第79章

Nov.24--This being Sunday, the guns were at rest.The whole of this country was dense chenar jungle; we therefore pushed on, and, after a ride of fourteen miles, we arrived at the Rhatamahatmeya's residence at Doolana.He insisted upon our taking breakfast with him, and he accordingly commenced his preparations.Borrowing one of our hunting-knives, two of his men gave chase to a kid and cut its head off.

Half an hour afterwards we were eating it in various forms, all of which were excellent.

We had thus travelled over forty-four miles of country from Minneria without killing a single head of game.Had we remained a week in the district through which we had passed so rapidly, we must have had most excellent sport.All this was the effect of being hurried for time.

In the neighbourhood of Doolana I had killed many elephants some years ago, and I have no doubt we could have had good sport at this time; but V.Baker's leave was so fast expiring, and the natives' accounts of the distance through the Veddah country were so vague, that we had no choice except to push straight through as fast as we could travel, until we should arrive on the Batticaloa path.

We took leave of our friend the Rhatamahatmeya; he had provided us with good trackers, who were to accompany us through the Veddah country to the 'Park'; but I now began to have my doubts as to their knowledge of the ground.However, we started, and after skirting the Doolana tank for some distance, we rode five miles through fine forest, and then arrived on the banks of the Mahawelle river.The stream teas at this time very rapid, and was a quarter of a mile in width, rolling along between its steep banks through a forest of magnificent trees.Some hours were consumed in transporting the coolies and baggage across the river, as the canoe belonging to the village of Monampitya, on the opposite bank, would only hold four coolies and their loads at one voyage.

We swam the horses across, and attending carefully to the safety of the cook before any other individual, we breakfasted on the opposite bank, while the coolies were crossing the river.

After breakfast, a grave question arose, viz., which way were we to go?

The trackers that the headman had given us, now confessed that they did not know an inch of the Veddah country, into which we had arrived by crossing the river, and they refused to go a step farther.Here, was a 'regular fix!' as the Americans would express it.

The village of Monampitya consists of about six small huts; and we now found that there was no other village within forty miles in the direction that we wished to steer.Not a soul could we obtain as a guide--no offer of reward would induce a man to start, as they declared that no one knew the country, and that the distance was so great that the people would be starved, as they could get nothing to eat.We looked hopelessly at the country before us.We had a compass, certainly, which might be useful enough on a desert or a prairie, but in a jungle country it was of little value.

Just as we were in the greatest despair, and we were gazing wistfully in the direction which the needle pointed out as the position of the 'Park,' now separated from us by an untravelled district of an unknown distance, we saw two figures with bows and arrows coming from the jungle.One of these creatures bolted back again into the bushes the moment he perceived us; the other one had a fish in his hand, of about four pounds weight, which he had shot with his bow and arrow; while he was hesitating whether he should run or stand still, we caught him.

Of all the ugly little devils I ever saw, he was superlative.He squinted terribly; his hair was greyish and matted with filth; he was certainly not more than four feet and a half high, and he carried a bow two feet longer than himself.He could speak no language but his own, which throughout the Veddah country is much the same, intermixed with so many words resembling Cingalese that a native can generally understand their meaning.By proper management, and some little presents of rice and tobacco, we got the animal into a good humour, and we gathered the following in formation.

He knew nothing of any place except the northern portion of the Veddah country.This was his world; but his knowledge of it was extremely limited, as he could not undertake to guide us farther than Oomanoo, a Veddah village, which he described as three days' journey from where we then stood.We made him point out the direction in which it lay.This he did, after looking for some moments at the sun; and, upon comparing the position with the compass, we were glad to see it at south-south-east, being pretty close to the course that we wished to steer.From Oomanoo, he said, we could procure another Veddah to guide us still farther; but he himself knew nothing more.

Now this was all satisfactory enough so far, but I had been completely wrong in my idea of the distance from Doolana to the 'Park.' We now heard of three days' journey to Oomanoo, which was certainly some where in the very centre of the Veddah country; and our quaint little guide had never even heard of the Batticaloa road.There was no doubt, therefore, that it was a long way from Oomanoo, which village might be any distance from us, as a Veddah's description of a day's journey might vary from ten to thirty miles.

I certainly looked forward to a short allowance of food both for ourselves and coolies.We had been hurrying through the country at such a rate that we had killed no deer; we had, therefore, been living upon our tins of preserved provisions, of which we had now only four remaining.

At the village of Monampitya there was no rice procurable, as the natives lived entirely upon korrakan (A small seed, which they make into hard, uneatable cakes.), at which our coolies turned up their noses when I advised them to lay in a stock before starting.