Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon Part 22

Then I have cut a stick for a rod, and made a line with some hairs from my horse's tail, with a pin for a hook, baited with a shrimp, and the fishing has commenced.

Fish and fruit are the most enjoyable articles of food in a tropical country, and in the former Ceylon is rich. The seir fish is little inferior to salmon, and were the flesh a similar color, it might sometimes form a subst.i.tute. Soles and whiting remind us of Old England, but a host of bright red, blue, green, yellow, and extraordinary-looking creatures in the same net dispel all ideas of English fishing.

Oysters there are likewise in Ceylon; but here, alas I there is a sad falling off in the comparison with our well-remembered "native."

Instead of the neat little sh.e.l.l of the English oyster, the Ceylon species is a shapeless, twisted, knotty, rocky-looking creature, such as a legitimate oyster would be in a fit of spasms or convulsions. In fact, there is no vestige of the true breed about it, and the want of flavor equals its miserable exterior.

There are few positions more tantalizing to a hungry man than that of being surrounded b oysters without a knife. It is an obstinate and perverse wretch that will not accommodate itself to man's appet.i.te, and it requires a forcible attack to vanquish it; so that every oyster eaten is an individual murder, in which the cold steel has been plunged into its vitals, and the animal finds itself swallowed before it as quite made up its mind that it has been opened. But take away the knife, and see how vain is the attempt to force the stronghold. How utterly useless is the oyster! You may turn it over and over, and look for a weak place, but there is no admittance; you may knock it with a stone, but the knock will be unanswered. How would you open such a creature without a knife?

This was one of the many things that had never occurred to me until one day when I found myself with some three or four friends and a few boatmen on a little island, or rather a rock, about a mile from the sh.o.r.e. This rock was rich in the spasmodic kind of oyster, large detached ma.s.ses of which lay just beneath the water in lumps of some hundredweight each, which had been formed by the oysters cl.u.s.tering and adhering together. It so happened that our party were unanimous in the love of these creatures, and we accordingly exerted ourselves to roll out of the water a large ma.s.s; which having accomplished, we discovered to our dismay that nothing but one penknife was possessed among us.

This we knew was a useless weapon against such armor; however, in our endeavors to perform impossibilities, we tickled the oyster and broke the knife. After gazing for seine time in blank despair at our useless prize, a bright thought struck one of the party, and drawing his ramrod he began to screw it Into the weakest part of an oyster; this, however, was proof, and the ramrod broke.

Stupid enough it may appear, but it was full a quarter of an hour before any of us thought of a successful plan of attack. I noticed a lot of drift timber scattered upon the island, and then the right idea was. .h.i.t. We gathered the wood, which was bleached and dry, an we piled it a few feet to windward of the ma.s.s of oysters. Striking a light with a cap and some powder, we lit the pile. It blazed and the wind blew the heat strong upon the oysters, which accordingly began to squeak and hiss, until one by one they gave up the ghost, and, opening their sh.e.l.ls, exposed their delightfully roasted bodies, which were eaten forthwith.

How very absurd and uninteresting this is! but nevertheless it is one of those trifling incidents which sharpen the imagination when you depend upon your own resources.

It is astonishing how perfectly helpless some people are if taken from the artificial existence of every-day life and thrown entirely upon themselves. One man would be in superlative misery while another would enjoy the responsibility, and delight in the fertility of his own invention in accommodating himself to circ.u.mstances. A person can scarcely credit the unfortunate number of articles necessary for his daily and nightly comfort, until he is deprived of them. To realize this, lose yourself, good reader, wander off a great distance from everywhere, and be benighted in a wild country, with nothing but your rifle and hunting-knife. You will then find yourself dinnerless, supperless, houseless, comfortless, sleepless, cold and miserable, if you do not know how to manage for yourself. You will miss your dinner sadly if you are not accustomed to fast for twenty-four hours. You will also miss your bed decidedly, and your toothbrush in the morning; but if, on the other hand, you are of the right stamp, it is astonishing how lightly these little troubles will sit on you, and how comfortable you will make yourself under the circ.u.mstances.

The first thing you will consider is the house. The architectural style will of course depend upon the locality. If the ground is rocky and hilly, be sure to make a steep pitch in the bank or the side of a rock form a wall, to leeward of which you will lie when your mansion is completed by a few sticks simply inclined from the rock and covered with gra.s.s. If the country is flat, you must cut four forked sticks, and erect a villa after this fashion in skeleton-work, which you then cover with gra.s.s.

You will then strew the floor with gra.s.s or, small boughs, in lieu of a feather bed, and you will tie up a bundle of the same material into a sheaf, which will form a capital pillow. If gra.s.s and sticks are at hand, this will be completed thus far in an hour.

Then comes the operation of fire-making, which is by no means easy; and as warmth comes next to food, and a blaze both scares wild animals and looks cheerful, I advise some attention to be paid to the fire. There must be a good collection of old fallen logs, if possible, together with some green wood to prevent too rapid a consumption of fuel. But the fire is not yet made.

First tear off a bit of your shirt and rub it with moistened gunpowder.

Wind this in a thick roll round your ramrod just below the point of the screw, with the rough torn edge uppermost. Into these numerous folds sprinkle a pinch of gunpowder; then put a cap on the point of the screw, and a slight tap with your hunting-knife explodes it and ignites the linen.

Now, fire in its birth requires nursing like a young baby, or it will leave you in the lurch. A single spark will perhaps burn your haystacks, but when you want a fire it seldom will burn, out of sheer obstinacy; therefore, take a wisp of dry gra.s.s, into which push the burning linen and give it a rapid, circular motion through the air, which will generally set it in a blaze.

Then pile gently upon it the smallest and driest sticks, increasing their size as the fire grows till it is all right; and you will sit down proudly before your own fire, thoroughly confident that you are the first person that ever made one properly.

There is some comfort in that; and having manufactured your own house and bed, you will lie down snugly and think of dinner till you fall asleep, and the crowing of the jungle-c.o.c.ks will wake you in the morning.

The happiest hours of my life have been pa.s.sed in this rural solitude.

I have started from home with nothing but a couple of blankets and the hounds, and, with one blanket wrapped round me I have slept beneath a capital tent formed of the other with two forked sticks and a horizontal pole--the ends of the blanket being secured by heavy stones, thus--

This is a more comfortable berth than it may appear at first sight, especially if one end is stopped up with boughs. The ridge-pole being only two feet and a half high, renders it necessary to crawl in on all-fours; but this lowness of ceiling has its advantages in not catching the wind, and likewise in its warmth. A blanket roof, well secured and tightly strained, will keep off the heaviest rain for a much longer period than a common tent; but in thoroughly wet weather any woven roof is more or less uncomfortable.

I recollect a certain bivouac in the Angora patinas for a few days'

hunting, when I was suddenly seized with a botanical fit in a culinary point of view, and I was determined to make the jungle subscribe something toward the dinner. To my delight, I discovered some plants which, from the appearance of their leaves, I knew were a species of wild yam; they grew in a ravine on the swampy soil of a sluggish spring, and the ground being loose, I soon grubbed them up and found a most satisfactory quant.i.ty of yams about the size of large potatoes--not bad things for dinner. Accordingly, they were soon transferred to the pot. Elk steaks and an Irish stew, the latter to be made of elk chops, onions and the prized yams; this was the bill of fare expected. But, misericordia! what a change cone over the yams when boiled! they turned a beautiful slate color, and looked like imitations of their former selves in lead.

Their appearance was uncommonly bad, certainly. There were three of us to feed upon them, viz., Palliser, my huntsman Benton and myself. No one wishing to be first, it was then, I confess, that the thought just crossed my mind that Benton should make the experiment, but, repenting at the same moment, I punished myself by eating a very little one on the spot. Benton, who was blessed with a huge appet.i.te, picked out a big one. Greedy fellow, to choose the largest! but, n'importe, it brought its punishment.

Palliser and I having eaten carefully, were just beginning to feel uncomfortable, when up jumped Benton, holding his throat with both hands, crying, "My throat's full of pins. I'm choked." "We are poisoned, no doubt of it," said Palliser, in his turn. "I am choking likewise." "So am I." There we were all three, with our throats in an extraordinary state of sudden contraction and inflammation, with a burning and p.r.i.c.king sensation, in addition to a feeling of swelling and stoppage of the windpipe. Having nothing but brandy at hand, we dosed largely instanter, and in the course of ten minutes we found relief; but Benton, having, eaten his large yam, was the last to recover.

There must have been highly poisonous qualities in this root, as the quant.i.ty eaten was nothing in proportion to the effects produced. It is well known that many roots are poisonous when raw (especially the manioc), which become harmless when cooked, as the noxious properties consist of a very volatile oil, which is thrown off during the process of boiling. These wild yams must necessarily be still worse in their raw state; and it struck me, after their effects became known, that I had never seen them grubbed up by the wild hogs; this neglect being a sure proof of their unfitness for food.

In these Augora patinas a curious duel was lately fought by a pair of wild bull elephants, both of whom were the raree aves of Ceylon, "tuskers." These two bulls had consorted with a herd, and had no doubt quarreled about the possession of the females. They accordingly fought it out to the death, as a large tusker was found recently killed, with his body bored in many directions by his adversary's tusks, the ground in the vicinity being trodden down with elephant tracks proving the obstinacy of the fight.

The last time that I was in this locality poor old Bluebeard was alive, and had been performing feats in elk-hunting which no dog could surpa.s.s. A few weeks later and he ran his last elk, and left a sad blank in the pack.

Good and bad luck generally come in turn; but when the latter does pay a visit, it falls rather heavily, especially among the hounds. In one year I lost nearly the whole pack. Seven died in one week from an attack upon the brain, appearing in a form fortunately unknown in England. In the same year I lost no less than four of the best hounds by leopards, in addition to a fearful amount of casualties from other causes.

Shortly after the appearance of the epidemic alluded to, I took the hounds to the Totapella Plains for a fortnight, for chance of air, while their kennel was purified and re-whitewashed.

In these Totapella Plains I had a fixed encampment, which, being within nine miles of my house, I could visit at any time with the hounds, without the slightest preparation. There was an immense number of elk in this part of the country; in fact this was a great drawback to the hunting, as two or more were constantly on foot at the same time, which divided the hounds and scattered them in all directions. This made hard work of the sport, as this locality is nothing but a series of ups and downs. The plains, as they are termed, are composed of some hundred gra.s.sy hills, of about a hundred feet elevation above the river; these rise like half oranges in every direction, while a high chain of precipitous mountains walls in one side of the view.

Forest-covered hills abound in the centre and around the skirts of the plains, while a deep river winds in a circuitous route between the gra.s.sy hills.

My encampment was well chosen in this romantic spot. It was a place where you might live all your life without seeing a soul except a wandering bee-hunter, or a native sportsman who had ventured up from the low country to shoot an elk.

Surrounded on all sides but one with steep hills, my hunting settlement lay snugly protected from the wind in a little valley. A small jungle about a hundred yards square grew at the base of one of these gra.s.sy hills, in which, having cleared the underwood for about forty yards, I left the rarer trees standing, and erected my huts under their shelter at the exact base of the knoll. This steep rise broke off into an abrupt cliff about sixty yards from my tent, against which the river had waged constant war, and, turning in an endless vortex, had worn a deep hole, before it shot off in a rapid torrent from the angle, dashing angrily over the rocky ma.s.ses which had fallen from the overhanging cliff, and coming to a sudden rest in a broad deep pool within twenty yards of the tent door.

This was a delicious spot. Being snugly hidden in the jungle, there was no sign of my encampment from the plain, except the curling blue smoke which rose from the little hollow. A plot of gra.s.s of some two acres formed the bottom of the valley before my habitation, at the extremity of which the river flowed, backed on the opposite side by an abrupt hill covered with forest and jungle.

This being a chilly part of Ceylon, I had thatched the walls of my tent, and made a good gridiron bedstead, to keep me from the damp ground, by means of forked upright sticks, two horizontal bars and numerous cross-pieces. This was covered with six inches' thickness of gra.s.s, strapped down with the bark of a fibrous shrub. My table and bench were formed in the same manner, being of course fixtures, but most substantial. The kitchen, huts for attendants and kennel were close adjoining. I could have lived there all my life in fine weather.

I wish I was there now with all my heart. However, I had sufficient bad luck on my last visit to have disgusted most people. Poor Matchless, who was as good as her name implied, died of inflammation of the lungs; and I started one morning in very low spirits at her loss, hoping to cheer myself up by a good hunt.

It was not long before old Bluebeard's opening note was heard high upon the hill-tops; but, at the same time, a portion of the pack had found another elk, which, taking an opposite direction, of course divided them. Being determined to stick to Bluebeard to the last, I made straight through the jungle toward the point at which I had heard a portion of the pack join him, intending to get upon their track and follow up. This I soon did; and after running for some time through the jungle, which, being young "nillho," was unmistakably crushed by the elk and hounds, I came to a capital though newly-made path, as a single elephant, having been disturbed by the cry of the hounds, had started off at full speed; and the elk and hounds, naturally choosing the easiest route through the jungle, had kept upon his track. This I was certain of, as the elk's print sunk deep in that of the elephant, whose dung, lying upon the spot, was perfectly hot.

I fully expected that the hounds would bring the elephant to bay, which is never pleasant when you are without a gun; however, they did not, but, sticking to their true game, they went straight away toward the chain of mountains at the end of the plain. The river, in making its exit, is checked by abrupt precipices, and accordingly makes an angle and then descends a ravine toward the low country.

I felt sure, from the nature of the ground and the direction of the run, that the elk would come to bay in this ravine; and, after half an hour's run, I was delighted, on arriving on the hill above, to hear the bay, of the bounds in the river far below.

The jungle was thick and tangled, but it did not take long, to force my way down the steep mountain side, and I neared the spot and heard the splashing in the river, as the elk, followed by the hounds, dashed across just before I came in view. He had broken his bay; and, presently, I again heard the chorus of voices as he once more came to a stand a few hundred paces down the river.

The bamboo was so thick that I could hardly break my way through it; and I was crashing along toward the spot, when suddenly the bay ceased, and shortly after some of the hounds came hurrying up to me regularly scared. Lena, who seldom showed a symptom of fear, dashed up to me in a state of great excitement, with the deep scores of a leopard's claws on her hindquarters. Only two couple of the hounds followed on the elk's track; the rest were nowhere.

The elk had doubled back, and I saw old Bluebeard leading upon the scent up the bank of the river, followed by three other bounds.

The surest, although the hardest work, was to get on the track and follow up through the jungle. This I accordingly did for about a mile, at which distance I arrived at a small swampy plain in the centre of the jungle. Here, to my surprise, I saw old Bluebeard sitting up and looking faint, covered with blood, with no other dog within view. The truth was soon known upon examination. No less than five holes were cut in his throat by a leopard's claws, and by the violent manner in which the poor dog strained and choked, I felt sure that the windpipe was injured. There was no doubt that he had received the stroke at the same time that Lena was wounded beneath the rocky mountain when the elk was at bay; and nevertheless, the staunch old dog had persevered in the chase till the difficulty of breathing brought him to a standstill. I bathed the wounds, but I knew it was his last day, poor old fellow!

I sounded the bugle for a few minutes, and having collected some of the scattered pack I returned to the tent, leading the wounded dog, whose breathing rapidly became more difficult. I lost no time in fomenting and poulticing the part, but the swelling had commenced to such an extent that there was little hope of recovery.

This was a dark day for the pack. Benton returned in the afternoon from a search for the missing hounds, and, as he descended the deep hill-side on approaching the tent, I saw tent he and a native were carrying something slung upon a pole. At first I thought it was an elk's head, which the missing hounds might have run to bay, but on his arrival the worst was soon known.

It was poor Leopold, one of my best dogs. He was all but dead, with hopeless wounds in his throat and belly. He had been struck by a leopard within a few yards of Benton's side, and, with his usual pluck, the dog turned upon the leopard in spite of his wounds, when the cowardly brute, seeing the man, turned and fled.

That night Leopold died. The next morning Bluebeard was so bad that I returned home with him slung in a litter between two men. Poor fellow!

he never lived to reach his comfortable kennel, but died in the litter within a mile of home. I had him buried by the side of old s.m.u.t, and there are no truer dogs on the earth than the two that there lie together.

A very few weeks after Bluebeard's death, however, I got a taste of revenge out of one of the race.

Palliser and I were out shooting, and we found a single bull elephant asleep in the dry bed of a stream; we were stealing quietly up to him, when his guardian spirit whispered something in his ear, and up he jumped. However, we polished him off, and having reloaded, we pa.s.sed on.

The country consisted of low, th.o.r.n.y jungle and small sandy plains of short turf, and we were just entering one of these open spots within a quarter of a mile of the dead elephant, when we observed a splendid leopard crouching at the far end of the glade. He was about ninety paces from us, lying broadside on, with his head turned to the opposite direction, evidently looking out for game. His crest was bristled up with excitement, and he formed a perfect picture of beauty both in color and att.i.tude.

Halting our gun-bearers, we stalked him within sixty yards; he looked quickly round, and his large hazel eyes shone full upon us, as the two rifles made one report, and his white belly lay stretched upon the ground.

They were both clean shots: Palliser had aimed at his head, and had cut off one ear and laid the skin open at the back of the neck. My ball had smashed both shoulders, but life was not fairly extinct. We therefore strangled him with my necktie, as I did not wish to spoil his hide by any further wound. This was a pleasing sacrifice to the "manes" of old Bluebeard.