These buffaloes, despite of their ferocious aspect and savage habits, are wholly inoffensive, and in all cases of danger are tempted at first to take to flight; but should they be pressed too closely, or wounded, their irascible and vindictive disposition speedily displays itself. When the negroes hunt the buffalo, says Paul Gervais, they are very careful to attack isolated individuals only, because, in the herds of these animals some will always be found disposed to avenge the death of their companions, and pursue the hunters to the uttermost. In their excesses of fury they strike the ground with their horns; dash their bodies against the trees in which their enemies have taken refuge; sometimes they will spend their rage upon one another, or upon the bodies of those of their kind which have been brought low.
Asia is the home of the Common Buffalo (Bos bubalus), and from thence he has migrated into several islands of the Indian Archipelago, Eastern Europe, and even into Italy. In France and Great Britain he has long been domesticated. But there also exist in several Indian provinces some savage species of the Arnee Buffalo (Bos Arni of Dr. Shaw), easily recognized by his horns of prodigious size and length, which frequently measure six feet in length, and eighteen inches in circumference at the base.
Travellers have asserted that nearly all the herbivora, and in particular the more feeble and timorous, evince a marked preference for open and level places; to such an extent, that the herds of antelopes, gazelles, and zebras may be seen abandoning their pastures when the herbage is unusually luxuriant. It is in the thickets, the matted and almost impenetrable jungles, and among the tall rank grasses, that the beast of prey glides stealthily and unseen upon his intended victim. Where the surface of the ground is smooth and bare, the herbivora can descry an approaching enemy, and take to flight or make ready for defence. It is not, however, the carnaria that they have most cause to dread, but man; not less cruel he than the stealthy lion or the prowling tiger, and far more formidable since European commerce has furnished the savage with firearms. He quickly learns to make use of these; but prior to their introduction into wilderness, prairie, and forest, he had devised against his prey various more or less successful means of destruction.
In Central Africa, for instance, the Bakouain Negroes, to capture en masse buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, antelopes, and even rhinoceroses, which gather in crowds around the grateful waters, construct a colossal and all-devouring snare, which they call a Hopo.
“This snare,” says Dr. Livingstone,[125] “consists of two very stout and very high fences, approaching each other so as to assume the shape of a V; at the apex of the angle, instead of completely joining them, they are prolonged in a straight line, forming an alley about fifty paces in length, abutting on a ditch which may measure from four to five yards square, and be from six to eight feet deep. Trunks of trees are arranged cross-wise on the borders of this trench, chiefly on the side from which the animals will arrive, and upon the opposite one, by which they will endeavour to escape. These trees form an advanced border above the ditch, rendering flight impossible, and the whole is carefully covered over with reeds, which hide the snare, and make it resemble a trap placed among the herbage. As the two fences are often a mile in length, while the base of the triangle which they define is nearly of the same dimensions, a company who form around the hopo a circle of three to four miles in circumference, by gradually drawing it closer, are certain to collect a great quantity of game. The hunters direct by their cries the animals which they surround, and cause them to reach the summit of the hopo. Men concealed at this point then fling their javelins into the midst of the affrighted herd, which, dashing headlong through the solitary opening it can find, involves itself in the narrow alley leading to the ditch. The animals fall in pell-mell, until the snare is filled with a living mass, which enables the others to escape by passing over the bodies of the victims. The spectacle is horrifying; the hunters, intoxicated by the pursuit, and no longer controlling themselves, strike these graceful animals with a delirious joy, while the poor creatures, crushed to the bottom of the abyss beneath the weight of the dead and dying, raise from time to time the pile of carcasses, by struggling, in the midst of their agony, against the burden which suffocates them.”
Of the corral in which the Cingalese entraps the elephant, and of the ingenious snares laid by the Malay or the Indian for the murderous tiger, I shall speak hereafter. Between man and the carnivora it was natural that a deadly war should be incessantly waged; but humanity would seem to dictate towards the inoffensive herbivora a less sanguinary hostility.
