Every book on Ceylon mentions the amount of game as
immense; and as to elephants -"
Here I was interrupted by the same gentleman. "All gross
exaggerations," said he -"gross exaggerations; in fact,
inventions to give interest to a book. I have an estate in the
interior, and I have never seen a wild elephant. There may be a
few in the jungles of Ceylon, but very few, and you never see
them."
I began to discover the stamp of my companion from his
expression, "You never see them." Of course I concluded that he
had never looked for them; and I began to recover front the first
shock which his exclamation, "There is no sport in Ceylon !" had
given me.
I subsequently discovered that my new and non-sporting
acquaintances were coffee-planters of a class then known as the
Galle Face planters, who passed their time in cantering about the
Colombo race-course and idling in the town, while their estates
lay a hundred miles distant, uncared for, and naturally ruining
their proprietors.
That same afternoon, to my delight and surprise, I met an old
Gloucestershire friend in an officer of the Fifteenth Regiment,
then stationed in Ceylon. From him I soon learnt that the
character of Ceylon for game had never been exaggerated; and from
that moment my preparations for the jungle commenced.
I rented a good airy house in Colombo as headquarters, and the
verandas were soon strewed with jungle-baskets, boxes, tent,
gun-cases, and all the paraphernalia of a shooting-trip.
What unforeseen and apparently trivial incidents may upset all
our plans for the future and turn our whole course of life! At
the expiration of twelve months my shooting trips and adventures
were succeeded by so severe an attack of jungle fever that from a
naturally robust frame I dwindled to a mere nothing, and very
little of my former self remained. The first symptom of
convalescence was accompanied by a peremptory order from my
medical attendant to start for the highlands, to the mountainous
region of Newera Ellia, the sanita rium of the island.
A poor, miserable wretch I was upon my arrival at this elevated
station, suffering not only from the fever itself, but from the
feeling of an exquisite debility that creates an utter
hopelessness of the renewal of strength.
I was only a fortnight at Newera Ellia. The rest-house or inn
was the perfection of everything that was dirty and
uncomfortable. The toughest possible specimen of a beef-steak,
black bread and potatoes were the choicest and only viands
obtainable for an invalid. There was literally nothing else; it
was a land of starvation. But the climate! what can I say to
describe the wonderful effects of such a pure and unpolluted air?
Simply, that at the expiration of a fortnight, in spite of the
tough beef, and the black bread and potatoes, I was as well and
as strong as I ever bad been; and in proof of this I started
instanter for another shooting excursion in the interior.
