After a short but violent struggle, the buck yielded up
his spirit. He was a noble fellow, and pluck to the last.
Having secured his horns to a bush, lest he should be washed away by the
torrent, I examined the dogs. Smut was wounded in two places, but not
severely, and Cato had just recovered his senses, but was so bruised as
to move with great difficulty. In addition to this, he had a deep wound
from the buck's horn under the shoulder.
The great number of elk at the Horton plains and the open character of
the country, make the hunting a far more enjoyable sport than it is in
Newera Ellia, where the plains are of much smaller extent, and the
jungles are frightfully thick. During a trip of two months at the Horton
Plains, we killed forty-three elk, exclusive of about ten which the
pack ran into and killed by themselves, bringing home the account of
their performances in distended stomachs. These occurrences frequently
happen when the elk takes away through an impervious country, where a
man cannot possibly follow. In such cases the pack is either beaten off,
or they pull the elk down and devour it.
This was exemplified some time ago, when the three best dogs were nearly
lost. A doe elk broke cover from a small jungle at the Horton Plains,
and, instead of taking across the patinas (plains), she doubled back to
an immense pathless jungle, closely followed by three
greyhounds--Killbuck, Bran, and Lena.
