We swam the horses across, and attending carefully to the safety of the
cook before any other individual, we breakfasted on the opposite bank,
while the coolies were crossing the river.
After breakfast, a grave question arose, viz., which way were we to go?
The trackers that the headman had given us, now confessed that they did
not know an inch of the Veddah country, into which we had arrived by
crossing the river, and they refused to go a step farther. Here, was a
'regular fix!' as the Americans would express it.
The village of Monampitya consists of about six small huts; and we now
found that there was no other village within forty miles in the
direction that we wished to steer. Not a soul could we obtain as a
guide--no offer of reward would induce a man to start, as they declared
that no one knew the country, and that the distance was so great that
the people would be starved, as they could get nothing to eat. We looked
hopelessly at the country before us. We had a compass, certainly, which
might be useful enough on a desert or a prairie, but in a jungle country
it was of little value.
Just as we were in the greatest despair, and we were gazing wistfully in
the direction which the needle pointed out as the position of the
'Park,' now separated from us by an untravelled district of an unknown
distance, we saw two figures with bows and arrows coming from the
jungle. One of these creatures bolted back again into the bushes the
moment he perceived us; the other one had a fish in his hand, of about
four pounds weight, which he had shot with his bow and arrow; while he
was hesitating whether he should run or stand still, we caught him.
Of all the ugly little devils I ever saw, he was superlative. He
squinted terribly; his hair was greyish and matted with filth; he was
certainly not more than four feet and a half high, and he carried a bow
two feet longer than himself. He could speak no language but his own,
which throughout the Veddah country is much the same, intermixed with so
many words resembling Cingalese that a native can generally understand
their meaning. By proper management, and some little presents of rice
and tobacco, we got the animal into a good humour, and we gathered the
following in formation.
He knew nothing of any place except the northern portion of the Veddah
country. This was his world; but his knowledge of it was extremely
limited, as he could not undertake to guide us farther than Oomanoo, a
Veddah village, which he described as three days' journey from where we
then stood. We made him point out the direction in which it lay. This he
did, after looking for some moments at the sun; and, upon comparing the
position with the compass, we were glad to see it at south-south-east,
being pretty close to the course that we wished to steer. From Oomanoo,
he said, we could procure another Veddah to guide us still farther; but
he himself knew nothing more.
Now this was all satisfactory enough so far, but I had been completely
wrong in my idea of the distance from Doolana to the 'Park.' We now
heard of three days' journey to Oomanoo, which was certainly some where
in the very centre of the Veddah country; and our quaint little guide
had never even heard of the Batticaloa road. There was no doubt,
therefore, that it was a long way from Oomanoo, which village might be
any distance from us, as a Veddah's description of a day's journey might
vary from ten to thirty miles.
I certainly looked forward to a short allowance of food both for
ourselves and coolies. We had been hurrying through the country at such
a rate that we had killed no deer; we had, therefore, been living upon
our tins of preserved provisions, of which we had now only four
remaining.
At the village of Monampitya there was no rice procurable, as the
natives lived entirely upon korrakan* (*A small seed, which they make
into hard, uneatable cakes.), at which our coolies turned up their noses
when I advised them to lay in a stock before starting.
There was no time to be lost, and we determined to push on as fast as
the coolies could follow, as they had only two days' provisions; we had
precisely the same, and those could not be days of feasting. We were, in
fact, like sailors going to sea with a ship only half-victualled; and,
as we followed our little guide, and lost sight of the village behind
us, I foresaw that our stomachs would suffer unless game was plentiful
on the path.
We passed through beautiful open country for about eight miles, during
which we saw several herds of deer; but we could not get a shot. At
length we pitched the tent, at four o'clock P.M., at the foot of
'Gunner's Coin,' a solitary rocky mountain of about two thousand feet in
height, which rises precipitously from the level country. We then
divided into two parties--W. and P., and V. B. and I. We strolled off
with our guns in different directions.
The country was perfectly level, being a succession of glades of fine
low grass divided into a thousand natural paddocks by belts of jungle.
We were afraid to stroll more than a mile from the tent, lest we should
lose our way; and we took a good survey of the most prominent points of
the mountain, that we might know our direction by their position.
