Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon - Sir Samuel White Baker (ready player one ebook .txt) 📗

a prejudice against it from the sights I have seen of their feasting upon putrid elephants that I never touch it.

The numbers of wild hogs in the low country is surprising, and these are most useful in cleaning up the carcases of dead animals and destroying vermin. I seldom or never fire at hog in those districts, as their number is so great that there is no sport in shooting them. They travel about in herds of one and two hundred, and even more. These are composed of sows and young boars, as the latter leave the herd when arrived at maturity.


[1] Speared through the body by the horns of a buck elk and killed shortly after this was written.



CHAPTER VII.


Curious Phenomenon--Panorama of Ouva--South-west Monsoon--Hunting Followers--Fort M'Donald--River--Jungle Paths--Dangerous Locality--Great Waterfall--Start for Hunting--The Find--A Gallant Stag--"Bran" and "Lucifer"--"Phrenzy's" Death--Buck at Bay--The Cave Hunting-box--"Madcap's" Dive--Elk Soup--Former Inundation--"Bluebeard" leads off--"Hecate's" Course--The Elk's Leap--Variety of Deer--The Axis--Ceylon Bears--Variety of Vermin--Trials for Hounds--Hounds and their Masters--A Sportsman "shut up"--A Corporal and Centipede.


From June to November the south-west monsoon brings wind and mist across the Newera Ellia mountains.

Clouds of white fog boil up from the Dimboola valley like the steam from a huge cauldron, and invade the Newera Ellia plain through the gaps in the mountains to the westward.

The wind howls over the high ridges, cutting the jungle with its keen edge, so that it remains as stunted brushwood, and the opaque screen of driving fog and drizzling rain is so dense that one feels convinced there is no sun visible within at least a hundred miles.

There is a curious phenomenon, however, in this locality. When the weather described prevails at Newera Ellia, there is actually not one drop of rain within four miles of my house in the direction of Badulla. Dusty roads, a cloudless sky and dazzling sunshine astonish the thoroughly-soaked traveler, who rides out of the rain and mist into a genial climate, as though he passed through a curtain. The wet weather terminates at a mountain called Hackgalla (or more properly Yakkadagalla, or iron rock). This bold rock, whose summit is about six thousand five hundred feet above the sea, breasts the driving wind and seems to command the storm. The rushing clouds halt in their mad course upon its crest and curl in sudden impotence around the craggy summits. The deep ravine formed by an opposite mountain is filled with the vanquished mist, which sinks powerless in its dark gorge; and the bright sun, shining from the east, spreads a perpetual rainbow upon the gauze-like cloud of fog which settles in the deep hollow.

This is exceedingly beautiful. The perfect circle of the rainbow stands like a fairy spell in the giddy depth of the hollow, and seems to forbid the advance of the monsoon. All before is bright and cloudless; the lovely panorama of the Ouva country spreads before the eye for many miles beneath the feet. All behind is dark and stormy; the wind is howling, the forests are groaning, the rain is pelting upon the hills.

The change appears impossible; but there it is, ever the same; season after season, year after year, the rugged top of Hackgalla struggles with the storms, and ever victorious the cliffs smile in the sunshine on the eastern side; the rainbow reappears with the monsoon, and its vivid circle remains like the guardian spirit of the valley.

It is impossible to do justice to the extraordinary appearance of this scene by description. The panoramic view in itself is celebrated; but as the point in the road is reached where the termination of the monsoon dissolves the cloud and rain into a thin veil of mist, the panorama seen through the gauze-like atmosphere has the exact appearance of a dissolving view; the depth, the height and distance of every object, all great in reality, are magnified by the dim and unnatural appearance; and by a few steps onward the veil gradually fades away, and the distant prospect lies before the eye with a glassy clearness made doubly striking by the sudden contrast.

The road winds along about midway up the mountain, bounded on the right by the towering cliffs and sloping forest of Hackgalla, and on the left by the almost precipitous descent of nearly one thousand feet, the sides of which are clothed by alternate forest and waving grass. At the bottom flows a torrent, whose roar, ascending from the hidden depth, increases the gloomy mystery of the scene.

On the north, east and south-east of Newera Ellia the sunshine is perpetual during the reign of the misty atmosphere, which the south-west monsoon drives upon the western side of the mountains. Thus, there is always an escape open from the wet season at Newera Ellia by a short walk of three or four miles.

A long line of dark cloud is then seen, terminated by a bright blue sky. So abrupt is the line and the cessation of the rain that it is difficult to imagine how the moisture is absorbed.

This sudden termination of the cloud-capped mountain gives rise to a violent wind in the sunny valleys and bare hills beneath. The chilled air of Newera Ellia pours down into the sun-warmed atmosphere below, and creates a gale that sweeps across the grassy hilltops with great force, giving the sturdy rhododendrons an inclination to the north-east which clearly marks the steadiness of the monsoon.

It is not to be supposed, however, that Newera Ellia lies in unbroken gloom for months together. One month generally brings a share of uninterrupted bad weather; this is from the middle of June to the middle of July. This is the commencement of the south-west monsoon, which usually sets in with great violence. The remaining portion of what is called the wet season, till the end of November, is about as uncertain as the climate of England--some days fine, others wet, and every now and then a week of rain at one bout.

A thoroughly saturated soil, with a cold wind, and driving rain and forests as full of water as sponges, are certain destroyers of scent; hence, hunting at Newera Ellia is out of the question during such weather. The hounds would get sadly out of condition, were it not for the fine weather in the vicinity which then invites a trip.

I have frequently walked ten miles to my hunting grounds, starting before daybreak, and then after a good day's sport up and down the steep mountains, I have returned home in the evening. But this is twelve hours' work, and it is game thrown away, as there is no possibility of getting the dead elk home. An animal that weighs between four hundred and four hundred and fifty pounds without his insides, is not a very easy creature to move; at any time, especially in such a steep mountainous country as the neighborhood of Newera Ellia. As previously described, at the base of the mountains are cultivated rice-lands, generally known as paddy-fields, where numerous villages have sprung up from the facility with which a supply of water is obtained from the wild mountains above them. I have so frequently given the people elk and hogs which I have killed on the heights above their paddy-fields that they are always on the alert at the sound of the bugle, and a few blasts from the mountain-top immediately creates a race up from the villages, some two or three thousand feet below. Like vultures scenting carrion, they know that an elk is killed, and they start off to the well-known sound like a pack of trained hounds. Being thorough mountaineers, they are extraordinary fellows for climbing the steep grassy sides. With a light stick about six feet long in one hand, they will start from the base of the mountains and clamber up the hillsides in a surprisingly short space of time, such as would soon take the conceit out of a "would-be pedestrian." This is owing to the natural advantages of naked feet and no inexpressibles.

Whenever an elk has given a long run in the direction of this country, and after a persevering and arduous chase of many hours, I have at length killed him on the grassy heights above the villages, I always take a delight in watching the tiny specks issuing from the green strips of paddy as the natives start off at the sound of the horn.

At this altitude, it requires a sharp eye to discern a man, but at length they are seen scrambling up the ravines and gullies and breasting the sharp pitches, until at last the first man arrives thoroughly used up and a string of fellows of lesser wind come in, in sections, all thoroughly blown.

However, the first man in never gets the lion's share, as the poor old men, with willing spirits and weak flesh, always bring up the rear, and I insist upon a fair division between the old and young, always giving an extra piece to a man who happens to know a little English. This is a sort of reward for acquirements, equivalent to a university degree, and he is considered a literary character by his fellows.

There is nothing that these people appreciate so much as elk and hog's flesh. Living generally upon boiled rice and curry composed of pumpkins and sweet potatoes, they have no opportunities of tasting meat unless upon these occasions.

During the very wet weather at Newera Ellia I sometimes take the pack and bivouac for a fortnight in the fine-weather country. About a week previous I send down word to the village people of my intention, but upon these occasions I never give them the elk. I always insist upon their bringing rice, etc., for the dogs and myself in exchange for venison, otherwise I should have some hundreds of noisy, idle vagabonds flocking up to me like carrion-crows.

Of course I give them splendid bargains, as I barter simply on the principle that no man shall come for nothing. Thus, if a man assist in building the kennel, or carrying a load, or cutting bed-grass, or searching for lost hounds, he gets a share of meat. The others bring rice, coffee, fowls, eggs, plantains, vegetables, etc., which I take at ridiculous rates-a bushel of rice for a full-grown elk, etc., the latter being worth a couple of pounds and the rice about seven shillings. Thus the hounds keep themselves in rice and supply me with everything that I require during the trip, at the same time gratifying the natives.

The direct route to this country was unknown to Europeans at Newera Ellia until I discovered it one day, accidentally, in following the hounds.

A large tract of jungle-covered hill stretches away from the Moon Plains at Newera Ellia toward the east, forming a hog's back of about three and a half miles in length. Upon the north side this shelves into a deep gorge, at the bottom of which flows, or rather tumbles, Fort M'Donald river on its way to the low country, through forest-covered hills and perpendicular cliffs, until it reaches the precipitous patina mountains, when, in a succession of large cataracts, it reaches the paddy-fields in the first village of Perewelle (guava paddy-field). Thus the river in the gorge below runs parallel to the long hog's back of mountain. This is bordered on the other side by another ravine and smaller torrent, to which the Badulla road runs parallel until it reaches the mountain of Hackgalla, at which place the ravine deepens into the misty gorge already