Tigers

Tigers are recurring features of the natural landscapes crossed in the novel, linking the speed of modern travel to forests and jungles beyond the railway and shipping routes. They are seen or heard at a distance: no individual tiger is named, approached, or made a direct threat to the travelers.

Railway Landscapes in India

During the train journey across India, the travelers pass wide tracts of jungle where tigers flee at the locomotive’s noise. The railway’s arrival is thus registered not only through the speed of the train but through its effect on the surrounding landscape: animals retreat as it advances, while the passengers continue onward.

The image returns during a night passage. The train runs at full speed amid the sounds of tigers, bears, and wolves fleeing before it, while darkness hides the landmarks of Bengal from the travelers. Tigers contribute to the scene’s sense of a wilderness encountered in motion—audible at night, but not closely observed.

Jungles Along the Sea Route

On Singapore, tigers are noted among the animals inhabiting the jungles around the tropical vegetation through which Phileas Fogg and Aouda travel by carriage. The account places them alongside the monkeys in the trees, but records no encounter between the animals and the travelers.

Later, as the Rangoon leaves Singapore, the high mountains of Malacca and their forests pass out of view. Those forests are described as inhabited by tigers prized for their beautiful fur. Here, unlike the railway scenes in India, the animals do not flee before a train; they belong to a distant forest landscape glimpsed from a departing vessel.

Narrative Role

Across these appearances, tigers mark the varied environments that the itinerary carries the travelers through. Their presence shifts with the mode of travel: they retreat from the noise of the railway, are noted within Singapore’s jungles, and inhabit the forests seen from the sea route toward Hong Kong. The accounts keep them at a distance, making them part of the novel’s moving panorama rather than independent participants in its human conflicts.