, when a shout from the latter announced that they had stumbled on a panther. They took to trees, and I got on the elephant to turn him out, while the rest exchanged their hog spears for rifles and surrounded the place. She got up before me, bounding away over the low bamboos, and I struck her on the rump with a light breech-loading gun as she disappeared. Several shots from the trees failed to stop her, and she took refuge in a very dense, thorny cover on the banks of a little stream. Twice I passed up and down without seeing the brute, but fired once into a log of wood in mistake for her, and was going along the top of the cover for the third time, when the elephant pointed down the bank with her extended trunk. We threw some stones in, but nothing moved, and at last a peon came up with a huge stone on his head, which he heaved down the bank. Next moment a yellow streak shot from the bushes, and levelling the adventurous peon, like a flash of lightning came at my elephant’s head, but just at the last spring, I broke her back with the breech-loader, and she fell under the elephant’s trunk, tearing at the earth and stones and her own body in her bloody rage.

“The method usually resorted to by old Bamanjee and other native shikáris for killing panthers and leopards, was by tying out a kid, with a line attached to a fish-hook through its ear, a pull at which makes the poor little brute continue to squeak, after it has cried itself to silence about its mother. No sentiment of humanity interferes with the devices of the mild Hindu. A dog in a pit with a basket work cover over it, and similarly attached to a line, is equally effective. I have known panthers repeatedly to take animals they have killed up into trees to devour, and once found the body of a child that had been killed by a panther in the Bétúl District, so disposed of in the fork of a tree. They are very often lost, I believe, by taking unobserved to trees. Beating them out of cover with a strong body of beaters and fireworks is, on the whole, the most successful way of hunting these cunning brutes; but it is accompanied with a good deal of risk to the beaters, as well as to the sportsman if he is over-venturesome; and it is liable to end in disappointment in most instances. My own experience is that the majority of panthers one finds, are come across more by luck than good management.

“A large panther was making himself very troublesome ... in the neighborhood of the Jubbulpúr and Mandlá road. He had killed several children in different villages, and promised, unless suppressed, to become a regular man-eater. I encamped for some days in the neighborhood of his haunts, and the very first night the villain had the impudence to kill and drag away a good-sized baggage pony out of my camp. The night being warm I was sleeping outside for the sake of coolness, and was awakened by a riving and gurgling noise close to my bed. It was too dark to see; so I pulled out the revolver, that in those uncertain times always lay under my pillow, and fired off a couple of shots to scare the intruder. Getting a light, I was relieved to find it was only the pony.” This animal did not return to its “kill,” and Captain Forsyth’s watch was in vain.

There are certain writers, William H. Drummond, and Sir William Cornwallis Harris, for example, from whose works it might be inferred that in East Africa panthers and leopards were of a quite different character from their Asiatic allies. Taking the evidence on record with regard to this continent as a whole, the discrepancy disappears, however, and Felis pardus there, appears in much the same aspect as elsewhere. The animals are necessarily modified to some extent by differences implied in a change of province, but in the main they are reported by observers as exhibiting like traits, and performing much the same exploits with those that have been given.

THE JAGUAR

Felis onca, generally called the jaguar, and very often, in the regions he inhabits, el tigre, or the tiger, is a large and heavy animal; coming, in respect to its average size, between the Asiatic panther and lion. It is, perhaps, the most exclusively inter-tropical form among Felidæ,--or at least the larger species of that family; and although it passes beyond equatorial latitudes both to the north and south, and is found at considerable elevations where the temperature is low, this beast is essentially an inhabitant of hot countries.

H. H. Smith and others look upon the black jaguar of the Brazilian highlands as a distinct species, and one whose range is different from that of the spotted animals of the Amazon valleys and basin of La Plata. W. N. Lockington (“Standard Natural History”) is one of several authorities who consider that there may be several true species of Felis onca, besides geographical varieties. In short, the zoölogy of this great American cat is not settled, and the records relating to its character and habits are rather scanty.

Looking at a full-grown jaguar carelessly, one might mistake it for a large and thick-set panther, with a rather short, clumsy tail, and very massive limbs. But besides that the angular ocelli on its coat--irregular black borders with an enclosed spot of the same color--are not rosettes, the ensemble is scarcely the same with that of a panther, although anatomically these species are nearly identical.

The true home of the jaguar is in the great woodlands of the Amazon. “Here,” says Lockington, “he reigns supreme; the terror of the forest, as the lion is of the desert, and the tiger of the jungle; the acknowledged and dreaded lord of man and beast.” Charles Darwin found this species in the basin of the La Plata River, living in reed belts and around lake shores. Unlike the panther, jaguars cannot live without a constant supply of water. Falconer asserts that in some places these animals subsist chiefly upon fish. At all events, they are very expert in catching them, and fish even in rivers whose banks abound with game.

As a rule, however, that large rodent, the capybara, now the only living representative of an ancient family otherwise extinct, is the American tiger’s chief article of food, and Darwin reports a saying among the Indians to the effect that man has little to fear from “el tigre’s” attacks where these are plentiful. Another point of resemblance between this beast and the panther is their mutual fondness for monkeys.

Natives believe that the jaguar fascinates them. All instances which have been given of the exercise of this power seem, however, to be susceptible of a different interpretation, and naturalists generally discredit the idea that such an influence is ever exerted. Hypnotic phenomena, however, are actual facts, and it is undoubtedly premature to limit the possibility of their induction to human beings.

Apart from this matter, concerning which there is no certainty, it is a fact that the brutes in question take their prey mostly on the surface of the ground, to some extent in water, and likewise among the limbs of trees. They are indiscriminate feeders, and besides all species of land animals that inhabit their range, both wild and domesticated, they destroy vast numbers of turtles and their eggs, lizards, fish, shell-covered species, and even insects. So long as anything has blood, whether red or white, in its body, it does not come amiss to what Wood calls “the jaguar’s ravenous appetite.” This trait makes him very destructive, and in some places domestic animals have been extirpated.

The jaguar, although he principally subsists upon game, hunts men also, as might be anticipated both from his size, strength, and family traits. An almost unarmed Indian of these regions is no match for a brute like this, even when provided with the blow-gun used in those latitudes.

Being as lazy as a lion, and from his usually abundant supplies, generally in good condition, the jaguar most commonly ambushes prey. Not always, however, for T. P. Bigg-Wither reports that they have been known to follow upon the trail of companies for days, while awaiting a favorable opportunity to seize one of the party. When “el tigre” designs to make a meal of peccary, the character of that creature compels him to surprise it. This is a very bold and inveterately revengeful animal, and moreover is rarely found except in herds. An attack upon one member of the band is instantly and fiercely resented by all, so that strategy upon the jaguar’s part is essential to success.

It is not at all unusual to find people congratulating themselves upon the assumed fact that formidable brutes are unacquainted with their own strength and skill. This is one of the many mistakes made concerning lower animals.

Returning to the jaguar’s general description, one of his most eccentric propensities is the pursuit of alligators. The jaguar kills and eats these reptiles from choice; or in many instances, simply bites their tails off and lets them go. H. W. Bates found a recently-killed alligator partly eaten. Orton refers to this habit as well known, and both Smith and Wallace speak of it as a matter of common notoriety.

Like all species among the Felidæ, this one is nocturnal. Their “dull, deadly-looking eyes,” as Barton Premium describes them, are not adapted to excess of light. In remote and secluded places, however, and in the dark recesses of a tropical forest they prowl at all hours, and the author has met with these beasts in the full glare of a vertical sun.

When a jaguar sets out on a foraging expedition at night, he begins to roar like the lion as he leaves his lair; and again like his majesty, he keeps this up at more or less regular intervals until he actually begins to hunt. Jaguars are noisy animals at all times, says Darwin, but they are especially so upon stormy nights, when their “deep, grating roar” reverberates through the forest in a manner very impressive to those unaccustomed to the sound.

Like all animals with retractile claws, they are in the habit of sharpening them, as it is called; but it is not for the purpose of putting a point upon his talons that a jaguar draws them through the bark of trees. All the cats are given to trying how far they can reach, and all of them, both in killing game and feeding, get their nails clogged with shreds of flesh. It is to cleanse them that they scratch tree trunks, from time to time, as they go along. Darwin asserts that each animal has an especial tree to which he resorts for this purpose.

It is agreed among several authorities that a jaguar constantly strikes down, disables, and kills game with a blow of his massive forearm. At the same time, Wood, Humboldt, and Holder write as if death always ensued from dislocation of the neck. When a horse or some other large quadruped is seized, says the former, his assailant “leaps from an elevated spot upon the shoulders ... places one paw on the back of the head and another on the muzzle, and then with a single tremendous wrench breaks the neck.” So far as the act described is assumed to be of invariable occurrence many equally reliable accounts differ entirely, and the author knows from personal experience that jaguars will attack in front, make their assault on level ground, and in some instances do not attempt to kill either man or beast by forcing back the head.