[Footnote 3:  The Singhalese hold the belief, that twigs taken from one bush and placed on another growing close to a pathway, ensure protection to travellers from the attacks of wild animals, and especially of elephants.  Can it be that the latter avoid the path, on discovering this evidence of the proximity of recent passengers?]

[Footnote 4:  A rogue elephant.]

[Footnote 5:  Woman’s robe.]

[Footnote 6:  The figured cloth worn by men.]

The following also relates to the same locality.  It was narrated to me by an old Moorman of Barberyn, who, during his earlier years, led the life of a pedlar.

2.  “I and another,” said he, “were on our way to Badulla, one day some twenty-five or thirty years ago.  We were quietly moving along a path which wound round a hill, when all of a sudden, and without the slightest previous intimation either by the rustling of leaves or by any other sign, a huge elephant with short tusks rushed to the path.  Where he had been before I can’t say; I believe he must have been lying in wait for travellers.  In a moment he rushed forward to the road, trumpeting dreadfully, and seized my companion.  I, who happened to be in the rear, took to flight, pursued by the elephant, which had already killed my companion by striking him against the ground.  I had not moved more than seven or eight fathoms, when the elephant seized me, and threw me up with such force, that I was carried high into the air towards a Cahata tree, whose branches caught me and prevented my falling to the ground.  By this I received no other injury than the dislocation of one of my wrists.  I do not know whether the elephant saw me after he had hurled me away through the air; but certainly he did not come to the tree to which I was then clinging:  even if he had come, he couldn’t have done me any more harm, as the branch on which I was far beyond the reach of his trunk, and the tree itself too large for him to pull down.  The next thing I saw was the elephant returning to the corpse of my companion, which he again threw on the ground, and placing one of his fore feet on it, he tore it with his trunk limb after limb; and dabbled in the blood that flowed from the shapeless mass of flesh which he was still holding under his foot.”

3.  “In 1847 or ’46,” said another informant, “I was a superintendent of a coco-nut estate belonging to Mr. Armitage, situated about twelve miles from Negombo.  A rogue elephant did considerable injury to the estate at that time; and one day, hearing that it was then on the plantation, a Mr. Lindsay, an Englishman, who was proprietor of the adjoining property, and myself, accompanied by some seven or eight people of the neighbouring village, went out, carrying with us six rifles loaded and primed.  We continued to walk along a path which, near one of its turns, had some bushes on one side.  We had calculated to come up with the brute where it had been seen half an hour before; but no sooner had one