No. 39. — 1889.] account of ceylon. 



249 



one), the third man takes his gun and shoots it at close 

 quarters. When they set out they will not allow any one to 

 go with them, and keep everything as secret as possible.* 



Every year they catch about twenty wild elephants, tame 

 them, and sell them to Persians and Moors, principally from 

 Mecca.f I myself had to go three years consecutively into 

 the jungle to see elephants caught, — at one time I saw as 

 many as two hundred together ; and because at the beginning 

 I was anxious myself to see how these huge brutes could be 

 caught, which one describes in one way, and another in 

 'another way, I was the more pleased to go. 



I will now tell how I have seen them caught by the Dutch r 

 in this same island of Ceilon. 



There are two places where they are caught, the one called 

 Kattumma, the other Flasmeulla.% A special master of the 

 hunt is appointed, who has to furnish a given number of 

 elephants every year. In my time he had to provide three 

 with tusks, and fifteen without : the latter being of consider- 

 ably less value than the former. He has for the purpose 

 thirty-six villages under his command, out of which he can 

 take five hundred natives to help him. The best time to catch 

 elephants is in the three months of June, July, and August, 

 because, on account of want of water, they leave the high 

 mountains and go into the plains towards the sea, where it 

 rains more frequently. 



Now, when the hunter wants to catch them, he orders wood 

 to be brought, or his subordinates must fetch it in the jungle 



*See Knox, p. 26, and C. A. S. Journal, No. 26, 1883, p. 16, of the 

 Panikkans, or Elephant-catchers. 



f Ribeiro says, twenty or thirty were procured annually for the Mogul. 

 The trade was important to the Dutch, realising from 100,000 to 130,000 

 guilders yearly. Colombo and Matara furnished fifty elephants, the 

 Wanni fifty, Mantota and Vilankulam twenty to twenty-five — a net total 

 of one hundred available for the sale at Jaffna, whence all were taken over- 

 land to find a readier market. Two kraals were held each year, that in 

 the Matara district being the larger. (Lee's Rebeiro, App., pp. 170-197.) 



X Katuwdna ; Walasmidla ; both in the Hambantota District of the 

 Southern Province. 



H 2 



