Martinsburg independent. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1875-1900, 1880-07-03
Tigers ana Elephants-In-
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Ten years after the famine Of
1910 a once populous district was n
silent jungle and in l7S0a small
body Of Sepoys could with diff.
Guilty force its way through its
forests.
For one hundred and twenty
miles" say 8 an eyewitness, they
marched through buttn extern
sive wood. All The way perfect
wilderness sometimes small
village presented itself In the
midst of these jungles, with lit
tie cultivated ground around it,
hardly sufficient TO encamp the
two battalions. These woods
abound with tigers and bears,
which infested the camp car
ryiDg off child and killing some
of the gentlemen's baggage bull
ocks." AS the rural communities
relinquished their hamlets and
drew closer together toward the
center of district, the wild beasts
pressed hungrily on their rear.
ny offered reward for each til
gers head sufficient to maintain a
peasants family In comfort for
three months; an item Of outlay
which our officers deemed so inn
portant. that. when in the finan-
ciaI crisis of 17909l, the Treasury
had to suspend all payments, 1t
made the tiger money and diet al
lowance for prisoners the sole ex-
ceptions to the rule. In vain it
spent the whole land revenue of a
frontier district in rewards for
killing wild beasts. A belt of
jungle filled with ferocious AMI
mails lay for years round the cuiti-
waited land. The official records
frequently speak of the mailbag
being carried off by tigers, and
the custom Of the mail-runners
carrying jangling rings or bell to
scare away the wild beasts, sur
vived to our own day. Lord Corn
| wallis, in 1889. had 10 sanction a
grant of public money to free the
military road from the depreda-
tions of these animals. The rava.
ges of the wild elephants were on
large scale, and their extermina-
ton formed one. of the most i'm
portant duties of the British Off
GERS after the country passed I'M
der our rule. Tigers, leopards
and wolves slew their thousands
of men, and their hundreds OF
thousands of cattle. But the herds
of wild elephants was absolutely
resistless, lifting off roofs, pushing
down walls, trampling village
underfoot as If it were city of
sand which child had built upon
the shore. In two parishes alone,
during the last few years of the
native administration, fifty-six
hamlets with their surrounding
lands "had all been destroyed and
gone to jungle, caused by the dep
relations of Wild elephants" An
other official return states that
forty market villages throughout
Bribham district had been desert
ed from the same cause. Large
reductions had to be made in the
land tax, and the Feast India
Company borrowed tame ele-
lphants from the native Viceroy's
stud in order to catch wild ones.
II had ocular proof on my jour
ney," writes an English officer in
1871, of their ravges. The poor
timid native ties his cot in tree,
to which he retires when the ele-
plants approach, and silently
views the destruction of his cot
tage, and the whole profits of his
labor" Zone night" writes an
English surveyor in 1910, sal
though / had a guard, the men of
the village close to my tent retired
to the trees, and the women hid
themselves among the cattle ,leav-
ing their huts peey TO the ele.
plants, who know very well
where to look for grain. Two
nights before, some of them had
unroofed a hut in the village, and
had eaten up all the grain which
a poor family possessed Most
fortunately for the population oil
the country" wrote the greatest
elephant-hunter of the last centu-
ry, "they delightin the sequester-
ed range of the mountains If they
preferred the plain, whole king.