Anecdotes of Big Cats and Other Beasts. David Alec Wilson

and M‘Kenzie, riding home. They had elected to enjoy their Christmas holidays a-hunting, and been away for several days.

      “Hunting what?”

      “Buffalo.”

      “I believe the buffalo is a dangerous beast to tackle.”

They looked at each other in a way that showed they had an adventure to tell. They had gone with another European and a crowd of followers to a muddy island in the delta, where a wild bull buffalo lived. They had failed to find him, and were all walking carelessly away, when he accidentally [88] met them. The sight of a mob where he had lived alone, like Robinson Crusoe, startled the old bull, and he charged. Then magistrates, policemen and followers stampeded in many directions. With the instinct inherited from our forgotten arboreal ancestors, the fugitives sought refuge in the trees; but the trees were too small to lift them above the reach of the horns, and one or more would have been killed if Mr. Dunn had not stumbled and fallen in the mud. This stopped the buffalo, which tried to pick him up, but could not do it, as he had the sense to lie flat. So it passed on; and Dunn then crawled to where his servant had dropped his gun, and recovered it, and shot the buffalo.

3. TAMING THE BUFFALO

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      This adventure shows how easily lives might be lost in hunting the wild buffalo, about which the herdsmen who know him best have told me what should, perhaps, be better known, were it only to prevent misunderstandings. There is not the slightest need for war between buffaloes and us. They are not natural enemies, like the tiger. They are not even troublesome to tame, like the deer.

[89] “Though terrible to kill, they are easy to catch,” say the herdsmen familiar with their haunts. “You have only to decoy them into a pen, and once there they can sell for a price at once, like those born in the village. They are more valuable,” said one herdsman.

      “But the taming?”

      “That’s nothing. Let them starve till they are weak. Then feed them up, slowly. Make them feel they are being fed by men.”

      “They can see that.”

      “No, for you generally bandage their eyes. You have to speak to them and not leave them to eat as if they found the food themselves. Let them know they owe it to you.”

      “You don’t think of that at all,” said another man. “Neither do they. This is what happens. There’s generally a lot of them, like a herd. Some would be dead, before others were weak. If you just flung the food in anyhow, the weaklings would be the last to get it. You keep an eye on them, so as not to lose any; and whenever you see that one is weak, you feed that one.”

      “It comes to the same thing,” rejoined the man who spoke first. “They learn that men are their friends, and then they’ll do anything you want.”

      “Do they work willingly?”

“Who ever did? They do what they have to, like [90] other people. A buffalo is so mighty that he hardly needs to make an effort to pull the plough. The one new caught and tamed does as well as the rest.”

      “Why is he worth more?”

      “He isn’t,” said the other man, quoting figures. An argument followed, and in the end they agreed. A newly-tamed herd might sell for less per head than village-born cattle, if the wild ones caught included more old animals and calves. Compare contemporaries, and the wild one is the better.

      “Why?”

      Various reasons were suggested, including one that was oddly expressed. “The wild animal is the more vigorous, because he has never been spoiled by working. Think how different I would have been if I had never had to work for my living!”

      This was absurd. Till we came here, with our commercial creed that money makes the man, education in Burma was universal and free to the poor, and, however it be in England, where factory workers breed in slums and breathe polluted air, in Burma the working man lives mostly in the fields, and is sturdier, and often more sensible, than the idler. The herdsmen reluctantly admitted this; and it led to a digression.

In a Socratic way, I explained the gospel of work, with half-and-half acceptance as long as I [91] quoted only Chinese maxims and examples; but, happening to hint that the English also had that to teach the East, I spoiled the lesson. There was a general laugh. “When do the English work?” Then one asked the other: ”Did you ever see an Englishman working?” They said to each other that the only Englishmen who worked were one or two, whom the others did not speak to, but treated like the Pagoda-slaves of native Burma. We returned to the buffaloes.

      “Why is the wild one the better?”

      “He is stronger, and fresher, and quieter.”

      “Quieter?”

      “Yes. He thinks of men, women and children as his feeders, and will never hurt anybody, and a little child can lead him.”

      “A child can drive the village cattle.”

      “The wild ones tamed are safest of all.” (It should be noted that the domestic buffalo is dangerous occasionally, and people are sometimes hurt or killed by them.)