Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446. Various
p>Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 / Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852
WOLF-CHILDREN
It is a pity that the present age is so completely absorbed in materialities, at a time when the facilities are so singularly great for a philosophy which would inquire into the constitution of our moral nature. In the North Pacific, we are in contact with tribes of savages ripening, sensibly to the eye, into civilised communities; and we are able to watch the change as dispassionately as if we were in our studies examining the wonders of the minute creation through a microscope. In America, we have before us a living model, blind, mute, deaf, and without the sense of smell; communicating with the external world by the sense of touch alone; yet endowed with a rare intelligence, which permits us to see, through the fourfold veil that shrouds her, the original germs of the human character.1 Nearer home, we have been from time to time attracted and astonished by the spectacle of children, born of European parents, emerging from forests where they had been lost for a series of years, fallen back, not into the moral condition of savages, but of wild beasts, with the sentiments and even the instincts of their kind obliterated for ever. And now we have several cases before us, occurring in India, of the same lapses from humanity, involving circumstances curious in themselves, but more important than curious, as throwing a strange light upon what before was an impenetrable mystery. It is to these we mean to direct our attention on the present occasion; but before doing so, it will be well just to glance at the natural history of the wild children of Europe.2
The most remarkable specimen, and the best type of the class, was found in the year 1725, in a wood in Hanover. With the appearance of a human being—of a boy about thirteen years of age—he was in every respect a wild animal, walking on all-fours, feeding on grass and moss, and lodging in trees. When captured, he exhibited a strong repugnance to clothing; he could not be induced to lie on a bed, frequently tearing the clothes to express his indignation; and in the absence of his customary lair among the boughs of a tree, he crouched in a corner of the room to sleep. Raw food he devoured with relish, more especially cabbage-leaves and other vegetables, but turned away from the sophistications of cookery. He had no articulate language, expressing his emotions only by the sounds emitted by various animals. Although only five feet three inches, he was remarkably strong; he never exhibited any interest in the female sex; and even in his old age—for he was supposed to be seventy-three when he died—it was only in external manners he had advanced from the character of a wild beast to that of a good-tempered savage, for he was still without consciousness of the Great Spirit.
In other children that were caught subsequently to Peter, for that was the name they gave him, the same character was observable, although with considerable modifications. One of them, a young girl of twelve or thirteen, was not merely without sympathy for persons of the male sex, but she held them all her life in great abhorrence. Her temper was ungovernable; she was fond of blood, which she sucked from the living animal; and was something more than suspected of the cannibal propensity. On one occasion, she was seen to dive as naturally as an otter in a lake, catch a fish, and devour it on the spot. Yet this girl eventually acquired language; was even able to give some indistinct account of her early career in the woods; and towards the close of her life, when subdued by long illness, exhibited few traces of having once been a wild animal. Another, a boy of eleven or twelve, was caught in the woods of Canne, in France. He was impatient, capricious, violent; rushing even through crowded streets like an ill-trained dog; slovenly and disgusting in his manners; affected with spasmodic motions of the head and limbs; biting and scratching all who displeased him; and always, when at comparative rest, balancing his body like a wild animal in a menagerie. His senses were incapable of being affected by anything not appealing to his personal feelings: a pistol fired close to his head excited little or no emotion, yet he heard distinctly the cracking of a walnut, or the touch of a hand upon the key which kept him captive. The most delicious perfumes, or the most fetid exhalations, were the same thing to his sense of smell, because these did not affect, one way or other, his relish for his food, which was of a disgusting nature, and which he dragged about the floor like a dog, eating it when besmeared with filth. Like almost all the lower animals, he was affected by the changes of the weather; but on some of these occasions, his feelings approached to the human in their manifestations. When he saw the sun break suddenly from a cloud, he expressed his joy by bursting into convulsive peals of laughter; and one morning, when he awoke, on seeing the ground covered with snow, he leaped out of bed, rushed naked into the garden, rolled himself over and over in the snow, and stuffing handfuls of it into his mouth, devoured it eagerly. Sometimes he shewed signs of a true madness, wringing his hands, gnashing his teeth, and becoming formidable to those about him. But in other moods, the phenomena of nature seemed to tranquillise and sadden him. When the severity of the season, as we are informed by the French physician who had charge of him, had driven every other person out of the garden, he still delighted to walk there; and after taking many turns, would seat himself beside a pond of water. Here his convulsive motions, and the continual balancing of his whole body, diminished, and gave way to a more tranquil attitude; his face gradually assumed the character of sorrow or melancholy reverie, while his eyes were steadfastly fixed on the surface of the water, and he threw into it, from time to time, some withered leaves. In like manner, on a moonlight night, when the rays of the moon entered his room, he seldom failed to awake, and to place himself at the window. Here he would remain for a considerable time, motionless, with his neck extended, and his eyes fixed on the moonlight landscape, and wrapped in a kind of contemplative ecstasy, the silence of which was interrupted only by profound inspirations, accompanied by a slight plaintive noise.
We have only to add, that by the anxious care of the physician, and a thousand ingenious contrivances, the senses of this human animal, with the exception of his hearing, which always remained dull and impassive, were gradually stimulated, and he was even able at length to pronounce two or three words. Here his history breaks off.
The scene of these extraordinary narratives has hitherto been confined to Europe; but we have now to draw attention to the wild children of India. It happens, fortunately, that in this case the character of the testimony is unimpeachable; for although brought forward in a brief, rough pamphlet, published in a provincial town, and merely said to be 'by an Indian Official,' we recognise both in the manner and matter the pen of Colonel Sleeman, the British Resident at the court of Lucknow, whose invaluable services in putting down thuggee and dacoitee in India we have already described to our readers.3
The district of Sultanpoor, in the kingdom of Oude, a portion of the great plain of the Ganges, is watered by the Goomtee River, a navigable stream, about 140 yards broad, the banks of which are much infested by wolves. These animals are protected by the superstition of the Hindoos, and to such an extent, that a village community within whose boundaries a single drop of their blood has been shed, is believed to be doomed to destruction. The wolf is safe—but from a very different reason—even from those vagrant tribes who have no permanent abiding-place, but bivouac in the jungle, and feed upon jackals, reptiles—anything, and who make a trade of catching and selling such wild animals as they consider too valuable to eat. The reason why the vulpine ravager is spared by these wretches is—that wolves devour children! Not, however, that the wanderers have any dislike to children, but they are tempted by the jewels with which they are adorned; and knowing the dens of the animals, they make this fearful gold-seeking a part of their business. The adornment of their persons with jewellery is a passion with the Hindoos which nothing can overcome. Vast numbers of women—even those of the most infamous class—are murdered for the sake of their ornaments, yet the lesson is lost upon the survivors. Vast numbers of children, too, fall victims in the same way, and from the same cause, or are permitted, by those who shrink from murder, to be carried off and devoured by the wolves; yet no Indian mother can withstand the temptation to bedizen her child, whenever it is in her power, with bracelets, necklaces, and other ornaments of gold and silver. So much is necessary as an introduction to the incidents that follow.
One day, a trooper, like Spenser's gentle knight,'was pricking on the plain,' near the banks of the Goomtee. He was within a short distance of Chandour, a village about ten miles from Sultanpoor, the capital of the district, when he halted to observe a large female wolf and her whelps come out of a wood near the
See 'The Rudimental,' in No. 391.
A paper on this subject will be found in
See 'Gang-Robbers of India,' in Nos. 360 and 361 of this Journal. The title of the pamphlet alluded to is,