Mythical Monsters. Gould Charles

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СКАЧАТЬ great sea-elephant, which, in Peron’s time, still migrated for breeding purposes from antarctic regions to the shores of King’s Island, where it is described by him as lining the long sandy beaches by hundreds, has been almost unseen there since the date of his visit, and its memory is only preserved in the names of Sea-Elephant Bay, Elephant Rock, &c. which are still inscribed on our charts.

      The introduction of the Dingo, by the Australian blacks in their southward migration, is supposed to have caused the extinction of the Thylacinus (T. cynocephalus), or striped Australian wolf, on the main land of Australia, where it was once abundant; it is now only to be found in the remote portions of the island of Tasmania. This destruction of one species by another is paralleled in our own country by the approaching extinction of the indigenous and now very rare black rat, which has been almost entirely displaced by the fierce grey rat from Norway.

      We learn from incidental passages in the Bamboo Books60 that the rhinoceros, which is now unknown in China, formerly extended throughout that country. We read of King Ch’aou, named Hĕa (B.C. 980), that “in his sixteenth year [of reign] the king attacked Ts’oo, and in crossing the river Han met with a large rhinoceros.” And, again, of King E, named Sëĕ (B.C. 860), that “in his sixth year, when hunting in the forest of Shay, he captured a rhinoceros and carried it home.” There is also mention made – though this is less conclusive – that in the time of King Yiu, named Yeu (B.C. 313), the King of Yueh sent Kung-sze Yu with a present of three hundred boats, five million arrows, together with rhinoceros’ horns and elephants’ teeth.

      Elephants are now unknown in China except in a domesticated state, but they probably disputed its thick forest and jungly plains with the Miaotsz, Lolos, and other tribes which held the country before its present occupants. This may be inferred from the incidental references to them in the Shan Hai King, a work reputed to be of great antiquity, of which more mention will be made hereafter, and from evidence contained in other ancient Chinese works which has been summarized by Mr. Kingsmill61 as follows: —

      “The rhinoceros and elephant certainly lived in Honan B.C. 600. The Tso-chuen, commenting on the C‘hun T‘siu of the second year of the Duke Siuen (B.C. 605), describes the former as being in sufficient abundance to supply skins for armour. The want, according to the popular saying, was not of rhinoceroses to supply skins, but of courage to animate the wearers. From the same authority (Duke Hi XIII., B.C. 636) we learn that while T‘soo (Hukwang) produced ivory and rhinoceros’ skins in abundance, Tsin, lying north of the Yellow River, on the most elevated part of the Loess, was dependent on the other for its supplies of those commodities. The Tribute of Yu tells the same tale. Yang-chow and King (Kiangpeh and Hukwang), we are told, sent tribute of ivory and rhinoceros’ hide, while Liang (Shensi) sent the skins of foxes and bears. Going back to mythical times, we find Mencius (III. ii. 9) telling how Chow Kung expelled from Lu (Shantung) the elephants and rhinoceroses, the tigers and leopards.”

      Mr. Kingsmill even suggests that the species referred to were the mammoth and the Siberian rhinoceros (R. tichorhinus).

      M. Chabas62 publishes an Egyptian inscription showing that the elephant existed in a feral state in the Euphrates Valley in the time of Thothmes III. (16th century B.C.). The inscription records a great hunting of elephants in the neighbourhood of Nineveh.

      Tigers still abound in Manchuria and Corea, their skins forming a regular article of commerce in Vladivostock, Newchwang, and Seoul. They are said to attain larger dimensions in these northern latitudes than their southern congener, the better-known Bengal tiger. They are generally extinct in China Proper; but Père David states that he has seen them in the neighbourhood of Pekin, in Mongolia, and at Moupin, and they are reported to have been seen near Amoy. Within the last few years63 a large specimen was killed by Chinese soldiery within a few miles of the city of Ningpo; and it is probable that at no distant date they ranged over the whole country from Hindostan to Eastern Siberia, as they are incidentally referred to in various Chinese works – the Urh Yah specially recording the capture of a white tiger in the time of the Emperor Süen of the Han dynasty, and of a black one, in the fourth year of the reign of Yung Kia, in a netted surround in Kien Ping Fu in the district of Tsz Kwei.

      The tailed deer or Mi-lu (Cervus Davidianus of Milne Edwardes), which Chinese literature64 indicates as having once been of common occurrence throughout China, is now only to be found in the Imperial hunting grounds south of Peking, where it is restricted to an enclosure of fifty miles in circumference. It is believed to exist no longer in a wild state, as no trace of it has been found in any of the recent explorations of Asia. The Ch‘un ts‘iu (B.C. 676) states that this species appeared in the winter of that year, in such numbers that it was chronicled in the records of Lu (Shantung), and that in the following autumn it was followed by an inroad of “Yih,” which Mr. Kingsmill believes to be the wolf.

      There also appears reason to suppose that the ostrich had a much more extended range than at present; for we find references in the Shi-Ki,65 or book of history of Szema Tsien, to “large birds with eggs as big as water-jars” as inhabiting T‘iaou-chi, identified by Mr. Kingsmill as Sarangia or Drangia; and, in speaking of Parthia, it says, “On the return of the mission he sent envoys with it that they might see the extent and power of China. He sent with them, as presents to the Emperor, eggs of the great bird of the country, and a curiously deformed man from Samarkand.”

      The gigantic Chelonians which once abounded in India and the Indian seas are now entirely extinct; but we have had little difficulty in believing the accounts of their actual and late existence contained in the works of Pliny and Ælian since the discovery of the Colossochelys, described by Dr. Falconer, in the Upper Miocene deposits of the Siwalik Hills in North-Western India. The shell of Colossochelys Atlas (Falconer and Cautley) measured twelve feet, and the whole animal nearly twenty.

      Pliny,66 who published his work on Natural History about A.D. 77, states that the turtles of the Indian Sea are of such vast size that a single shell is sufficient to roof a habitable cottage, and that among the islands of the Red Sea the navigation is mostly carried on in boats formed from this shell.

      Ælian,67 about the middle of the third century of our era, is more specific in his statement, and says that the Indian river-tortoise is very large, and in size not less than a boat of fair magnitude; also, in speaking of the Great Sea, in which is Taprobana (Ceylon), he says: “There are very large tortoises generated in this sea, the shell of which is large enough to make an entire roof; for a single one reaches the length of fifteen cubits, so that not a few people are able to live beneath it, and certainly secure themselves from the vehement rays of the sun; they make a broad shade, and so resist rain that they are preferable for this purpose to tiles, nor does the rain beating against them sound otherwise than if it were falling on tiles. Nor, indeed, do those who inhabit them have any necessity for repairing them, as in the case of broken tiles, for the whole roof is made out of a solid shell so that it has the appearance of a cavernous or undermined rock, and of a natural roof.”

      El Edrisi, in his great geographical work,68 completed A.D. 1154, speaks of them as existing down to his day, but as his book is admitted to be a compilation from all preceding geographical works, he may have been simply quoting, without special acknowledgment, the statements given above. He says, speaking of the Sea of Herkend (the Indian Ocean west of Ceylon), “It contains turtles twenty cubits long, containing within them as many as one thousand eggs.” Large tortoises formerly inhabited the Mascarene islands, but have been destroyed on all of them, with the exception of the small uninhabited Aldabra islands, north of the Seychelle group; and СКАЧАТЬ