Neither Of Us Was Feeling Well; We Had Been For Some Weeks In The
Most Unhealthy Part Of The Country, And I Was Just Recovering
From A Touch Of Dysentery:
Altogether, we were looking forward
with pleasure to our return to comfortable quarters, and for the
time we were tired of jungle life.
However, we arrived at a
little village about sixty miles south of Batticaloa, called
"Gollagangwelléwevé" (pronunciation requires practice), and a
very long name it was for so small a place; but the natives
insisted that a great number of elephants were in the
neighborhood.
They also declared that the elephants infested the neighboring
tank even during the forenoon, and that they nightly destroyed
their embankment, and would not be driven away, as there was not
a single gun possessed by the village with which to scare them.
This looked all right; so we loaded the guns and started without
loss of time, as it was then one P. M., and the natives described
the tank as a mile distant. Being perfectly conversant with the
vague idea of space described by a Cingalese mile, we mounted our
horses, and, accompanied by about five-and-twenty villagers,
twenty of whom I wished at Jericho, we started. By the by, I
have quite forgotten to describe who "we" are - F. H. Palliser,
Esq., and myself.
Whether or not it was because I did not feel in brisk health, I
do not know, but somehow or other I had a presentiment that the
natives had misled us, and that we should not find the elephants
in the tank, but that, as usual, we should be led tip to some
dense, thorny jungle, and told that the elephants were somewhere
in that direction.
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