in his life. Those broad, wide flings of his—his
coat of monstrous looseness, and his trousers of
unheard-of width, his habitual lounge and strong
individuality not in the faintest degree shaded
off into command, are all against the possibility
of the military theory. He looks more like an
engineer—like a man who has been abroad in
rich, warm, generous climates, and who has
fought for his own hand ever since he was a
boy—conquering all manner of evil circumstance,
and coming now to the end of the strife
triumphant and a hero to the last. I like to
see these leonine magnificent men. They are
like bits of old Greek or Roman life, great,
beautiful, and masculine, translated into our
smaller world of nerves and nervous development;
and carry with them an atmosphere of
health and strength, even into omnibuses when
they enter. I could weave a whole novel out of
that big man's life; but before I have finished
the first chapter, he lunges at the conductor
with his thick carved stick, heaves himself
weightily out of the machine, and I see him
striding back at a speed I could not match,
having forgotten to buy his wife a lobster at
Lynn's. And Lynn's is the only place in
London—so he says, but I do not—where they
are to be had worth the eating. And when
there falls helplessly into his place an old, bent,
withered, dusty, little woman, with a red bundle
smelling of cheese and stale pie-crust—a dusty
little woman like a withered green apple all of
whose juices are dried up, and whose few last
years will be spent in the charitable Union—I
too have come to the end of my day's travel, and
must leave my omnibus friends of an hour with
the remainder of their histories unfinished.

MORE TRIFLES FROM CEYLON.

IN this moist showery isle of verdure, if it
happen not to rain for six weeks, people begin
to write and declaim about the fearful drought.
One man from the Ambegamoa district describes
the terrible state of things there; it has actually
not rained for three whole weeks! Now, in the
north of Ceylon, the climate of which resembles
in some degree that of India, and on the
Coromandel coast, rain falls at one season of the
year, that is, between October and January, and
for the rest of the year very little indeed falls—
certainly when it does come down, it makes up
for lost time.

Just at present we have a season of drought,
and the wild animals consequently draw towards
the rivers; and cheetahs, or panthers rather—for,
according to Sir E. Tennent, the cheetah is
unknown in Ceylon—have approached the outskirts
of Colombo, the capital of the island. A very
large one was observed swimming across the
Kalany Ganga a few days ago, and was shot.

Later still, while a strongly built Singhalese
man was bathing in the same river, a panther
sprang into the water and seized him by the
right arm; the man, who was unarmed, grasped
his assailant by the throat; and a companion
ran up with a knife, and dealt the panther such
a blow on the head that he quitted his hold of
the man's arm, but again seized him by the
thigh. The man who had the knife, cut the
panther across the throat and rescued his
companion: an act of daring for which he ought to
receive a medal. The wounded man was
conveyed to the hospital, where he lies dangerously
ill.

A friend of mine was lately riding in company
with three others, in single file along the narrow
strip of land which connects the peninsula of
Jaffna with the rest of the island, when suddenly
his horse sprang to one side in a manner so
unexpected as nearly to unseat him. It appeared
that an alligator which had been lying by the
side of the lagoon, had made a spring at the
horse's legs as he passed. One of the gentlemen
who was riding behind my friend, and who
had seen the whole proceeding, was so strongly
impressed with the idea that the horse had been
touched by the alligator, that he was not satisfied
until he had dismounted and examined the horse's
legs. This is unquestionably one of the coolest
pieces of impertinence I have ever heard of
on the part of a tank alligator; and having
heard of it I shall certainly be more cautious
about going into tanks where alligators are up
to my waist, for half an hour at a time. I
remember once watching the proceedings of
alligators in a tank in this neighbourhood. I
espied on the opposite side of a tank two black
curlew, birds of most delicate flavour, but very
shy. My gun carrier was a good way in the
rear, and as the curlew were moving quietly
along, I rode into the tank to watch them.
There were several alligators about me, and the
way they went to work was this: A fellow would
rise to the surface and look at my pony and me
to see where we were. Then he would sink
and come up again a little nearer and go down
again, and come up and have another look to
see where we were. At last my gun was
brought and I had my shot at the curlew, and
saw no more of the alligators, who always take
alarm at the sound of a gun.

I omitted to mention that on his return a day
or two after, my friend kept a look-out for his
enemy, and discovered him once more on the
bank—he gave him a two-ounce rifle-ball, which
made a long white scar along his back; however,
a wound like that does not usually prove fatal
at once, and the alligator succeeded in getting
away.

The magistrate at Mullativoe one morning
found that an alligator had sought the hospitable
shelter of his court-house during the night, and
a gentleman at Batticaton found another in his
stable.

An old sportsman in Jaffna, who had an
endless stock of tales, used to tell how he had once
shot several alligators with grains of rice
instead of ball! After he had tested the credulity
of his hearers to a moderate degree, he would
add that the alligators were about nine inches
long. They were young ones which he killed
as specimens.