k for coolness beneath the shade of the forest.
At this time we also sought shelter in some ruined temple or rest-house,
or we had our tents pitched under the shadow of some lofty tree. Once
more towards evening the birds took to the wing, the wild animals
hurried out to the tanks, and streams, and water-courses, and then moths
and numberless night-feeding animals came out to seek for their prey.

At length we reached a plantation which we were told belonged to Mr
Coventry. A small, but comfortable-looking bungalow stood in the midst
of it. I cannot describe the anxiety with which I approached the door.
A native servant appeared. I had to wait till Mr Fordyce came up to
interpret for me. Mr Coventry was not there. He had been for some
time, but he was lately joined by a young gentleman with whom he had set
out for another estate he had purchased to the north of Kandy, and, from
his having taken his rifles and other sporting guns, it was supposed
that he had gone on some hunting expedition. The information was not
altogether unsatisfactory. I hoped at length to come up with him, and
my heart bounded with joy at the certainty it seemed to me that the
young gentleman spoken of was my brother.

Mr Fordyce did not appear to sympathise with me as much as I should
have expected in my anxiety to find my brother.

"You will fall in with him all in good time, and a few days or weeks
cannot make much difference to either of you," he remarked.

Soon after this we heard that there was to be held, at the distance of
two or three days' journey off from where we then were, a corral or
grand elephant hunt.

"We will without fail attend it," exclaimed Mr Fordyce. "It is one of
the things most worth seeing in Ceylon, and I have not been at one for
many years."

Of course Nowell and I were delighted to go. Ceylon has for time
immemorial been celebrated for the number and size of its elephants, and
for their great sagacity and docility when trained. They have,
therefore, annually been caught and tamed, and sent off to different
parts of Asia, where they have been highly prized.

We had pitched our tents one evening at the distance of about half a
mile from one of those wonderful lakes formed artificially in days long
past for the purpose of irrigating the rice fields of the low country.
They were usually created by the erection of a dam across the mouth of a
valley, oftentimes not less than two miles in length, and from fi