It must have been some hours afterward that I was again aroused by my watchful companion, who pointed out two splendid elks, a doe and a buck, within sixty paces of my lair. To indemnify me for my last failure, these both fell before my fowling-piece, which is second to none for smooth-bore ball-practice; so I returned about three, A.M., to the tent to rest, as we were to begin another day's work with a thirteen miles' march to Tanicolam. Thus passed seven days, during which we visited Coolvellan, Tanekai, and several other Tamil villages, shooting spotted deer, wild boar, bears, chetas, and elks at night, and deer, hares, peacocks, alligators, and jungle-fowl by day; sometimes bivouacking under the spreading shade of a tamarind tree, sometimes by the side of a lonely tank among the lemon grass and reeds, which thickly ornament its thorny margin. The eighth morning saw us journeying homeward, regretting the shortness of our leave, but consoling ourselves with the thought, that when duty calls we must obey. We had traveled fifty miles south of Jaffna, into solitudes where white faces had, perhaps, never before been seen--our bag was respectably filled: eighteen spotted skins bore testimony to our skill; and what with alligators and boars' heads, surmounted by peacocks' tails, our party made a brilliant re-entrance into the northern capital. A VISIT TO ROBINSON CRUSOE. I am not going to describe savage life, or uninhabited islands: what I have to say relates to most civilized society, and to no island whatever. My object is simply to "request the pleasure" of the reader's company in a short excursion out of Paris: an arrangement which secures to him the advantage of visiting a place which is beneath the notice of the guide-books, and to myself the society of that most desirable of companions--one who allows me to engross the entire conversation.