Chapter C: B. Brown, speaking of the causes, whatever these may be, which (5)

Whenever wolves hunt in numbers, it is that one part may lie in ambush, and the other drive the game, or because they design to assail enemies they are well aware a few could not overcome. These packs only hold together for a short time, and their formation depends upon the accidental presence of several separate bands in the same vicinity who are attracted by a common object, or follow each other’s motions like carrion birds. This is what happens in the neighborhood of remote and isolated settlements in Northern Europe, when human beings are the game they pursue. Within Russian forests and those which lie near lonely villages in Sweden, Norway, and Swedish-Lapland, small packs form as darkness veils the weird, melancholy, desolate beauty of winter landscapes. They meet irregularly, with the vague, fierce feelings of an excited mob. The band is brought together by howlings, and it sweeps outward into the open on an indefinite quest. Woe betide the wolf who gives out during this wild gallop, or slips his shoulder on the frozen crust. Desperation may enable him to conceal the accident for a few strides, but discovery is certain, and he is instantly torn to pieces and devoured. If a fresh trail be found, the pack follows it. Human voices or the sound of sleigh-bells brings down the wolves like a storm-driven cloud. Men often go out with drags fastened to sledges, and as their purpose is simply to kill, and they are prepared, and do not venture too far from the villages, these hunters generally succeed in their undertaking. But not always; many a sleighing party of this kind has not returned, neither men nor horses. Many a belated wayfarer and party of travellers have never reached their journey’s end. A fleet horse will for a time outrun wolves, even when by stealthy approaches they have almost closed around him, and this the author knows from experience; but it will not answer to go far, for in that case the fugitive will certainly be caught.

Turning now to the most celebrated, as well as the largest and fiercest member of this family, we find that the Scandinavian wolf is in many places increasing in numbers, despite the various means which are made use of for its destruction. L. Lloyd (“Scandinavian Adventures”) ascribes this to immigration from Russia and Finland. However this may be, recent writers still echo the lamentations of Olaus Magnus, and of quaint old Bishop Pontappidan (“Natural History of Norway”) to the effect that the country is overrun by them. Thus Von Grieff asserts that in many localities “the wolf taxes the peasant higher than the crown,” and J. A. Strom expresses himself to much the same effect.

A wolf will eat any sort of flesh, irrespective of its kind or condition, and when pressed by hunger he consumes vegetable substances also. Pontappidan says that one was killed whose “stomach was filled with moss from the cliffs and birch tops.” Humboldt states that famishing wolves swallow earth like the Otomac Indians on the Orinoco.

It is the common or gray wolf--the only one known in Scandinavia, although at one time Nilsson attempted to erect its black variety, _Canis lycaon_, into a species--which those authors referred to speak of when deploring this creature’s destructiveness. Lloyd thinks that it cannot be extirpated from the mountain and forest regions of Sweden and Norway. The animal is prolific. A female, after ten weeks’ gestation, brings forth from four to six, and even nine cubs. They are born in burrows, inherit great constitutional vigor, and are well tended upon the part of their parents. Whatever else may be denied the wolf, some praise for domestic virtues cannot in fairness be withheld from him. He hunts diligently and disinterestedly for the support of his mate and young, and when these (which are at first nearly black and look like foxes, except that they have not a white tip to their tails) are able to travel, both parents carefully supervise their education. Various diseases are prevalent among wolves, and many die of sickness; but if it be true that hydrophobia is unknown among those of North-western Europe, their exemption from a disorder which afflicts this species in all cold, and even temperate climates elsewhere, must be looked upon as an unexplained fact. During the rigorous and prolonged winters of high latitudes large numbers starve to death. Men shoot, trap, and poison them at every opportunity; they often kill one another, and when the ice breaks up in the greater inlets of the north Atlantic and Baltic, multitudes of wolves that have been hunting the young of seals upon their frozen surfaces perish.

Buffon seems to have furnished the wolf’s character ready made for use by subsequent writers, since these appear to have done little more than copy or comment upon his text. “_Il est naturellement grossier et poltron,” he says, “mais il devient ingénieux par besoin, et hardi par necessité; pressé par la famine, il brave le danger_”--that is, it will come out of the depths of forests, and attack domestic animals. “_Enfin, lorsque le besoin est extrême, il s’expose à tout, attaque les femmes et les enfans, se jette même quelquefois sur les hommes; devient furieux par ces excés, qui finissent ordinairement par la rage et la mort._”

Now if one reads, not all, for that would be impossible, but a great many accounts of actual observations upon wolves, and has at the same time some personal knowledge of these brutes, the foregoing will prove to be unsatisfactory. When special traits, and especially those of courage and enterprise, are examined in books, flat contradictions begin to appear. Colonel Dodge (“Plains of the Great West”) maintains that the gray wolf of America is an arrant coward. Ross Cox (“Adventures on the Columbia River”) asserts that he is “very large and daring.” Nobody has ever denied that wolves are formidable creatures which can be dangerous if they choose; what their annalists have done is to proceed upon the assumption that they are exactly alike everywhere, and give the general disposition and character of an entire race from a few scattered specimens seen by themselves in some particular localities. Under any circumstances it would be useless to discuss the wolf’s courage without having previously settled what courage in a wolf is, and how it displays itself. Principle and sentiment have nothing to do with it; appetite and passion are its sole incentives. To compare it, then, with that of some savage warrior in whom a certain standard of action always exists, is unallowable. Yet this is continually done, not openly and avowedly perhaps, but evidently in effect.

Audubon (“Quadrupeds of North America”) saw wolf-traps in Kentucky. “Each pit was covered with a revolving platform of interlaced boughs and twigs, and attached to a cross-piece of timber that served for an axle. On this light platform, which was balanced by a heavy stick of wood fastened to the under side, a large piece of putrid venison was tied for a bait.” Visiting one of these pits in the morning, with its constructor and his dogs, three wolves, “two black and one brindled,” were found to have been caught. “They were lying flat on the earth, with their ears close down to their heads, and their eyes indicating fear more than anger.” It is said by Felix Oswald, (“Zoölogical Sketches”) that pitfalls always cow animals. At all events, in this case, the farmer, axe and knife in hand, descended and hamstrung them. Audubon stood above with a gun and the dogs, to whom these helpless creatures were thrown to be worried. None of the captives made any resistance worth mentioning because they were such cowards! If a lion of the Atlas, however, comes ramping down upon an Arab _douar_, leaps over the fence of a cattle-pen, and finds himself at the bottom of a trench, he meets death with the same resignation. But that is on account of the dignity of his character. No mortal knows what either animal thinks or feels, and, since there is no difference between their demeanors, it would be quite as easy to make the death scene of the wolf poetic, and probably fully as much in accordance with the truth.

What has been said of fortitude applies equally to other qualities. It seems reasonable to allow wolves some part in deciding what enterprises they shall undertake, which way an attack ought to be made, and whether the risk of any adventure is likely to overbalance its advantages. They are very well acquainted with the business which it falls to their lot in life to transact, and since the days have gone when Greek lycanthropes, German währ-wolves, and French loupgarous appeared among mankind, not anybody is able to put himself in this animal’s place so completely as to appreciate those motives by which it is actuated.

Wolves differ with their geographical position, with the peoples that come in contact with them, and in virtue of individual peculiarities. What has been done by them anywhere, might undoubtedly occur again if the conditions remained unaltered. Dr. Henry Lansdell (“Russian Central Asia”) knew of Tartars on the steppes who rode down the wolf and beat it to death with their heavy whips. He likewise learned that shepherds in the Caucasus protected their flocks by means of dogs. Yet his native attendants, as he reports with some surprise, actually allowed themselves to become alarmed at the threatened attack of a pack on the road from Kabakli to Petro-Alexandrovsk.

T. W. Atkinson’s views (“Oriental and Western Siberia”) were not so decided, and his experiences in these latitudes had been different. He saw plenty of wolves in the valley of the Ouba, and they had followed his party on the plains of Mongolia. Cossacks assured him (“Travels in the Region of the Amoor”) that travellers upon the steppe were often devoured, and bands of these grim beasts frequently gathered about his camp by night. On one occasion while hunting he observed a fine maral--the large stag of high altitudes in the Ac-tan, Ale-tan, and Mus-tan regions--run into by three of these brutes. “The ravenous beasts were tearing the noble creature to pieces while yet breathing,” when two _bearcoots_--black Tartar eagles--sailed over the spot, and one swooped. “The wolves caught sight of them in an instant ... and stood on their defence.... In a few seconds the first _bearcoot_ struck his prey; one talon was fixed on his back, the other on the upper part of his neck, completely securing the head, while he tore out the liver with his beak. The other eagle seized another wolf, and shortly both were as lifeless as the animal they had hunted.”

This explorer, however, so far departed from the rule in such cases made and provided, that he did not immediately generalize the character of all the wolves in Asia from his observations of those two that permitted themselves to be killed by a pair of birds. On the contrary, when a pack followed his party in Mongolia, he was prepared to look upon it as a serious matter. They were in camp, the weather was mild, game abounded, and it was a beautiful night. “Before long we could hear their feet beat upon the ground as they galloped towards us. In a very short while the troop came up and gave a savage howl. The men now placed some dry bushes on the fire (which had been allowed to sink by the Kalmucks and Kalkas, lest its light should attract robbers), and blew it up into a bright flame which sent its red glare far beyond us, disclosing the wolves, their ears and tails erect, and their eyes flashing fire. At this instant I gave the signal, and our volley was poured in with deadly effect, for the horrible howling they set up showed what mischief had been done. We did not move to collect our game--that might be done in the morning. Our pieces were reloaded as fast as possible, for the Kalmucks warned us that the wolves would return. We could hear them snarling, and some of the wounded howling, but they were too far away to risk a shot. The fire was let down, and we remained perfectly quiet.

“We were not long left in ignorance of their intentions. Shortly there was a great commotion among our horses, and we discovered that the pack had divided and were stealing up to our animals on each side, between us and the water. The Kalkas and Kalmucks rushed up to our steeds, uttering loud shouts, and this drove the wolves back again. It was now necessary to guard the horses on three sides, as we could hear the savage brutes quite near. The men anticipated that they would make a rush, cause the animals to break away, and then hunt them down. A Cossack and Kalmuck turned to guard the approaches on each side, and I remained watching at the front. The fire was relighted and kept in a constant blaze by Kalkas adding small bushes, and this enabled us to see as well as hear our savage enemies. Presently I discovered their glaring eyeballs moving to and fro, nearer and nearer; then I could distinguish their grizzly forms pushing each other on. At this moment the rifles cracked to my right, and the fire sent up a bright blaze, which enabled me to make sure of one fellow as he turned his side towards me. I sent the second ball into the pack, and more than one must have been wounded from the howling that came from this direction. The other men had also fired, and I did not doubt with equal effect, for it was certain that they would not throw a shot away. In a few minutes the growling ceased, and all was still except the snorting of some of the horses. Both Kalkas and Kalmucks assured me that the wolves would make another attack, and said that no one must sleep on his post.

“To increase our difficulty, we now had but few bushes left, and none could be obtained near us; therefore it would only be by a most vigilant watch that we could now save our horses. The night, too, became very dark, and nothing could be seen at a short distance except towards the lake, where any dark object might be observed against the dim light that rested on the water. Sharp and keen eyes were peering out in every direction, but no wolf was seen, nor sound heard. The Kalkas said the wolves were waiting till all was still, and then they would make a dash at the horses.

“We had been watching a long time without the slightest movement, when two of the horses became uneasy, tugging at the thongs and snorting. The clouds rolled off, the stars came forth and reflected more light upon the lake. Presently howling was heard in the distance, and Tchuck-a-boi declared that another pack of wolves was coming. When they approached nearer, those that had been keeping guard over us so quietly began to growl, and let us know that they were not far away. As it was now deemed absolutely necessary to procure some bushes, four of my men crept quietly along the shore of the lake, two being armed, and in about ten minutes they returned, each of them having an armful of fuel. The embers were rekindled, and material placed on them, ready to be blown into a flame the moment it was needed. The sounds we heard in the distance had ceased for some time, when suddenly there was a great commotion. The other wolves had come up, and the growling and snarling became furious. How much I wished for light, in order to witness the battle that seemed likely to ensue. For a time there seemed to be individual combats; but there was no general engagement, and soon all became still as before. Again we waited, looking out for more than half an hour, when the horses began pulling and plunging violently; but we could see nothing. The men now blew up the embers, and in a few minutes the bushes burst into a blaze, and then I saw a group of eight or ten wolves within fifteen paces, and others beyond. In a moment I gave them the contents of both barrels, the others fired at the same instant, and the pack set up a frightful howl and scampered off.” Atkinson found eight dead bodies next morning, and the bloody trails of many wounded that had gone off.

How would this party have fared if instead of warm weather, and the presence of a pack that merely desired to gratify their taste for horse flesh, and showed their willingness to brave fire and rifle-balls to this end, the steppe had been snowy and the animals starving? There seems to be no more doubt that a considerable detachment of Russian infantry was destroyed by wolves about fifty years ago in the passes of the Ural Mountains, than there is that the dragoon by whom Wellington sent his despatch after the battle of Albuera was eaten, together with his horse. “Daring as the wolf was in olden times,” says Lloyd, speaking of that found in Scandinavia, “he has lost nothing of his audacity at the present day.” In proof of which he collects from newspapers, parish registers, official reports, and the testimony of eye-witnesses, a statement of the ravages of wolves among domestic animals and human beings that almost equals those mediæval notices in which their evil deeds have been recorded from one end of Europe to the other. None of these, or rather, none the writer has met with, rival that recital given by James Grant (“The Wild Beast of Gevaudan”). French, Dutch, Belgian, and English journals, during 1765, were full of those events of which a brief abstract is inserted, and their prolonged occurrence finally came to be an affair of grave importance to the government of France.

In that year a beast, not identified as a wolf until after its death, created a reign of terror in the forest country of Provence and Languedoc, devouring eighty people about Gevaudan. “_Qui a dévoré plus que quatrevingt personnes dans le Gevaudan_,” says the official report. A drawing (from description) was sent to the Intendant of Alençon, and as this looked more like a hyena than anything else, it was given out that one of these brutes was at large. The province offered a thousand crowns for its head, the Archbishop ordered prayers for public preservation, and the commanding officer of the department scoured the country with light cavalry. These measures failed, and after a troop of the 10th dragoons had pursued it for six weeks through the mountainous parts of Languedoc, and though it was seen several times, had failed to come up with the animal, the reward was increased to ten thousand livres, and Louis XV. offered six thousand more. High masses innumerable were said, and cavalry, bands of game-keepers, and gentlemen with their servants, sought the monster in all directions. Hunters by thousands were in search of it for months, and in the meantime its howl was heard in village streets at night, children and women were killed in their farmyards, woodcutters lost their lives in forests, and men were dragged out of vehicles on the public roads by day.

At last the Sieur de la Chaumette, a famous wolf slayer, appeared upon the scene. His two brothers accompanied him, and they actually found and wounded the animal. The chase was taken up by him again, and he was joined by a party of hunters picked from the most expert foresters of fifty parishes. It was in vain, however, for they never viewed their quarry again. In September, 1765, the Sieur de Blanterne, in company with two associates, shot the wild beast of Gevaudan, which had ravaged a large region of Southern France for nearly a year. The carcass was sent to Paris, and proved to be that of an enormous wolf.

A creature capable of killing one man, is able, all things being equal, to kill a dozen or a hundred.

Wolves’ ravages are at present confined to places from which we have no reports, and that is the reason why public opinion always places such occurrences in the past. In all essentials wolves are potentially the same as ever, but their relations to mankind differ according to geographical position. In one place they are harmless and timid, in another they are aggressive and dangerous. Throughout the Arctic regions of the earth, where one might imagine that privation would render them audacious, they generally avoid the presence of human beings and are not often seen. Franklin, Back, and Parry have little to say about them, and it is the same with many other travellers in their northern haunts. Bush, Kennan, Cotteau, Seabohn, Collins, Price, etc., have no information of any importance to give. Even Dr. Richardson, the naturalist, passes them by nearly unnoticed, and Rink (“Danish Greenland”), in his collection of the “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” is silent on this subject. All these authors, however, refer to other animals of the Arctic. Dr. Harris (“Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca”) finds places for the bear, musk-ox, fox, wolverene, in his immense repository of facts and impressions, but none for the wolf.

A somewhat comprehensive acquaintance with what has been said concerning this creature, disposes the writer to think, that the silence of explorers with regard to a beast that would naturally attract attention, is explained by Captain Ross (“Voyage to Baffin’s Bay”). In his first expedition the wolf is not mentioned among those animals described in the “Fauna of the Arctic Highlands”; but in his narrative of the “Second Voyage” he says, “the perpetual hunting of the natives seems to prevent deer, together with those beasts of prey that follow on their traces, from remaining in their vicinity.” Dr. John D. Godman (“American Natural History”) contradicts Ross flatly, and asserts that “in the highest northern latitudes ... wolves are very numerous and exceedingly audacious. They are generally to be found at no great distance from the huts of Esquimaux, and follow these people from place to place, being apparently much dependent upon them for food during the coldest season of the year.” Godman does not say whether his information was got at first hand, or taken from others, but there is no doubt as to the fact that he is wrong. High latitudes do not furnish permanent habitats for game. Reindeer or caribou are not only migratory, but wander constantly; the latter being, as Charles C. Ward remarks, “a very Ishmaelite” in its habits. The same is true of other animals upon which wolves subsist, and the idea of their living in any numbers upon Eskimo leavings is amusing.

Milton and Cheadle (“The North-west Passage by Land”) give much the same explanation as Captain Ross for the fact that wolves are so rarely seen in the far north. “Wild animals of any kind,” they inform us, “are seldom viewed in the Hudson Bay territories, unless they are carefully tracked up. They are so constantly hunted, ... and whenever they encounter man, are so invariably pursued, that they are ever on their guard, and escape without being seen.” Forced to range widely because the character of this region involves constant change of place upon the part of their principal game, and made wary to the last degree by perpetual hostilities, it might well be that travellers found them absent from those regions they explored, and scarcely had an opportunity to observe such as were actually in their vicinity. Thus Parry (“Journal”), who was struck by their shyness, says, “it is very extraordinary that no man could succeed in killing or capturing one of these animals, though we were for months almost constantly endeavoring to do so.”

Something, however, may depend upon local variety. Captain Koldewey (“German Arctic Expedition”) tells us that “the peculiar--species, he calls it--of wolf met with in other arctic neighborhoods is not found in East Greenland; neither is the wolf-like dog now dying out from disease.” Brown (“Fauna of Greenland”) takes the same view, but whatever the facts may be, dogs and wolves have sometimes been known to treat each other very differently. Sir Edward Belcher (“The Last of the Arctic Voyages”) saw a wolf, which he at first supposed from its appearance to be one of Sir John Franklin’s surviving dogs, come up to his own team on the sledge journey of 1853. “It did not quarrel with them.... Its habits were certainly very peculiar; it cared not for us, and frequently approached so near that it might have been shot, but was not disposed to make friends.” Even if the tameness of this animal had been due to starvation, that would not have accounted for the friendliness of Belcher’s dogs. General A. W. Greely (“Three Years of Arctic Service”) reports of his, that “whenever wolves were near they exhibited signs of uneasiness, if not of fear.” Captain Ross noticed that his dogs at Boothia Felix “trembled and howled” whenever wolves approached them. It is well known, however, that in the arctic, as elsewhere, these animals interbreed. Godman gives the following: “_Scientia naturali multum versato et fide digno viro Sabina, se canem Terræ-novæ cum lupa coire frequenter vidis_.” Theodore Roosevelt and others speak of the same thing as coming under their personal cognizance.

In high latitudes of America and Asia the wolf’s attitude towards man is inconstant to a marked degree. Much difference is doubtless due to influences both general and local, permanent and temporary, which it is impossible to ascertain from any accounts. The packs C. A. Hall (“Arctic Researches”) met with near “Frobisher’s Farthest,” and at J. K. Smith’s Island, manifested none of that timidity which has been remarked upon as the consequence of constant persecution. On the contrary, “they were bold,” says Hall, “approaching quite near, watching our movements, opening their mouths, snapping their teeth, and smacking their chops, as if already feasting on human flesh and blood.” Similarly, “eleven big fellows crossed the path” of O. W. Wahl (“Land of the Czar”) “one winter day, near Stavropol.” They merely inspected the travellers and went on. Colonel N. Prejevalsky (“From Kulja across the Tian Shan to Lob-nor”) saw but few wolves, and in his report upon the fauna of the Tarim valley, he remarks that they “are unfrequent, if not rare.” During his expedition (“Mongolia”), however, the Tibetan wolf, _Lupus chanco_, the same animal he thinks that the Mongols of Kan-su call _tsobr_, but really the common species under one of its many changes of color, was found to be “savage and impudent.” Captain William Gill (“The River of Golden Sand”) saw “here and there” on the broken and undulating plains of Mongolia near the Chinese frontier, “small villages surrounded by a wall to protect them from the troops of wolves that in the desolate winter scour the barrens of San-Tai.”

Nothing would be gained by multiplying references, which might easily be given _ad nauseam_ without finding that there was any particular change in their tenor. Enough have been already presented to show how utterly valueless are those sweeping conclusions upon the character and habits of wolves, which we are too much accustomed to see. The widest generalization on this subject that can be made with any approach to certainty, is that these animals, over and above their specific traits, are what their situations and the experiences connected with ordinary and every-day life make them. It is a well-attested fact that the wolf may be domesticated, and instances of this kind are not uncommon. Audubon, for example, saw them drawing the small carts in which Assiniboin Indians brought their peltries into Fort Union. Samuel Hearne (“A Journey from Prince of Wales Fort in Hudson Bay, to the Northern Ocean”) gives an account of certain things seen by himself, which seem to indicate that these animals occasionally bear like relations to savages with those which must have subsisted when they were first reclaimed. “Wolves,” he says, “are very frequently met with in those countries west of Hudson’s Bay, both on the barren grounds and among the woods; but they are not numerous. It is very uncommon to see more than three or four of them in a herd.... All the wolves in Hudson’s Bay are very shy of the human race.... They are great enemies to the Indian dogs, and constantly kill and eat those that are heavy loaded and cannot keep up with the main body.... The females are much swifter than males, for which reason, the Indians, both northern and southern, are of opinion that they kill the greatest part of the game.” This, however, cannot be the case, Hearne observes, because they live apart during winter, and do not associate till towards spring. “They always burrow under ground to bring forth their young; and it is natural to suppose that they are very fierce at those times; yet I have very frequently seen even the Indians go to their dens, take out the young ones and play with them. I never knew a northern Indian to hurt one of them; on the contrary, they always carefully put them into the den again; and I have sometimes seen them paint the faces of the young wolves with vermilion or red ochre.”

This statement of the friendliness existing between man and these beasts is unique. James Morier in the mountains of Armenia, Persia, and Asia Minor, Douglas Freshfield in the Central Caucasus, Atkinson, Prejevalsky, and Gill in Northern Asia, Forsyth, Hunter, and Pollok in India and Indo-China, and a host of witnesses in Europe and America, have given evidence to their destructiveness and to the enmity with which they are regarded.

There never has been any question with respect to the wolf’s intelligence. His sagacity and cunning are of the highest brute order; and although, if one looks at a longitudinal section of his brain, it appears poorly developed, when compared with that of a dog, resembling, to use Lockington’s simile, a pear with the small end forwards, the latter animal is probably not inferior to the former in natural faculty. “If we could subtract,” says Professor Romanes (“Animal Intelligence”), “from the domestic dog all those influences arising from his prolonged companionship with man, and at the same time intensify the feelings of self-reliance, rapacity, etc., we should get the emotional character now presented by wolves and jackals.” The former need to be wise in their generation, for it is but seldom that their “ways are ways of pleasantness,” and their paths are never those of peace. Their gaunt frames and voracious appetites have become common colloquialisms, and each has to match his astuteness against all the devices for his destruction that human ingenuity can invent.

Lloyd describes the amenities and virtues that adorned the character of a wolf cub belonging to Madame Bedoire; how it guarded her premises, made friends with her dog, went walking with its mistress, played with her children, and howled when she did not caress it. The biography of this blessed infant was written by a lady; Lloyd merely inserts the account. It had to be shot when it was a year old. He himself had a young she-wolf whose most noticeable actions seemed to be connected with her endeavors to get pigs within reach of where she was chained. “When she saw a pig in the vicinity of her kennel, she, evidently with the intention of putting him off his guard, would throw herself on her side or back, roll, wag her tail most lovingly, and look like innocence personified”; but if, as occasionally happened, the pig’s mind was impressed with these artless ebullitions of youthful joy, and it came near enough, the creature was done for. While Sir Edward Belcher’s ship lay in winter quarters a wolf haunted her vicinity. He sat under her stern, he beguiled the dogs away, he drove off all the game. Then they tried to kill or capture him, but in vain. When pieces of meat were fixed at the muzzles of loaded muskets, he fired off the guns and ate the bait. Seated upon a hill, just out of range, this “charmed wolf,” as the men called him, “narrowly watched the proceedings of those engaged in further schemes for his destruction, and exulted possibly in his superior wisdom.” Belcher’s sailors began to believe this animal to be one of the officers of Sir John Franklin’s lost ship, the _Erebus_. Dr. Rae reports the case of a wolf that cut the string fastened to the trigger of a gun before taking the meat placed in front of it. And Audubon relates that wolves watch fishermen in the northern lakes, pull their lines up, and appropriate the catch. They gnaw through heavy timber into caches and undermine dead-falls. They uncover and spring steel traps, and are as difficult to beguile as the wolverene--it is impossible to say more. Captain Lyon’s crew caught a wolf in a trap that pretended to be dead when the men who set it arrived. Wherever men carry firearms the wolf appreciates their effectiveness, and is perfectly well aware that his coat will not turn a rifle-ball. But while this exercises an obvious influence upon his general behavior, in most cases the ability to see the movements of his enemy seems to lessen his dread of what may happen. If several are together when fired at, they will scamper off; but it is very common to see them turn when they think themselves safe, and regard their adversary with strict attention.

Upon the whole, it is doubtful whether wolves have been much diminished in numbers anywhere, except in places where the country has become thickly settled. While these creatures have solitudes to fall back upon, they make use of those great advantages in the struggle for existence which they possess. Their speed, endurance, and hardihood, the number produced at a birth, and their exceeding sagacity, qualify this race to fight the battle of life, hard as it is in most instances, in a manner that but few animals of any kind can equal.

There are two reasons why, in the midst of fragmentary notices and romances innumerable, authentic annals of American frontier life are so meagre in their accounts of what these beasts have done. The first is that our earlier settlers were men such as they have encountered nowhere else, and the wolves were soon cowed. In the second place, perils threatened those living on the border, which were so much more imminent than any which ever became actual through the agency of wolves that these beasts came to be disregarded. Those depredations and murders which they really perpetrated were only perpetuated in tradition, and when survivals of this kind came to be recast by writers who, besides being unacquainted with all the facts, knew nothing about the animals themselves, they at once assumed a form that was stamped with all the incongruities of crude invention, and served only to conceal more effectually that portion of truth upon which these poor fictions were constructed.

It is probable that all, who, having really observed the character of those wolves that inhabit what were once the buffalo ranges of the Northwest, and then going southward made the acquaintance of that large, yellowish-red wolf called the _lobo_, in Mexico, will admit that there is much difference between them. In the Sierra Madre two wolves are commonly considered to be a match for a man armed as these people usually are, and unless the whole population have conspired together for the purpose of propagating falsehoods on this particular subject, it must be believed that the lobo is often guilty of manslaughter. It has not happened to the writer to be personally cognizant of the death of any victim of theirs, but riding westward one day through the forests of that mountainous country lying between Durango and the Pacific coast, in the interval between two divisions of a large train of _arrieros_ separated from each other by a distance of several miles, a woman and two children, boy and girl, were met. Struck by the beauty of the little girl, and knowing the way to be unsafe, some conversation took place in which the mother made light of those dangers suggested, and declined, with a profusion of thanks, an offer to see the party safe to her sister’s rancho in a neighboring valley. They had only a little distance to go along the ridge, she said, and would then soon descend to their place of destination. The wolves were like devils, it was true, but robbers were worse, and she had many times crossed there from her home without meeting with either. In short,--_muchissimas gracias Señor, y todos los santos, etc., etc. Adios_!

All of them were devoured a very short time after. Their clothes and bones were found scattered on the trail which they had not yet left before they were killed. The muleteers in rear who found these fragments collected and buried them, putting up the usual frail cross which is to be seen along this route, literally by scores.

This term _lobo_ is indiscriminately applied in Spanish America to creatures that bear little resemblance to one another. The _guara_ of Brazil is known under that name, an inoffensive, vegetable-eating animal, in every respect unlike the wolf in character and habits, and, according to Dr. Lund, specifically distinct from it in having the second and third vertebræ of its neck characteristically elongated. Emmanuel Liais, however (“Climats, Géologie, Faune du Brésil”), states the chief contrasts between those creatures in question succintly, as follows: “_Au point de vue du régime alimentaire, les deux espèces du genre Canis les plus éloignées sont le loup commun d’Europe, animal féroce et sauguinaire, et la plus carnivore de toutes les espèces du genre, et l’Aguara ou Guara du Brésil--Canis Jubatus de Demarest, appelé à Minas-Geraes trés-improprement Lobo (nom portugais du Loup), et décrit par la plupart des ouvrages de mammologie comme le loup du Brésil. C’est cependent le moins carnivore de tous les chiens connus, et sa nourriture préférée consiste en substances végétales._”

As has been said, the wolf does not reach its highest development in hot countries. Wolves may be dangerous and destructive within low latitudes, as is the case both in America and Asia, but it will be found that when this occurs their range is generally confined to elevated regions in those provinces. Major H. Bevan (“Thirty Years in India”) states that “wolves are amongst the most noxious tenants of the jungles around Nagpore, and they annually destroy many children; but they do not commit such ravages as in northern India.” The same is true of the “giant wolf,” _Lupus Gigas_, that Townsend and other naturalists described as a distinct species; but this brute which has so evil a reputation in the highlands of Mexico, “the red Texan wolf,” as Audubon calls it, does not extend in the United States to the northern prairies; it only exists as a variety of the common species in the lower Mississippi valley, and farther south.

Audubon remarks that this form of the common species has “the same sneaking, cowardly, yet ferocious disposition” as other wolves; nevertheless those anecdotes with which he intersperses his descriptions are certainly not calculated to foster the belief that his impression agrees with facts.

There are certain traits and habits belonging to wolves at large which may now be brought together. They are not by any means strictly nocturnal animals, but very commonly prowl by night, and in places where large packs assemble; most of what has with truth been said against them occurred under cover of darkness. By all accounts, it is amidst gloom and storm, while the _buran_ rages over the arctic tundra, that troops of these fierce creatures do their worst among Yakut and Tungoo reindeer herds. Caribou are not herded, and have been but little observed by those who could give any information upon such a point as this. Everywhere, a wolf is destructive, fierce, wary and sagacious. Moreover, it will often become aggressive and audacious in the highest degree, when circumstances contribute to foster the development and facilitate the expression of its natural character. It is the typical wild beast of its family, and if it is not in many instances sanguinary and prone to take the offensive, there is a much better explanation for abstention from violence than that of natural cowardice. Wolves have far too much sense not to know what they can gain with least exposure to loss; and no beast of prey, that is sane, and not driven to desperation, ever proceeds upon any other principle than this. Given the existence of mind, those accidents by which mind is modified, and relative differences in degree among its qualities, must also be admitted. Comparative stupidity, evenness of temper, want of enterprise, tameness and timidity, undoubtedly distinguish wolf and wolf, as they do all carnivores. Still this would not account for the conventional wolf, or explain the anomaly of its imaginary character, or show why, or on what grounds, it is maintained that there should exist so great an incongruity in nature as an animal unadjusted mentally and yet adapted physically to a predatory life; that has at the same time the disposition of a tiger and the harmlessness of a lamb, that lives by violence, yet shrinks from every struggle, that maintains itself by the exercise of powers it must be fully conscious of possessing, and is constantly debarred from the results which it might attain through their exercise by causeless apprehension. This is very nearly what must be meant when a beast of prey is called a coward.

Wolves stalk their prey, ambush it, either alone or in collusion with others that drive the game, and they also run it down. The jaw is very powerful and formidably armed, and in proportion to its bulk this creature is exceedingly strong. A wolf, though structurally carnivorous, will eat anything--fish, flesh, or fowl, fresh or putrid, animal or vegetal. When he has gorged to the limit of his capacity, if anything remains it is commonly dragged to some place of concealment and buried. Then the brute lies down until the apathy induced by surfeit passes away. Wolves hunt both by sight and scent, by day and night. They will certainly interbreed with dogs, producing fertile offspring; and they may be domesticated. But as they grow older the characteristics germane to their savage natures assert themselves. It is said by Godman that “when kept in close confinement, and fed on vegetable matter, the common wolf becomes tame and harmless, ... shy, restless, timid.” If he had said it became _ill_, the statement would have been more conformable with fact. No such interruption of the normal course of life is possible without an impairment of health, both bodily and mental. Carnivorous animals are not to be turned into vegetarians at will, nor any creature’s energies thwarted and cramped without distortion and atrophy.

Wolves no doubt can swim, but it is certain that a wolf seldom voluntarily takes to water in which he cannot wade. Audubon saw one swimming, and others have witnessed the like. Still all accounts represent these beasts as stopping short in pursuit on the bank of a stream. Naturalists say that the length of life in this species is twenty years, and it has been recorded also that they do not become gray with age. It looks like a purility to repeat what has been gravely reported more than once; namely, that when wolves have plenty to eat they get fat, become lazy, and are not so aggressive as under contrary conditions. On the other hand, nothing is more common than to find writers explaining every act of audacity as due to hunger. Most probably it is; they would hardly go hunting while in a state of repletion. But the question is, how these authorities find out the exact state of their dietaries, and can be certain that they must be starving before they will attack the wild Asiatic ox or American moose; also how much less food is required, to urge them on to assail a party of men.

In seasons of scarcity wolves of the northern plains prey upon prairie-dogs, ground-squirrels, hares, foxes, badgers, etc.; small creatures that offer no resistance, and which it is only difficult to catch. At the same time they hunt the large game of North America, and although, much to the disgust of a certain class of writers, the common wolf, which weighs about a hundred pounds, does not select a buffalo bull in the best fighting trim as an object for attack when a less formidable animal of this species can be found, or meet the moose, that often stands six feet at the withers, or indeed any creature that can kill him, in such a way as to give it the best opportunity for doing so, he often has to fight and frequently comes to grief. But they “give every human being a wide berth,” says Roosevelt, and it would be strange indeed if they did not, since none are apt to be encountered who, according to the wolf’s experience, are unprepared for offensive action, or who do not make it their business in those parts to destroy him. This fact has been completely realized by wolves of the plains, and it is for this reason that in these latitudes they have now become, what Colonel Dodge asserts that they are, “of all carnivorous animals of equal size and strength, the most harmless to beasts, and the least dangerous to man.”

A wolf’s structure is not by any means so well adapted to destructive purposes as that of the larger _Felidæ_. No species of the genus _Canis_ has either the teeth, claws or muscles which belong to cats. A predatory animal may, and often does, make an error in judgment, but there is one thing that it never does, and that is, to attack deliberately knowing beforehand that it must fight fairly for victory, and that the issue is quite as likely to be fatal to itself as to its destined prey. A single wolf is not a match for those large animals it destroys; and when, in virtue of what Professor Romanes calls the “collective instinct,” odds have been taken against them, they succumb before a combined assault.

Where parties of “wolfers,” as they are called, pass the winter in placing poisoned meat in their way, and in localities in which they abound, destroy them for their skins by hundreds, wolves would need to be much less sagacious than they are, if what was noticed by Lord Milton and his companion was not true as a matter of course. “These animals,” the account says, “are so wary and suspicious that they will not touch a bait lying exposed, or one that has been recently visited.” John Mortimer Murphy (“Sporting Adventures in the Far West”) had seven years’ experience of the way in which wolves were shot, trapped, poisoned and coursed. The conclusion he came to from those observations which he relates so well, was that the wolf in such localities, “large, gaunt, and fierce as it looks, is one of the greatest cowards known.” He omitted to mention--but Godman has rectified the oversight--that wolves carry their natural cowardice to such an extent, and are so exceedingly dubious concerning what man may do, that a few pinches of powder scattered about dead game, or an article of clothing left near it,--in short, any evidence of the presence of a human being will prevent them from approaching it.

There are several ways of writing natural history, and this is one of them. It would seem, nevertheless, that if a plan could be adopted for looking upon the general organization of wild beasts as in a great measure determining their characters, and for considering, if possible, anomalous traits as most probably intimately connected with peculiarities in their situation, we might no longer feel confounded at finding that sentient creatures are not the same under dissimilar circumstances. If brutes could be considered to have some knowledge of themselves, to act like brutes and to feel like them, without reference to any human opinions whatever, forthcoming literature of this kind would be benefited.

In those parts of the world where the wolf comes in contact with people not well prepared to receive him, his attitude towards mankind is aggressive. In Eastern Europe, for example, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and through the Danubian states generally, wolves occupy quite a distinguished position for dangerousness, and the inhabitants regard them with any other feeling than that of contempt. Captain Spencer (“Turkey, Russia, the Black Sea, and Circassia”), while passing through that vast forest which separates the more settled tracts of Moldavia from the Buckowina, was besieged in a half-ruined chalet with his companions, and the pack continued their attack all night, and lost heavily.

The coyote,--_Canis latrans_,--that thieving creature which is often found intermingled with the gray and other coated wolves on the great plains of North America, has been by some writers--Colonel Dodge, for example--discriminated from the prairie wolf as a separate species. Those differences which exist between them, however, have little classificatory value. Contrasts in size, dissimilarities in color, marking, and the growth of hair, are all seen in the common wolf, of which this is “a distinct but allied species,” with northern and southern varieties.

“There is,” says Schoolcraft, “something doleful as well as terrific in the howling of wolves.” When people speak of the jackal’s howl, they commonly call it “unearthly,” but a coyote’s voice is much more singularly diabolical, and his intonations are so hideously suggestive of all that is weird and devilish, that it stands by itself among natural sounds, and cannot be compared with the outcry of any other creature. Murphy describes it as follows: “The voice seems to be a combination of the long howl of the wolf and the yelp of the fox; but so distinctly marked is it from either, that, once heard, it is never forgotten. The coyote has the strange peculiarity of making the utterance of one sound like that of many; and should two or three try their larynxes at the same time, persons would fancy that a large pack was giving tongue in chorus. The cry appears to be divided into two parts. It first begins with a deep, long howl, then runs rapidly up into a series of barks, and terminates in a high scream, issued in prolonged jerks.” According to conventional opinions, elephants among wild animals, and dogs among those that have been domesticated, occupy the highest places in order of intelligence. The author does not believe this to be the case with respect to the first named species, and so far as pure intellect goes “Die reinen Vernunft,” no dog can probably surpass _Canis latrans_. Professor Huxley also reports that he can find no essential difference between their skulls. While these animals may be equal, however, in absolute capacity, the coyote, considered according to civilized standards of manners, is the kind of creature that if any dog were to take after, he would be incontinently shot or hanged.

His idea of good conduct is to get what he can honestly procure when driven to straightforward courses, but by preference to steal it, as being less troublesome. He is astute beyond comparison in nefarious practices, and has sense enough to howl with derision (as he sometimes seems to do) if it could be explained to him that mankind were capable of judging his behavior according to any other rule of life than his own. _Homo sapiens_, in a highly evolved state, is imbued with the truly noble idea that he is the centre of creation, and that all living things are admirable in proportion as they approach himself. He calls the coyote a “miserable cur,” “a barking thief,” and says sarcastically that the brute has kleptomania. Savage man, on the contrary, esteems him greatly. The two are much alike in many respects. We have already seen that this little wolf has been adopted as the tutelar of gentes among Pueblo Indians, and southern tribes of the Tinneh stock, and its prominence is scarcely less with those of the northwest coast of America. They honor the coyote; their myths and folk-lore record its good qualities and wisdom. To them it is the incarnation of a deity or a demon (these are nearly the same), and it is never killed, for fear that ill luck might be sent by the spirit of which this animal is the representative.

Under these happy auspices coyotes hang around native encampments and villages, interbreed with Indian dogs, grow fat on salmon cast upon river banks in the spawning season, hunt all that smaller game which their more powerful relations resort to for supplies only when hard pressed, and omit to take advantage of no opportunity to gain possession of provisions which are not theirs. The opinion they have of the human race is that it exists for their advantage, and mankind, further than it contributes to their support, is an object of indifference to them.