THE OUT-STATION; OR, JAUNTS IN THE JUNGLE. BY J. WILLYAMS GRYLLS, ESQ. CHAPTER I. THE MOUNTAIN-JUNGLE OF CEYLON. 66 HAVE you not, times without number,-amiable and unsophisticated reader,-alighted upon some of the innumerable home-conceived fancies of the Indian jungle, imposed upon you through portions of our annual" curiosities of literature ?-And, consequently, have you not had that interesting locality daguerreotyped on your imagination, as being an unbounded ocean of solar-microscopically-magnified herbage-each blade of grass resembling that of a gigantic broadsword-with three or four palm, talipot, or cocoa-nut trees (for all the world like parasols with handles on the "malle elastique" principle), thrown in by way of variety; whilst the terrestrial portion of the scene is garnished with the head of a tiger, and a rattlesnake's tail by way of excitement? All which original conception holds about as apt a similitude to the glorious reality, as a pauper at the door of a union to a Peri at the gates of Paradise. Let me proceed, therefore, in the first place, to attempt the operation of a "dissolving view" on the aforesaid mental daguerreotype; and if a change does not come over the ideas of my "compagnon d'aventure," as we ramble together through the splendid mountain scenery of Ceylon, it must either be attributed to a deficiency in the descriptive faculties of the operator, or the obtuse and unimaginative temperament of the worthy reader's self. To keep perturbed nigger spirits in proper awe and subjection to her majesty, and "those in authority under her," for the consideration of "five shillings and threepence" per diem, and to trust to Providence and a double-barrel for one's daily bread, during two entire years of mortal existence, is an event not reserved for the o Toλλo of creation; wherefore, having lately undergone the ordeal with honour to myself, and considerable credit to her majesty's service (although never actually congratulated on such an event by the Horse Guards), I will generously share the benefit of my experience with the reader, and doffing for the nonce my regulation harness, invite him to spend a month with me in the jungle, undertaking to find him in unlimited 'rack punch, and in cheroots, grown under my own tillage, and manufactured on my own gun-case; and should he decline to add his own contribution to the pea-fowl soup, the venison stew, or the snipe curry, I further guarantee to keep him from starvation, on condition that he puts up with the "cuisineries" of my Malay factotum, and allows his lively imagination to fancy he perceives in the "nigger's" desperate attempts at stews, grills, and broils, the nascent genius of a Soyer. It is still night and darkness. Awaking to a strong smell of coffee and a state of half-consciousness, I reflect on my insane resolve, over champagne and claret at mess the night before, to leave Kandy the next day, at four in the morning. Around me the Coolies are fighting and scrambling as to who shall carry the lightest package of my commissariat department, and in a state of mind any thing but angelic, having kicked the lazy, extortionate convoy (did a real nigger ever yet go to Heaven?) out of the house with their respective loads, I swallow the milkless decoction (supposed to be coffee), and lighting a cheroot to counteract the effects of a dense fog, I start on my first day's journey through the precipitous scenery between Kandy and Newera Ellia. The plain that I pass through before getting out of the town, was once the scene of the old Malabar monarchs' ideas of regal pleasures and delectabilities. Seated in the balcony of the temple that stands on it, their chief delight consisted in watching elephants (who had been specially instructed for the purpose) dissect some unfortunate law-breaker, piecemeal, beginning at the finger-joints; and in looking at mothers cutting off their children's heads, and then pounding them in a wooden mortar; all which "eccentricities" are handed down to posterity by rude paintings of the events on the inner walls of the temple. There is another incident attached to this temple, which is any thing but consolatory to an Englishman's amour propre. It is supposed that the drums of her majesty's regiment, taken by the Cingalese at a massacre of the British troops, are preserved in one of the rooms; and, although the island has been totally subdued since, no attempt has been made to rescue the unfortunate drum-prisoners from their luckless fate; except on one occasion by a handful of private soldiers, who having more esprit du corps (or, possibly, esprit d'arrack) in them than allowed by the rules and regulations of the Articles of War, were doubtless regaled with a dose of extra-drill afterwards for their too patriotic temerity. My route now lies over a continual series of mountain-passes through the interior, at the end of every ten or twelve miles of which I arrive at a rest-house, kept by some enterprising native, formerly most probably a mess waiter, or butler under some Englishman, whose tastes he is au fait at suiting. Consequently, among his stock of rice cakes, eggs, fowls, [arrack, &c., he not unfrequently is able to produce that inestimable luxury, under such circumstances, to the famished travellera bottle or two of bitter ale (surgit_amari aliquid*); and vastly do I commiserate the digestive powers of a man that do not allow him an appetite at every ten miles, inhaling, as he does, a fresh, fragrant breeze that counteracts the too powerful influence of a mid-day sun, and sets into commotion a wilderness of foliage and lemon-grass, whose rustling, added to the now swelling, now scarcely audible, roar of the waterfalls, as they leap from rock to rock into the stupendous precipices below, is the sole sound that disturbs the silence of a scene as bright and cloudless as ever dawned on Eden. After passing through thirty miles of this wild and beautiful scenery, I arrive at Newera Ellia, a plain on the summit of the highest hills of Ceylon, where one can revel in an English climate, feel once more the comfort of a long-abandoned woollen wardrobe, and enjoy a bottle of wine that has not undergone the refrigerating process for two hours before dinner; but my destination lies beyond this, for although an elephant now and then frightens the inhabitants of this rus in nube out of their propriety by paying them an angel's visit, yet it is seldom that they intrude upon the ground where their unceasing persecutor, man, has left his footmark. Leaving the plain, and passing through three or four miles of forest, the most magnificent panorama of explored creation bursts suddenly upon Query-"a-liquid.”—Printer's Cherub. the view; plain, precipice, mountains, torrents, lying before, below, and around me, as far as mortal eye can penetrate. Before me stretch the never-ending plains around Wilson Bungalow (built by General Sir John Wilson, from whom it derives its appellation), whose walls one can just perceive glittering like a white speck on the face of ocean. These vast plains, where many a tantivy has cheered on a pack of English stag-hounds, have been the scene of some of the happiest days of the exiled fox-hunter. The waters of the Megaloia are roaring in the distance, whilst the hills, covered to their very apex with apparently impermeable foliage, become a source of wonderment and speculation as to how many hundreds of hogs, deer, elephants, monkeys, snakes, and buffaloes, their branches may shelter. Groves of guava-trees line our road, and few things in life do I know more delicious than a morning's amusement among this most exquisite fruit, whilst it is yet cold from the night air. The flavour is that of every fruit of an English garden concentrated to an essence, and many are the petits verres that an uncontrollable indulgence of these little irresistibilities compel their suicidal victim to undergo before breakfast. Arrived (after more perils by water than by land, for there being few or no bridges, I am obliged to ford the torrents as I best can, which is generally performed on the back of one of the coolies, whilst the horses are being swum across in some deeper and smoother part) at the base of Kamouna-kooli, whose summit stands 10,000 feet above the sea's level, I pitch my tent, or rather take possession of a dilapidated habitation at the foot of the mountain, every room of which presents unmistakeable symptoms that our right to its occupation will, ere long, be contested by disputants, winged, quadruped, biped, and reptile. With this latter enemy I have a pitched battle on the spot, a long and undisputed residence in the thatch of the house having given it a "prior claim.” These nuisances, the ratsnakes, which generally average from six to twelve feet long, are perfectly innocuous, and live in the thatched roofs of almost every Ceylon bungalow, which they keep clear of rats by living on them; but whether the remedy is not worse than the disease is entirely a matter of opinion or antipathy, for in pursuit of their game the snakes not unfrequently miss their hold; and, there being no ceilings, come down on one's head or bed without the least ceremony in the world; a proceeding considerably subversive to the philosophy of the "lord of creation, "and resulting in an immediate onslaught on the aggressor, who, independently of this, is no doubt the most incommoded party in the first instance. Should the natives of the country, however, (for even in these mountains there are human beings stowed away in some seemingly inexplorable and invisible recess; living without the assistance of the " circulating medium," Heaven only knows on what and how!) gain intelligence of the forthcoming visit of an Englishman, the greatest compliment they can show is to denude their own limbs of their white sheets to hang round the walls of the room, so that you only see the struggles of the fallen viper at the top, where, hanging over you like the sword of Damocles, he keeps you in a continual state of perspiration, if not alarm. To settle down to sleep for the first time in life, surrounded only by savages and wild beasts of every description, a hundred miles or more distant from even the jungle-dwelling of a countryman, has more excitement in it, than one who has never experienced the situation would imagine; and it is extraordinary how the value of every thing bearing the remotest vestige of civilisation, even down to the flavour of a cigar, is enhanced thereby; consequently, about the most difficult business of the twenty-four hours in a jungle expedition consists in summoning sufficient resolution to "turn in.” Another jorum of arrack punch, a fresh bottle of Lafitte, or just one more cigar," however delectable at the time, generally entail an unpleasant re-action in the morning, when the nigger, as in duty bound, awakes you at five A. M., with the information that there is a herd of wild elephants or buffaloes within half a mile of the house, adding, by way of consolation, " plenty savage, master!" There are, however, other and more potent causes that keep one under arms during the first night, or at least the greater part of it; for there being no doors or windows, and the previous tenants, out for the day, not yet being aware of a new occupant, it might be attended with disagreeable results to be caught napping by a bear with a sore head, or an unamiable wild hog wrought into a determination of going its whole self. But now for the jungle and its denizens. Carrying a double-barrelled gun apiece, and arming my Malay follower with a third, more for the sake of protection than aggression (for the first day shall be devoted to a specimen of the locale of our future exploits), I commence my ascent up the mountain before the sun has shed a ray upon its summit-now clambering up huge masses of rock between immense banyan trees, whose branches, growing downwards again into the earth from their parent stem, prove of no slight assistance in the ascentnow suddenly emerging into open spaces of ground, covered at intervals with lemon-grass reaching far above my head, I am kept on the constant look out for squalls; the screechings of the awakening animals over head becoming more loud and frequent as I progress, and as the twilight of morning becomes more palpable, A dark, indefinable patch, a few yards distant, just appearing above the lemon-grass, is formed by a herd of a dozen elephants, as noiseless and motionless as the old blackened stumps of trees close to them, and many an inexperienced hand has walked into an animal's proboscis before discovering his mistake. At the next step I incontinently break in upon the slumbers of a noble elk, who, drawing himself to his full height, stares for a moment at his intruder, and then dashes down the steep as if it were a grassy flat. Jungle fowl rise at my feet at every turning, whilst above me an unceasing clatter of tongues and creaking of branches, as the squatters thereon migrate from tree to tree, give indication that my invasion of the monkey's territory is not viewed with any feeling of hospitality by the tribe. A " rogue" elephant, a rascal who has been driven from his herd for habitual misconduct, and whose paw is in consequence against man and beast, next makes his appearance in front, sending me round some half a mile out of the direct road, simply because I am determined not to commence hostilities till the morrow ("Honi soit qui mal y pense"); and, after a two-hours' pull, I reach the welcome summit of the mountain, in time to behold the sun rise from the eastern sea in " one unclouded blaze of living light." Wiping the perspiration from my brow, I bring myself to an anchor on the top of some inviting rock, to contemplate a scene, the intense grandeur and beauty of which would absorb every sense aud feeling, did not a huge cobra di capella at the moment, lifting his hooded head from one of the fissures of my adopted throne, send me sprawling among the grass and brambles at its foot. A load of " No. 7" shot avenges my insulted dignity and interrupted contemplation, and uncoils twelve feet of the deadliest of the viper tribe. At the report of the gun, flocks of diminutive parrots of every imaginable hue spring from the branches below me; minute birds of Paradise, with their two streaming tail feathers, whirl over my head, and "strange things come up to look at me, the monsters of the woods." In such a scene-miles and miles away from the mark of human hand, where, perhaps, alone I can truly see How beautiful is all this visible world, How glorious in its action and itself, where, a human speck, we stand alone amid the habitations of the hugest and deadliest of the brute creation, who take no thought of the morrow, what they shall eat or what they shall drink-in such a scene, I say, it is strange to recur for a moment to the busy, idle, laughing, weeping, glittering, squalid, hoping, despairing, struggling world of my fatherland! Where is the world at eighty?" says Young; where is it at eighteen, on the mountain jungle of Ceylon? say I-passed from existence, almost from memory. 66 But every man his own philosopher"-I won't apostrophise. As the sun gets higher the signs of life gradually disappear, till the particoloured lizards alone seem to have it all to themselves. Now and then a brilliant, harmless snake rustles through the dead grass, and at intervals a peacock, in all the majesty of a seven-foot tail, stalks out of the skirt of the jungle; but, by degrees, even these vanish, and I am left to the silence of a tropical noonday, painful to endure from its intensity. Such a picture of nature in its primal state, unruffled by a breath, unclouded by a haze, admits not of description. But it is not always thus. Dark, destruction-charged, and terrible, are the hurricanes that sweep at times over the scene. Through the deep ravines around me the gusts of wind, like yelling fiends, howl and shriek in dismal chorus, falling on the ear with an ominous sound, woful, unearthly, and desolate, as of yore they struck on the senses of the lonely dwellers on Mount Ararat, seeming to weep over the destruction of a world! At last comes night-cloudless, brilliant, and fairy-like in its moonlit existence. The white mists rising in the valleys below, give to the hill tops that stretch above them the appearance of a cluster of islands in a silvery sea. Myriads of fireflies glitter on every tree of the mountain, and never did a glimpse of Paradise beam on the opium-wrought visions of a fanatic more serenely glorious than the scene before me! At length a shriek from some dyspeptic baboon in a nightmare recalls me to a sense of my position, and of the hour of the night; and my last cheroot, Like a saint of old, condemn'd and sold, To death through suffering driven; having Pass'd with a smile, from its funeral pile, I retrace my steps, and am soon wrapt in a sleep as breathless as the air around me, and dreamless as the sleep of death! |