It required eight men with two cross poles to bring him
home.
I reached the tent to breakfast at eight o'clock, having bagged three
fine bucks and two buffaloes that morning; and being, for the time,
satiated with sport, I quitted Ceylon.
CHAPTER VIII.
Beat-hounds for Elk-hunting--Smut--Killbuck--The Horton Plains--A Second
Soyer--The Find--The Buck at Bay--The Bay--The Death--Return of Lost
Dogs--Comparative Speed of Deer--Veddah Ripped by a Boar--A Melee--Buck
at Black Pool--Old Smut's Ruse--Margosse Oil.
The foregoing description of sporting incidents closed my first visit to
Ceylon. I had arrived in the island to make a tour of the country and to
enjoy its sports; this I had accomplished by a residence of twelve
months, the whole of which had been occupied in wandering from place to
place. I now returned to England; but the Fates had traced ANOTHER road
for me, and after a short stay in the old country I again started for
Ceylon, and became a resident at Newera Ellia.
Making use of the experience that I had gained in wild sports, I came
out well armed, according to my own ideas of weapons for the chase. I
had ordered four double-barrelled rifles of No. 10 bore to be made to my
own pattern; my hunting-knives and boarspear heads I had made to my own
design by Paget of Piccadilly, who turned out the perfection of steel;
and I arrived in Ceylon with a pack of fine foxhounds and a favourite
greyhound of wonderful speed and strength, 'Bran,' who, though full of
years, is still alive.
The usual drawbacks and discomforts attendant upon a new settlement
having been overcome, Newera Ellia forms a delightful place of
residence. I soon discovered that a pack of thoroughbred foxhounds were
not adapted to a country so enclosed by forest; some of the hounds were
lost, others I parted with, but they are all long since dead, and their
progeny, the offspring of crosses with pointers, bloodhounds and
half-bred foxhounds, have turned out the right stamp for elk-hunting.
It is a difficult thing to form a pack for this sport which shall be
perfect in all respects. Sometimes a splendid hound in character may be
more like a butcher's dog than a hound in appearance, but the pack
cannot afford to part with him if he is really good.
The casualties from leopards, boars, elk and lost dogs are so great that
the pack is with difficulty kept up by breeding. It must be remembered
that the place of a lost dog cannot be easily supplied in Ceylon. Newera
Ellia is one of the rare climates in Ceylon which is suited to the
constitution of a dog. In the low and hot climates they lead a short and
miserable life, which is soon ended by a liver complaint; thus if a
supply for the pack cannot be kept up by breeding, hounds must be
procured from England at a great expense and risk.
The pack now in the kennel is as near perfection as can be attained for
elk-hunting, comprising ten couple, most of whom are nearly thoroughbred
fox-hounds, with a few couple of immense seizers, a cross between
bloodhound and greyhound, and a couple of large wire-haired lurchers,
like the Scotch deer-hound.
In describing the sport, I must be permitted to call up the spirits of a
few heroes, who are now dead, and place them in the vacant places which
they formerly occupied in the pack.
The first who answers to the magic call is `Smut,' hero of at least 400
deaths of elk and boar. He appears the same well-remembered form of
strength, the sullen growl which greeted even his master, the numerous
scars and seams upon his body; behold old Smut! His sire was a Manilla
blood-hound, which accounted for the extreme ferocity of the son. His
courage was indomitable. He was a large dog, but not high, considering
his great length, but his limbs were immense in proportion. His height
at the shoulder was 26 1/2 inches; his girth of brisket 34 inches. In
his younger days he always opened upon a scent, and the rocky mountains
and deep valleys have often echoed back his deep notes which have now,
like himself, passed away. As he grew older he became cunning, and he
ran entirely mute, knowing well that the more noise the elk heard behind
him the faster he would run. I have frequently known him to be out by
himself all night, and return the next morning blown out with food which
he had procured for himself by pulling down a doe single-handed. When
he was a young dog, and gave tongue upon a scent, a challenge was
offered, but never accepted, that the dog should find, hunt, and pull
down two buck elk, single-handed, within a fortnight, assisted only by
his master, with no other weapon than a hunting-knife; there is no doubt
whatever that he would have performed it easily. He then belonged to
Lieutenant Pardoe, of the 15th Regiment.
He had several pitched battles with leopards, from which he has returned
frightfully torn, but with his yellow hair bristled up, his head and
stern erect; and his deep growl, with which he gave a dubious reception
to both man and beast, was on these occasions doubly threatening.
I never knew a dog that combined superlative valour with discretion in
the degree exhibited by Smut. I have seen many dogs who would rush
heedlessly upon a boar's tusks to certain destruction; but Smut would
never seize until the proper time arrived, and when the opportunity
offered he never lost it.
