XXV 
THE SAM BUR 
341 
his face, striving to relieve him as he convulsively 
gasped for breath. 
“At length his limbs stretched and stiffened. 
My good dog was gone.” 
No one knows the loss of a dog of this kind 
unless he is constantly engaged in these wild sports. 
If Bertram had lived, he would have been invaluable, 
but it is a physical impossibility that any dog so 
reckless of danger can long survive. Killbuck, who 
was killed by a spotted buck at the Park, was just 
such another dog as Bertram, and he won undying 
renown by his feats of seizing during an experience 
of two years, until he met an untimely fate by 
impaling himself upon the deer’s antlers, at the same 
time that he pulled his stag down single-handed, 
and died in victory. 
These extracts from my original diary afford a 
vivid picture of the sport of sambur deer hunting, 
as it was conducted in Ceylon. I never permitted 
a rifle to be carried by any person who accompanied 
the pack, as shooting a hunted stag would have 
been regarded in the same light as shooting a fox in 
England. 
I have frequently remarked with surprise that 
residents in India do not more generally make use 
of dogs for various types of hunting, especially as 
the climate during winter throughout the Central 
and Northern Provinces would be favourable to the 
sport. There are many places which I know, that 
would be far easier to hunt than the boundless 
jungles of Ceylon, and the sambur stag would then 
