When I was a young boy, my imagination was captured by big cats. I clearly remember a frequent bedtime lights-out worry that a cougar was hiding under my bed as I tried to stave off fear and go to sleep. Prime time television at the time was crowded with Westerns, and you couldn’t watch many episodes before a stalking mountain lion showed up growling on the cabin roof or—worse—prowling just out of sight of the cowboys’ campfire. Not to mention, jungle shows were still the rage and regularly featured lions and leopards.
Of all the big jungle cats, the melanistic form of leopards—the black leopard, also known in India as a black panther---is for me the most terrifying. All leopards are stealthy predators and they all hunt at night, but a black leopard hunting you in the dark of night sounds like a nightmare. And when I think of a black leopard, I think of a leopard, and my mind slips inevitably to Jim Corbett.
Anglo-Indian Jim Corbett wrote Man-Eaters of Kumaon, first published by Oxford University Press in 1944 and then reprinted in Britain, Canada and the US in 1946. It was a booming success with over a half million sales worldwide by the end of that year. Corbett followed up with The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag in 1947 and The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon in 1954. These books tell how Corbett single-handedly hunted down man-eating tigers and leopards that from 1907 to 1938 terrrorized the villages of north India in the hill districts of Garwhal, Almora and Naini Tal. It’s hard to believe, but these man-eaters were responsible for the deaths of over 1500 persons. In later years Corbett abandoned the rifle for the camera, preferring photography to killing.
When the first man-eaters book was written, Corbett’s exploits were already legendary in Kumaon. He was a lifetime student of the Indian jungle and even wrote a little book called Jungle Lore. I love the stories of Corbett’s detective skill and courage as a solitary hunter but also of the vivid descriptions of natural history and marvelous scenic beauty of the Indian jungle in the Kumaon District in the foothills of the Himalayas. And I love the way he writes with simple clarity that perfectly visualizes the most unfamiliar scenes. Describing one of these bad moments, he says, “I cannot expect you who read this at your fireside to appreciate my feeling at the time.” While tracking a tiger through dense scrub on a steep rockslide, he hears her growling “resentfully”. He had disturbed her 436th human meal.
In 1947, Corbett and his sister retired to Kenya. There he added another interesting fact to his already fascinating life, a fact made more piquant by this past week’s Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. He was bodyguard to Princess Elizabeth in 1952 when she acceded to the throne while staying at the Treetops Hotel in Aberdare National Park. Corbett wrote these now famous lines in the visitors’ logbook: “For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a tree one day a Princess and, after having what she described as her most thrilling experience, she climbed down from the tree next day a Queen.”
Corbett’s life and character call to mind three of my favorite pieces of advice. One is from Buckminster Fuller: “What can I do that isn’t going to get done unless I do it, just because of who I am?” The second, from Teddy Roosevelt: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” And finally, there are the wonderful lines from John Wesley: “Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, As long as ever you can.”
I had to look up “melanistic.” 🥹 Such good writing, Del. I especially appreciate your three nuggets of wisdom. Blessings, Bob