district is the dry season in another, and vice versa. Wherever the dry
weather prevails, the pasturage is dried up; the brooks and pools are
mere sandy gullies and pits. The Veddah watches at some solitary hole
which still contains a little water, and to this the deer and every
species of Ceylon game resort. Here his broad-headed arrow finds a
supply. He dries the meat in long strips in the sun, and cleaning out
some hollow tree, he packs away his savoury mass of sun-cooked flesh,
and fills up the reservoir with wild honey; he then stops up the
aperture with clay.

The last drop of water evaporates, the deer leave the country and
migrate into other parts where mountains attract the rain and the
pasturage is abundant. The Veddah burns the parched grass wherever he
passes, and the country is soon a blackened surface--not a blade of
pasture remains; but the act of burning ensures a sweet supply shortly
after the rains commence, to which the game and the Veddahs will then
return. In the meantime he follows the game to other districts, living
in caves where they happen to abound, or making a temporary but with
grass and sticks.

Every deer-path, every rock, every peculiar feature in the country,
every pool of water, is known to these hunting Veddahs; they are
consequently the best assistants in the world in elephant-hunting. They
will run at top speed over hard ground upon an elephant's track which is
barely discernible even to the practised eye of a white man.
Fortunately, the number of these people is very trifling or the game
would be scarce.

They hunt like the leopard; noiselessly stalking till within ten paces
of their game, they let the broad arrow fly. At this distance who could