In such clearings are cultivated chiefly millet of different sorts, or edible grasses, sesame, and a small pulse called mun; while in the richer soil around some scattered conical brown anthills are planted maize, pumpkins, or red chillies, and a few small cucumbers called kaekiri, bearing yellow or reddish fruit some six inches long. Climbing up two or three of the smaller trees are to be seen gourds, with their curious, hanging, pale, bottle-shaped fruit.
Along the path through the chēna jungle there are not many signs of life. A Monitor Lizard or “Iguana,” about four feet long, which we frighten as it was licking up ants and other insects on the roadside with its extensile thin tongue, scurries off quickly, and disappears down a hole in the side of an anthill. Over the jungle come the slow monotonous calls, “Tok, tok, tok, tok,” of a small Barbet, perched on the topmost twig of one of the higher trees, jerking its body to the right and left as it repeats its single note. A Woodpecker crosses the path with a screaming cry, three times repeated, and a few other birds may appear at intervals, but otherwise there is not much to break the sameness.
Then, if one be lucky, comes a tract of the original forest that has escaped the chēna clearer’s destructive bill-hook and fires, in which is immediately experienced the welcome relief afforded by the delightful cool shade cast by the forest trees of many species which stretch high above the lower bushes. This is the home of the Elephant, traces of which are observed in the wide footprints and an occasional broken-down sapling or fractured branch. A slightly leaning tree on the side of the path has tempted one to rub his back on it, and lower down are the scratches left by a Leopard’s claws, as he scraped them on it like a cat.
As we pass along the leaf-strewn way, the loud hoarse cry, “Hō, hō,” of the large grey Monkeys (Semnopithecus priamus) whom we startle, resounds through the trees. They cease to feed on the succulent young leaves, and shake the rustling branches in their bold leaps among the higher ones. This is soon followed by a sudden stillness as they mysteriously conceal themselves, vanishing as though by magic among the denser foliage.
Bird calls unfamiliar to a stranger are heard, especially the short cry of two notes, rather than the crow, of the Jungle-cock—the wild game-fowl of Ceylon,—the sheep-like bleats of the Lesser Hornbill, sometimes the rich notes of the Crested Drongo, or the often reiterated whistle, “To meet ye´-ou,” of the Whistling Babbler. A charming Ground Dove that was picking up seeds on the path, flies off quickly down the path, and turns suddenly through the bushes. A few white or brown or striped Butterflies, and sometimes the lovely, large, dark velvety-green or steely blue Ornithoptera, flit about. A few sharp notes, uttered as a small timid creature, little bigger than a hare, darts off under the bushes, tell us that we have startled a little Mouse-deer, Mīminnā. These fragile-looking animals always stand on tiptoe, appearing exactly, as Mr. R. A. Sterndale expressed it in his work, The Mammalia of India, “as if a puff of wind would blow them away.” But as a rule, there is not much animal life noticeable even in these forests, unless one can spare time to search for it.
Another patch of the chēna jungle succeeds the forest, and then the path reaches one end of the embankment of a village tank or reservoir, a shallow sheet of water varying in size from two or three acres to more than one hundred, but commonly from twenty to fifty in area. The trim, earthen, grass-sloped embankment, nearly straight, from an eighth of a mile to half a mile long, from nine to sixteen feet high, and six feet wide on the top, rises a few feet above the water level.
In its contrast with the parched and heated ground along which we have come, the scene always appears strikingly beautiful. There are few fairer spots on the earth than some of the village tanks when they are nearly full of water. Here we may sit in the cool shelter of an umbrageous tree, and contemplate nature in its most idyllic aspect. The busy world, with its turmoil and stress, its noisy factories and clanging machinery, its hurrying railway trains and motor-cars, its crowded cities full of an artificial and unhealthy existence, has disappeared, as though it had been merely a fantastic vision of the night. Here all is peace: an uneventful calm that has survived the changes of perhaps two thousand years, and that may be unaltered in another two thousand. One may wonder if the fevered life of the present western civilisation will last as long, or will have burnt itself out, and been swept away like that of the dead civilisations that preceded it.
Abandoning these day dreams, which the seclusion of the site induces, we look around us. At both sides of the tank and along the outer toe of the embankment grow lofty trees, with grey trunks often strengthened by wide buttresses, which are thrown out so as to afford their support in the direction in which it is chiefly needed. If a branch become unduly expanded on one side of the tree, always that on which it receives the rays of the sun, so as to displace the centre of gravity, the trunk at once proceeds to develop these thin triangular buttresses under it, wide at the base, and extending ten or fifteen feet upward. As though designed by an engineer, there are usually two which act as struts, and support the trunk below the overweighted branch; and on the opposite side a broader one which acts as a tie, and assists in holding back the stem.
There is no lack of varied forms of animal life here. Often a party of brown Monkeys who have come to drink at the tank are to be seen in some of the trees, sitting quietly inspecting the visitors, or walking leisurely along the branches, a few of the females carrying under their bodies a young one tightly clutching them.
In many tanks, a low grey or dark-stained rock in the water affords a favourite basking ground for the sluggish muddy-brown Crocodiles that make their home in all but a few of the smallest of these tanks. They lie on it like stranded logs, exposed to the sun’s rays, often with wide-open mouths, as though overcome by the heat, from which, however, they make no effort to escape.