ELEPHANT-SHOOTING IN CEYLON.

SIR,-As it may not be altogether uninteresting to "gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease," to read a little of the field-sports of the land we live in, I am instructed to acquaint you that here, in Ceylon, we flatter ourselves that, amongst many other good things, we are indulged with the very best elephantshooting in the world; and that we hold it meet, with your good leave (since none of our better qualified predecessors have done so), to place on record a few observations upon the sport, illustrating the general remarks we make by a diary of one of the very best of our excursions.

Excepting for some miles inland from the line of coast between Chilaw and Tangalle, and in the immediate neighbourhood of very thickly inhabited localities, elephants are to be met with in every part of Ceylon. Not always, certainly, in the same numbers at the same places, but you will never go far without hearing of them; and there are extensive tracts of country in which they abound at almost all seasons. They are met with singly, more commonly in herds of from three to twelve or twenty, and sometimes in more numerous herds, which are spoken of as amounting even to hundreds; and they are found indifferently on all descriptions of ground-on the hills and plains in the open country, and equally in forest or in bush jungle.

The average height of the fullgrown Ceylon elephant is upwards of eight feet. Their sight is very defective, but their hearing seems good, and their sense of smell particularly acute. It is always advis able to get to leeward of them if possible; and directly you hear or approach them, even on the stillest days, you will see the natives crumbling the gossamer grass and dropping it from their raised hands, or adopting other modes of ascertaining if there be any movement in the air. They vary exceedingly in courage, from the beast which will run from any alarm, to the one which will resolutely advance on the fire of a whole party. But they are very much more commonly timid than

courageous: of course, when wounded, many of them become savage, and as troublesome as they can make themselves, though it is remarked that they are inconceivably stupid in dealing with unfortunate gentlemen, and, so far as our Ceylon records go, it is certain that (though a mere stamp of the foot would be death) at least three-fourths of those who fall into the clutches of an elephant escape with a mauling. The last gentlemen sportsmen killed by elephants in this island were Mr. Wallett and (longo intervallo) Major Haddick, while Messrs. M'Kenzie, Holyoake, George, Gallwey, and Major Rogers have been severely wounded by them, luckily escaping with more or less damage. Of course, a very great number of men are saved from accidents by their brother sportsmen. Elephants are generally bolder on open ground than in cover, but, if bold, far more dangerous in cover than in open ground. In the first instance they see their antagonist, and he looks no great things compared to themselves. Sometimes, in open ground, they appear to hesitate as you are coming up, and then turn when you are within twenty paces; but very often, if you are not followed by a posse that frightens them, they stand or huddle together, and when you are very close, one or two of them come on to meet you. In cover they most commonly hear you coming up, and at the sound, or when they see the cover stir, they go off; or if you contrive to come up very well in very thick jungle, after seeing their legs at four or five yards from you, you may, by creeping on another pace, catch their small eyes peering down to make you out; but before your gun is up to your shoulder they will be off, with a crash that seems to be levelling every thing around you. There are, however, exceptions to these rules; and they furnish most of the critical predicaments in which elephant-shots have been placed, as may be readily conceived when it is remembered how close you must be to fire, and that the jungle which hems you, and with its thorns hooks you, in all

round, is trampled down like stubble by the elephant that rushes on you. It is, in truth, a very uncertain sport as regards danger; but in open ground, if all fails, you have free and fair use of your legs, and a man in elephant-shooting may calculate on having sometimes to run, for reasons quite as satisfactory to his amour propre as Bardolph's at Gad's or Claverhouse's at Loudon Hill. The most favourable ground for shooting is very open jungle, where you can approach without being heard or seen, and make way through it in the event of a retreat. Opinions differ widely as to the pace of the elephant; but I find all men who have been chased unani-, mously agree that they run fast, and that he does cleverly who gets away from them.

The practice in Ceylon is to fire invariably at the head, the favourite shots being above the trunk, at the temples, the hollow over the eye, and the hollow at the back of the ear; in all cases bearing in mind the size and position of the brain, and levelling so as to go directly to it through these weaker parts of the skull. In the opinion of the first shot in Ceylon, fifteen paces is decidedly the best distance to fire. It gives time for a second shot; whereas, when you let an elephant come quite close, if the first shot does not drop him, and he rushes on, the second will be a very hurried and most likely ineffectual one, and if not effective, the retreat will commence with the disadvan

often

is

doubt, but I have seen it very fail. Behind the ear, they say, deadly; but I never fired it, or saw it fired, that I remember. If the ball go critically true to its mark, all shots are certain; but the bones on either side of the honeycomb passages to the brain are so thick that there is in all a glorious uncertainty, which keeps a man on the qui vive till he sees his elephant down, and even that does not insure results. Elephants, after being left for dead, and their tails cut off, are often seen up again, and, like "the Old Original Coach and Horses new revived" on the Harrow Road, flourishing in active business.

There are not many elephant-shots who have not been foolish enough in their day to go up to an elephant with a single and only barrel; but this is generally before they have seen a scrape. I should say a man was perfectly gunned for elephantshooting with three doubles, carrying balls fourteen or sixteen to the pound, with the same bore, nipple, &c. The ball, one-third pewter, should go down with moderate pres sure over a charge and a-half of powder, and the caps ought to fit exactly. I have been minus three caps out of four barrels when before a herd. Many elephant-shots affect heavy guns. I think them utter nuisances: their weight fags you and heats you, and at times you find yourself before an elephant with scarce power to lift them. I remember once coming hurriedly on an ele phant with nothing but a single bush between us, and firing a shot from my heavy Nock, which, instead of the temple, struck the ear of the animal, when she turned slap on me, and I literally was not able to get the infernal patteraro up to my shoulder a second time before she almost had hold of it. I fired as I was raising it, and of course did her no harm. I had to bolt. In ten seconds I was down-her trunk twiddling about my legs, and, but for a friend who came up at the moment, and floored her as she was on her knees paying every possible attention to me, I should most probably have been expended. I have since found myself more than half dead after a pursuit, in which I had car ried

tage of a very short start. It is, however, certain that, what with the closeness of cover and the desire in open ground to be sure of your bird, most first shots are fired at about ten paces, and occasionally closer. Men don't like to hear their friends say, "It's a pity you didn't go a little nearer before you fired." A shot that goes true to the brain drops an elephant off the gun; but nothing is more common than to see them take a dozen shots and go away, and they have been known to take many more, and afterwards fairly to defeat the party opposed to them. There is a wide difference of opinion as to the most deadly shot. I think the temple the most certain; but authority in Ceylon says the fronter. It is the prettiest shot, no

a heavy gun; and as light ones

do their work, I know no advantage the heavier have, unless it be that they may possibly stun or stupify, or, perhaps, now and then kill a very big elephant, when the light ones would not. But this is a bare and rare possibility; while the inconvenience and nuisance of carrying the heavies is incontestible and neverceasing. Although a single elephant will often take all you can give him, the battery I recommend is chiefly desirable in dealing with a herd, both as regards the number you may kill, and the chance of fresh elephants coming on you after you have discharged three or four barrels, espe cially as these latter are usually illdisposed and resolute.

The two

steady fellows who carry your spare guns must be instructed to keep very close, and by no means to allow their zeal to bring themselves into action.

By taking a good map of Ceylon(I can fancy you paraphrasing Mr. Pottingen's exclamation of Ten brave men! but where are they to be found?")-well, then, by taking the best you can get, and drawing a line from Pangregam or Bintennè at the great bend of the Mahavilla Ganga (where it changes its east and west course to north and south), direct eastward to the coast, you will pass over the ground on which our party met. It is a part of what is called the Veddah-ratè, or Veddah's country, of the province of Wellassy. There are a few small villages where it borders on the cultivated parts of Bintennè, Oova, and Wellassy, but with these exceptions it is uninhabited, save by the Veddahs who hunt over it. To make amends, however, for this want of society, elephants are almost always numerous there, deer innumerable, and hogs, buffa loes, bears, cheetas, partridge, peafowl, and snipe, in very reasonable abundance. For an extent of, perhaps, 200 square miles, this country is neither more nor less in appearance

than what it is called "the Park," or, more properly, "Rogers' Park," from the unrivalled sportsman who first discovered its capabilities. contains many large isolated hills of rock and forest, but the lower ground

It

consists of long undulations perfectly open, or dotted with single trees and clumps, with stripes of forest (chiefly in the hollows where the waters run) which here and there spread over the neighbouring ground to some extent. In fact, great part of it resembles the Sherwood of Ivanhoe, consisting of "woods through which there are many open glades and some paths, but such as seem only formed by the numerous herds of cattle which graze in the forest, or by the animals of chase and the hunters that make prey of them;" while the more open parts recalled to our minds the descriptions we had read of the American prairies. In much of the forest there is no undergrowth; in other parts a good deal. The Patupalar river, and one or two of its feeders, intersect the country rather inconveniently; so much so, indeed, that a gentleman who preceded us prophesied that our sport on this occasion would amount to little more than taking off our clothes to cross one river, and putting them on again to go decently to the next. About two and a half miles from the last inhabited spot, called Dimbledenny, is the bungalow

prettily situated, with a fine lawn bordered by noble trees in its frontwhere our head-quarters were to be established. Two very precipitous and striking rocks, of about 300 feet in height, called "Rogers' Pillars," rise behind the building, and serve as admirable landmarks.

Our ride from Kandy was a great treat, especially the descent of the Diabobolè pass, which leads down to a tract of country of notoriously bad character, and which, at a turn of the road about a mile beyond Gonagamma, presents the traveller with a most striking and impressive view. The river, whose modulated roar has been previously heard, is seen by breaks for many miles, foaming and struggling along its rocky and descending bed to the left, covered till late in the day by wreaths of mist, through which are seen its banks, torn bare to the primitive rock, high above the usual watermark. From these the precipices rise abruptly

*This noble and estimable fellow was, last year, struck down and killed by lightning in Ceylon.

full 2000 feet, and close the view on that side. To the right the forest hills ascend somewhat more gradually, but yet wild and broken, while on in front lies the Mahavilla

ceptible outline of the several hills within our view, was that he had brought us in a direction directly opposite to that of our destination. We accordingly doubled back, and night set in. We had wandered about an hour in the dark, when, on passing the ridge of a small hill, we heard the long, low, roll of a herd of elephants, and a sharp "prut" or two, and looking in the direction of the sounds, saw a thick black mass at some distance on our right. It was evidently a large herd, and I have already mentioned that we had no guns. As we crossed near to them the growling became much louder, accompanied by a sort of banging noise, like a cooper hammering a cask, which, with two or three peculiarly angry trumpets, so scared our people that they quite forgot themselves, and scudded in all directions, With a deal of difficulty we col lected them by shouting, except two, whom our eloquent execrations could not seduce out of the trees, up which they had fled, and where they chose to pass the night, so that we pushed on without them, and were very shortly brought up by a chasm, of which we could not see the bottom but where we could hear the water flowing fast, and which we were told was impassable. Here we struck a light from a tinder-box, and were striving to set fire to bits of wood to enable us to examine our difficulties, when a native, attracted by our shouting, came from the other side, and told us he had left the bungalow that afternoon, and that though we could cross the river be low us, the next one we should come to was a more doubtful matter. We forded the first stream easily enough, for it was not breast-high, and, after passing half a mile of plain, we came to the second river, and were surprised to see lots of people and lights, and doubly so to hear a well-known voice or two shouting and laughing at their loudest. They were our friends, who had been similarly be nighted and beset with elephants, and together we made as merry a crossing of a rattling stream of 100 yards in width, and of rather critical depth, as heart could desire. Our numerous chools, or flambeaux, gleaming in and along the water, flashing on either bank and lighting up the lofty

valley between them-still, dank, and noisome-looking, shut in from the wholesome and purifying breeze, and open with all its spread of vegetation, swamp, and water, to the fiery sun. Not a hut, or a curl of smoke, or the sign of any thing betokening the presence of man, is seen along the line; while a few abandoned clearings at the foot of the pass shew where he has vainly endeavoured permanently to invade the confines of this deadly valley, and either died or fled. If you could imagine a Kandian priest of fifty feet in height, with a voice of twentytrumpet power, the pass itself is precisely a scene in which, with a fitting regard to the picturesque and the probable, he might fire away his poetry and prophecy to great advantage on an English detachment winding down the mountain, after the approved fashion of Gray's celebrated bard. A very different landscape is presented by the path which leads from Pangregam to Bibilè, passing through a noble forest, the openings of which give views of the Hewaillia range of mountains on the right. The exquisite and varied greens which clothed their sides were, as we all declared, superior to any thing we had ever witnessed, and what with them and the waterfalls, the pretty cottages, and wihares or temples, in their sheltered nooks, with graceful bamboos and cocoa-nuts around them-the classic spots of several skirmishes in the Kandian rebellion, where those we knew had done the state some service - the charming plain of Veeragama, and the pea-fowl, with their splendid plumage, bearding us as if they knew we had no guns, our last day's ride was enlivened by almost a continued file-fire of exclamations of delight. It was near dusk in the evening when we reached the edge of the park, and our guide, after leading us a couple of miles into it, suddenly stopped, declaring himself at fault, and, after much expostulation, all that we could extract from him, by fixing him on a knoll and desiring him to consider well the scarce per