See, under “Insults,” p. 256, for the war customs of the Samoans. See also “Catamenia;” “Witchcraft.”
XXXIV.
HUNTING AND FISHING.
The African hunter in pursuit of game, such as elephants, anoints himself “all over with their dung.”—(Father Merolla, in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 251, “Voyage to Congo.”) This, he says, is merely to deceive the animal with the smell.
Pliny relates that in Heraklea the country-people poisoned panthers with aconite. But the panthers had sense enough to know that human excrement was an antidote. (Lib. xxviii. c. 2.) Again in lib. viii. c. 41 he tells of the aconite-poisoned panther curing itself by eating human excrement. Knowing this fact, the peasants suspend human excrement in a pot so high in the air that the panther exhausts itself in jumping to reach it, and dies all the sooner.
Schurig (“Chylologia,” p. 774) has the above tale, but has taken it from Claudius Æmilianus, as well as Pliny.
The reindeer Tchuktchi feign to be passing urine in order to catch their animals which they want to use with their sleds. The reindeer, horses, and cattle of the Siberian tribes are very fond of urine, probably on account of the salt it contains, and when they see a man walking out from the hut, as if for the purpose of relieving his bladder, they follow him up, and so closely that he finds the operation anything but pleasant.
“The Esquimaux of King William’s Land and the adjacent peninsula often catch the wild reindeer by digging a pit in the deep snow, and covering it with thin blocks of snow, that would break with the weight of an animal. They then make a line of urine from several directions, leading to the centre of the cover of the pitfall, where an accumulation of snow, saturated with the urine of the dog, is deposited as bait. One or more animals are thereby led to their destruction.”—(Personal letter from the Arctic explorer, W. H. Gilder, dated New York, October 15, 1889.)
“The dogs of the Esquimaux are equally fond of excrement, especially in cold weather, and when a resident of the Arctic desires to relieve himself, he finds it necessary to take a whip or a stick to defend himself against the energy of the hungry dogs. Often, when a man wants to urge his dog-team to greater exertion, he sends his wife or one of the boys to run ahead, and when at a distance, to stoop down and make believe he is relieving himself. The dogs are thus spurred to furious exertion, and the boy runs on again, to repeat the delusion. This never fails of the desired effect, no matter how often repeated.”—(Idem.)
“I only know one superstitious use of excrement,—that wherein the hooks were placed round some before the fishing incantations began.” (“The Maoris of New Zealand,” E. Tregear, in “Journal of the Anthrop. Institute,” London, 1889.) This bears a very close resemblance to certain of the uses of cow-dung in India.