Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-12-15

- ERICA lay behind u.s. blue blur on
III the horizon. Zanzibar, white sands
III and jade-green reef water, slanted
palms and scent of cloves, was
$50 slipping farther and farther away on
the bright seas of the Indian Ocean. We were
off to the Indies to British India, to the Dutch
East Indies, to French Indo-China.
There were the four of us who had just jour-
neyed $500 miles through Africa. 400 of them
on foot-my husband and myself; our small
Alice who had her ninth birthday in the in
terror of Africa and Miss Williams, trained
nurse, Alice's guardian-companion.
We had variety of interests in the journey
ahead of us, studies of colonial expansion native
rights of property, comparison of the native life
with that of the tribes of Africa-and the tiger
My personal horizon was striped orange and
black with that tiger.
We knew nothing of tigers. There are no
tigers in Africa though novels of South Africa
speak of tigers because the Boer farmers often
give that name to leopardS The very newness
of the game appealed to us, in Imagination at
rest in our deck chairs.
> We were lean and leg-weary from tracking
elephants through the depths of the Ituri for
est as offerings to the cannibal tribes with
whom we were Sojourning, from stalking buffalo
through deep grass, from hurrying across end
less plains after lions that had four legs to
our two.
XHTE had made the first expedition through the
untouched mountains west of Lake Ed
ward in the Belgian Kongo-a little jaunt that
we recommend to those travellers who wish to
escape from the luxuries of the too-easy beaten
path CT Africa!-we had stood all night on
shiveringy cold African highlands, our guns at
attention while raiding elephants pillaged with
in 80 feet of us-we had faced angry, uproarious
canuibalS-we had done lot of things that
would never be dull in our memories, for the
moment we were greatly content to be doing
ncthing at all more violent than looking forward
to pleasantly distant activity.
In India we were merely travellers We had
no designs upon the Bengal tiger, for shooting
tigers from elephant was no part of our
plans. My husband always hunts foot,
though not from any love of walking. 1t Is the
most difficult and the most dangerous of hunt
ing, and the most rewarding in experience
Shooting from an elephant is certainly a test
of craftsmanship, but you must lose that thrill
n danger which Is the eXhilaration of hunting
big game.
Moreover, we had read much about that
way of hunting and we heard so much from
the English passengers, on the Karagola, that
we fancied we should feel ourselves enacting
familiar drama. The clamorous drive
the beaterS advancing the sinking tawny
form slipping through the reeds-then the rifles
roar, the Snarl of the wounded beast and the
SCTlpeu uulBtNB lCSeh upon elepnanC
plucked OPPORTUNITY off by the elephants trlsty
trunk.
No, we'd go to our rendezvous on foot. For
us the pastures new Of Sumatra, where tigers
were said to abound, and initiation to whatever
type of hunting prevailed there.
So across India we went as travellers and our
only encounter with tigers was in the Victoria
Gardens at Bombay, where we stood and
watched the great striped beasts weaving to and
fro in their cramped cages and wondered if we
were actually to meet them face to face in their
native jungleS.
The tiger in captivity gives keener impress
sion of the natural wild animal than any other
The lion has a dignified, bored apathy to a man.
made world; the Indian ELEPHANT have never
seen an African captive in the zoos-is melan-
choly creature of routine; the buffalo becomes
dull, grazing brute: but the tiger is forever I'M
reconciled to his imprisonment, forever ruthless
Those implacable green eyes staring out OF
the bars at you, the throaty Snarl and the
tongue hot for blood, the lashing tail and the
1Aeat muscles ripping under the gorgeous
skin, impatient for their old, free launching
through space-all these create for you the I'M
dying savagery of the tigers soul. Nothing that
I saw Of captive tigers made me underestimate
the beast we were to meet.
India we saw briefly as a succession of pic
lures. Teeming baZaars, clamorous with
acqlisitiveness, yelled women with climbing
ankiets wandering sacred cows, filthy fakrS
with matted locks and whitened faces. golden
temples, palaces of breath-taking beauty, mud
villages of heart-breaking squalor, mosques and
arches, starving dogs gaunt ribs of hunger.
jewels of glttering spendor, rainbow silks rivers
of sewage.