“The following morning, anxious to gain a height for my observations in time to avail myself of the clear atmosphere of sunrise, 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 Acanthaccae (Strobilanthes), which grows, abundantly in the mountain ranges of Ceylon.]

“The predicament was not a pleasant one.  I had no weapon of defence, and with one spring or blow of his paw the beast could have annihilated me.  To move I knew would only encourage his attack.  It occurred to me at the moment that I had heard of the power of man’s eye over wild animals, and accordingly I fixed my gaze as intently as the agitation of such a moment enabled me on his eyes:  we stared at each other for some seconds, when, to my inexpressible joy, the beast turned and bounded down the straight open path before me.  This scene occurred just at that period of the morning when the grazing animals retired from the open patena to the cool shade of the forest:  doubtless, the leopard had taken my approach for that of a deer, or some such animal.  And if his spring had been at a quadruped instead of a biped, his distance was so well measured, that it must have landed him on the neck of a deer, an elk, or a buffalo; as it was, one pace more would have done for me.  A bear would not have let his victim off so easily.”

Notwithstanding the unequalled agility of the monkey, it falls a prey, and not unfrequently, to the leopard.  The latter, on approaching a tree on which a troop of monkeys have taken shelter, causes an instant and fearful excitement, which they manifest by loud and continued screams, and incessant restless leaps from branch to branch.  The leopard meanwhile walks round and round the tree, with his eyes firmly fixed upon his victims, till at last exhausted by terror, and prostrated by vain exertions to escape, one or more falls a prey to his voracity.  So rivetted is the attention of both during the struggle, that a sportsman, on one occasion, attracted by the noise, was enabled to approach within an uncomfortable distance of the leopard, before he discovered the cause of the unusual dismay amongst the monkeys overhead.

It is said, but I have never been able personally to verify the fact, that the leopard of Ceylon exhibits a peculiarity in being unable entirely to retract its claws within their sheaths.