Sixty miles are passed; the top of the Kaduganava Pass is reached,
eighteen hundred feet above the sea level, the road walled with jungle
on either side.
From the summit of this pass our newly arrived sportsman
gazes with despair. Far as the eye can reach over a vast extent of
country, mountain and valley, hill and dale, without one open spot, are
clothed alike in one dark screen of impervious forest.
He reaches Kandy, a civilised town surrounded by hills of jungle--that
interminable jungle!--and at Kandy he may remain, or, better still,
return again to England, unless he can get some well-known Ceylon
sportsman to pilot him through the apparently pathless forests, and in
fact to 'show him sport.' This is not easily effected. Men who
understand the sport are not over fond of acting `chaperon' to a young
hand, as a novice must always detract from the sport in some degree. In
addition to this, many persons do not exactly know themselves; and,
although the idea of shooting elephants appears very attractive at a
distance, the pleasure somewhat abates when the sportsman is forced to
seek for safety in a swift pair of heels.
I shall now proceed to give a description of the various sports in
Ceylon--a task for which the constant practice of many years has
afforded ample incident.
The game of Ceylon consists of elephants, buffaloes, elk, spotted deer,
red or the paddy-field deer*(*A small species of deer found in the
island), mouse deer, hogs, bears, leopards, hares, black partridge,
red-legged partridge, pea-fowl, jungle-fowl, quail, snipe, ducks,
widgeon, teal, golden and several kinds of plover, a great variety of
pigeons, and among the class of reptiles are innumerable snakes, etc.,
and the crocodile.
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