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A Tyger Destroyed by a Serpent! Near Madras, in India, on the 20th February, 1816, in presence of one of our Missioners (a native of New-Hampshire.)
[Boston,] 1816. Illustrated broadside, 15.75” x 9” plus margins, text in three columns, with touches of red to engraving. CONDITION: Very good, some spotting and toning consistent with age, a few small losses to paper, one partially affecting a “w” in the right column of text. A rare and striking broadside featuring a large wood engraving by Boston’s Abel Bowen and relating the eyewitness account of a New Hampshire missionary who saw a giant serpent, evidently a python, overpower an enormous tiger in southern India. Bowen’s woodcut, with touches of red making the bared fangs and open mouths of the animals all the more vivid, shows the terrifying encounter at its most dramatic moment—the serpent having suddenly entwined itself “in a number of curls around the trembling body” of the tiger, whose large claws are rendered useless. Below the title is printed the “Extract of a letter” from an anonymous New Hampshire missionary, addressed to a friend in Boston to “satisfy you that our laudable attempts to christianize a heathen race…are frequently attended with the most eminent danger of the destruction of our lives.” En route from Madras to Pondicherry (now Puducherry), the missionary and his two guides stumble upon the imminent battle: The Serpent commenced the attack by darting his head from the lowest branches of the tree, to within a few feet of the Tiger’s head, his jaws extended, and venomiously [sic] shooting fourth his forked tongue in quick succession—the attack was repelled by the Tiger, in no other way than by raising his forepaws and striking at the head of the Serpent—the latter having for several minutes diverted himself in this way, at length made a sudden and fatal dart at the Tiger, dropping his whole body and entwining it in a number of curls around the trembling body of the beast!—the Tiger bellowed and tore the ground with his claws, but so completely was every limb of his body secured by the dexterous Serpent, that it was in vain that he attempted to defend or extricate himself—the Tiger in this situation struggled for near a quarter of an hour, when, by his dismal groans, it became apparent that he was completely overpowered, and no longer enabled to make any resistance—he in a few moments after breathed his last! You may form some idea of the astonishing strength and dexterity of the Serpent, when I assure you, that so taught did he coil himself about the body of the Tiger, that I very distinctly heard the bones of the latter crack at every movement, while the blood gushed from his mouth, eyes and noes [sic]! In the final column, the missionary recounts another run-in with a tiger, which left both himself and his horse in “a terrible anguish trembling, followed by a hot fit and profuse perspiration…During this unpleasant day I must confess I felt the greatest terror imaginable…The horse was not well for some days after, nor has he travelled that rode since without extreme reluctance.” Abel Bowen (1790–1850) was born in New York, but as a young man moved to Boston, where he soon became “a leading engraver in that city,” working on both copper and wood (Groce & Wallace, p. 70). In 1816 he published “The Naval Monument,” illustrated with copper and wood engravings of naval battles during the War of 1812. In the early 1820s he collaborated with New England renaissance man Rufus Porter on his Revolving Almanack, and in 1834 helped establish the American Engraving and Printing Co., which, as the Boston Bewick Co., later published the American Magazine, devoted to the promotion of wood engraving in America. He had brief business partnerships with Alexander McKenzie and William S. Pendleton, and shaped the next generation of Boston engravers through his tutelage of Hammatt Billings, Nathaniel Dearborn, William Croome, and others. OCLC records just one holding, at AAS. A very scarce and strikingly-illustrated broadside published in Boston and relaying the mortal fight between two fearsome predators, as witnessed by a New England missionary near Madras, India. REFERENCES: Not in North American Imprints. Groce and Wallace. Dictionary of Artists in America (1957).
Item #10515
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