A Book of the Wilderness and Jungle with Big Game Hunting Anecdotes

F. G. Aflalo

Description

A Book of the Wilderness and Jungle with Big Game Hunting Anecdotes by Aflalo, F., G. Originally published in the early 1900s in London. A book of big game hunting and natural history anecdotes contributed by numerous well known sportsmen of that era. Exciting true stories from Africa, India, Asia and other wild places worldwide. Illustrated. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Read Country Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 16 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528761505
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A BOOK OF THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE
THE WATCHFULNESS OF THE ARGALI .
A BOOK OF THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE
EDITED BY
F. G. AFLALO, F.R.G.S.
AUTHOR OF OUR AGREEABLE FRIENDS
ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR AND BLACK AND WHITE BY E. F. CALDWELL

CONTENTS
I. T HE W ILDERNESS
II. T HE C REATURES OF THE W ILDERNESS
III. T HE V ENGEANCE OF THE W ILD
IV. T HE T AMING OF THE W ILD
V. T HE P ASSING OF THE W ILD
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
T HE W ATCHFULNESS OF THE A RGALI
F ULL ON A G REAT M OOSE
T HE B OAR THINKS LITTLE OF D RINKING AT THE SAME W ATERHOLE
F ROM THE C ATTLE TO THEIR D RIVER WAS BUT A S TEP
C LEAN T HROUGH A H ERD OF H ARTEBEEST
S O AS TO B REAK THE L ION S J AW
IN BLACK AND WHITE
A ND H ISSED S AVAGELY AT THE B OAR
B ACK C AME THE E LEPHANT IN NO E ND OF A H URRY
T HE A FRICAN R HINOCEROS USES ITS H ORN FOR T OSSING ITS E NEMY
A R ARE A NTELOPE
T HE M EAL THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
I T M ANAGES TO J UMP ON THE J AGUAR S B ACK
PREFACE
A PREFACE usually explains, or professes to explain, why a book is written. It may, as a rule, be taken as read that scores of friends have urged the author not to keep his knowledge from the world. These friends then expect copies of the book when it appears. I cannot plead any such wholesale mandate. The book was written at the invitation of the publishers, and for reasons not unwelcome to those who write books.
Yet I would not have set about it if it had not seemed to fill a gap. It attempts, in fact, to be a kind of Nature-study book on the larger scale, an introduction to the study of big game in our overseas possessions. It is not merely a book of adventure with wild animals, though its pages contain many thrilling stories of actual encounters told by those who took part in them. But it aims at something over and above this sensational treatment of the subject.
Many volumes have been published during the last few years on what is known as Nature-teaching. Some of these are very good, others only good, and further grades need not be specified. All of them attempt, more or less successfully, to rouse an interest in wild life, animal and vegetable, and to moderate the thirst for destroying it. The rare fern is treated as respectfully as the rare butterfly. There can be no doubt whatever that the excellent Boy Scout movement has in great measure been responsible for this literature, for there is obvious necessity for encouraging this combination of observation and restraint in an immense body of youngsters suddenly turned loose, often without the embargo of trespass, in the most peaceful corners of England. Therefore book after book appears in which the Boy Scouts (and other boys who are too lazy to scout) are taught to watch squirrels without catapulting them and count the eggs in the blackbird s nest without taking them. This is very admirable doctrine, and, so far as England is concerned, it could not be bettered.
All lads are not, however, destined to stay in England. Many-one might say most-of the best and brightest turn their eyes to othe lands, either in adventurous ambition to see the world, or from sheer compulsion to make their way in life with greater opportunities than they can find in the Old Country. Necessity, then, and choice combine to send thousands of young fellows every year to India, Africa, Canada, or those farther colonies that lie on the other side of the world. In one sense, no doubt, the Mother Country is the loser by this steady drain on the best of her blood, and it has even been compared with the loss of the strongest and bravest of her manhood in war. Yet there is this difference that, whereas those who fall in battle are gone for all time, many who make a career overseas return home to end their days. This is true of practically all who, as soldiers, civil servants, or planters, go to India; and those who, in the kinder climates of other outposts of the Empire, settle permanently in their adopted home, remain loyal at heart to the old country and rally round her when she needs them.
This book, then, is intended as an introduction to Nature Study in those vast territories beyond the seas over which the British flag is still kept flying. How different are they from this little Great Britain of ours-of the quiet meadows with their moles and rabbits, little woods that would scarcely hide an elephant, rivers that are mere rills, lakes that might be ponds, and mountains little more than anthills when compared with the splendid majesty of Himalaya or the Rockies. Instead of such miniature scenes, we have to consider the Wilderness-desert, jungle, or mountain-vast, mysterious, in parts still untrodden by man, and the last stronghold of many beautiful or interesting creatures on the verge of disappearance.
Here also, with some exceptions, the spirit of moderation should be encouraged, and something is said of this in the concluding chapter. The Passing of the Wild is inevitable, but it may be indefinitely delayed by well-framed game-laws, which should limit the bag in the case of all animals save those which are dangerous, and which should entirely protect such species as are threatened with extinction. The Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire has chosen a clumsy title, but does admirable work in this direction, and an equally satisfactory spirit of protection has, even at the eleventh hour, become apparent in the nation which drove the wild buffalo of the prairies off the face of the earth.
At the same time, it is necessary to use common sense in framing these regulations and to recognise that the injunction to spare life cannot be worded as peremptorily in the African or Indian jungle, as, for instance, in Epping Forest. For one thing, many of the wild animals are exceedingly savage and dangerous. The lion, tiger, and leopard, to quote only three, do not hesitate to attack natives and annually destroy immense quantities of cattle, sheep, goats, and poultry. Europeans, it is true, are, as a rule, not molested by these animals unless they wound them first, though even to this immunity there are exceptions. But Europeans are morally responsible for the safety and well-being of those whose birthright they administer, and they should consider themselves bound to shoot every lion or tiger they may come across, even at some personal risk and discomfort. In the chapter entitled Vengeance of the Wild the reader will find details of terrible encounters with infuriated wild animals, many of them ending in the sportsman s death, others involving escapes little short of miraculous. No one, after reading these stories, is likely to plead for the protection of lions and tigers, at any rate, though there are, no doubt, people who hold it wicked to kill a flea.
Again, it must be borne in mind that those who travel in the heart of a country like Africa, even where sport is not the primary object of their expedition, must provide meat for their native followers as well as for themselves, and the negro eats a deal of meat when on the march. It would be ridiculous to forbid the shooting of antelopes, or even of an occasional giraffe or hippopotamus, with so many mouths to feed. It is easy for stay-at-home folk, with a butcher s shop round the corner, to preach such comfortable doctrine, but out in the wild places life is measured by other standards than those that suffice the complacent folk of cities.
Last, but not least, there is the freedom of sport. I am not going to insist, in the thrilling language of a florid prospectus recently issued with a sporting work of reference, that our national games make national heroes, for I am of those unappreciative people who believe that a man may be a hero even though he has never watched a football match or shot a pigeon out of a trap. At the same time, there can be very little doubt that those who have the courage and endurance to go into the jungle after tiger, or into the Himalaya after wild sheep, learning, as they go, the virtue of dogged patience and the arts of woodcraft, stalking, intercourse with native tribesmen and getting over difficult country in quick time-these men must be valuable assets to their country in the hour of their country s need. While, therefore, sportsmen should be subjected to fair and reasonable restraint, made to pay for their amusement, debarred from killing more than a strictly limited number of beasts, and utterly prohibited from shooting the females of some and both sexes of others, it would be a bad day that should see the sport of big game hunting unconditionally forbidden or, worse still, losing its attraction for Englishmen abroad. This book does not pretend to offer information as to camping requisites or rifles, though hints as to season and locality will here and there be found. Many adventures with dangerous game are related in its pages, and most of these have been specially contributed. There is, however, no account of shooting either giraffe or hippopotamus, for these should be shot only when meat is needed for the natives, and such grisly necessity does not fall under the head of sport. There is a single interesting story of an elephant hunt in Rhodesia. If the admission of this narrative should be at variance with the view expressed elsewhere in the book on the pity of slaying so grand a creature for its ivory, it must be remembered that, when wounded at any rate, and sometimes even without provocation, an elephant is one of the most terrible of all wild animals, and, as will be seen in Chapter III , only one other, the lion, has killed so many men in the history of African sport and exploration.
There will also be found an exciting narrative of the manner in which the native Arab hunters ride down the giraffe, killing the anim