The donghill kind

Delights in filth and fowle incontinence;
Let Gryll, be Gryll, and have his hoggish minde;
But let us hence depart whilest wether serves and
winde.

And so saying, he tried what could be done
with a dog that was looking on hard by. There
is one animal in Ceylon that has no feathered
friends, and it is not to be wondered at. I mean
the jackal; and the manner in which he is said
to rid himself of his tormentors was recently
related in an interesting paper in one of the local
publications. A jackal was, it is said, observed
by an old hunter to take up some cocoa-nut
fibre in his mouth and proceed to the water,
where, wading in a short distance, he gradually
lowered himself, until at last nothing but the
very tip of his snout remained above water.
After retaining this position for some time, he
suddenly ducked under, leaving the cocoa-nut
fibre in the water, and made for the shore. The
old hunter had been watching his actions with
much curiosity for some time, unable to make
out what his customer was after, but quite
prepared to find it was something very deep. When
he had left, the man examined the piece of cocoa-
nut fibre, when the object of the jackal was at
once apparent. His disagreeable tenants had,
as he sunk in the water, gradually wended their
way towards his snout. Thence they had, poor
deluded victims of misplaced confidence, taken
refuge in the cocoa-nut fibre, and soon they were
left to the mercy of the fickle elements, while
master jackal sloped off with a clean bill of
health.

As I jog along, a party of men are to be seen
a short way off, with hands joined, apparently
going through a country dance at this early hour
of the morning; and so they are, but with a
purpose and an object: they are treading out
the corn. In the distance are heard the shouts
and laughter of boys, bathing in the sluggish
stream. The moorhen feeds by the road-side;
the dove coos in the bush; the jungle-cock and
double-spurred haban kukulu cry from the
forest, and the snipe rises close beside us, as my
horsekeeper, my horse, and I pursue our way.
The Singhalese is a great bather. In this soft
sleepy land, the hours of his lazy noontide are
spent in standing up to his waist in some river
or lake beneath the shade of overhanging trees,
and pouring vessel after vessel of water over his
head. He will then slowly sink down and disappear,
come up after a while, and pour some more
water over himself again, or else he and a
companion will amuse themselves by the half-hour
with standing opposite each other, and alternately
splashing into one another's eyes a jet of
water, struck up with the open palm of the hand.

A five minutes' halt, that my horsekeeper
rnay have a cup of coffee, and on again. We
pass a sugar estate that is abandoned all
but a little patch. It was once the late Lord
Elphinstone's. The buildings with the tall
chimney stand out clear in the morning light.
Thousands upon thousands have been sunk upon
this spot that now brings forth so fine a crop of
——weeds. We are in the habit of extolling those
pioneers in distant lands who have shown us
what will succeed, but do we not owe almost as
great a debt of gratitude to those who have
taught us what will not answer? How many a
poor fellow who might otherwise have sunk his
little all in a sugar estate has invested it in
something else, warned by the losses of a more
wealthy speculator. If " deeds of great men
all remind us, we can make our lives sublime,"
the failures of rich and enterprising men may
also show us how we can avoid making our
career a losing one. Valuable machinery here
lies idle, awaiting a use at some future time;
but I have no time to look at it, and press on.
The sun is getting hot. A little further and I
overtake my coolies and baggage; we ford the
river, and, soon after, reach the morning's halting-
station, the house of a Singhalese gentleman,
which has been prepared for our use. The owner
makes his bow, and then, with true politeness,
retires, and is seen no more until I leave. Here
a welcome cup of coffee enables me to hold on
till breakfast. A wash, a snooze, a story from
All the Year Round, and then comes the meal of
meals in India; that is, the late breakfast, the
déjeûner à la fourchette, as distinguished from
the young breakfast of coffee and toast; time of
day, not far from noon; bill of fare on this occasion,
spatch-cock, potatoes, cold brisket of beef,
rice, three curries, and a sambal.

Another stage in the afternoon. We are on
a jungle bridle-road, and the bridges are regular
horse-traps. I am warned to dismount before
crossing them by what happened to a predecessor
on this very road. He tried to ride over one of
them, about which his attendants had doubts.
It broke, and he went to the bottom of the
nullah; his horse hung somehow, like Mohammed,
between earth and the sky, and was with
much difficulty rescued. At sunset, after a hot
ride, we halt for the night at another house, like
the one of the morning strongly built, but in
native style. Here a few chatties of water wash
away the heat and dust of the day's travel, and
a late dinner follows. In this climate, and at
this season, a bed in the verandah is preferable
to a close room, although we are at some height
above the sea. Next morning we are up with
the early village cock. The coolies wake up
reluctantly from their slumbers, and sling their
loads on a pliable stick made of the areca palm,
and called a " pingo." They balance the baggage
at either end, suspending it by strings, then
give the stick a slightly oscillating motion, and
off they go, keeping step with its swing.

We ford for the last time the river, whose
banks, lined with the feathery bamboo and
larger forest trees, we have hung upon hitherto,
and face a mountain with an awfully steep
ascent. It is off the regular track, and leads
to a valley in the mountains which is anything
but a " happy valley," and where I have some
business to transact, whereof I shall say more
hereafter. To follow a " bee line" may be very
fine on the prairies, but when it is up one side
of a mountain and down another, one wishes