icer of the Fifteenth Regiment, then
stationed in Ceylon. From him I soon learnt that the character of
Ceylon for game had never been exaggerated; and from that moment my
preparations for the jungle commenced.

I rented a good airy house in Colombo as headquarters, and the verandas
were soon strewed with jungle-baskets, boxes, tent, gun-cases, and all
the paraphernalia of a shooting-trip.

What unforeseen and apparently trivial incidents may upset all our
plans for the future and turn our whole course of life! At the
expiration of twelve months my shooting trips and adventures were
succeeded by so severe an attack of jungle fever that from a naturally
robust frame I dwindled to a mere nothing, and very little of my former
self remained. The first symptom of convalescence was accompanied by a
peremptory order from my medical attendant to start for the highlands,
to the mountainous region of Newera Ellia, the sanitarium of the island.

A poor, miserable wretch I was upon my arrival at this elevated
station, suffering not only from the fever itself, but from the feeling
of an exquisite debility that creates an utter hopelessness of the
renewal of strength.

I was only a fortnight at Newera Ellia. The rest-house or inn was the
perfection of everything that was dirty and uncomfortable. The
toughest possible specimen of a beef-steak, black bread and potatoes
were the choicest and only viands obtainable for an invalid. There was
literally nothing else; it was a land of starvation. But the climate!
what can I say to describe the wonderful effects of such a pure and
unpolluted air? Simply, that at the expiration of a fortnight, in spite
of the tough beef, and the black bread and potatoes, I was as well and
as strong as I ever bad been; and in proof of this I started instanter
for another shooting excursion in the interior.

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 houses were
for the most part built of such unsubstantial materials as stick and
mud plastered over with mortar--pretty enough in exterior, but rotten
in ten or twelve years. The only really good residence was a fine
stone building erected by Sir Edward Barnes when governor of