The opening of TWO HAPPY YEARS IN CEYLON
INTRODUCTORY
There are perhaps few families in the Mother Country to whom the farther corners of Great Britain have (from the colonising or sporting instincts of its various members) become more really familiar to the imagination of the younger branches than that to which I was welcomed, as its twelfth addition.
Thus about the time of my first introduction to the immortal Robinson Crusoe, my eldest brother Penrose returned from Canada, soon to be followed by my second brother Roualeyn, who had made his mark as the pioneer of all the Lion-hunters who since then have ravaged the hunting-grounds of Southern Africa.
Then two more of the home brood started to carve their fortunes in far countries. Almost simultaneously my fourth and fifth brothers, John and William, sailed for Ceylon and Bombay, where the latter tamed wild men[1] and slew wild beasts, while the former settled down to sober cocoa-nut planting in the neighbourhood of Batticaloa; and then, through weary years of waiting for the growth of trees which never in his lifetime repaid his outlay, he obtained work in the forests on the east coast, and likewise distinguished himself as a cunning and mighty hunter, beloved by the wild …