308 
WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WAYS 
CHAP. 
morning to revisit the old scenes. I felt tired 
upon my return, and depressed in spirit, as I 
looked back upon the days when I seldom 
walked, but always ran, and never knew the 
meaning of the word ‘‘fatigue.” I suspected that 
I also must be growing old. 
It is astonishing to regard the havoc that 
can be created by the axe. I remember the 
time when we looked over an expanse of 
interminable and pathless forest from the hill¬ 
tops above Newera Ellia. No person would 
have believed that it would entirely disappear, 
and give place to tea. A railway station at 
Nana-Oya is only 4 miles from the hotel, which 
brings the sanatorium within eight hours' journey 
of sweltering Colombo. 
I re-read my own book, Eight Years in 
Ceylon , written in 1854, to refresh my memory 
of things and people connected with the country. 
It struck me that I had been rather unsparing 
in my criticisms upon certain governors of the 
island, but the sins of omission and commission 
upon their part were nothing to the act of the 
man (whoever he may have been) who had 
deprived the troops of their sanatorium, 
dismantled the barracks at Newera Ellia, and, 
although a railway now brings the place within 
only a few hours of Kandy and Colombo, had 
neutralised every advantage by withdrawing the 
entire military detachment. 
Here was a magnificent anomaly; “that a 
