Here, There and Everywhere

by Lord Frederic Hamilton

It so happened that the Census of 1891 was taken whilst we were in camp, so I can give the exact number of retainers whom the Maharajah brought with him. It totalled 473, including mahouts and elephant-tenders, grooms, armourers, taxidermists, tailors, shoemakers, a native doctor and a dispenser, and boatmen, not to mention the Viennese conductor and the thirty-five members of the orchestra, cooks, bakers, and table-waiters. The Maharajah certainly did things on a grand scale. One of the English guests gave, with perfect truth, his place of birth as required in the Indian Census Return as "a first-class carriage on the London and North-Western Railway, somewhere between Bletchley and Euston; the precise spot being unnoticed either by myself or the other person principally concerned."

The daily routine of life in the camp was something like this: We men all rose at daybreak, some going for a ride, others endeavouring with a spoon to lure the cunning mahseer in the swift-running river, or going for a three-mile walk through the jungle tracks. Then a bath, and breakfast followed at nine, when the various shikaries came in with their reports. Should a tiger have made a "kill," he would be found, with any luck, during the heat of the day close to the body of his victim. The "howdah" elephants would all be sent on to the appointed rendezvous, the entire party going out to meet them on "pad" elephants. I do not believe that more uncomfortable means of progression could possibly be devised. A pad elephant has a large mattress strapped on to its back, over which runs a network of stout cords. Four or five people half-sit, half-recline on this mattress, hanging on for dear life to the cord network. The European, being unused to this attitude, will soon feel violent cramps shooting through his limbs, added to which there is a disconcerting feeling of instability in spite of the tightly grasped cords. Nothing, on the other hand, can be more comfortable than a well-appointed howdah, where one is quite alone except for the mahout perched on the elephant's neck. The Maharajah's howdahs were all of cane-work, with a softly padded seat and a leather-strap back, which yielded to the motion of the great beast. In front was a gun-rack holding five guns and rifles, and large pockets at the side thoughtfully contained bottles of lemonade (the openers of which were never forgotten) and emergency packets of biscuits.

The Maharajah owned about sixty elephants, in which he took the greatest pride, and he was most careful in providing his guests with proved "tiger-staunch" animals. These were oddly enough invariably lady-elephants, the males being apt to lose their heads in the excitement of meeting their hereditary enemies, and consequently apt to run amok.

My particular elephant, which I rode daily for five weeks, was an elderly and highly respectable female named "Chota Begum." Had she only happened to have been born without a tail, and with two legs instead of four, she would have worn silver-rimmed spectacles and a large cap with cherries in it; would have knitted stockings all day long and have taken a deep interest in the Church Missionary Society.

I soon got on very friendly terms with "Chota Begum." She was inordinately fond of oranges, which, of course, were difficult to procure in the jungle, so I daily brought her a present of half-a-dozen of these delicacies, supplementing the gift at luncheon-time with a few bananas. Chota Begum was deeply touched by these attentions, and one morning my mahout informed me that she wished, out of gratitude, to lift me into the howdah with her trunk. I cannot conceive how he found this out, but I naturally was averse to wounding the elephant's feelings by refusing the proffered courtesy, though I should infinitely have preferred getting into the howdah in the ordinary manner. The mahout, after the mysterious manner of his kind, was giving his charge minute directions to be very careful with me, when I suddenly felt myself seized by Chota Begum's trunk, lifted into the air, and held upside down at the extreme length of that member, for, it seemed to me, at least five minutes. Rupees and small change rained from my pockets to the ground, cigar case, cigarette case, matches and cartridge extractor streamed down to earth in clattering showers from their abiding places; the blood rushed to my head till I was on the very verge of apoplexy, and still Chota Begum, remembering her instructions to be careful, held me up aloft, until slowly, very slowly indeed, she lowered me into the howdah, dizzy and stupid with blood to the head. The attention was well-meant, but it was distinctly not one to be repeated indefinitely. In my youth there was a popular song recounting the misfortunes of one Mr. Brown: "Old man Brown, upside down, With his legs sticking up in the air"; but I never imagined that I should share his unpleasant experiences.

I never enquired too minutely as to how the "kubber" of the whereabouts of a tiger was obtained, but I have a strong suspicion that unhappy goats played a part in it, and that they were tethered in different parts of the jungle, for, as we all know, "the bleating of the kid excites the tiger."

A tiger being thus located by his "kill," the long line of beating elephants, riderless except for their mahouts, goes crashing through the burnt-up jungle-growth, until a trumpeting from one of the elephants announces the neighbourhood of "stripes," for an elephant has an abnormally keen sense of smell. The various guns are posted on their elephants in any open spot where a good view of the beast can be obtained when he breaks cover. I have explained elsewhere how I personally always preferred an ordinary shot-gun loaded with a lead ball, to a rifle for either tigers or bears. The reason being that both these animals are usually shot at very close quarters whilst they are moving rapidly. Time is lost in getting the sights of a rifle on to a swift-moving objective, and there is so little time to lose, for it is most inadvisable to wound a tiger without killing him; whereas with a shot-gun one simply raises it, looks down the barrels and fires as one would do at a rabbit, and a solid lead bullet has enormous stopping power. I took with me daily in the howdah one shot-gun loaded with ball, another with No. 5 shot for birds, an Express rifle, and one of the Maharajah's terrific 4-bore elephant-rifles; this latter's charge was 14-1/2 drachms of black powder; the kick seemed to break every bone in one's shoulder, and I was frightened to death every time that I fired it off.

On that Assam shoot I was quite extraordinarily lucky, for on the very first day the beating elephants announced the presence of a tiger by trumpeting almost at once, and suddenly, with a roar, a great streak of orange and black leaped into the sunlight from the jungle straight in front of me. The tiger came straight for my elephant, who stood firm as a rock, and I waited with the smooth-bore till he got within twenty feet of me and I knew that I could not possibly miss him, and then fired at his shoulder. The tiger fell dead. This was a very easy shot, but it did me great service with my mahout. These men, perched as they are on the elephant's neck, carry their lives in their hand, for should the tiger be wounded only, he will certainly make a spring for the elephant's head, and then the mahout is a dead man. Incidentally the "gun" in the howdah will not fare much better in that case. The mahout, should he have but small confidence in his passenger's marksmanship, will make the elephant fidget so that it becomes impossible to fire.

Two days later we were beating a patch of jungle, when, through the thick undergrowth, I could just see four legs, moving very, very slowly amongst the reeds, the body above them being invisible. "Bagh" (tiger), whispered the mahout, turning round. I was so excited that I snatched up the heavy elephant-rifle instead of the Express, and fired just above those slow-slouching legs. The big rifle went off with a noise like an air-raid, and knocked me with mangled shoulder-blades into the seat of the howdah. I was sure that I had missed altogether, and thought no more about it, but when the beat came up half an hour later, a huge tiger was lying there stone dead. That, of course, was an absolute piece of luck, a mere fluke, as I had never even seen the brute. As soon as the Maharajah and his men had examined the big tiger's teeth they at once pronounced him a man-eater, and there was great rejoicing, for a man-eating tiger had been taking toll of the villagers in one of the jungle clearings. I believe that tigers only take to eating men when they are growing old and their teeth begin to fail them, a man being easier to catch than a bullock or goat. The skins of these two tigers have lain on my drawing-room carpet for thirty years now.

On our second day the Maharajah shot a leopard. He was only wounded, and I have never seen an animal fight so fiercely or with such indomitable courage. Of course, the whole cat-tribe are very tenacious of life, but that leopard had five bullets in him, and still he roared and hissed and spat, though his life was ebbing from him fast. We must have worked round in a circle nearer to the camp, for whilst we were watching the leopard's furious fight the strains of the Maharajah's orchestra practising "The Gondoliers," floated down-wind to us quite clearly. I remember it well, for as we dismounted to look at the dead beast the cornet solo, "Take a pair of sparkling eyes," began. There was such a startling incongruity between an almost untrodden virgin jungle in Assam, with a dead leopard lying in the foreground, and that familiar strain of Sullivan's, so beloved of amateur tenors, that it gave a curious sense of unreality to the whole scene.