WATER BUFFALO. THE WANDERINGS OF THE
THE Indian Government has recently formed dairy farms to supply milk and butter for the fl use of the troops. The fine breeds of Indian cattle are used in these dairies, but cow buffaloes are also kept on account of the richness of their milk. Europeans sometimes object to use it, as the domesticated buffalo is often kept as a sort of scavenger to the cow byres of the Indian cities, and eats the litter and refuse of the farmyards. But properly fed the buffalo is by no means the bovine pig which it becomes when kept in Hyderabad or Benares. It is not only a first-class air/ animal, but the strongest beast of draught in the world except the elephant. Great areas of rich river delta
and marsh in three continents • are maintained
in culte ration by buffaloes, when no other animal could possibly be used to plough the rice-fields or drag carts over and through miles of liquid mud. The value of this, probably the latest of all large animals to be domesticated, is so well boom in the East that it has for centuries past been carried to places 80 remote from its original home, and apparently so inaccessible, that the extent of its involuntary migrations in the service of man has a peculiar interest. Besides this it is one of the very few domesticated animals which, like the vak and the gayal (possibly a tame form of the gaur), are still found in their original wild state, with form and habits scarcely altered. The wild buffalo is among the most dangerous and formidable of the big game of India, never hesitating to charge when wounded, and noted for the persistency with which it seeks todestroy the person who has injured it. Its natural home is in the grass jungles and swamps of India, Nepaul, and Assam. It is also found wild in the island of Formosa. It is a huge black beast, with no hair, a skin like black guttapercha, immense horns, sometimes measuring more than twelve feet along the curve, though not spreading like a shield over the forehead as in the Cape buffalo, but set like a pair of scythes on each side of its head. A bull stands six feet high at the shoulder,—eighteen hands, that is ; its bulk is enormous, and its great spreading feet are well adapted for walking in the swamps. By choice it is semi-aquatic. A herd will lie for hours in a pool or river, with just their eyes, horns, and great snub noses above water. Any one who blunders on to a buffalo in a wallowing-hole and frightens it out may be excused for imagining that he has just come on a mud volcano at the moment of eruption.
This is the real buffalo—called in India the arnee--and not to be confounded with the gaur or the banteng, the wild oxen of India and the Far East. It will be seen that the buffalo in its wild state is limited to a not very large area,—namely, the country south of the Himalayas, and extending for some distance, the limits of which are not perfectly known, in the territory of the Indo-Chinese States. Yet this enormously powerful and fierce animal has been so completely domesticated by the Hindoos that the tame herds are regularly driven out to feed in the same jungles in which wild buffaloes live, the bulls among which will often come down and, after giving battle to the tame bulls, annex the cows for a time and keep them in the jungle. The only striking difference in appear- mice between the tame and wild buffalo is that the horns of the former do not grow to the size attained in the wild specimens, and alter their curve and pitch. Mr. Lockwood Kipling notes the curious effect of the grove of long horns above a herd of these animals, no two buffaloes having them of the same pattern. Traces of the lateness of the date of their apprenticeship to the service of man are seen in their power of self-defence and combination when threatened with attack by tigers or leopards, by their mating with the wild stock, and by the uncertainty of their temper, especially towards Europeans. Wherever they are used by Oriental races these outbreaks of savageness are always in evidence from time to time when the white man encounters them. In China they have been known to chase Europeans when the latter were riding, as well as when passing on foot. They will do the same in India, in Egypt, and in Burmah. Yet in India they are generally taken out to pasture by some small boy, who is their tyrant and master, and will pro- tect him, their calves, and themselves from the tiger. An account appeared recently in Country Life of the use of a herd of these animals to beat the jungle for a wounded tiger which had killed a native. The buffaloes were driven up and down for a whole day, beating the ground in a compact body, until they found the tiger, whose hiding-place was shown by the excitement of the herd, at which it charged almost as soon as they observed it, and was shot by the guns following them.
As a beast of draught the buffalo has astonishing powers of hauling heavy traffic over bad roads. It can plough in mud over its hocks. It is most docile. It can swim a river going to and from work, tow barges along canals and streams, sometimes walking in the shallow
0 water by the banks, like the horses did on the Lower Thames before the towpath was made. It will • eat any- thing it can get, and asks only for one indulgence, a good hour's Balm or mud bath in the middle of the day. The rice-fields which feed so great a percentage of the population of Eastern Asia could scarcely be cultivated without its aid, and it is so valuable as a dairy animal that the percentage of butter in its milk equals that of the best breeds of English dairy cattle. The result is that it has become an equal favourite with the Hindoo, the Arab, and the Chinaman, and plays a most im- portant part in the agriculture of the Lower Nile Valley.
The great distance from its original home in India at which we now find the buffalo established is evidence that the animal has a history of an exceedingly adventurous kind, were it possible to trace the story of its travels. Starting from the Indian jungles, and then domesticated on the Indian plains, this erstwhile wild beast has reached, and been domes ticated and plays a most important part in, Egypt, Pales- tine, Southern Italy and the Campagna, the South and East of Spain, Hungary, Turkey, and Western Asia as far as the borders of Afghanistan. By some unknown route it has reached the West Coast of Africa, and is estab- lished as a beast of draught and cultivation on the Niger. It has travelled far up the Nile, and will go further, for it would be invaluable on the great swamps Fashoda way. In the Far East the Chinaman has made it his own peculiar pet, having, it is believed, first learnt its value in the rice-grounds of the South. It has been taken to Japan, where it now works in the rice-grounds ; to the Philippines and the islands of the Malay Archipelago ; and there is no doubt that it would be useful in British Guiana. Possibly the Italians who are crowding over into South America will introduce it in the Lower Mississippi Valley ; but it is by nature a brown and yellow man's beast, and only appreciated in Europe by the South Latin races.
How did the buffalo get from India to Africa ? Who first took it to Egypt? How did it get from Egypt round to the West Niger P And who brought it to Italy, and from whence ? All these are most interesting questions, and as the distance of time which has elapsed since the animals were introduced into Europe does not fall beyond the historic period, may possibly be answered. In Egypt, for instance, there exists a pictorial record on the tombs and elsewhere, covering many thousands of years, in which pictures of animals play an important part. If the first appearance of the water buffalo in these paintings were noted, the date of its importation from India to Egypt would be known. From inquiries kindly made by M. Maspero at the suggestion of Lord Cromer, it appears that nowhere in the long " pic- ture history" of ancient Egypt does the water buffalo appear. The African buffalo is seen there ; not so the domesticated Asiatic one. This is very interesting negative evidence that this domesticated animal was not known in ancient Egypt. It is surmised, probably rightly, that it was imported after some great epidemic of cattle plague, or it may have been taken from the West Coast of India up the Euphrates Valley, and thence down the Jordan Valley to Egypt. Arab dhows have for ages done a regular trade in carrying horses from the West Coast of India to the Persian Gulf. It is probably one of the oldest forms of shipping which exists, and the Arabs who now ship horses from Bombay to the Persian Gulf may have been in the cattle trade in very early days. It is also probable that in the era of Hindoo maritime enterprise these creatures were taken both to the Far East and to the East Coast of Africa. The circumstances which led to their introduction into Italy and Spain are probably to be found in some existing record; but it is not one generally known, the nearest surmise being that they may have been given to a Longobardian King with other animals by the chief of a horde of Asiatic invaders. They were not known in Italy in Roman times. But if they had been introduced as recently as the camels which are still used on one of the Royal estates in Tuscany (an enterprise due fo the Medici), the fact would probably have been matter of common knowledge.
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