IN THE JUNGLE 5 



of jungle paths running down the hill, one wide enough 

 for a carriage, but very steep. 



Strange to say, the bulk of the Ceylon jungle con- 

 sists, in the Central Province at least, of an exotic 

 plant. This is the so - called lantana, which was 

 introduced as a botanic experiment from the Straits 

 Settlements within the memory of living man. It 

 is a low-growing shrub, rarely more than seven or 

 eight feet high, with reddish, sickly-smelling flowers. 

 Mr Rudyard Kipling has described the extraordinary 

 rapidity with which the South Indian jungle swallows 

 up cultivated land once it has been left to Nature. 

 Nothing, however, to my mind equals the rapidity 

 w^ith which the lantana grows. To the southward of 

 my bungalow I had had some poles of land cleared for 

 a cinchona nursery — in those days, the very latest 

 Ceylon idea. No sooner was the land done with than 

 the jungle began to swallow it up again, and I am 

 afraid to write in how few weeks — I might almost say 

 days — all trace of man's handiwork there was lost. 



An impenetrable lantana jungle, then, surrounded 

 my bungalow. Before it, it ran down to the town a 

 couple of hundred yards below ; but behind there 

 were hundreds of acres of it, indeed thousands. Here 

 and there a tall cotton-tree, areca palm, or wild mango 

 broke the dead level. But the mass of the vegetation 

 was this same plant, so thickly serried that no member 

 of my household ever went a yard behind the house, 

 for the simple reason that to do so he must have first 

 made his road with a billhook. That the jungle was 

 not untenanted, the sharp bark of the muntjac (known 

 in Ceylon as the red deer) which often broke the 

 silence of the night, proved. By the way, the words 

 " silence of the night " must only be taken relatively 



