The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-07-23
midas STRIPED TERROR.
Destroyer Of Nan aud DeSOlateT Of
Native Villages.


Jungles-An Incident on the Lower
Slopes Of the Ghauts, and Some Re-
Elections Thereon.
From the London Daily Telegraph
The true owner and landlord of many a
tract of country, in the parts am revisit
ing in thought is the gold-coated and
striped tyrant of the woods, the tiger
There are large ranges on the ghauts-
one might almost call them estates
which are owned, at least temporarily,
by pair of tigers, or, it may be, by an
old male tiger siugly, or by a tigress,
which has been left alone to take care
of herself and her cubs, and so develops
all the worst virtues of her fierce matern-
ity. 1t is one of these last that has come
to my mind in connection with a summer
evening in India when, along the lonely
jungle road, an Englishman with his at
PENDANTS, was approaching a village In
such a country as I am describing, the viii
lagos are few and far between.
partly because of many difficult
partly because of the resolute
way in which the more courageous wild
beasts dispute with man hereabouts his
pretensions to call himself lord of the
creation. On the plains where the cOun-
try is open and easily traversed tigers
never stay long in one place, or are likely
to pay with their hides If they do; but on
the shoulders of the hills surrounded by
thickets, which are the fringe of an in
termmablC forest, the striped raiah of
the forest is Oftentimes master of the stu
ton and takes tribute from the cattle,
goats and dogs of the community till he
can be trapped or poisoned. or until he
goes for some personal reason elsewhere.
1t is not so bad for the country people as
long as he retains his natural dread Of
man, which is so instructive that the In
dian herd boy will often fearlessly save
his oxen by shouting al the attacking IT,
ger, and even tiinging his stick at him:
nor do the slender Indian girls shrink
from leading their goats to the stream or
fetching home wood and grass be
cause tiger has killed COW
or kid just beyond the village.
But at one time or another tiger who
has been, like the rest of his kind, terri
bly, afraid Of man in any shape, laws that
dread aside on u sudden and forever, and
then becomes truly formidable. 1t is
perhaps in most cases the result of an
unattended experiment. The courage of
a tiger is the courage not of pride, but of
desperation, like that of a cat. He win
get between the roots Of the trees or the
cracks in the earth to escape, but if
escape be cut off he will attack an ele-
phaat with armed sportsmen upon it.,
which is as if an infantry soldier should
hurl himself against the masonry of a
fortress. In some fatal moment the Hin
cgiVi nj FOL Nrs
native agriculturist. or the local postman
with his jingling bolls has passed some
spot where a tiger lay in wait watching
toe distant cattle grazing, or waiting for
night time to visit some tigress who has
amOrously responded to his roar
The beast has thought himself per-
ceived, has feared to be cut off
from his usual retreat, or the vic
tim has shouted in terror, making the
tiger hysterical with fright, and then, in
a paroxysm of rage and fear, il has snarl-
ed and sprung forth and dealt in frenzy
rather than design that terrible blow
with the front paw which will stun a
wild boar and diSlOcate the neCkbOue of q
bull. Before his roar of angry surprise
has echoed through the Jungle the man
or woman, or child lies a corpse under
his claws, and instinct forces him to go
on, and to crunch the soft neck with his
JGliOW IduSS. luGI Jne secret IS OuJ,
the tiger has learned what poor
forzed thing this lord of the creation
is; how feeble his natural forces; how
useless for defense that eye that was so
dreaded; those hands that were so
crafty; those limbs that bore him 50
haughtily with his head to the sky.
Moreover, the tiger has tasted man and
found him as savory to devour as he is
easy to butcher, and from that time forth
the brute neglects no further opportunity,
but becomes d confirmed ''man-eater."
There appeared the other day in an In
dian newspaper a letter from an English
official who had come across an instance
where a young tigress in the manner al
luded to, had depopulated a district,
killed dozens Of men and women and
taken actual possession of a forest road
and tract. She began her career in July
by killing two women near a forest vii
lage and by the end of the following De-
cember had slain at least thirty persons,
becoming holder and more cunning with
each fresh murder Her beat lay in some
foot hills, and she roamed over an area of
twenty-five miles long by three or four
broad. The country was such that she
could neither be tracked for any distance
nor driven forth by heaters. She would
not kill tied buffalo, nor would shego back
TO a corpse If once disturbed. She became
at last 50 bold that She would in open day
light carry off men and women when cut
ting the crops in the terraced fields,
stalking them from above and suddenly
springing on them. The terror of her
ferocity spread through the country. The
villagers left their homes for safer re-
gions, yet even in the forests the tigress
learned to stalk the sound of an AK, and
made many victims before the woods
were proved to be even more dangerous
than the fields had been. The method Of
attack adopted was so sudden as to pre-
vent any possibility of escape; the blow
dealt so deadly as TO renderieven a cry for
help impossible. The victim was dead
and carried of before his companions
knew what had occurred. Constant
efforts were made for her dcstruc-
ton Poison, spring guns, and dead
falls were intellectually resOrted to, any
number of bunaloes were tied up at night,
and many a time the fresh trail Of kill
was taken up in hopes of obtaining shot
at the tigress, but with no result. At
last file of soldiers were requisitioned
to see what force could do to remove this
horrible animal, cunning having been
found Of no avail. The beast was killed
and was found to be young tigress, in
perfect condition the pad Of her left
forefoot had at one time been deeply cut
from side to side, but had thoroughly
healed, leaving, however, a deep scar,
which proved her presence wherever she
rOamed
The same account mentions one instance
in which two cowherds, living in a small,
grass hut in a somewhat wild forest, were