323 



CHAP. m. 



ELEPHANT SHOOTING. 



As the shooting of an elephant, whatever endurance and 

 adroitness the sport may display in other respects, requires 

 the smallest possible sldll as a marksman, the numbers 

 which are annually slain in this way may be regarded as 

 evidence of the midtitudes abounding in those parts of 

 Ceylon to which they resort. One officer. Major Eogers, 

 killed upwards of 1400 ; another, Captain Gallwey, has 

 the credit of slajmig more than half that number ; Major 

 Skinner, now the Commissioner of Eoads, almost as 

 many ; and less persevering aspirants follow at humbler 

 distances.^ 



But notwithstanding tliis prodigious destruction, a re- 

 ward of a few shilhngs per head offered by the Govern- 

 ment for taking elephants was claimed for 3500 destroyed 

 in part of the nortliern province alone, in less than three 

 years prior to 1848 : and between 1851 and 185G, a 



^ To persons like myself, who are 

 not addicted to yvhat is called " sport," 

 the statement of these wholesale 

 slaughters is calculated to excite 

 eiu-prise and curiosity as to the 

 nature of a passion that impels men 

 to self-exposure and privation, in 

 a pursuit which presents nothing 

 but the monotonous recuiTence of 

 scenes of blood and sufterino-. Mr. 

 Baker, who has recently published, 

 under the title of T7ic liijle and the 

 Hound in Cci/hti, an account of his 

 exploits in the forest, gives us the 

 assurance that " all real i^poHsmen 

 are tender-hearted men, tvho shun 

 cruelty to an aninml, and are easily 



mox'ed by a talc of distress ; " and 

 that although man is naturally blood- 

 thirsty, and a Ijoast of prey by in- 

 stinct, yet that the true sportsman is 

 distinguished from the rest of the 

 human race by his " lore of nature 

 and of noble scenery. ^^ In support of 

 this pretension to a gentler miture 

 than the rest of numkind, the author 

 proceeds to attest his o^^^l abhorrence 

 of cruelty by narrating tlie sull'erings 

 of an old hoimd, which, although 

 " toothless," he cheered on to assail 

 a boar at bay, but it recoiled " co- 

 vered ^^'ith blood, cut nearly in half, 

 ^vHith a wound, fourteen inches in 

 length, from the lower ptu-t of the 



Y 2 



