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
miss? Should the game be simply wounded, it is quite enough; they never
lose him, but hunt him up, like hounds upon a blood track.
Nevertheless, they are very bad shots with the bow and arrow, and they
never can improve while they restrict their practice to such short
ranges.
I have often tried them at a mark at sixty yards, and, although a very
bad hand with a bow myself, I have invariably beaten them with their own
weapons. These bows are six feet long, made of a light supple wood, and
the strings are made of the fibrous bark of a tree greased and twisted.
The arrows are three feet long, formed of the same wood as the bows. The
blades are themselves seven inches of this length, and are flat, like
the blade of a dinner-knife brought to a point. Three short feathers
from the peacock's wing are roughly lashed to the other end of the
arrow.
The Veddah in person is extremely ugly; short, but sinewy, his long
uncombed locks fall to his waist, looking more like a horse's tail than
human hair. He despises money, but is thankful for a knife, a hatchet,
or a gaudy-coloured cloth, or brass pot for cooking.
