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The blind bulk of the immeasurable beast 
... bristling with intolerable hair 
lying in front of one, and feel that one has done a good turn to Venus. One of my boars, by the way, 
gave me a lesson in literature. I came across his body two days after the battle and it hit me in the 
eye --- to say nothing of the nose --- with Baudelaire's "Charogne". 
Beside the path, an infamous foul carrion, 
....Stones for its couch a fitting sheet. 
Its legs stretched in the air, like wanton whores 
....Burning with lust, and reeking venom sweated, 
Laid open, carelessly and cynically, the doors 
....Of belly rank with exhalations fetid. 
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Upon this rottenness the sun shone deadly straight 
....As if to cook it to a turn, 
And gave back to great Nature hundred-fold the debt 
....That, joining it together, she did earn. 
The sky beheld this carcase most superb outspread 
....As spreads a flower, itself, whose taint 
Stank so supremely strong, that on the grass your head 
....You thought to lay, in sudden faint. 
The flies swarmed numberless on this putrescent belly, 
....Whence issued a battalion 
Of larvae, black, that flowed, a sluggish liquid jelly, 
....Along this living carrion. 
All this was falling, rising as the eager seas, 
....Or heaving with strange crepitation --- 
There was an utterly unspeakable fascination in watching the waves of maggots. The surface 
undulated with the peculiar rhythm of the ocean. 
To Baudelaire, as we know, a similar sight suggested his "Inamorata". I was presumably too blindly in 
love with Rose to see the resemblance; the main impression on my mind was more impersonally 
philosophical. I thought of the 13th Key of the Tarot, of the sign of Scorpio, the invincible 
persistence of life perpetuating itself by means of that very putrefaction which seems to shallow 
minds the star witness against it. Here were vermin feeding on corruption, yet the effect was of 
lambent vibrations of white brilliance, disporting themselves in the sunlight --- here, quit! Am I a 
sportsman describing his heroic feats, or am I not? 
The elephant, "the half reasoner with the hand", is in an entirely different category from any other 
animal. I felt much more like a murderer when potting a hathi than when it is a monkey, though I 
perfectly understood the emotion of the average Englishman in this conjuncture. Nor is the elephant 
easy to shoot. The odds against hitting him in the vital spot are very great; and strange as it may 
sound, in country like Hambantota, he is very difficult to see at all. In the whole province there are 
really very few trees of notable stature, yet the undergrowth (including smaller trees) is so think 
and so high that it is rarely possible to see an animal even when one is close to him. I remember 
once being so near to an elephant that I could have prodded him with a salmon rod; but I could not 
see one inch of all his acres. He was feeding on small twigs; I could hear every gentle snap; I could 
hear his breathing; I could smell him. If he had taken it into his head to turn or if the wind had 
shifted, my number would have been up. He could have trampled his way to and over me without an 
effort, while I could not