“On the 11th of November of the same year I chanced to meet a Tiger myself. I was on the shore of the mainland opposite Amoy, in the afternoon, looking out for small birds, in company with a friend. I carried a gun, but had only small shot and one cartridge. Some villagers came running to us crying ‘Go and shoot the Tiger!’ I thought they were making game of us, until some of them assured us that there really was a Tiger in a neighbouring village, and that they would be much obliged if we would kill it. They led us to a village at the foot of a hill near the shore, where we found men, women, and children huddled outside in great alarm. Many of the men were armed with matchlocks. They desired us to take off our boots, and one of the men guided us over the roofs of the houses to the last house near the hill, and, pointing to a large rock, he made us listen. We could distinctly hear growls, and peering over I saw the lips and feet of the Tiger under the overhanging rock. The house on which we stood presented a wall facing the rock, and about two yards distant. We went inside, and I persuaded the owner to make a hole in the wall. I had no means of drawing the charge of my gun, so I rammed down a cartridge on the top of the small shot in one barrel, and a few hollow buttons into the other. In the hurry and excitement no bullets or iron nails were forthcoming. The Tiger noticed the hole in the wall, but only growled. I fired the button barrel first, aimed at its neck, but he only answered by a growl, and I saw that the buttons had done no more than turn up the skin without penetrating. His jaw was full towards me, and I gave him the cartridge right between his eyes. He gave a furious roar, and bounded into the garden, where he stood for some seconds bleeding from the nose, and with his tongue lolling from his mouth. I had no more cartridges with me, so I loaded again with the metal-edged buttons which the villagers tore off their coats for me. The Tiger had moved away, and I tracked him by his blood into a dilapidated temple. I looked in at the window, and there stretched beside a coffin sat the noble beast. He, turned his head and growled as he saw me, and, without a moment’s thought I raised the barrels and fired another shower of buttons in his face. I turned and fled; but a roar followed which I shall never forget, and I found myself, breathless, at the bottom of a precipice, with my gun upraised, expecting to see the angry creature upon me; but strange enough he did not follow. The villagers, who were assembled two hundred yards away, all ran when I ran; but seeing the Tiger did nut pursue, one of them came forward and put me on his knees, and patting me on the back, helped to bring back my breath, which I had lost by the fall. We crept up to the window again. Every one of the thick wooden bars had been knocked out by the force of the leap; but from the blood only splashing the outside of the window, it was evident the Tiger had not come out of the building. We looked in at the window, and just below, outstretched on the floor in a pool of blood, lay the Tiger. I threw up my hand and shouted to my friend, who watched the proceedings at a distance, that the Tiger was dead. At the noise, the Tiger raised his head and growled. He was a Cat, of course, and had the usual nine lives. I went to the villagers and proposed a joint attack, but they would not consent. Some of them ascended the hills behind and fired on to the roof of the house in which the Tiger was sheltered. It was getting dark, so breathless and hurt I took boat and returned to Amoy. A few hours after the Tiger is said to have moved away; but whether he died or recovered his wounds I could never satisfactorily learn, so contradictory were the stories told.”
Mr. Thomson recounts a tale of a planter in this province, who, returning home after a carouse, a little too much under the influence of Scotch whisky, was sorely bested by a Tiger. “It was rather dark, and verging on the small hours of morning when MacNab, mounting on his trusty steed, set his face towards home. Feeling at peace with all men, and even with the beasts of prey, he cantered along a road bordered with mangroves, admiring the fitful gleams of the fire-flies that were lighting their midnight lamps among the trees. But soon the road became darker, and Donald, the pony, pricked his ears uneasily as he turned into a jungle-path which led towards the stream. Donald snuffed the air, and soon redoubled his pace, with ears set close back, nostrils dilated, and bristling mane. Onward he sped, and at last the angry growl of a Tiger in full chase behind roused MacNab to the full peril of his position, and chilled his blood with the thought that his pursuer was fast gaining ground, and that at any moment he might feel the clutch of his hungry and relentless claws. Here was a dilemma, the cold creek before him, and the hot breath of the Tiger in the rear. A moment or two were gained by tossing his hat behind him, and then Donald cleared the streams at a bound. The Tiger lost his scent, and Mr. MacNab reached home in safety, by what he delighted to describe as a miraculous escape.”
To us, who “live at home at ease,” life would seem to be hardly bearable in a place when one is liable, any day, to meet with such an adventure as this—with every chance, too, of a less pleasant termination. But it is astonishing how indifferent to the presence of wild beasts the inhabitants of these countries become. Even Europeans soon acquire the same fearlessness, or, rather, apathy. Of this Mr. Thomson gives a striking illustration:—“In these sparse settlements of Malays and Chinese, Roman Catholic missionaries are at work. I once fell in with one of these priests, shod with straw sandals, and walking alone towards Bukit, Mer-tangrim (the pointed hill), to visit a sick convert who had a clearing upon the mountain-side. His path lay through a region infested with wild animals; and when I inquired if he had no dread of Tigers, he pointed to his Chinese umbrella, his only weapon, and assured me that with a similar instrument a friend of his had driven off the attack of a Tiger not very far from where we stood. But the nervous shock which followed that triumph had cost the courageous missionary his life.”
THE LEOPARD.[17]
The Leopard, or Panther, is undoubtedly the third in importance and interest of the great Cats. From a historical point of view it is more interesting than the Tiger, and would naturally come immediately after the Lion, but its size, ferocity, and beauty are so very inferior to the Tiger’s that it must needs yield to the glorious Bengalee. In the matter of beauty alone it is eclipsed by the Jaguar, but the fact of its having been known from very ancient times, and that of its occurrence in our own hemisphere, must decide us, in the absence of any important characters, anatomical or otherwise, to give it the precedence of its very nearly related American cousin.
The Leopard was the only one of the greater feline animals, except the Lion and Tiger, that seems to have been known to the ancients. It is always represented as drawing the chariot of Bacchus, and the forlorn Ariadne is sculptured as riding on one of the spotted steeds of her divine lover. The Panther was also constantly used in the barbarous sports of the amphitheatre, and, in common with the Lion and Tiger, has been both executioner and grave to many a bold-hearted martyr.
The Leopard’s skin was a favourite mantle in the olden times in Greece. In the “Iliad,” Homer, speaking of Menelaus, says—
“With a Pard’s spotted hide his shoulders broad
He mantled o’er.”——
and the Leopard, or Panther, is given in the “Odyssey” as one of the forms assumed by Proteus, “the Ancient of the Deep.”