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Updated: June 29, 2025
There is no doubt that a good stout boar-spear, with a broad blade and strong handle, is the proper weapon for the attack; but a spear is very unhandy and even dangerous to carry in such a hilly country as the neighbourhood of Newera Ellia.
It was impossible to have visited Newera Ellia, and to have benefited in such a wonderful manner by the climate, without contemplating with astonishment its poverty-stricken and neglected state. At that time it was the most miserable place conceivable. There was a total absence of all ideas of comfort or arrangement.
The two remaining rams, not having been accustomed to much high living since their arrival at Newera Ellia, got pugnacious upon the clover, and in a pitched battle the Leicester ram killed the Cotswold, and remained solus.
On another occasion a dog named Matchless, a cross between foxhound and pointer, was seized by a leopard in open day when, together with a pack of hounds, walking through a jungle-path at Dimbola, not far from Newera Ellia. The leopard sprang suddenly from a tree, and, seizing the dog, immediately ascended, and took refuge among the boughs with the hound suspended in its mouth.
We were to enter the Veddah country at the north and strike down to the south. I knew a bridle-path from Badulla to Batticaloa, which cut through the Veddah country from west to east; therefore we should meet it at right angles. From this point V. Baker was to bid adieu, and turn to the west and reach Badulla; from thence to Newera Ellia and to his regiment in Kandy.
Some few of the natives in the poorest villages save a small quantity, to exchange with the travelling Moormen for cotton cloths, etc., and in this manner the trifling amount exported is collected. During the honey year at Newera Ellia I gave a native permission to hunt bees in my forests, on condition that he should bring me the wax.
All strangers remark the scanty accommodation afforded to the numerous visitors. To see the number of people riding and walking round the Newera Ellia plain, it appears a marvel how they can be housed in the few dwellings that exist.
After repeated experience their instinct soon shows them that, no matter how the whole pack may individually hunt, the "find" will be achieved by one of the first-rate hounds, and gradually they give up hunting and take to listening for the opening note of the favorite. Of course in an open country they would be kept to their work by the whip, but at Newera Ellia this is impossible.
As I travelled from Kandy to Newera Ellia, and back again to Kandy by a different route, my impression of the picturesqueness and productiveness of the country was confirmed. There was one thing I did not see the blooming heather of my own Highlands. There is, I suppose, no country where all that is desirable can be obtained. It must be acknowledged Ceylon has its disadvantages.
There are many small farmers, or rather gardeners, at Newera Ellia who have succeeded uncommonly well. One of the emigrants who left my service returned to England in three years with three hundred pounds; and all the industrious people succeed. I am now without one man whom I brought out.
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