T HE children of Allendale and of the fells north of
Hexham are living at this close of this fourth year of the twentieth century in much the same state of terror as small girls did in the days when the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" was first composed. Their mothers dare not send them to school, and they are all fetched "ben the house" before dark ; while their fathers, the shepherds or farmers, expect when they go out to the fold or on to the mountainside to find their sheep worried. Though this has been going on for many weeks, the resources of civilisation are completely baffled by the efforts of one animal which was " improved " off the face of the earth in those parts about the close of the sixteenth century.
The reincarnation of the hereditary foe of children and of cattle in the border county was caused by the escape of the beast from a private collection in one of the county towns. Visitors to the London "Zoo" last summer may very possibly have had some misgivings as to whether a remark- ably fine pair of three-parts-grown wolves which were kept in an enclosure made of wire netting might not one day succeed in doing the same, though whether, if they had done so, they would have found a suitable wilderness in which to set up successfully in the best classic manner of wolves, as the Allendale monster has done, may be doubted. The latter found itself in just the surroundings in which it once flourished in this country, a district where artificial woods have taken the place of the old low-ground forest, and where hundreds of square miles of mountain and fell, peopled mainly by curlews and sheep, carry almost as few inhabi- tants to the acre as can be found anywhere in the North, except on the Pennines. But in the old days the wolf and the robber equally precluded keeping sheep, which hardly
appeared even on the Cheviots till after the Act of Union. At the present day the whole country is a vast sheep farm, and their hereditary foe, having recruited the inner wolf with mutton killed on a modest scale which would probably be deemed " necessaries " in any lupine circle, has begun to slay and ravage the folds out of mere lightness of heart, the natural outcome of what has not been the lot of wolves since the memory of man,—a real superabundance of mutton. Forty sheep were debited to its account in one week.
On Sunday last, in broad daylight, it killed four and badly worried another ; and an anxious shepherd driving his flock
along a road that evening saw the big grey wolf hop up on
to a wall, whence it lightly scanned the sheep, and then, seeing the shepherd, retired to a neighbouring wood. There it was sought by twenty men with guns, and many beaters, but was not seen. Last week forty armed shepherds sur- rounded a wood to which it had been tracked, but the
wolf had a wolf's own luck. It broke cover past the worst shot of the party, who missed it. It is still at large, and judging from the experience and practice of Russian sportsmen, who with those in Hungary are the only people in Europe who have any experience in wolf shooting or hunting, it is very likely that the creature will be too cunning for the shepherds. In Russia the greatest care is taken to harbour a wolf in a portion of forest, and when this is done "stops" are often set round it all night. Next day the guns are posted by experienced local men, and in addition large wolfhounds are held ready, if any can be bad, to slip at the animal if missed or wounded.
The whole incident has a parallel in the extraordinary career of the "Great Dog of Ennerdale," a very large half- bred mastiff which maintained itself for several seasons by sheep-killing in Cumberland in the Lake District. When chased by local packs of hounds, it would throw itself on its back, put up its feet, and surrender at discretion, whereon the hounds would decline to touch it. We believe that its skin is still kept in the neighbourhood where it was ultimately shot. Not even the famous white wolf of the Currumpaw pack, as described by Mr. Seton-Thompson, was more full of cunning and resource.
This awakened echo of an uncomfortable past does explain in a very vivid fashion the frightful incubus which one savage beast might become in days when man was at a disadvantage with the beasts, both in weapons and in power of movement. The mythical heroes seem in nearly every case to have "entered public life" on the very just qualification of killing some murderous and extremely cunning wild animal which had become an established curse to a district. Doubtless they felt obliged to live up to their reputation, which accounts for Hercules not being contented with the killing of the Nemaean lion only. Later, instead of being a hero, the deliverer from some local wild beast became a saint. If the Church had permitted the canonisation of an animal, there is little doubt that the Welsh hound Gelert ' would have had a deserved place in the Calendar. Harold Hardrada.claimed distinction for having, among other exploits, killed an enormous crocodile when in Egypt, which we may assume to have played the part of the Mugger of lluggerghaut, on some reach of the Nile where his Varangians were temporarily encamped.
But a crocodile has its limits of range. The were-wolf, the lion, the tiger, the leopard, and the bear have none. Probably no pressure from any human foes, however malignant, bore so cruelly on the weakly armed races of the earth as the night-long terror in the shape of the determined local wild beast. In all the old stories he is always a creature with a special haunt,—the Nemaean lion or the hydra of the marsh of Lerna. At the present moment this frightful and incarnate persecutor flourishes unchecked in many parts even of the British Empire. The tale of the two lions of the Tsavo River—note the persistence of the local and limited range of these scourges of humanity—has been already told in the Spectator. They exhibited all the mixture of extreme cunning and of boldness which characterises the typical animal "
persecutor" of man. More than sixty Indian coolies, as well as numbers of the natives employed on the Uganda line, were killed and eaten by them. They stopped the construction of the railway, and more than a thousand labourers became "arboreal," and slept on platforms in trees. It is satisfactory to think that the killing of such ferocious and astute enemies as these two lions has a kind of reward as of old. The young engineer who succeeded, after many risks, in shooting them entered the Yeomanry as a subaltern in the Boer War, and by its close was a Lieutenant-Colonel in command of a regiment.
The case of the Tsavo River lions was matched in some degree by the enterprise of a tiger in the Mandha district in India. It was not a mangy invalid, like some man-eaters, but "an exceedingly powerful beast of unexampled ferocity and audacity." It turned highwayman, and completely stopped the traffic on the ordinary road. Its habit was to kill only the drivers of the native carts. It might have killed the bullocks, but this did not suit its taste. It was the driver who was in every case carried off and eaten. The natives thought that by passing in company with several carts together they would be safe. But the tiger was equal to the emergency, and seized the man on the last cart. The road was deserted, and though a price was set on the animal's head, no one could shoot it. At last the police superintendent hit on a happy thought, somewhat like that by which Colonel Patterson trapped one of the Tsavo River lions. He baited a cart, not with a live man, but with a dummy, and the bullocks in this were attached to another cart, also drawn by bullocks, and covered by a strong bamboo cage in which the superintendent sat with the driver. "Suddenly there was a roar, a large tiger bounded from the jungle, and with extraordinary quickness seized the dummy driver from his seat in the rearmost cart, and dragged it to the jungle." But the bullocks in both carts, terrified at the roar, bolted instantly at such a pace that it was impossible to shoot from the one in front, and the tiger had to be left to enjoy the stuffed straw in the dummy. It was not till some time later that the tiger was shot. Another tiger, killed by Sir Samuel Baker, who preserved the above anecdote, was only a cattle-killer, but was so clever, or so lucky, that it was reported to be shot-proof. It had been beaten for for so many years by Europeans passing that way that the trees near the regular paths were occupied by old " macharns" like old crows' nests, which were merely mended up for a new-corner!
General Douglas Hamilton, whose hunting notes were published after his death in that very fine and original book, "Records of Sport in Southern India" (London: R. H. Porter, 21s.), mentions a man-slaying animal which seemed to bear a charmed life. The tigress which the last Indian Government Reports debit with twenty-three human lives was a mere amateur compared to this, which lived at the foot of the Nilgiri Hills. It was known to have killed two hundred human beings. Yet for years it baffled all attempts to shoot it. Driving the jungle or picketing bullocks was quite useless, and it only fell at last to the rifle of a European who followed up the trail instantly after it had killed a woman as she was drawing water from a stream.
The desolating curse which a cunning and savage beast may become in quite civilised districts is also illustrated in the reminiscences of Mr. Thomas Webber, lately published by Mr. Edward Arnold under the title of "The Forests of Upper India" (128. 6d. net). The beast was known as the Juli tiger. It haunted a very large extent of country through which the road passes from Juli to Naini Tal. For three years hardly a week passed without a death being reported as due to the Juli tiger. Ghoorka soldiers were detailed in batches to try to kill it, but without result. The tiger was believed to be the son of a man-eating tigress, and to contain within its body the reasoning elements of all the souls of its own and its mother's human victims. Thus provided, its cunning was regarded as equalling some three hundred man- power, for its own victims were calculated at between two and three hundred men, women, and children. It was ultimately shot by Mr. Webber, after a persevering and painful hunt in the hottest season of the year.
Previous page
