by David Day
As for the original human population of Tasmania: the last of the Palowi tribal aboriginal people were hunted down and exterminated within forty years of the 1803 colonization. In the 1840’s the last Tasmanians were housed by missionaries in the original convict colony buildings at Derwent River. Thirty years later, Trugenaner (Truganini), the last full-blood Tasmanian, died there in 1876.
THE NIGHT STALKER
Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger – 1936
1.
Tasmanian Tiger, Kangaroo Wolf
Pouched Dog, Hyena Opossum
No name seemed to fit
This creature of the night
Head and teeth of a wolf
Eyes and stripes of a tiger
Gaping jaws of a crocodile
It had the torso of a hyena
The backward pouch of an opossum
Front legs of a dog
Hind legs and tail of a kangaroo
Resorting to the Lego-language
Of the ancient Greeks
We came up with “Thylacine”
Which is “a pouched something”
Shy and elusive
Never a danger to man
Yet, somehow we made it
A nightmare beast
2.
Still struggling toward definition,
We gave it a second Greek name:
“Cynocephalus” or “Dog-head”
Like a pagan underworld god
The creature didn’t know
It was a chimera
Thought it was just itself
Not a composite riddling beast
Some kind of sphinx
In a land of the kangaroo and platypus
Who could say what was strange?
In fact, in its own dreamtime
We were the nightmare
3.
In this creature’s world
What was truly monstrous
What was absolutely deadly
Was us
For all the First Tasmanians
Both men and beasts
Nothing so strange
Had entered their world
Since the end of the ages of ice
Nothing so sudden
And dangerous
Since the beginning
When molten fire poured down
From the night sky into the boiling sea
THE TIGER’S TALE
THIRD WATCH 5 P. M. NONE
BALI TIGER – 1937 – Panthera tigris balica
Pliny the Elder – 65 AD
Natural History , Rome
Hyrcania and India produce the Tiger, an animal of tremendous swiftness and ferocity. The late Emperor Augustus was the first person who exhibited at Rome a Tiger in the arena. This was in the consulship of Quintus Tubero and Fabius Maximus, at the dedication of the theatre of Marcellius, on the fourth day before the nones of May: the late Emperor Claudius exhibited four at one time.
Augustus Caesar’s introduction of the first Tigers into the Roman arena is also mentioned by Suetonius in his Life of Augustus; while Lampridius informs us that the mad teenage Emperor Heliogabalus yoked Tigers to his chariot in imitation of the god Bacchus. Martial, who lived a little after Pliny, speaks of Tigers in considerable numbers exhibited in Rome by Domitian.
Christian Brothers – 1150 AD
The Book of Beasts , Cambridge
Tigris the Tiger gets his name from his rapid pace for the Persians, Greeks and Medes used to call the arrow ‘tygris’. The beast can be distinguished by his manifold markings, by his courage and by his wonderful velocity. And after him the River Tigris is named because it is the swiftest of all rivers.
This description is from the Cambridge Book of Beasts (1150 AD), one of the many famous Latin bestiaries which were medieval books of natural (and supernatural) history. In large part, they were encyclopaedic gleanings from classical authors like Lucretius and Pliny combined with traveller’s tales and folklore. This Book of Beasts was translated from the Latin by T. H. White, the medievalist and author of the Arthurian novel The Once and Future King. White’s translation begins with a quotation by T. H. Huxley which perhaps explains something of the bestiary’s eternal appeal: “Ancient traditions, when tested by severe processes of modern investigation, commonly enough fade away into mere dreams; but it is singular how often the dream turns out to have been a half-waking one, presaging a reality.”
Baron Oscar Vojnick – 1911
On the East India Group of Islands , Bali
In the western part of Bali Island, along the northern shore, in the mountains of Groendoel, we discovered tiger footprints. On November 2nd while collecting twigs to be used for the construction of a fence around the traps, the carcass of a freshly killed kidang [roe deer] was encountered by our people. The trap was set in front of the kidang in the thicket. Minaut was almost certain that the tiger would be caught in another day. I was much less convinced, as the many human tracks could have warned the tiger. But no, it came in to feed, and the trap caught one of its forelegs, just below the wrist.
In 1912, Ernst Schwarz was able to write in Big Game Hunting that the Tiger was “fairly common in Bali.” Two decades later it was gone. The Bali Tiger was the smallest of eight subspecies of Tigers, and the first to become extinct. Today, three (Bali, Java, Caspian) of the eight subspecies of Tiger are extinct, and another four are critically endangered. The Tiger had survived millennia of hunting by man with impunity, but when modern high-powered rifles became widespread, Tiger populations rapidly declined to near extirpation everywhere.
Arthur de Carlo Sowerby – 1923
“China’s Fur Trade,” China Journal , Hong Kong
The Tiger is the most dreaded and highly prized of the carnivores. Not only is his skin of value, but his whole carcass; for the Chinese believe that the bones, blood, heart and even the flesh of the tiger have medicinal properties of rare power, and will pay a goodly price for concoctions brewed by the apothecary that contain such ingredients as powdered tiger’s knee-cap, or clotted tiger’s blood. The heart of the tiger is supposed to impart to the consumer the courage and strength of the tiger itself. On this account the tiger has been hunted till he is almost extinct.
Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough in 1920 wrote concerning Tiger fetishes: “The Miris of Assam prize tiger’s flesh as food for men; it gives them strength and courage. But ‘it is not suited for women; it would make them too strong-minded’. In Korea the bones of tigers fetch a higher price than those of leopards as a means of inspiring courage. A Chinaman in Seoul bought and ate a whole tiger to make himself brave and fierce.”
George Jennison – 1928
Noah’s Cargo , Java
The Rampoc, or ‘Tiger fight’ waged against men, is a Court ceremonial in which the Royal bodyguard, in four ranks and armed with long pikes forms a square of fifty yards, in the centre of which the tiger cage is deposited covered with straw. The door is held in place by a rope of equally inflammable material. The Court being assembled, two officials of high rank walk in sedately to the sound of music, fire the straw, and return equally composedly back to the ranks that open to receive them. Meanwhile, the tiger, maddened by burns and fear, is bounding frantically in the cage until the door falls, when it is sure to leave at once. Outside it may, and often does, hesitate; it looks round for a foe on which to vent its fury, and dashes, as a rule, for the two men whose isolation marks them for attack. It is received on the spears, and not uncommonly is impaled by its own leap and weight.
The second smallest species, the Javan Tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica), was also hunted to extinction some time around 1988. Curiously, it was on Java’s Trini Island that one of the oldest human skeletal remains was discovered in 1891: the famous 700,000 year old Java Man (Pithecanthropus erectus/Homo erectus). It was also here, just over a century later, that the oldest Tiger skeletal remains were discovered: the 1,200,000 year old Trini Tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis).
VOS Company Report – 193
1
Dutch East Indian Company Survey , Bali
In Bali the Tiger is one of the five traditional totemic Barong dancers: Tiger, Boar, Dragon, Elephant and Lion. Each represents an area of Bali that has its own protective spirit modelled on a different animal. Barong is the King of Spirits and the leader of this host of good spirits. Barong is in mortal combat with the Rangda Witch of Black Magic and her evil graveyard spirits. Despite being numbered among the protective spirits, the Tigers of Bali have enjoyed no popular protection in return. A few of this race yet live in West Bali but are having a hard time. They are much sought after by hunters from Java, so they will certainly disappear within a few years.
This Dutch East Indies Survey reported that uncontrolled hunting by Dutch colonial trophy hunters on excursions from Java was rife and fashionable. The report’s prediction of extinction proved correct: the last known Bali Tiger was a female shot at Sumbar Kima in West Bali on 27 September 1937.
The third Tiger extinction was an animal over twice the size of the Bali and Java subspecies. The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) measured over 10 feet in length and weighed in excess of 500 pounds. A government and military policy of tiger eradication in Russia, combined with uncontrolled hunting in the Caspian regions of Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, so depleted the population by the 1940’s, that there were thought to be only a dozen left in the mountains of northern Iran by the late 1950s. Sometime between 1960 and 1980, the Caspian Tiger became extinct.
With the exception of the Indian Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) in protected reserves in India, all other surviving tiger subspecies are critically endangered and number only in the hundreds in the wild. These are the Siberian Tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), the Chinese Tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), the Sumatran Tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) and the Indo-Chinese Tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti).
LAST RITES
Bali Tiger – 1937
The little prince of tigers
Is dead
The chime of temple bells
An army of votive arrows is offered
A long rope of prayer tethers the sun
Master of the emerald forest
Lord of the crystal waterfall
That feeds the sacred lake
Dread foe of the Monkey King
And the Dragon Master
He was like a flame in the forest
His fearful laughter was in the land
Now he is the small flickering light
Of an altar candle
The yellow tallow of memory
Slowly flowing away
VIKINGS AND GAREFOWL
FIRST WATCH 6 P. M. VESPERS
GREAT AUK OR GAREFOWL – 1844
Alca (Pinguinus) impennis
Jacques Cartier – 1534
Journals of Jacques Cartier, Isle of Birds, Newfoundland
Some of these birds are as large as geese, being black and white with a beak like a crow’s. They are always in the water, not being able to fly in the air, inasmuch as they have only small wings about the size of half one’s hand, yet they move as quickly along the water as other birds fly through the air. And these birds are so fat that it is marvellous. In less than an hour we filled two boats full of them, as if they had been stones, so that besides them which we did eat fresh, each of our ships did powder and salt five or six barrels of them.
Jacques Cartier’s account of this unequal meeting of Great Auk and Man on the Isle of Birds (Funk Island) off the coast of Newfoundland in 1534 is the first written record of Europeans hunting these birds in North America: “And on the twenty-first of the said month of May we set forth from this [Catalina] harbour with a west wind, and sailed north, northeast of Cape Bonavista as far as the Isle of Birds, which island was completely surrounded and encompassed by a cordon of loose ice, split up into cakes. In spite of this belt of ice our two longboats were sent off to the island to procure some of the birds, whose numbers are so great as to be incredible, unless one has seen them; for although the island is about a league in circumference, it is so exceedingly full that one would think they had been stowed there. In the air and round about are an hundred times as many more as on the island itself.”
A curious theory links the Great Auk with the discovery of North America. It proposes that the Icelandic Vikings, already familiar with Auks and aware in a general sense of bird migrations, would have noticed the seasonal disappearances and departures of vast rafts of birds in their western waters. It would have been a small step for the Vikings to conclude that these Garefowl were travelling to other, similar islands in the west. Consequently, it has been suggested they could have followed the migrating legions of Auks, who would have led them first to Iceland, and later to Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Great Auk was the strongest and swiftest of northern swimming and diving birds, and almost immune to marine predators; while its rocky nesting sites in the rough North Atlantic were for millions of years inaccessible to men. It numbered in the tens of millions until recent historic times.
Anthonie Parkhurst – 1578
Hakluyt’s Voyages, Isle of Penguins, Newfoundland
There are sea Gulls, Murres, Duckes, wild Geese, and many other kind of birdes store, too long to write, especially on one island named Penguin, where we may drive them on a planke into our ship as many as shall take her. These birds are also called, Penguins and cannot flie; there is more meate in one of these then in a goose; the Frenchmen that fish neere the grand baie, doe bring small store of flesh with them, but victuall themselves always with these birdes.
Cartier’s “Isle of Birds” of 1534, Parkhurst’s “Isle of Penguins” of 1578, and Cartwright’s “Funk Island” in 1792 are one and the same rookery visited by all three voyagers, and by countless others over nearly three centuries. The summer – the nesting season – was the only time that Great Auks could be taken, for the rest of the year they dispersed and lived at sea, where they were safe from human hunters. So each summer, the men came to their rookeries and set up camps where they waited for the birds to come to them. Stone corrals were constructed on the islets, and the birds were driven into them and slaughtered.
Slaying the Auks during the nesting season compounded the destruction; as did egg collection, as each nesting pair only produced a single egg. This slaughter and depredation continued unabated for nearly three centuries. The general presumption of most observers was summed up in one hunter’s account written in 1622: “God made the innocence of so poor a creature to become such an admirable instrument for the sustentation of man.”
By the Vikings, this bird was known as the Geirfugl. And by the Irish it was known as Gearrabhul – meaning “the strong stout bird with the spot” – which was corrupted through usage to “Garefowl.” Among the Welsh, who once hunted the bird on islets off Britain’s shores, they were called Pingouins, which means “white head.” The Great Auk was the original “Penguin: ” the “penguins” of the southern hemisphere having derived their name from British explorers who presumed these flightless Antarctic birds were a southern variety of the North Atlantic bird.
George Cartwright – 1792
Journal of Transactions and Events, Funk Island, Newfoundland
Innumerable flocks of sea-fowl breed upon this isle every summer, which are of great service to the poor inhabitants of Fogo when the water is smooth, they make their shallop fast to the shore, lay their gang-boards from the gunwale of the boat to the rocks, and then drive as many penguins on board, as she will hold: for, the wings of those birds being short, they cannot fly, nor escape. The birds which people bring thence, they salt and eat, in lieu of salt pork.
Fishermen and Newfoundland colonists flocked to these rookeries every nesting season to kill birds and steal eggs. Also, many new industrial uses were found for these birds: feather beds, meat for bait, oil for lighting lamps, oil for fuel for stoves, and collar bones for fish hooks; and dried Auks (full of oil) were used as torches. The annual wholesale gathering of eggs
was an especially destructive practice. Just one vessel commanded by a Captain Mood took 100,000 eggs in a single day.
By 1810 Funk Island was the only West Atlantic rookery left, and these constant summer raids by oil and feather merchants’ crews soon finished off even this last vast North American nesting site as well. The only place Great Auks existed after Funk Island rookery’s demise was a group of islands on the southwestern tip of Iceland. Most Auks withdrew to a lonely outcropping of rock called Geirfuglasker, or “Auk Rocks” – which was a lonely and dangerous outcropping of rock so rugged, it was safe from all but the most determined and foolhardy of hunters.
In 1830, the already near-extinct species suffered a further cataclysmic disaster. A volcano erupted under the sea near Iceland and caused a seaquake that resulted in the destruction of Geirfugl Island. The last rookery of the Great Auk sank beneath the sea, and the colony was destroyed and scattered.
It became apparent that about 60 Great Auks survived the sinking of Geirfuglasker. These birds took refuge on an even smaller and equally dangerous rocky outcrop, known as Eldey Island. It is from this last station that nearly all of the skins and eggs now found in European collections have been obtained, and during the fourteen years (1830-1844) that the Garefowl frequented this rock, one bird after another was hunted down for museum bounties, until there were just two left.