THE BLUE TIGER

Evening Star, Issue 21904, 15 December 1934, Page 22

THE BLUE TIGER

A MISSIONARY HUNTS MAULERS OF FUKIEN A tiger had raided the tiny Chinese village just before I arrived. _ The big cat had struck down and carried off to his lair a'sixteen-year-old boy, and the entire village was iu a hubbub. When a man-eater appears in a countryside in Fukien terror reigns, for the simple Chinese peasants are well-nigh helpless. They possess miserable firearms at best, and their fear of the tiger is abject (said Harry R. Caldwell). During my travels as a missionary through the hills of Fukien Province, South China, outside the great port city of Foochow, i always carried a shotgun with which to obtain food. At the sight of the shotgun which my bodyservant, Gnuk Da, carried for me, tho Chinese villagers begged me to kill the tiger, which was known to bo in tho lair near by. The thought of killing a tmer was alluring to me as a hunter, nut my shotgun was woefully inadequate for big game. Yet, as a missionary, bringing to these heathen folk a message of hope and a religion entirely, opposed to the helpless futility of devil-propitiating form or Buddhism, I should do my best to Jielp them in this tiger trouble also. I therefore assented—with misgivings. Gnuk Da built a fire, and we melted down the bird shot from some of our shells. We poured the molten lead into a hollow bamboo stalk, let it cool, and from this leaden stick we fashioned rude shot of large size. With these we loaded several of, the shells. We staked out a goat as bait on a terraced hillside near the narrow, deep ravine overgrown with tangled shrubs, where tho tiger was lurking. Then we hid ourselves on the terrace a short distance from the goat and waited. The bleating of the goat brought the tiger to the edge of the lair, about fifty yards away, The tiger hunts apparently as avidly when gorged as when hungry, and this tiger was no exception. However, be sat down on his haunches like n hug© house cat and watched the goat suspiciously. For fully an hour—it seemed like many more to me—he sat thus, occasionally moving as though to advance, then thinking better of it.

RIGHT INTO HIS GREAT BARRED FACE. Just at sunset he came. He crouched low and slipped across the comparatively open space like a house cat' approaching a bird. Then he cleared the three terraces below us with as many light bounds, and suddenly landed on the terrace with us, not more than 15ft from where wo stood. For the first time ho saw us. Instantly he forgot the goat and turned to face this new prey. Ho crouched to spring, and 1 fired right into his great barred face. Ho leaped into the air with a bloodcurdling snarl, fell in a heap, recovered himself, /and scrambled over the terrace whence he had come. As he disappeared 1 fired the other barrel oil my shotgun into his hindquarters, and he stumbled mortally wounded down the terraces. But he still had remarkable vitality, and he dragged himself into the thickets of the lair, where 1 had no desire to follow him in the twilight which had set in. Nest day we returned, with half the population of the village acting as beaters, and followed the trail of blood to where he lay dead. Had 1 had a rifle such as Gnuk Da and I now carry, I could have finished the tiger as ho sat there 'soyds away. But the shotgun requires close quarters, entirely too close for comfort when the game is an Amoy tiger. Such experiences' convinced mo that killing tigers in my parish would servo a most useful purpose in demonstrating graphically to the Chinese how the white man, with his religion of hope and confidence in himself and in his protecting' God, can overcome'the fiercest beasts. The tiger, lau hu, the scourge of that part of China, long has been regarded, as the instrument b( angry, vengeful gods against whose wrath only propitiating ceremonies could avail. With this in mind I have made the tiger a kind of persona! enemy, because, after all, he is the enemy of the people among whom I Laboured and the enemy, pf my faith. On many occasions, therefore, during the thirty years I have lived in, Fukien I have entered the lairs' of tigers, seeking to meet" the giant beast which had struck down some human being or domestic animal. THE MALTESE TERROR. The tiger has long held man at bay in those parts, has been the cause of man’s migration from the soil, and of the abandonment of hundreds of thousands of the most productive acres. And

this is a land where the bare necessities of life are barely adequate even in the best of times. The fame of my tiger shooting—Gnuk Da and 1 have accounted for thirty-two —went far and wide and opened avenues for myself and my' message which could have been entered in no other way. When some county official or a deputation from a stricken village appealed to me, I would do. my best to help. But if I had answered every appeal which came in during those thirty Ci X would have done nothing but man-eaters. My increasing duties as a missionary prevented me from warring on the tiger as 1 long to do, and as I hope to do when 1 return to China this coming winter. And the tiget which I most surely will hunt as assiduously as time and circumstances will permit is a freak, a Maltese tiger, with a blue instead of a yellow hide, although his black stripes are similar to others of his kind. This strange beast has ranged the Fukien hills lor years, has killed and devoured literally scores of human beings, and is, because of his peculiar coat, probably the most desirable trophy in big game hunting. ' All tigers arc marauders, some of them become man-killers, and others, comparatively few of the total, become man-eaters. , But a man-eater was accused of having killed more than 240 human beings in a single season. These figures were contained in a letter addressed to me by the chief official of a county to the north of my parish, appealing to me to come and hunt the savage killer. In another community sixty people were killed by one "of more man-eaters in a few weeks. Yet for all his savage power and frequent appearances, the tiger is the most elusive of game. He is here to-day and gone to-morrow, a nomad with no permanent abode, although he seems to make the rounds of many lairs in the Same location. ! He may kill the second time the same day miles away from the scene of his morning meal. Once as I hunted a tiger in the lair nearest to his' latest kill, he appeared at a village many miles away and killed the three children of one of the Chinese guides who accompanied me. And this within a hundred feet of their own door. The tiger will squeeze himself into incredibly small holes in a pen to kill a pig, goat, or cow. But he is strangely wary of entering a door to a log trap built tent-shaped., I have tried this method, and the tiger usually tries to gnaw his wav into or dig his way under the log pen, paying no attention to the open door where a

trap lies concealed or where a trigger will drop the door behind him. His enormous size ought to make the Chinese tiger foolhardy, but as a rule it does not. He frequently reaches a weight of 4001 b, and the biggest known in those parts sometimes top this figure. There is no creature thereabouts 1 save the largest of wild boar which can stand against him, and so few modern rifles are in that region that he maybe said to have no cause to fear them. Yet he is amazingly cautious and suspicious of danger. He must do the attacking himself, or else he will, usually retreat. He will even stop when about to spring —for the most trivial causes. He-has been known to abandon a kill because of the shouting of some boys at play more than a quarter of a mile away. Ho often flees when shouted at, apparently hating the sound of a human voice, although the cries of his victims, once he has attacked them, disturb him not at all. “ OLD HORSE FACE.” One man-eater that I hunted as consistently as my duties as missionary allowed had been shot at and missed so often by Chinese hunters that he was proclaimed by them an evil god and believed to possess a charmed life, He was a huge beast with pale yellow hide and unusually long hair for < felis_ tigria Amoyensis. as the South China tiger is called' scientifically. The natives knew him as “ Old Horse Face.” I had received many requests from villages to shoot this beast, hut one day a Chinese friend of mine was digging in his garden when the. great cat struck him down. I set after .the tiger at once. Many times 1 staked put a goat and waited until darkness fell-hut Horse Face, although he had killed in the neighbourhood that day, never came. ■ One clay Old Horse Face spied me as I sat on a stone,by tbo roadside resting during a long journey afoot. As I sat there that sixth sense which sometimes warns man of danger caused me to look sharply about. _ Behind me was a liiuside covered with vegetation. As J looked I became aware of a movement, although I could see nothing when I stared. With my rifle across my knees 1 faced the hillside. . Suddenly a large tiger sprang from the cover and charged down toward nie, It was Old Horse Face. I waited to make sure of my aim, then fired. The huge cat sat in his tracks, dead. Terrible killer that he was. Old Horse Face died without a struggle. It seemed an ignominious end for such a cruel mon-

ster. -Not even once did lie lash his great tail ns his big body flattened on to the ground and lay still. * The higlipower ball had done its work. He weighed 3741 b. and his shaggy pelt made a nice rug for my study. HUNDREDS OF HUMAN VICTIMS. But the tiger I have long sought to kill—the desire dates back many years —still carries on his murderous career unharmed. He’is the .Maltese tiger, the Black Devil, as the Chinese call him, “ U-gui.” He is huge, weighing, those who have seen him agree, more than 400 pounds. He is a man-eater of the most ferocious type, and his human victims probably reach into the hundreds. Mystery surrounds this strange beast. Is he. a melanistic freak, _ like a black deer and other specimens in the animal kingdom known to science as such ? Or is he a sub-species of the Amoy tiger? No one knows. Never has a Maltese tiger pelt been taken so far as inquiry can discover. Boy Chapman Andrews, who hunted the Maltese beast with me once, believes ho is a brunette freak and a single < beast of unusual qualities. Perhaps he is. But there is no doubt whatsoever of his existence. He has been seen, has rondo countless forays on villages and outlying farmhouses, and everyone , agrees on his description. Every morning for eight consecutive days ho dozed on a sunny terrace just back of a village, where the entire population of about 800 people saw him clearly. . The Maltese tiger performed a prodigious feat of strength which I hesitate to relate for fear I shall not be believed. A-Chinese peasant hut was built close to the side of a hill, and behind the hut there was a pen dug out of the hill. In this pen were kept a cow arid a yearling calf. At dusk one night the Maltese tiger leaped down into the pen, killed the big calf, which weighed hundreds of pounds, and, holding the- calf in its jaws, leaped, back to the embankment. I measured this embarikment a day or two later, and fouhd it to be a few inches more than twelve feet high. The calf was so big a strong man could hardly have lifted, it. Yet the great tiger took it in his jaws and leaped twelve feet upward over a perpendicular embankment. I once Had a chance to shoot this blue beast, but- circuhrstances prevented my taking the _ famous pelt. • He came along a trail near where Gnuk Da and I had staked out a goat. We saw him as ho sat down on his haunches, show-

ing his breast, which was so' blue I thought it was the faded blue coat of a Chinese before I descried, the tiger’s outline. Then wo saw he had lost interest in.: the goat and was about to spring on two little .Chinese boys gathering -firewood in a hollow nearby. I could not shoot at once,,as. leaves arid ferns were in the way to _ deflect my, bullets, and there was no time to los§. Then, too, should I only succeed in wounding him he would most surely maul the little fellows to death as he fell into the ravine. I shouted to him* and he bounded into the brush. , The little boys were safe,- and ray great chance was gone. ; ■ When I return to Fukien, shortly, I am going to devote niy entire spare time to hunting this Maltese killer cat until his pelt is mine. And when I get it no museum can have it, I fear. 1 want it not only for itself as a great game trophy, hut to solve, if possible* the mystery of his birth.—Harold 8,Caldwell in the ‘ New York Herald* Tribune.’ ‘