Two Good Jungle Books

With a Camera in Tiger-Land. By F. W. Champion. (Chatto and Winchis. 30s.) Tiger, Tiger ! By W. Hogarth Todd. (Heath Cranton. 7s. 6d.) IF at a picnic party in the woods, a leopard suddenly appeared in our midst and removed one of the party while drinking his4tikt, the remainder would not, certainly, continue their meal as if nothing had happened. Yet that is exactly what ocongs with the deer of the jungle.

When the Indian cheetah drinks, a crocodile may snap at his muzzle and drag him into the river ; while he is browsing,• a tiger may carry him off at any moment. But by some merciful provision of nature the companions of the victims are not unduly perturbed. A chorus of alarm accompanies the actual killing, of course, but as soon as the marauder is out -of sight peace returns to the herd, and it continues feeding as though the vision of death, so immanent and so inexorable in the jungle, had completely left their minds. In short, the jungle is not cruel. Even the tiger does his killing with the speed and deftness of a human butcher.

Of alIthis and more we may rata in-Mr.-Chanipiori's enchant." ing volume. Here, also, is the story published last year in The Pioneer, of how Captain Corbett killed the famous man- eating leopard of Rudrapryag, which terrorized a district in Garhawal for nine years and was responsible for 125 deaths of human beings before he was destroyed in 1926. A leopard is the most dangerous of all animals owing to its activity and devilish cunning. Traps, gins and poisons had been tried without avail. On April 1st, a human kill was poisoned and the man-eater consumed part of the cyanided corpse but (with the vitality of a Rasputin) suffered no ill effects. Spring guns were then tried, but failed, and a huge gin caught nothing more than a tuft of hair from the leopard's hind leg.

Captain Corbett then decided that he would sit up all night over a tethered goat for at least ten nights. The courage and endurance that this demanded and the appalling risks he ran can be understood- perhaps by anyone who reads this book with attention—the old shikari will not need the t's crossed. The end of the tenth night still brought no sign of the leopard, so Corbett continued again in the_same place fot the _ eleventh _consecutive. night: This time he was

successful. At ten p.m. the leopard appeared. He switched on the electric torch and found the bead of his rifle was (for- tunately) Alrawn exactly on the body. One shot, a roar, a leap, silence. Until' dawn he could not, of course, leave his machan. At the end of his long vigil, he found blood tracks and eventually the leopard itself, which had fallen down a small precipice. It was very old, whiskerless and mangy, but of enormous

Perhaps, however, the most exciting story in the book (but they are all good, and the pictures are all triumphs of photography) is:another tiger_ yarn, also originally published in last year's Pioneer. This was a desperate adventure which recently befell Mr. and Mrs. Smythies. They were in two machans about forty yards apart, waiting for a tiger to tie driven out of a beat. The tiger slouched out, was fired • went back and finally broke cover at full gallop with a terrific noise. Mrs. Smythies fired when it was about thirty yards from her and hit it some six inches above the heart. ft rolled over, roaring. We . will let Mr. Smythies tell us rhat he saw :— ;-7" The tiger, mad with rage, turned round, saw her [his wife} in the machan;" and made for her, -climbing the tree for all the world Pike a huge domestic cat, with its foiearms ahnost encircling it. Up it went vertically under her-machan, and as I turned round- hurriedly, I knocked the loose cartridges out of my machan to the ground. As things were, I had no option but to take the risk: of hitting my wife. I fired at the brute when it was half-way up the free, but only grazed it. . As I looked to work the bolt and reload, realized I had only one cartridge left, and, looking up again, saw my wife standing up in the machan with the muzzle of her rifle fit the tiger's mouth—his teeth marks, are 8 inches up the barrel— and ho was holding on to the edge of the machan with his forepaws and chin."

The tiger had at least two-thirds of his weight on the edge of the machan and was hanging out from the tree by its width. The whole tree rocked violently. Mr. Smythies now saw his wife lose her balance and topple over backwards. The tiger, however, was too angry to notice her disappearance and had torn the strings of the machan to shreds. Mr. Smythies fired his last cartridge and by the mercy of heaven the bullet went true and the tiger fell backwards, immediately below the machan. Whether he was dead or not Mr. Smythies did not know : his wife and the tiger were both hidden in the long grass and he himself was up a tree with no cartridges and, therefore, powerless—surely as bad a pre-- dicament as any sbikari has ever been in. But it all ended happily, for the tiger was dead and his wife alive.

The stories and descriptions in this book are so delightful that we are embarrassed in the choice of what to quote, but we would draw especial attention to the author's fine resolve never to use a lethal weapon except for purposes of the larder and to confine his sport to photography.

There is no doubt whatever that photographing wild animals is much more sporting than shooting them : it is not only more difficult, but also far 'Mee dangerous. " Many Others," says Mr. Champion, " are following the same road, and it is devoutly to be hoped that hunting with the camera Will ultimately largely replace the old-fashioned kind" which adorned a wall with ugly stuffed heads, instead of beautifying a book such as this with illustrations of animals in all the Pride and power and beauty of jungle life.

Of the danger of this new sport, the reader with imagination May get more than an inkling, by studying the splendid full face of a mad wild. elephant on p. 173—surely the best trophy any hunter has ever secured ! Mr. and Mrs. Champion, mounted on their faithful pad-elephant, Balmati, came upon a massive bull in that peculiar physical condition known :is nrusth (when the great pachyderms are liable to tmgovern-- able fits of fury), accompanied by a large cow and a delightful little calf. The trio were feeding from a bamboo clump. For some time he and his wife watched the bull caressing his t■itly with his trunk. It made a curious rasping noise as it slid down the calf's back, and the whole formed a most fasci- nating scene which would haVe made an ideal picture, but the shade was too dense for photography. So they pushed forward bOldly on Balmati. But the bull elephant, became suddenly aware that something was wrong and " Ms us, his whole body gave a start. BO ears, went back, his stszted-tO curl-and we realized that we-were in for trouble this time. There seemed nothing efati—JO do, ea 1 continued to snake exposures as hard as I could [italics are ours], while the mahout, dazed, no doubt, or because he had so often ordered tame elephants, shouted to the tusker to go back. This was, of course, the worst possible thing to do, as, the moment the great beast heardn human voice, his worst suspicions were confirmed, and-he knew for certain that that hated creature, man, had come to interfere with him aiia his family. Karim, however, soon covered his initial mistake by doing the right thing, and fired a shot with a gun, just as the enraged lord of the herd lifted his foreleg and charged at us, looking for all the world like a great lumbering motor-omnibus bearing down. upon us. It appeared that nothing could save us, and, armed with no more than a camera and feeling guilty about my wife, who should not have accompanied me, I was just holding my breath for the shock of the impact when Karim providentially fired his second barrel right over the monster's face, thereby causing him to swerve with a- crash past one side of a small rohini tree, just as Bahnati turned and fled on the other. We departed, fully routed, at Bal. mati's beat pave of some eight miles an hour, expecting the great brute to follow - -but, after we had-gone about 100 yards, we realized that we had made good our escape, more than a little shaken, but none the worse except for the loss of my sun-helmet."

Space does not permit us to follow this redoubtable photo- grapher and most charming author on any more of his adventures. Neither can we enlarge, as we would wish, on the-interesting questions the author 'raises as to the voices of the tiger and their meaning, of the habits of deer, of hyena, of the psychology of elephants. As a last word we can say, without fear of exaggeration, or even of dissent on the part of anyone who knows India, that this is the best book on the juhgle since -Kim. Mr." Champion is a modern' Mowgli, in addition to his other duties as a most capable Forest Officer. As to the illustrations, not Messrs. Martin Johnson or Kearton have taken better pictures of wild life.

Another book of the same type, with real experience behind it, is Mr. Hogarth Todd's. It suffers only by comparison with what is quite an exceptional work. There is not the same skill with the pen in Tiger, Tiger! but to make up for this " Ian Hay " contributes a preface which might servo as the backbone of this review, for both volumes give us a glimpse into the lives- of the men who see that " the dams hold, the canals irrigate, the grass grows and the British Raj endures," as well as a picture of the life of the jungle.

Mr. Todd was terribly mauled by a tigress. He tells us in Chapter iii. how he found himself on the ground, with some- thing hurting him most terribly, how he seized the beast's ruff with both hands and shook her deliriously to make her let go the huge mouthful she had taken of his thigh ; and how, as they struggled, the eyes of mail and beast came within twelve inches of each other, when the glare of the tigress's furious yellow orbs changed suddenly to fear as she met the eyes of man ; and how she threw the terrifying human body from her with a flick Of wrist and forearm, sending him flying through the air. After this vivid and unusual description, he completely wins our hearts by telling us, good sportsman that he is, the same story from the tigress's point of view.

She meant no harm. She was merely saving herself from that awful creature, Man : like Mr. Champion, Mr. Todd is no believer in the fun of killing as many wild things as possible.

The book is full of good stories and scenes of the day's work and the day's play in India, which, whether we have ever been lucky enough to know them or not, will entertain the reader. It' is a pity, however, that so many names are omitted or altered. What reason is there, for instance, for calling Poor. Patterson, who was killed pigsticking at Bareilly when this reviewer was a member of the tent-club there, Matterson ? Why, again, should we not know which irrigation schemes the writer was concerned with, 'when he so pleasantly and excitingly deseribes the danger of a bursting dam during the monsoon rains A final thrill, if the reader be not glutted : Mr. and Mrs. Todd were out walking, she unarmed, he with a twelve bore and No. 6 cartridges. they came on two tiger cub; :— " our enjoyment of watching them was suddenly and rudely inter- rupted by a series of terrific roars, which broke out from the farther end of the island. We then caught gliripses of a full-grown tigress charging at us, with bristling ruff, along the wooded bank. This was too much for my wife, and she started running towards the island along the way by which we had just come. She covered the five yards or so which separated us from the island, and then went up the bank. I shouted to her : !For God's sake, stop ! ' for I saw that if she continued farther she would-inevitably be caught by

the tigress.

I don't know-if my voice was especially insistent, I expect if was,

or else the instinct of self-preservation asserted itself—anyhow,

the great thing was that she did stop. 1 then implored her to stand

still on the top of the bank where she was and not move ; the one way to daunt a tiger is-to stand still. He is naturally-mit accustomed to anything standing up to him ; he takes all his game on the run.. It was a very high test of courage ; I might almost say as high a test : of its kind as any English woman has ever undergone. But she pluckily stood it, and thereby probably saved her life and my own as -well.

The tigress came along making her ghastly noise until within fifteen yards of her, when she suddenly crouched down in the long grass. She then continued to growl and snarl for what seemed to us like an eternity, but which in reality was probably only some two or three minutes.. During that time my wife and I stood stock still . eight or ten yards apart, and I continued to exhort her not. to move. -thought that if I spoke aloud in my ordinary voice the courage would slowly ooze out of the brute, -because anotherthingto which a tiger is not accustomed is the sound of the speaking„ human_ voice. I therefore told my wife this as calmly as I could-as we waited, but also with the.object of giving her confidence at the same time:

The plan seemed to work, for the tigress was certainly kept at bay for an interval. On the other hand she was primarily, of course, out to frighten us, to attract our attention from her cube and to give them time to make good their escape. She also succeeded beautifully in her little plan, for our attention had certainly been diverted all right ! We had never had any inten- tion whatever of doing her darlings any harm, although, of courae, she did not know this. We now sincerely wished we had never seen the little brutes.

At the end of the distressing interval, when I suppose she thought that she had held us spell-bound long enough, she once more sprang to her feet with a final:roar,. bounded.to. within a yard of my wife, dug all-four paws into the earth-together, stopped, and then Untied

round and- bolted. • . - . - - - - - - My wife almost fell down the bank, 'arriving close to the place where I was standing.

I fully expected the tigress to follow her. As I said before. I only had a gun loaded with shot in my hand, but this at tho range of a yard or two might have served ; it would of course have been necessary to kill the animal or blind her instantaneously, and this might have been possible at close range. However, havirg attained her object in thoroughly frightening us, the tigress evidently did not want to force the issue to extremes, but only to go off and rejoin her offspring."

She faded away into the gloom, to rejoin her babies, and Mr. and Mrs. Todd returned to camp with thankful hearts, to rejoin their two children.

What jolly books these arc, so different from the stuffy pages of scandal we so often read ! By comparison, these volumes are a winter morning on sonic duck-jhil of the United Provinces, with its huge zest, its infinite horizon ; those others, a winter morning in the Underground of our mephitic civilization. F. Y-B.