Evening star., 1946-04-07
Hoir-Roising Tales
Of TigerHunting
In JunqIe WHds
MAN-EATERs OF KUMAON

By Jim Corbett. (Ortord Uni
perSity Press; s2J
Ready made to the taste of real
life thriller lovers is this current
Book of-the-M Month Club selection,
which combines the best qualities
Of Misunderstanding" the jungle
book, and your favorite horror strip.
It's a tale of tiger hunting by a
real tiger hunter, and it has about
everything such a tale can have.
Kumaon is mountainous district
Of Northern India. A man-eater,
as the term is used in this book, is
q tiger which has gone on diet
of human flesh. Jim Corbett is
hunter. extraordinary who has spe-
cialized in wiping man-eaters out.
In this modestly written little book
Maj. Corbett tells of eight of his
successful tiger hunts, seven of
whlcA were against man-eaters. Sir
Maurice Hallett, Governor of the
United Provinces, and Lord Lin
llthgoW, former Viceroy of India,
contribute foreWords vouching for
the truth of the hair-raising tales.
Halr-ralsing they are-mainly in
what they report concerning the
conduct of the tigers prior to their
taking off. Without Maj. Corbett's
account it would be impossible for
readers such as ourselves, to whom a
nousef1y or a SemioccaSional skunk
is the utmost in animal menaceS,
to get even an approximate idea
OF the effect of the presence of a
man-eater on an unprotected native
Indian countryside. Over as much
as 40 square miles one of these
beasts can literally rule, as Mai.
Corbett tells it, putting an absolute
end to travel and the pursuits of
agriculture and grazing by which
the people live. For months, and
sometimes for years, the killer
ranges at will, taking scores of VIC
TINS, so that, after a while, there
will be hardly a household in the
territory which has not lost a mem
Der to its appetite. The toll of the
Champawat man-eater was 200 in
Nepal and 234 in Kumaon. The
ChoWgarh man-eater accounted for
64 victims. Both beasts, moreover,
went at large for more than four
years. The gap between the awful
depredations of such creatures and
the effectiveness of governmental
measures for determination is one
of the astonishing things revealed in
the majors book
Rewards are offered, he says, and
special hunting parties organized
but, apparently, when one party
fails months pass before another is
sent out.
Almost as astonishing as the
governments laxness in the matter
is the helplessness of the natives,
as this book reveals it. 1t is hard
to imagine population of American
pioneers, for instance, shivering in
terror for as long as four years
while ravening beast freely lived
off their numbers. 1t is quite i'm
possible to imagine a tribe of Ameri-
can Indians submitting to a murder
GUS animal even in their pregun-
powder days. But the natives of
British India seemingly have not
resources whatever against the tiger
turned killer. They are not even
competent woodsmen, according toI
Maj. Corbett. When he went out
after man-eater he went, by choice,
alone, regarding the natives as a
hindrance rather than help.
His reports of his hunts are simple
day-by-day records. He would be
sometimes for weeks on the trail of
one tiger.
Maj. Corbett's narrative is full of
jungle lore which, to the uninitiated.
reads like dime thrillers but which
must still be accepted. He heard a
monkey call and knew at once not
only where the tiger was but what
it was doing. He read not only
his tigers tracks but their minds.
AS I said, it reads incredibly-but
fact stands that the major killed
the murderers where other hunters
failed.
With all that, his book is some
times on the dull side for the very
reason that, in the literary sense,
one tiger hunt is very much like
another and day-by-day reports of
unsuccessful tracking, carried over
weeks, come to have a noticeable
sameness to them. But it is a re-
markable record. Even more than
for its accounts of hunting virtu-
osity, its revelation of conditions in
the native villages is significant.
n~L DLLJ