Who would hit a man when down? A Frenchman would do
all these things, and might be no bad fellow after all. It would be HIS
way of doing it. His notion would be to make use of an advantage when an
opportunity offered. He would think it folly to give the hare a chance
of running when he could shoot her sitting; he would make an excellent
dish of all the trout he could snare; and as to hitting his man when
down, he would think it madness to allow him to get up again until he
had put him hors de combat by jumping on him. Their notions of sporting
and ours, then, widely differ; they take every advantage, while we give
every advantage; they delight in the certainty of killing, while our
pleasure consists in the chance of the animal escaping.
I would always encourage the love of sport in a lad; guided by its true
spirit of fair play, it is a feeling that will make him above doing a
mean thing in every station of life, and will give him real feelings of
humanity. I have had great experience in the characters of thorough
sportsmen, who are generally straightforward, honourable men, who would
scorn to take a dirty advantage of man or animal. In fact, all real
sportsmen that I have met have been tender-hearted men--who shun
cruelty to an animal, and are easily moved by a tale of distress.
With these feelings, sport is an amusement worthy of a man, and this
noble taste has been extensively developed since the opportunities of
travelling have of late years been so wonderfully improved. The facility
with which the most remote regions are now reached, renders a tour over
some portion of the globe a necessary adjunct to a man's education; a
sportsman naturally directs his path to some land where civilisation has
not yet banished the wild beast from the soil.
Ceylon is a delightful country for the sporting tourist. In the high
road to India and China, any length of time may be spent en passant, and
the voyage by the Overland route is nothing but a trip of a few weeks of
pleasure.
This island has been always celebrated for its elephants, but the other
branches of sport are comparatively unknown to strangers. No account has
ever been written which embraces all Ceylon sports: anecdotes of
elephant-shooting fill the pages of nearly every work on Ceylon; but the
real character of the wild sports of this island has never been
described, because the writers have never been acquainted with each
separate branch of the Ceylon chase.
A residence of many years in this lovely country, where the wild sports
of the island have formed a never-failing and constant amusement, alone
confers sufficient experience to enable a person to give a faithful
picture of both shooting and hunting in Ceylon jungles.
