Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1892 — Worst Man-Eater Known. [ARTICLE]

Worst Man-Eater Known.

The Calcutta Englishman contains a blood-curdling account of the doings of a man-eating leopard lately shot in the Rajshahi district in Bengal. Tho monster had destroyed 154 persons before ho was brought down. His appetite for flesh, his ferocity, his cunning and his audacity were unexampled in the leopard tribe, and they would have done credit to a tiger. He depopulated whole villages, for the mere terror of his name sent the inhabitants flying as soon as he had seized a solitary victim in their midst. For miles around the people never ventured to leave their houses after nightfall until they heard he was dead, but this was no great hindrance to him. He would seize them from the verandas when they were smoking the evening pipe, and sometimes he penetrated the very houses in the dead of night and carried away children—often without giving the slightest alarm to the other inmates. As a rule he killed only one person at a time; but sometimes he killed two, and on one occasion he killed three in one day. Children and old women were hie favorite food. Among hie victims there were but six men. He was impelled by a sheer hankering for human flesh, for he never touched the cattle. The villagers began to think the scourge was a demon incarnate, and it was impossible to organize them for the pursuit. At length some twenty claphants were brought together for un expedition, and a flying column of British planters set sorth in quest of the destroyer. They searched for some time in vain, until an old man, whose wife had been eaten, came to report that their quarry had taken refuge in a tamarind tree. It was as he had stated, only the maneater had hidden himself in the jungle at the foot of the tree and for the moment could not be found. The place was surrounded and the elephants advanced in close order to trample the fugitive out of his hiding-place. This manceuvre succeeded after frequent repetition ; the beast was driven out of cover and at once riddled with balls. Ho will become a legend in the district, and perhaps a deity.