JAUNTS IN THE JUNGLE. 45 



But during all this interesting interlude, we will 

 suppose yourself, my dear reader, to be charitable 

 enough to be cleaning our guns, and cutting chops 

 out of the murdered pig that hangs in the verandah, 

 whereon we may enjoy a late dinner, and secure our- 

 selves the moral certainty of such a night-mare as will 

 cause us no want of inclination to jump out of bed 

 next morning with the first peep of daylight, and to 

 see if we cannot vary the day's " carte" by a venison 

 dinner, although you must excuse its being unattended 

 by the customary confectionery satellites ; had the 

 interior economy of the " genus cervus" been left to 

 our simple construction, I dare say we certainly 

 should, by a special dispensation of our own, have 

 endowed each animal with a receptacle for currant 

 jelly among some of its other numberless, and to all 

 culinary intents useless, interior appendages. 



There is no such variety among any one tribe of 

 animals in the whole brute creation, that I am aware 

 of, as there exists among the deer of Ceylon. 



First and foremost, we have the noble and beautiful 

 elk, standing fourteen hands in height, its antlers 

 branching some six feet above its front, its dark full 

 eye and bright silky coat, the exceeding elegance of 

 its long and taper understandings, the fine drawn 

 tenuity of which you would imagine that the weight 

 of its carcase in its bounding leaps from rock to rock 

 would snap like a reed ! 



To see one of these noble creatures in its own 



