[The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon by Samuel White Baker]@TWC D-Link bookThe Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon CHAPTER VI 4/49
He dries the meat in long strips in the sun, and cleaning out some hollow tree, he packs away his savoury mass of sun-cooked flesh, and fills up the reservoir with wild honey; he then stops up the aperture with clay. The last drop of water evaporates, the deer leave the country and migrate into other parts where mountains attract the rain and the pasturage is abundant.
The Veddah burns the parched grass wherever he passes, and the country is soon a blackened surface--not a blade of pasture remains; but the act of burning ensures a sweet supply shortly after the rains commence, to which the game and the Veddahs will then return.
In the meantime he follows the game to other districts, living in caves where they happen to abound, or making a temporary but with grass and sticks. Every deer-path, every rock, every peculiar feature in the country, every pool of water, is known to these hunting Veddahs; they are consequently the best assistants in the world in elephant-hunting.
They will run at top speed over hard ground upon an elephant's track which is barely discernible even to the practised eye of a white man. Fortunately, the number of these people is very trifling or the game would be scarce. They hunt like the leopard; noiselessly stalking till within ten paces of their game, they let the broad arrow fly.
At this distance who could miss? Should the game be simply wounded, it is quite enough; they never lose him, but hunt him up, like hounds upon a blood track. Nevertheless, they are very bad shots with the bow and arrow, and they never can improve while they restrict their practice to such short ranges. I have often tried them at a mark at sixty yards, and, although a very bad hand with a bow myself, I have invariably beaten them with their own weapons.
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