Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore / With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planter

by Robert H. Elliot

I now turn to an animal which is really dangerous, and I think more daring than any animal in the jungles—the wild boar—and whatever doubts the panther has of its own powers, I feel sure that the boar can have none—in fact its action is not only daring, but at times even insulting. To be threatened and attacked in the jungle one can understand, but to be growled at and menaced while on one's own premises is intolerable. I never but once heard the deep threatening don't-come-near-me growl of the wild boar (and in the many sporting books I have read I never met with any allusion to it), and that was some years ago, within about ten or fifteen yards of my bungalow, and the incident is worth mentioning as showing the great daring and coolness of the wild boar.

One evening at about seven o'clock, and on a clear but moonless night, I went into the garden in front of my house. This is flanked by a low retaining wall some three or four feet high—a wall built to retain the soil when the ground was levelled—and below this a few bushes and plants had sprung up close to the bottom of the wall. In these I heard what I supposed to be a pariah dog gnawing a bone, and, in order to frighten it away, I quietly approached within a few yards of the spot, and made a slight noise between my lips. I was at once answered by a low deep growl, which I at first took to be the growl of a panther, and I then walked back to the bungalow and told my manager to bring a gun, telling him that there was either a large dog (which on second thoughts appeared to me most probable), or some animal gnawing a bone. We then quietly approached the spot where we could hear the gnawing going on quite plainly about five yards off. By my direction he fired into the bushes, and we then stood still and listened, and presently heard what was evidently some heavy animal walk slowly away. On the following morning I sent my most experienced shikari to the spot, and he reported that the animal was a wild boar, which had been munching the root of some plant, and the soil being gravelly, the noise we had heard proceeded from the chewing of roots and gravel together. This boar then had not only refused to desist from his proceedings when I was within five yards of him, but had even warned me, by the low growl afore mentioned, that if I came any nearer serious consequences might ensue. On the following day I assembled some natives and beat a narrow jungly ravine below my house, at a distance of about, fifty yards from it, and there came out, not the boar, but his wife with a family of five or six small pigs. She was shot by a native, and the young ones got away, but the boar either was not there, or, more probably, was too knowing to come out. He did not, however, neglect his family, but in some way best known to himself, collected them together, and went about with them, as, a day or two afterwards, he was seen with the young pigs by my manager, and their tracks were also to be seen on one of the paths in my compound, or the small inclosed park near my bungalow. This boar afterwards became very troublesome, ploughed up the beds in my rose garden at the foot of my veranda stops, and even injured a tree in the compound by tearing off the bark with his formidable tusks. But, daring though he was, he was once accidentally put to flight by a slash of an English hunting whip. The boar, it appears, was making his round one night when my manager, hearing something moving outside his bath-room, and imagining it to be a straying donkey—we keep some donkeys on the estate—rushed out with his hunting-whip, and made a tremendous slash at the animal, which turned out to be the boar, so startling him by this unexpected form of attack, that he charged up a steep bank near the house and disappeared. This boar was afterwards shot by one of my people in an adjacent jungle—at least a boar was shot, which we infer must have been the one in question, as since then my garden has not been disturbed. The boar is more dangerous to man than any animal in our jungles, and I have heard of three or four deaths caused by them in recent years in my district. The natives, however, say that, till he is wounded, the tiger is less dangerous than the boar, but that after a tiger is wounded, he is the more dangerous of the two; and I think that this is a correct view of the matter. The boar has a most remarkable power of starting at once into full speed, and that is why his attacks are so dangerous. In countries inhabited by wild boars it is very important to be always on the alert. As an illustration of this, and also of the great power of the boar, and of his sometimes attacking people without any provocation on their part, I may mention the following incident.

When I was walking round part of my plantation one morning with my manager, and we chanced to stand in a path for a few moments (I forget now for what reason), my dogs went down the hill into the coffee, and appear there to have disturbed a boar. Luckily for myself, I always keep a sharp look out, and my eye caught a glimpse of something black coming up amongst the coffee. In a single second a boar appeared in the path some twenty yards away. The path sloped downwards towards me, and at me he came, like an arrow from a bow. As there was no use in my attempting to arrest the progress of an animal of this kind, I stepped aside and let him into my manager, who, luckily for himself, was standing behind a broken off coffee tree, which stood at a sharp turn in the path some yards further on. The result was very remarkable. The boar's chest struck against the coffee tree and slightly bent it on one side. This threw the boar upwards, and, of course, broke the force of the charge, but there was still enough force left to toss my manager into an adjacent shallow pit with such violence that his ear was filled with earth. I was now seriously alarmed, as I had no weapon of any kind, but luckily the boar went on. His tusk, it appeared, had caught the manager—a man of about six feet, and thirteen stone in weight—under the armpit, but had merely torn his coat. We organized a beat the same afternoon, and killed the boar, which was suffering from an old wound, and this no doubt accounted, in some degree, for his sudden and gratuitous attack. Tigers often attack the wild boar, and there are often desperate battles between them, and well authenticated instances have been known of the boar killing the tiger. I have never met with one in my neighbourhood, though I once aided in killing a tiger which had been ripped in several places by a boar. As it is impossible in jungly districts to ride the wild boar, he is invariably shot, except when, in the monsoon rains, he is occasionally speared. At that season the wild pigs make houses, or rather shelters, for themselves by cutting with their teeth and bending over some of the underwood, and under these they repose. When such shelters are discovered, a man approaches them cautiously and drives his spear through the shelter into the boar's back. I have never seen this done, but have often heard of its being done where I lived in former days, during the rainy season.

Boar's head pickled in vinegar and garnished with onions makes a good dish, especially after harvest, when the pigs are in good condition, but, from what I have known of the habits of the wild boar, I do not think I should ever be inclined to partake of it again, and certainly not when cholera is about. A neighbour of mine told me that when he was once beating a jungle for game the natives backed out of it with great promptness, having come upon wild pigs in the act of devouring the dead bodies of some people who had died of cholera. I may mention that it was customary in former times, and doubtless is so still to some extent, to deposit the bodies of cholera victims anywhere in the jungle, instead of burying them in the ordinary way. An official of the Forest Department told me that, passing one day near the place where the carcase of an elephant lay, he had the curiosity to go and look at it. To his astonishment he found the flanks heaving as if the elephant were still alive, and while he was wondering what this could mean, two wild boars, which had tunnelled their way in, and were luxuriating on the contents of the carcase, suddenly rushed out. From what I have hitherto said it seems plain that wild boar is not a safe article of food, unless, perhaps, when, it inhabits remote jungles where foul food can rarely be met with. I have never made any measurements of wild boars, but Colonel Peyton—a first-rate authority—writing in the "Kanara Gazetteer," says that some are to be found measuring forty inches high, and six feet long.

The jungle dog (kuon rutilans) is a wolfish-looking-dog of a golden brown colour, with hair of moderate length, and a short and slightly bushy tail. It hunts in packs of seven and eight, and sometimes as many as twenty and even thirty have been reported. In my neighbourhood I have never actually known them to attack cattle or persons, but Colonel Peyton tells us, in the "Kanara Gazetteer," that they grew very bold in the 1876-77 famine, and killed great numbers of the half-starved cattle which were driven into the Kanara forests to graze, and since then a reward of 10 rupees has been paid for the destruction of each fully grown wild dog. Colonel Peyton alludes to the native idea that these dogs attack and kill tigers, but says that no instance of their having killed a tiger is known. At the same time it is, he says, a fact that the tiger will give up his kill to wild dogs, and will leave a place in which they are present in large numbers. Some years ago I beat a jungle in which a tiger had killed a bullock, and in which another tiger had on a former occasion lain up, but the tiger was not there, and a number of jungle dogs were beaten out. We afterwards found the tiger in a jungle about a mile away, and he had evidently abandoned his kill, for no other reason, apparently, than because of the presence of the dogs. An old Indian sportsman tells me of a very widespread native tradition as to the action of these dogs previous to attacking a tiger. Their belief is that the dogs first of all micturate on each others' bushy tails, and, when rushing past the tiger, whisk their tails into his eyes and thus blind him with, the objectionable fluid, after which they can attack him with comparative impunity. A forest officer informs me that the Gonds have a somewhat similar tradition, and that they believe that the dogs first of all micturate on the ground around the tiger, and that the effluvium has the effect of blinding him.[^[23]] The late Mr. Sanderson, in his "Thirteen Years amongst the Wild Beasts of India," mentions an instance reported to him by the natives of their finding a tiger sitting up with his back to a bamboo bush, so that nothing could pass behind him, while the wild dogs were walking up and down and passing quite close to him, evidently with the view of annoying the tiger, and the position then taken up by the tiger seemed to show that he was apprehensive of an attack. From his experience of the great power of the wild dog, Mr. Sanderson entertained no doubt that they could kill a tiger, though he knows of no instance of their having done so. The old Indian sportsman above alluded to told me of a case where a tiger had been marked down by native shikaris, and where they afterwards found wild dogs eating the carcase of the tiger, which they had presumably killed, but I cannot find any account of the dogs having been seen in the act of killing a tiger, though I can easily conceive that a hungry tiger, and an equally hungry pack of wild dogs may have come into collision over a newly killed animal, and that the dogs may then in desperation have killed the tiger.

A Coorg planter who has had opportunities of observing the habits of those dogs, tells me that when hunting a deer they do not run in a body, but spread out rather widely, so as to catch the deer on the turn if it moved to right or left. Some of the dogs hang behind to rest themselves, so as to take up the running when other dogs, which have pressed the deer hard, get tired. He once had a bitch the product of a cross between a Pariah and a jungle dog. When she had pups she concealed them in the jungle, and in order to find them she had to be carefully watched and followed up. She went through many manœuvres to prevent the discovery of her pups, and pottered about in the neighbourhood of the spot where she had concealed them, as if bent on nothing in particular. Then she made a sudden rush into the jungle and disappeared. After much search her pups were found in a hole about three feet deep, which she had dug on the side of a rising piece of ground. The bitch did not bark—the jungle dog does not—and the pups barked but slightly, but the next generation barked as domestic dogs do.

Many years ago I met with a very singular and puzzling circumstance in connection with jungle dogs. I had offered a reward of five rupees for a pup, and one day several natives from a village some three or four miles away, brought me a pup—apparently about six or eight months old. This, it appears, they had caught by placing some nets near the carcase of a tiger I had killed, and on which a pack of these dogs was feeding. They drove the dogs towards the nets, which they jumped, but the pup in question was caught in the net. My cook now appeared on the scene and declared that the pup belonged to him, and that he had brought it from Bangalore, and on hearing this I declined, of course, to pay the reward. As I had never, and have never, seen a jungle dog pup, I neither could then, nor can now, undertake to say whether the pup was a wild one or not, though it seemed to me that it might have been a kind of mongrel animal with a good deal of the pariah dog in it. The natives then requested the cook to take the pup and pay them five rupees for their trouble. This he declined to do, and they then said they would take it back to the carcase of the tiger and let it go. This they did, and the pup was never heard of again, and I assume that it must have rejoined the wild dogs. As my cook had no conceivable motive for falsely asserting that the dog was his, I can only assume that the animal had strayed away and joined the pack of wild dogs.

There is no reward for killing wild dogs in Mysore, as is the case in the Madras Presidency, and I should strongly advise that one should be given, as from the great destruction of the game, on which they at present live, these animals will soon become very destructive to cattle, and possibly, or even probably, dangerous to man. And it is the more important to attend to this matter at once, because I find, from Jerdon's "Mammals of India," that the bitch has at least six whelps at a birth, and he mentions that Mr. Elliot (the late Sir Walter) remarks that the wild dog was not known in the Southern Maharatta country until of late years, but that it was now very common; and he adds that he once captured a bitch and seven cubs, and had them alive for some time. No one has any interest in killing these jungle dogs, and until a reward is offered for their destruction, they will go on increasing at an alarming rate.

I now pass on to offer some remarks on snakes, and especially on the great number of deaths said to be caused by them, and I say said to be caused by them, because I have good reason to suppose that the immense number of deaths (sometimes returned at 17,000 or 18,000 for all India) reported as being caused by them, are really poisoning cases which are falsely returned as being due to snake bite. When mentioning this surmise on board of a P. and O. ship to two civilians, they demurred to the idea, and I then asked them if they had ever known within their own cognizance of a man being killed by a snake—i.e., either seen a man fatally bitten, or who had been fatally bitten. They never had, and that too during a service of about twenty-four years. I then, out of curiosity, made inquiries through all the first-class passengers, and at last met with one lady who had a gardener who had been killed by a snake. I also got my English servant to make a similar inquiry in the second-class, and no passenger there had known of a case, though one of them had been engaged in surveying operations for ten years. My attention has been particularly called to this subject in consequence of my own long experience, which stretches back to the year 1855, and, though cobras have been killed in and around my house, and in the plantations, I have not only never known of a death from snake bite on my estates, but have, since the date mentioned, never heard of but one case in my neighbourhood, and that was of a boy who was killed by some deadly snake about four or five miles from my house. I made inquiries in Bangalore on this subject. Now Bangalore is a place which always had a bad reputation as regards cobras. The population is large, and there are, of course, numerous gardens, and many grass cutters are employed, and the occupations there of a large number of people are such as to make them liable to risk from snake bite; and yet, in the course of the year, there had only been, three cases of snake bite. How is it then that such an infinitesimal number of the cases reported on occur within the cognizance of Europeans? And unless some competent observer is at hand to determine the cause of death, what can be easier than to poison a man, puncture his skin, and then point to the puncture as an evidence that the death was caused by snake bite?

Of one thing I feel certain, and that is, that the cobra is a timid snake, that it is not at all inclined to bite, and unless assailed and so infuriated, will not bite, even if trodden on by accident, as long as the snake is not hurt, which, of course, it would not be if trodden upon by the bare foot, and that is why, I feel sure, I have so rarely heard of a man being bitten by a snake during my long experience in India. I can give a remarkable confirmatory instance, which happened at my bungalow some years ago. My English servant had got his feet wet one morning, and had placed his shoes to dry on a ledge of the bungalow just above the place where the bath-room water runs out. At about three in the afternoon he went in his slippers round the end of the bungalow to get his shoes, and trod on a cobra which was lying in the soft and rather muddy ground created by the bath-room water. He had stepped on to about the middle of the snake's body, but probably rather nearer the tail than the head. The cobra then reared up its body, spread its hood, hissed, and struggled to get free, while my servant held up his hands to avoid the chance of being bitten, and he said that he could see that the afternoon sun was illuminating the interior of its throat, but he was afraid to let it go, thinking that it would then be more able to bite him. This, however, he is quite positive it never attempted to do, and after some moments of hesitation he jumped to one side, and the snake, so far from offering to bite when liberated, went off in the opposite direction with all speed. I am sure that wild animals perceive quite as readily as tame ones do the difference between what is purely accidental, and what results from malice prepense. The snake must have perceived that its being trodden upon was a pure accident, and, as it was not hurt, did not bite. A Brahmin once told me of a somewhat similar case, where his mother, seeing what she supposed was a kitten in a passage of the house, gave it a push on one side with her foot. It turned out to be a cobra, which spread its hood and hissed, but never offered to bite her. Colonel Barras, the author of some charming natural history books, told me that he quite agrees that the cobra is disinclined to bite, and pave me a practical illustration of this which had fallen within his own observation. On one occasion, when some of my coolies were crossing a log, which was lying on the ground, my overseer, just as they were doing so, observed that under a bent-up portion of the log there was a cobra. He waited till all the coolies had crossed over and moved on, and then stirred up the cobra and killed it. I mention these instances to show that it is probably owing to the fact of the cobra not being at all an aggressive snake, and not being given to bite unless attacked, or hurt, that no death has occurred on my estates, or in my neighbourhood during such a long period of time.