Notwithstanding This, At Some Seasons The Whole District Is Alive With Game.

January and February are the best months for elephants and buffaloes, and August and September are the best seasons for deer, at which time the whole country is burnt up with drought, and the game is forced to the vicinity of Yalle river and the neighbouring pools.

In the wet season this district is nearly flooded, and forms a succession of deep marshes, the malaria from which is extremely unhealthy. At this time the grass is high, and the elephants are very numerous.

When I was in this part of the country the drought was excessive; the jungle was parched, and the leaves dropped from the bushes under the influence of a burning sun. Not a cloud ever appeared upon the sky, but a dazzling haze of intense heat spread over the scorched plains. The smaller streams were completely dried up, and the large rivers were reduced to rivulets in the midst of a bed of sand.

The whole of this country is a succession of flat sandy plains and low jungles contiguous to the sea-coast. The intense heat and the glare of the sun rendered the journey most fatiguing. I at length descried a long line of noble forest in the distance, and this I conjectured to be near the river, which turned out to be the case; we were soon relieved from the burning sun by the shade of as splendid a forest as I have ever seen. A few hundred yards from the spot at which we had entered, Yalle river rolled along in a clear stream. In the wet season this is a rapid torrent of about 150 yards in width, but at this time the bed of the river was dry, with the exception of a stream of about thirty paces broad, which ran directly beneath the bank we were descending.

An unexpected scene now presented itself. The wide bed of the river was shaded on either side by groves of immense trees, whose branches stretched far over the channel; and not only beneath their shade, but in every direction, tents formed of talipot leaves were pitched, and a thousand men, women, and children lay grouped together; some were bathing in the river, some were sitting round their fires cooking a scanty meal, others lay asleep upon the sand, but all appeared to be congregated together for one purpose; and so various were the castes and costumes that every nation of the East seemed to have sent a representative. This was the season for the annual offerings to the Kattregam god, to whose temple these pilgrims were flocking, and they had made the dry bed of Valle river their temporary halting-place. A few days after, no less than 18,000 pilgrims congregated at Kattregam.

I was at this time shooting with my friend, Mr. H. Walters, then of the 15th Regiment. We waded up the bed of the river for about a mile, and then pitched the tent under some fine trees in the open forest.

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