The romance of the animal world

by Edmund Selous

A Kaffir Lion Hunt.

The hunters surrounded the lion shouting and singing, and the lion, confused by the noise and numbers, crouched and growled. The circle grew smaller and smaller until a single warrior rushed forward, the lion sprang upon him to be received on the point of his assegai, and was soon dispatched by the brave hunter and his comrades.

The Hindoos would not suffer so much from tigers if they were a more warlike race, for, although they have no firearms, they might easily make spears, and a party of men with spears can kill the fiercest beast of prey. Thus the Kaffirs of South Africa if a lion should kill even an ox belonging to them, much more one of themselves, never rest until they have taken its life in return. The whole village arm themselves with their spears—or assegais,[18] as we call them—and follow up the track of the marauder till they have at last found him, however far he may have gone. They then form a circle round the lion, and holding one assegai in the right hand, and some spare ones, together with a shield large enough to cover the whole body, in the left, they begin to close in upon him, singing and shouting. The lion, when he sees so many men advancing against him, crouches down and, growling fiercely, makes ready to spring upon one of them, as soon as he comes within a certain distance. He has not long to wait. The men, continuing to advance, make the circle ever smaller, and as he turns from side to side, doubtful on which point in it first to charge, a single warrior—as arranged probably by previous agreement—rushes forward to the combat. Instantly, the lion’s attention, which has been distracted amidst the numbers of his enemies, is fixed upon this one, and, with concentrated fury, he comes leaping towards him. Did the man stand to receive the charge, he would be dashed to the ground by the mere weight of the lion’s body; but, skilful as brave, he sinks gracefully down, with his shield held over him, and stabs up with his assegai from underneath it. For one blow—which may or may not be fatal—the lion has time, but, almost as he makes it, twenty or thirty assegais meet in his body, as, with a tremendous yell, the rest rush down upon him, each striving to be first to shield the comrade, who has thus so splendidly performed his part. In the mêlée which ensues many of the men may be more or less badly mauled, whilst some may lose their lives, but when it is all over—and it does not last many minutes—the lion lies stretched on the ground, with hardly an inch of skin, in his whole body, not cut by the blade of an assegai. Thus, amongst the more warlike tribes of Africa, lions have no chance of becoming habitual man-eaters, as do so many tigers in India, but in those parts of the country where the natives are timid, just the same thing happens, though, even there, there is not often so long a lease of life for the offending animal.

Most of the larger feline animals take, occasionally, to man-eating, as leopards in Asia or Africa, and jaguars in America. The puma, however, as we have seen before, is the friend of man, and never behaves in this way. Wolves, when they go in packs, are very dangerous to man, but I have not heard of their showing a special predilection for his flesh except in the province of Oude, in India, and here, since they hunt separately, for the most part, and a grown person—at least a man—would be often too strong for them, it is children that they mostly attack. “Night comes on,” says someone who has lived there, “the wolf slinks about the village site, marking the unguarded hut. It comes to one protected by a low wall, or closed by an ill-fitting tattie (mat). Inside, the mother, wearied by the long day’s work, is asleep with her child in her arms, unconscious of the danger at hand. The wolf makes its spring, fastens his teeth in the baby’s throat, slings the little body across its back, and is off before the mother is fully aware of her loss. Pursuit is generally useless. If forced to drop its burden, the cruel creature tears it beyond power of healing, while should it elude pursuit, the morning’s search results in the discovery of a few bones, the remnants of the dreadful meal.”

It would seem—that is to say, there is evidence which makes it difficult not to believe so, so for my part, I do believe it—that, every now and then, a child that has been carried off in this way by a wolf, is not eaten, but grows up with the young wolves, in the den to which it has been brought, being suckled like them by the dam. The evidence of which I speak comes from various witnesses, both native and European, and whilst the different stories told confirm one another, several “wolf-boys,” as they are called, have been actually brought up in orphanages or other charitable institutions in Oude, into which they have been received, after having, according to the account of those who brought them there, been actually captured whilst in the company of wolves, and going on all fours, like them. These boys, when first caught, were just like animals in all their ways and habits, ate only raw meat, and though they got a little less wolf-like by degrees, can hardly be said to have ever become human beings, and never learnt to speak.

Here is an account of the capture of one of these poor wolf-boys. It appeared in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History more than fifty years ago, and is quoted by Professor Ball in his Jungle Life in India, where a résumé of the evidence on this subject may be found. It evidently seems as strong to him as it does to me, but I was wrong to say that it was difficult not to believe in the thing after reading the evidence for it, for the fact is that evidence has not so much effect on people as it ought to have. We believe a thing—or are inclined to believe it—or not, according to the general inclination of our mind, and then test the evidence by our belief, instead of our belief by the evidence. However, here is the account, and it is only one of several others: “Some time ago two of the King of Oude’s sawars, riding along the banks of the Gúmptji, saw three animals come down to drink. Two were evidently young wolves, but the third was as evidently some other animal. The sawars rushed in upon them and captured all three, and to their great surprise, found that one was a small, naked boy. He was on all fours, like his companions, had callosities on his knees and elbows, evidently caused by the attitude used in moving about, and bit and scratched violently in resisting the capture. The boy was brought up in Lucknow, where he lived some time, and may, for aught I know, be living still. He was quite unable to articulate words, but had a dog-like intellect, quick at understanding signs and so on.” Again, quoting from the same paper: “There was another more wonderful, but hardly so well authenticated, story of a boy who never could get rid of a strong wolfish smell, and who was seen, not long after his capture, to be visited by three wolves, which came evidently with hostile intentions, but which, after closely examining him, he seeming not the least alarmed, played with him, and, some nights afterwards, brought their relations, making the number of visitors amount to five, the number of cubs the litter he had been taken from was composed of.”

I quote these accounts as the two most interesting, and, for their evidential value, refer again to the work I have just mentioned. Then was the famous story of Romulus and Remus true after all? Supposing the brothers had been found and rescued by peasants, before they had been long with the wolf, this does not seem to me impossible, for then there would not have been time for those dreadful dehumanising effects, recorded in these Indian cases. But whether true or not, I have no doubt that the legend—and it is only one of many such—grew out of observed facts, and such facts were, no doubt, commoner in early times than they are now. As a reason for the child being sometimes suckled, after having been brought by one of a pair of wolves to the common den, Professor Ball suggests that if the other of them had, in the meantime, brought home something else—as, say, a kid or goat—and if this had been eaten first, the child, lying amongst the cubs, might have been received as one of them, before a fresh meal was required, in which case it would not afterwards have been hurt. He thinks it more likely, however, that the child should have been stolen by a she-wolf, to replace the loss of one or other of her cubs. I do not, myself, however, think this nearly so likely. Why should it occur to a wolf, or any animal, to replace its own young by a human child? If it wished to adopt, it would surely adopt a wolf-cub. The first of these explanations, therefore, is the one that I accept, and it seems to me a probable enough one.

Children in Oude used to be so frequently carried off, that there were people who made a livelihood by searching the wolf-dens, on the chance of finding gold ornaments there, for in India it is customary to deck children out in jewellery, of which even the poorest people seem to have a family stock. No wonder, therefore, if sometimes one should have escaped being devoured in the way above indicated; but whether the same state of things prevails at the present time I do not know. Perhaps it does, for the people who went about looking for the jewels, did not want the wolves to be exterminated, for fear they should not be able to make an honest living, just as our own wreckers were very much opposed to the building of lighthouses, or as some shipowners think it a wicked thing that they should not be able to insure their vessels for four or five times their value. Whether they still can do this, or whether there are still professional wolf-den searchers in India, I don’t quite know.

It seems possible, then, that man may sometimes live with animals, and lead the life that they do—in fact, become an animal to all intents and purposes. On the other hand, there are animals that do not fall so very far behind man, in his lowest and most savage state. I am thinking, of course, of the great man-like or anthropoid apes, in whose uncouth, satyr-like forms, and grotesque physiognomies, we no doubt see, if not actual copies of what our remote ancestors were, yet something very similar to what they must have been. This was Darwin’s opinion, though from the stress that is always being laid upon his not having thought the existing apes our ancestors—as some still think he did—but only our co-descendants from a common progenitor, there is a danger of forgetting that it was. Man, according to Darwin’s view, has very much diverged from this common ape ancestor, whilst the existing apes have not; but he has only so diverged through a number of steps or stages, and could we trace these back, we should soon reach beings—our real forefathers—differing but little from the apes of the present day. This is really not so very different from having descended from those actual apes; but many people seem to find great comfort in thinking they have not done that. It is only tweedledum as against tweedledee, but they make the most of it.