CHAPTER I.

Wild Country-Dealings in the Marvellous-Enchanting Moments The Wild
Elephant of Ceylon--'Rogues'-Elephant Slaughter-Thick Jungles-Character
of the Country-Varieties of Game in Ceylon--'Battery for Ceylon
Sport'-The Elk or 'Samber Deer'-Deer-coursing.

It is a difficult task to describe a wild country so exactly, that a
stranger's eye shall at once be made acquainted with its scenery and
character by the description. And yet this is absolutely necessary, if
the narration of sports in foreign countries is supposed to interest
those who have never had the opportunity of enjoying them. The want of
graphic description of localities in which the events have occurred, is
the principal cause of that tediousness which generally accompanies the
steady perusal of a sporting work. You can read twenty pages with
interest, but a monotony soon pervades it, and sport then assumes an
appearance of mere slaughter.

Now, the actual killing of an animal, the death itself, is not sport,
unless the circumstances connected with it are such as to create that
peculiar feeling which can only be expressed by the word `sport.' This
feeling cannot exist in the heart of a butcher; he would as soon
slaughter a fine buck by tying him to a post and knocking him down, as
he would shoot him in his wild native haunts--the actual moment of
death, the fact of killing, is his enjoyment. To a true sportsman the
enjoyment of a sport increases in proportion to the wildness of the
country. Catch a six-pound trout in a quiet mill-pond in a populous
manufacturing neighbourhood, with well-cultivated meadows on either side
of the stream, fat cattle grazing on the rich pasturage, and, perhaps,
actually watching you as you land your fish: it may be sport. But catch