It  is  not  the  mere  ordinary  pleasure  that  one  ex-
periences in  sport  generally,  such  as  running  into  a
fox  after  a  forty  minutes'  chase — (and  there  are  few
excitements  more  enlivening  or  heart-thrilling  than
that),  or  the  self-satisfied  complacency  that  one  feels
on  the  eve  of  a  first  of  September,  when  the  spacious
pockets  are  relieved  of  some  thirty  brace  of  birds;
but  it  must  be  the  consciousness  of  the  power  of  man
over  every  beast  of  the  field,  and  the  pride  of  wield-
ing it,  that  causes  one  to  feel  such  intense  gratifi-
cation when  an  elephant  is  brought  down  in  the  midst
of  its  own  native  wilds  !

To  such  perfection  has  elephant  shooting  been
carried  in  Ceylon,  that  I  fear  every  reader  who  had
never  visited  those  shores  would  consider  the  "  Jaunts"
far  too  "  Munchausenish"  if  I  related  every  anecdote
connected  with  the  slaughter  of  the  elephant  that  has
fallen  under  my  own  immediate  observation — in
short,  it  is  much  better  to  keep  all  matters  of  wonder-
ment to  oneself  rather  than  lose  irretrievably  a  repu-
tation for  truth  by  being  the  unlucky  possessor  of  the
knowledge  of  some  extraordinary  feat  that  could  only
produce  incredulity  in  ninety  and  nine  readers  out  of
every  hundred;  in  illustration  of  which  I  will  relate
an  anecdote  that  actually  occurred  at  a  well-known
club-house  in  London  not  very  many  years  ago,  where
foreign  sports  becoming  the  topic  of  conversation


JAUNTS  IN  THE  JUNGLE.  57

— and  amongst  the  rest  elephant-shooting — an  officer,
just  returned  from  Ceylon,  ventured  to  assert  that,  to
his  own  individual  knowledge,  a  brother  officer  had
slain  with  his  own  gun  alone  fourteen  hundred
elephants  !

This  was  too  much  to  be  endured,  and  the  whole
room,  taking  it  as  a  joke,  burst  into  a  roar  of  laughter,
which  increased  in  proportion  with  the  vehemence  of
the  unhappy  sponsor  of  the  assertion,  who  forthwith
offered  to  bind  himself  by  any  quantity  and  quality
of  affidavits  the  company  might  choose  to  impose,  as
to  the  truth  of  what  he  adduced.
