JAUNTS IN THE JUNGLE. 55 



CHAPTER VI. 



A FORTNIGHT'S EXCURSION AMONG THE ELEPHANTS. 



AFTER having allowed yourself, like a good, do- 

 cile, and accommodating reader as you are, to be so 

 incontinently dragged, on our last excursion together 

 after elk, over a wilderness of hard-hearted crags and 

 yawning chasms, to the serious abrasion of your 

 shins and the deterioration of your nether habili- 

 ments, you shall now have your reward by an in- 

 troduction to the monarch of the forest the leviathan 

 of creation the Elephant; and, in its slaughter, to 

 the " crack sport of the Ceylon jungle.' 7 



There is something indescribably soul -stirring and 

 exhilarating, however much we may be hacknied in 

 the sport, when we see one of the kings of the jungle 

 (which the elephant decidedly is, and the lion a mere 

 pitiful usurper) sink dead upon the ground at the feet 

 of such a speck on nature's face as man in compari- 



