atural impulse is to effect its escape. In
illustration of this, I insert an extract from one of his letters, which
describes an adventure highly characteristic of this instinctive
timidity.

"On the occasion of one of my visits to Adam's Peak in the prosecution
of my military reconnoissances of the mountain, zone, I fixed on a
pretty little patena (i.e. meadow) in the midst of an extensive and
dense forest in the southern segment of the Peak Range, as a favourable
spot for operations. It would have been difficult, after descending from
the cone of the peak, to have found one's way to this point, in the
midst of so vast a wilderness of trees, had not long experience assured
me that good game tracks would be found leading to it, and by one of
them I reached it. It was in the afternoon, just after one of those
tropical sun-showers which decorate every branch and blade with its
pendant brilliants, and the little patena was covered with game, either
driven to the open space by the drippings from the leaves or tempted by
the freshness of the pasture: there were several pairs of elk, the
bearded antlered male contrasting finely with his mate; and other
varieties of game in a profusion not to be found in any place frequented
by man. It was some time before I could allow them to be disturbed by
the rude fall of the axe, in our necessity to establish our bivouac for
the night, and they were so unaccustomed to danger, that it was long
before they took alarm at our noises.

"The following morning, anxious to gain a height in time to avail myself
of the clear atmosphere of sunrise for my observations, I started off by
myself through the jungle, leaving orders for my men, with my surveying
instruments, to follow my track by the notches which I cut in the bark
of the trees. On leaving the plain, I availed myself of a fine wide game
track which lay in my direction, and had gone, perhaps half a mile from
the camp, when I was startled by a slight rustling in the nilloo[1] to
my right, and in another instant, by the spring of a magnificent leopard
which, in a bound of full eight feet in height over the lower brushwood,
lighted at my feet within eighteen inches of the spot whereon I stood,
and lay in a crouching position, his fiery gleaming eyes fixed on me.

[Footnote 1: A species of one of the suffruticose _Acanthacea_ which
grows abundantly in the mountain ranges of Ceylon. See _ante_, p. 90 n.]

"The predicament was not a pleasant