Beast and Man in India Part 11

It is not now thought a great feat to send elephants down to the sea in ships. They are engirdled with slings as they stand, little dreaming that presently they will be s.n.a.t.c.hed up, swung aloft, and lowered deep into a dark hold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WAITING FOR THE RAJA]

Some of the earlier cargoes were not so easily managed. A distinguished officer told me of his troubles with a batch of elephants he took from Calcutta to Chittagong, and how they very nearly wrecked a ship. The first to be shipped was awkwardly handled, caught the hatchway with his tusks and trunk, slung himself askew, and struggled and fought hard. But at last all the forty were stowed, and the steamer went down the Hooghly, anchoring for the night in an oil-still sea off Saugor Point. Now the elephant is the most restless creature alive, always in motion; a fact which native observation has noted in the saying, "An elephant's shoulder is never still." At first they said it was a ground swell that made the ship roll so much, but soon the Captain came in dire alarm to the officer in charge of the freight. The elephants had found that by swaying to and fro all together, a rocking motion was produced which seemed to please them immensely. So the great heads and bodies rolled and swung in unison, till the ship, which had no other cargo and rode light, was in imminent danger of rolling clean over. The mahouts were hurried down into the hold, and each, seated on his beast, made him "break step" so to speak. There they had to stay for a long time. An unforeseen difficulty was found in carrying fodder along the central avenue. The elephants would allow a laden coolie to proceed a little way, and then, with the quiet mischief of their kind, one would lay him by the heels with his trunk while the others s.n.a.t.c.hed his bundles of gra.s.s. So they made a gangway over their backs along which the coolies crawled. The worst was when the elephant first shipped died in his place, of vexation, mahouts would say, who believe the creatures only die when they are so inclined. He was the farthest from the hatchway, and in the awful heat of the Bay of Bengal he had to be taken to pieces and pa.s.sed through the line of his brethren, up and over the side in ships' buckets!

Arrived in port there was no wharf, and the animals had to swim and wade a mile of water from the anchorage to the sh.o.r.e. The first was slung down, his mahout on his neck, to the water, as it seemed from the deck, a lascar clinging to the chain to let go the swivel. He let go too soon, the elephant fell with a mighty splash, losing his mahout, while the suddenly released chain shot the astonished lascar like a bolt from a catapult some fifty yards away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN ROYAL STATE]

It is not, however, trials of this kind that make the English transport officer, struggling across creation with mules, oxen, and elephants, gray before his time, but the number of reports and dockets he has to write.

That dead elephant's tusks were a congenial subject to Commissariat clerks, and they "had the honour to inquire" in many letters.

We have turned from the elephant as he appears to the Oriental, to the creature as he really is, and it may be interesting to hear the account of him that the paternal Government of India has to give. For that Government is itself elephantine in its nature, capable of supporting great weights, but p.r.o.ne also to busy itself in infinite details with restless and inquisitive trunk. The proper treatment of the animal in health and disease is set forth in a manual by the late Mr. Steel, a high veterinary authority, while the Commissariat and other departments concerned with the large property of the State in elephants are carefully instructed in their management. It is officially stated that--"all who have had to deal with elephants agree that their good qualities cannot be exaggerated; that their vices are few and only occur in exceptional animals; that they are neither treacherous nor retentive of injury; and that they are obedient, gentle, and patient beyond measure." This is higher and more sympathetic praise than is usually tied up in the pink tape of Secretariats, and it is all true. The next sentence, however, of the official characterisation declares that in many things the elephant is "a decidedly stupid animal!"

It was ever hard to find wit and virtue combined, but it may be doubted whether the sentence is quite just. Intelligence among animals is a matter of delicate and difficult comparison. Simplicity of character were a better word than stupidity. A stupid creature refuses to learn and to obey. The elephant under sympathetic treatment always tries to obey, and can be taught to perform acts foreign to all we know of its nature. This ent.i.tles it to a higher place on the strictly limited scale of animal intelligence than the word "stupid" indicates. Its inquisitiveness is confined to objects within elephant range, and its sympathies, like those of all purely vegetarian animals which have to spend a large proportion of their time in eating, are narrow. Of a dog, on the other hand, it was once delightfully remarked in the American tongue, "Don't say that before Snap. Snap don't know he's only a dog; he thinks he's folks!" No mahout would begin to think of his placid self-contained charge along this line. They all seem to regard elephant character as a thing apart, and with a respect which a stupid animal could not command,--even from mahouts.

As to the strength of the beast and the best way of turning it to account, there is less room for controversy. On a march, weight-carrying is the work an elephant can best perform, for though he can pull strenuously and well, his frame is not suited for long spells of draught work. His chest is relatively small and weak; so sometimes he is made to pull with ropes tied to the tusks, and sometimes from his waist, if an elephant can be said to have a waist--but the mighty forehead would, to an amateur, appear to be the best hitching point.

The normal load for continuous travel of a fair-sized elephant is 800 pounds, so the animal is equal to eight ponies, small mules, or a.s.ses; to five stout pack-mules or bullocks, and to three and one-third of a camel.

Under such a load the elephant travels at a fair speed, keeping well up with an ordinary army or baggage train, requiring no made road, few guards, and occupying less depth in column than other animals. He is invaluable in jungle country and all roadless regions where heavy loads are to be moved.

In Burmah and on the east and south-east frontier elephants are absolutely necessary for military supply. When once a good road is made, the beast is, of course, easily beaten by wheeled carriage.

He shines most as a special Providence when the cattle of a baggage train or the horses of a battery are stalled in a bog or struggling helplessly at a steep place. An elephant's tusks and trunk serve at once as lever, screw-jack, dog-hooks, and crane, quickly setting overturned carts and gun-carriages right, lifting them by main force or dragging them in narrow winding defiles where a long team cannot act; while his head, protected by a pad, is a ram of immense force and superior handiness.

I write "he" mechanically, but it ought to be said that in consequence of the liability of the male to occasional fits of ill-temper from functional causes, it has been decreed that only females are to enter Government service, and they should not be less than twenty or more than thirty years of age, capable of carrying 1200 pounds for a first-cla.s.s elephant (eight feet high and over) and 960 pounds for a second-cla.s.s animal (under eight feet in height), exclusive of gear. No recruit under seven feet should be admitted. Male animals are preferred by Native Princes on account of their larger size and prouder bearing, and among about two thousand elephants owned by the British Government a few males are kept for State and parade purposes. An elephant at twenty-five years of age may be compared to a human being of eighteen. He attains his full strength and vigour at about thirty-five, and has been known to live a hundred and twenty years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELEPHANT PILING TIMBER (BURMAH)]

A born forester, it is in jungle-work that the labouring elephant outside Government service is seen at his best. The tea-planters of a.s.sam and Ceylon find him useful in forest clearing and as a pack animal. They even yoke him to the plough. He is the leading hand in the teak trade of Burmah,--unrivalled in the heavy toil of the timber-yard, where he piles logs with wonderful neatness and quickness. Small timbers are carried on the tusks, clipped over and held fast by the trunk. A log with a thick b.u.t.t is seized with judicious appreciation of balance, while long and heavy baulks are levered and pushed into place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELEPHANT LIFTING TEAK LOGS (BURMAH)]

As to its keep, the elephant is a chargeable beast; costing from 4 to 8 a month when rations of rice or wheaten flour cakes are given, as they should be, with fodder-stalks and leaves of various kinds. Rum, brandy, or arrack, mixed with ginger, cloves, pepper, and treacle, and made into a paste with flour, provide the elephant with a sort of tipsy-cake that cheers and comforts him when suffering from fatigue or cold. In the matter of food and stimulants, however, mahouts have no conscience, and steal without a qualm.

Ages of slack-handed usage have settled that the servant of the elephant and three generations of his family shall live on the beast he is paid to cherish. Allowances are given for flour, fire-wood, oil, and spices, but the elephant only gets a share in them, and not always that. So the worst ailment he has to face is semi-starvation, the lot of most elephants in captivity. The beast is in truth a n.o.ble anachronism, belonging to a young world time of denser foliage than this dried-up age which packs hay in trusses and treasures ensilage in pits. But the thievish mahout is responsible for the worst of his belly-pinch. Yet elephant men are usually spoken of as models of devotion to their beasts. "They love 'em, sir," said an English officer to me once. But that does not prevent their showing an indifference to their comfort, characteristic of all Orientals, whose talk often drips with sentiment, while their practice is of dry brutality. The acknowledged authorities on the subject, Mr. Sanderson and the late Mr. J.

H. Steel, agree that mahouts invariably make the animals' comfort subservient to their own. Even the best of them will seldom take the trouble to put their beasts under the shadow of a tree at mid-day. They also have the cruel Indian trick of securing the animals fore and aft in the most irksome manner possible. A rope or chain fastened to one foot and to a peg in the ground is sufficient restraint for most elephants, and allows them to turn to and from the sun and wind as they find agreeable.

Mahouts think nothing of securing an animal so that one side is exposed day and night to wind or rain. The practice of tight tying up is particularly repugnant to those who have a sympathetic knowledge of the restless, swaying, Johnsonian habit rooted in the beast's nature. The native servant himself keenly appreciates his liberty and is the most elusive creature alive, perpetually slinking from his duty into the jungles of the bazar.

But when he ruleth he is a terrible despot.

Outside India it is believed that elephants are dying out of the land. The example of America, where the men and creatures natural to the soil have been exterminated to make room for a too triumphant civilisation, has taught the world a lesson of anxiety. But animal lovers may rest content, for the elephants of India, like the people, are increasing in numbers.

They are carefully protected in their natural haunts, whence English officers of experience draw supplies for use with as much system and regularity as sheep are drafted from the hillside flock. The details of the Government kheddah or capturing arrangements are full of interest,--sport in its finest sense; nor is it easy to say whether the skill in woodcraft of the English directors, or the courage, endurance, and patience of the natives employed, are most admirable. Like a strong a.s.s between two burdens, the British Government has been beaten with many staves, and also with fools' truncheons of pantomime paper, but, at least, it has tried to husband the resources of the country.

The thoughtful Germans are said to meditate the re-capture and domestication in their new Equatorial realm of the African elephant, free since the days of Hannibal. It is to be hoped this is true, for there is naught sillier under the sun than the slaughter which has. .h.i.therto been all that civilisation had to bestow on these blameless Ethiopians.

CHAPTER X

OF CAMELS

"When spring-time flushes the desert gra.s.s, Our Kafilas wind through the Khyber pa.s.s.

Lean are the camels but fat the frails, Light are the purses but heavy the bales, As the snow-bound trade of the North comes down To the market-square of Peshawar town.

"In a turquoise twilight crisp and chill, A Kafila camped at the foot of the hill.

Then blue smoke haze of the cooking rose, And tent-peg answered to hammer nose; And the picketed ponies, s.h.a.g and wild, Strained at their ropes as the feed was piled; And the bubbling camels beside the load Sprawled for a furlong adown the road; And the Persian p.u.s.s.y-cats, brought for sale, Spat at the dogs from the camel-bale."

_The ballad of the King's jest._--R. K.

[Ill.u.s.tration:]

While some mahouts hint vaguely that the elephant came to India from the farther East, it is an accepted belief that the camel came from the West, _i.e._ from Arabia. No account is taken of the herds of wild camels seen on the high table-lands of Central Asia. So the saying has it, "The camel let loose, goes westward," or "The camel is a good Mussulman, for when free, he runs towards Mecca." In default of proof that the beast really follows the setting sun, it may be suspected that Oriental fancy, always strong, has more play than Oriental observation, which is often weak. For the camel is a peculiarly Muhammadan creature both in his life of to-day and in his wonderful origin. It was on his back that the body of Shah Ali Shah was laid after death, and he was sent into the wilderness till the Angel Gabriel met him and, taking the rope, led him no man knows whither. Before that ghostly funeral the camel resembled a horse, but the Angel gave him a hump like the mountain into which he disappeared, and feet to spread on the yielding sand, with other anatomical peculiarities, all duly enumerated by good Mussulmans. This story is also told of Moses, the friend of G.o.d, or the converser with G.o.d, the place of whose sepulchre no man knoweth unto this day. Probably the saying has its origin in the propensity of the stupid camel to stray and lose itself, for it has none of the "homing"

faculty so strongly developed in the horse. People who religiously face westward several times a day to pray naturally get an occidental twist in their minds. Nay, there are those who maintain that all the world has this trick, and that, like Wordsworth's friends, we still go "stepping westward." South Australia has not yet discovered a Mecca twist in the thousands of camels it now owns.

The Prophet himself was a camel driver or _Serwan_, and always cherished the liking of a true Arab for the beast of which he said, "Speak ill neither of the camel nor of the wind; the camel is a benefit to man and the wind is an emanation of the Spirit of G.o.d." When he was married to Kadijah, two young camels were slain for the wedding feast.

But Indian popular observation lacks the Arab keenness, nor is the beast so important and highly thought of as in Arabia. There is no strong insight in calling the long shafts of the camel's limbs crooked, as in the angry saying to a shifty ne'er-do-well, "O camel, hast thou _one_ straight bone in thy body?" The pride of a big man is rebuked by the saying, "The camel thought he was the biggest thing in the world till he came under the mountain." Of a very tall man who, in India, is often a simpleton, they say, "Tall as a camel, but silly as an a.s.s," and of an unwilling, grumbling servant, "He snarls like a camel when you load him." The bite of a camel is very severe and sometimes poisonous, so the saying goes, "G.o.d preserve us from the nip of a camel and the snap of a dog." Of a notoriously unlucky man they say, "Even if he were perched on a camel a dog would jump up and bite him." The Kirgiz have a pious expansion of this saying: "Whom the fates bless with a good son may light a bonfire; but the father cursed with a bad son will be devoured by dogs, though he be mounted on the back of a camel." We express the completeness of ill-luck by saying, "The bread never falls but on its b.u.t.tered side." The Kirgiz say, "One never falls but from a _nar_"--the large-sized Bokhariot camel. A common saying similar to our "waiting to see which way the cat jumps" is based on a trivial story. A potter and a greengrocer hired a camel between them. The camel reached round with his long neck and ate some of the cabbages on the greengrocer's side, whereupon the potter jeered. "Wait and see which side he sits down upon," said the greengrocer. The camel sat down on the potter's side and smashed his wares. aesop's frog tried to swell himself as big as the ox, but in India they say of pretentious little people, "When the camels were branded, the frog also held up his leg," as who should say, "brand me too."

"The goat-keeper went to buy a camel and wanted to feel its ears" (a point of handling which no judicious goat-buyer omits) is a saying which has several applications in India; but in Britain also we may see critics a-tiptoe, reaching up with tiny and inapt canons of judgment to things they do not understand.

The decorative value of the camel cannot be appreciated by those who have only seen one or two at a time. He was made for a sequence, as beads are made for stringing. On an Indian horizon a long drove of camels, tied head to tail, adorns the landscape with a festooned frieze of wonderful symmetry and picturesqueness. Five hundred camels go to a mile.[3] If I had a very long and lofty hall to decorate I should pray the architect to let me loop it round with camels, with here and there a Biloch driver, as the frieze turned a corner or was interrupted by a bracket or girder. For a quaint and almost comic spectacle, a bivouac of a camel Kafila or caravan on the march is not easily surpa.s.sed. The beasts are seated four or five on each side of a sheet or table-cloth on which their fodder is placed. Camels are as symmetrically constructed as gun-carriages, and their hind-legs fold up like two-foot-rules. They rest in great part on a pedestal behind the chest with which Nature has furnished them, and sit close together in high-elbowed state with an indescribable air of primness and propriety.

With, as often happens, a driver supping at each end of this table in the wilderness, the whole arrangement has an absurdly formal and well-regulated air, suggesting a tea-party of elderly maiden ladies, as the long necks curve and bridle and the mincing mouths move busily.

[Footnote 3: This is the present official estimate, allowing a little over 10 feet 6 inches per camel. Sir Charles Napier, however, writing of his first day's march from Rori to Imain Ghur in the Sindh desert, allows 15 feet to each animal: "Oh! the baggage! the baggage! it is enough to drive one mad. We have 1500 camels with their confounded long necks, each occupying 15 feet! Fancy these long devils in a defile; four miles and a quarter of them!"]

The deliberate movement of the beasts under their burdens is impressive and not without a touch of scornful majesty. Only an Oriental, one would think, could accommodate himself to that unhasting cadence of step. Perhaps the reported existence of wild camels in Arizona territory is a fabulous or jocular ill.u.s.tration of American character. It is said they were imported into the United States to serve as pack animals, but n.o.body foresaw that the nervous, electric American was the last man alive to pace placidly at the end of a camel's nose-rope. He naturally dropped it in disgust;--and now there are wild camels in Arizona. If this story is not true, it ought to be.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN A SERAI (REST-HOUSE)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: RAJPUT CAMEL-RIDER'S BELT]

The truth about the camel's character has often been debated. He is wonderful, and, in his own way, beautiful to look at, and his patience, strength, speed, and endurance are beyond all praise. The camel-riders of Rajputana and Central India, mounted on animals of a swift breed, cover almost incredible distances at high speed, finding it necessary to protect themselves against the racking motion by broad leathern belts tightly buckled, which are often covered with velvet and prettily broidered in silk. Even they, who know the beast at his best, never pretend to like their mounts, as one likes a horse. So useful a beast is estimable, but the most indulgent observation fails to find a ground for affection. Europeans, at all events, who have to do with camels seem to think it were as easy to lavish one's love on a luggage van. He is a morose, discontented, grumbling brute, a servant of man, it is true, as is the water that turns a mill-wheel, the fire that boils a kettle, or the steam that stirs the piston of a cylinder. He does not come to a call like other beasts, but has to be fetched and driven from browsing. There are but few words made for his private ear such as belong to horses, dogs, and oxen. An elephant has a separate word of command for sitting down with front legs, with hind legs, or with all together, and he moves at a word. A camel has but one, and that must be underlined with a tug at his nose-rope ere he will stoop. But he has a large share in that great public property of curses whose loss would enrich the world.

The camel has so little sense, one wonders he is credited with malevolence, but so it is, and there is sound appreciation of his vindictiveness in a phrase in use for bearing malice, equivalent to "camel-tempered," and of his aimless wandering in another addressed to an idle man, "Why are you loafing round like a loose camel?"

"Camel colour" is a common word among weavers, embroiderers, and the like; but it is not a good colour name, because camels vary much in tint. Other names of this end of the colour scale are better, as "_badami_" or almond; "mouse colour"; _khaki_, or _khara_, catechu tinted. An ostrich is a camel-bird, and so says Western science,--_struthio camelus_,--and a giraffe a camel-cow; no notice apparently being taken of the creature's spots.

The camel's grumble has led the British soldier to christen him "a humming-bird." "Commissariat scent-bottle" has also been heard, and when in camp with camels, you see more in these schoolboy absurdities than would strike a stranger. The relations of the British soldier with the camel, however, have been so vividly and truly put in my son's barrack-room ballad, "Oonts!" (camels), that I make no apology for quoting it at length,--premising that Mr. Thomas Atkins, who takes his own way with Oriental languages, invariably shortens long vowels, and makes _oont_ rhyme with grunt.

OONTS!

(NORTHERN INDIA TRANSPORT TRAIN)

What makes the soldier's 'eart to penk, what makes 'im to perspire?

It isn't standin' up to charge or lyin' down to fire; But it's everlastin' waitin' on a everlastin' road For the commissariat camel and 'is commissariat load.

O the oont, O the oont, O the commissariat oont!

With 'is silly neck a bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes, We packs 'im like a idol, an' you ought to hear 'im grunt, An' when we gets 'im loaded up, 'is blessed girth-rope breaks.

What makes the rearguard swear so 'ard when night is drorin' in, An' every native follower is shiverin' for 'is skin?

It ain't the chance o' bein' rushed by Paythans from the 'ills, It's the commissariat camel puttin' on 'is blessed frills.

O the oont, O the oont, O the hairy, scary oont!