There is no saying to what size a wild boar grows. I have never killed them with the hounds above four hundredweight; but I have seen solitary boars in the low country, that must have weighed nearly double.
I believe the flesh is very good; by the natives it is highly prized; but I have so strong a prejudice against it from the sights I have seen of their feasting upon putrid elephants that I never touch it.
The numbers of wild hogs in the low country is surprising, and these are most useful in cleaning up the carcases of dead animals and destroying vermin. I seldom or never fire at hog in those districts, as their number is so great that there is no sport in shooting them. They travel about in herds of one and two hundred, and even more. These are composed of sows and young boars, as the latter leave the herd when arrived at maturity.
[1] Speared through the body by the horns of a buck elk and killed shortly after this was written.
CHAPTER VII.
Curious Phenomenon—Panorama of Ouva—South-west Monsoon—Hunting Followers—Fort M'Donald—River—Jungle Paths—Dangerous Locality—Great Waterfall—Start for Hunting—The Find—A Gallant Stag—"Bran" and "Lucifer"—"Phrenzy's" Death—Buck at Bay—The Cave Hunting-box—"Madcap's" Dive—Elk Soup—Former Inundation—"Bluebeard" leads off—"Hecate's" Course—The Elk's Leap—Variety of Deer—The Axis—Ceylon Bears—Variety of Vermin—Trials for Hounds—Hounds and their Masters—A Sportsman "shut up"—A Corporal and Centipede.
From June to November the south-west monsoon brings wind and mist across the Newera Ellia mountains.
Clouds of white fog boil up from the Dimboola valley like the steam from a huge cauldron, and invade the Newera Ellia plain through the gaps in the mountains to the westward.
The wind howls over the high ridges, cutting the jungle with its keen edge, so that it remains as stunted brushwood, and the opaque screen of driving fog and drizzling rain is so dense that one feels convinced there is no sun visible within at least a hundred miles.