Friday, the 16th,-this morning we fully expected our English letters; we had been expecting them since the 12th, having left orders that they were to be forwarded. As we have always encamped upon the high road-such as it is--they cannot have missed us. We were again doomed to disappointment; and this is a disappointment which none but they who have been in distant lands can fully appreciate. We started early, and walked a long way through a most beautiful country for game of all sorts. B-- and I both shot at a pig; we saw a buffalo and an elk, but they were both too much on the alert for us. In the afternoon Lgot a slight touch of fever, and determined not to go out; so B- and I started and walked through the jungle, without seeing a head of game,-by game, I mean large game, as we dont count hare, peafowl, &c. On our return we found L- much better, and that he had been out a bit. Next day, Saturday, 17th, L- still rather seedy, and remained at home. Having given his gun to his hunter, we then started off, and soon came upon a buffalo in the open, which Bgot a good shot at, 80 yards off. L sent his bullet clean through him; but he only went away lame, and we saw no more of him. We then met a large herd of elephants; B shot, and missed a fine old cow facing him. Away they all went; we followed up the wounded cow; I had six shots at her, B― five. I then stopped to load, when Ramblan, the hunter, came up to us, and said he had killed two, and there was another with tusks close by. Off I went like lightning after the tusker, whom I found lamenting over his mother and brother (the two Ramblan had killed); I fired, and brought him on his knee; but, while down, Ramblan gave him another, for fear, as he said, of one tusky go away," though I had made him perfectly safe. We cut off the tusks, and then went to the top of a high rock, called "Accagalla," where we had a most splendid view. Before starting on my trip, one of my brother officers bet me a five-pound-note I did not kill three elephants myself: I took it and won it to-day. We saw two elk, and two deer after; I took a long shot at a deer. I made up my mind not to fire long shot at deer or elk, as it is not at all easy even to hit them with ball, and its great odds if you get them even then, as they are in the jungle directly. B made a good shot at a peafowl, and dropped him; but the jungle was so thick we could not find him. On our return, we found L much better; he had been out, and killed a hare and peacock for the "pot." He was immensely disgusted with our luck with the "tusker." He has been out very often before-and never missed a day from fever-and never came across a tusker; and here were we, two young hands, getting one our first trip. B—— and I went out again, but brought nothing-found L had been out and bagged a pig and a hare. We celebrated the "tusker" with champagne. Next day, Sunday, moved on to Galle. In the middle of the day I was enjoying a quiet nap, when I was awoke with the joyous sound of "Overlands." "Hurrah!" cried I, and off the bed like a shot out of a gun. In the afternoon, B- and I went out for the "pot:" B-- killed a hare, I a peahen and jackall. I could hardly bring myself to put up my gun to kill the latter, as the creature put me so much in mind of a fresh fox going away for a "forty minutes spirt" over the best country. That evening made up the week's bag: it consisted of eleven elephants, two buffaloes, three wild pigs, and two jackalls. My share,-three elephants, and two jackalls, also had a hand in the two buffaloes and one pig. L's share was two elephants, and one pig; B,'s three elephants, and one pig,-both of them, also, shared in the honours of the two buffaloes and one pig. Ramblan killed the other three elephants. Our small game had been three hares, three peafowl, and one teal::-we never killed more than was necessary for the "pot," else, we could have made up a large bag in almost no time. Rebiew of Ancient Athletic Sports. TH HE term Athletic Sports is altogether of modern date, it would not have been understood by the ancients; to them gymnastic exercises were no pastime, but a serious and important part in the training of youth. The whole education of a Greek had three divisions, letters, music, and gymnastics, but these last occupied as much time and labour as the two others put together; indeed at a certain period of life those ceased, and gymnastics alone continued to be practised, not only in youth but in adult and mature age. Greek physicians and philosophers were alike convinced of the intimate connection between body and soul; their faith was muscular, the chief article being that physical and mental health went together. That their creed was not unsound, the result has proved; for while the body received from these exercises that beautiful development which has made Greek art a pattern to all succeeding generations, so, if not in consequence of these exercises, at least in connection with them, the triumphs of the Greek intellect have been no less, and perhaps even more predominant. Taking gymnastics in its comprehensive classical sense, it may be divided into the agonistic and the athletic arts; the former was pursued for the purpose of improving their health and bodily strength by those, who though they sometimes contended for prizes in the public games did not, like the athletes, devote their whole lives to the preparation for these contests. In fact the one was an amateur, the other a professional. But in early times, as in the present, there were persons of considerable political and social importance who obtained prizes at the national games, but who did not follow athletic exercises as a profession. Thus we read in the eighth book of Herodotus, in his enumeration of the naval forces at Salamis, that, of the nations resident beyond the river Acheron, the Crotoniatoes were the only people that came to the succour of Hellas, when she was in danger, with one ship, whose commander was Phyallus, and he was thrice a Pythian victor But as the preparation for these contests involved more and more extraordinary efforts, it was found that a severe and exclusive course of training was necessary to insure any chance of obtaining victory. Hence arose a class of men, the professional athletes, who in the latter and more degenerate days of Rome, alone contended in the public games while numerous spectators enjoyed the easy luxury of a self-indulgent criticism. This was the division of the exercised. Of the exercises themselves there was a distinction between the pancratium and the pentathlon, though both were events common to the gymnasium, and the great religious festival games. The former was more akin to our boxing and wrestling combined, a violent and hard exercise which does not now enter into athletic sports, but is confined to professionals and the prize ring, and therefore needs no description here. There were also on the one hand in the national games, chariot and horse races, (with which, not being bodily exercises, we do not conceive ourselves to be concerned) and on the other, in the gymnasia, boyish sports, such as ball playing, boys pulling at the two ends of a rope, ("French and English "), top spinning, playing at "dubs," and the like, which are also foreign to our subject. We will, therefore chiefly direct our attention to the pentathlon as more nearly corresponding to athletic sports as now understood, both in its own nature and in the position, as gentlemen, of those who practised it in old time, and who, we hope, will never cease to practise its corresponding equivalents now. The pentathlon consisted of five distinct kinds of games, viz: leaping (apa), foot race (8póuos), disc throwing (diokos), spear hurling (ákovrov), wrestling (ráλn). In their entirety, and in their performance on the same day, and in a certain order, by the same athletes, they belong to the time in which the great national games of Greece were instituted, though different parts of the course are mentioned in early times as being practised by the old Heroes. Boxing, wrestling, leaping, and running are the four classes enumerated by Alcinous (Odyssey VIII., 103) as practised by the Phœacians: Περιγιγνόμεθ ̓ ἄλλων Πύξ τε, παλαισμοσύνη τε, καὶ ἅλμασιν, ἠδὲ πόδεσσιν.” (1.) Boxing, wrestling, running, archery, and spear-throwing were the challenges which Odysseus gave the Phoacians, and which were declined by them, after they had proof of his disc hurling powers. (Odyssey VIII., 205, etc.) The leaping was one of the most prominent parts of the Pentathlon, as it is one of the chief events in our modern games; but it seems to have been practised then in a somewhat different manner. We do not know that there are any records of the "long jump," the "high jump," or the "hurdle jump." The ancients seem to have leapt with masses of metal (aλripes graves massa) something like our dumb bells in both hands, though, probably, this was not the earlier practice. In the account of the Phœacian games (Odyssey VIII.) Amphialus is said to have been far the first; but, very provokingly, it is not said whether it was the "high jump," and whether he reached 5ft. 9in. as Messrs. Little and Roupell, of Cambridge University, did at the champion meeting of the Amateur Athletic Club, on March 23rd, 1866. The foot race. There were diversities in this, either the simple foot race (Spóμo) in which the performers went in a straight run from the starting post to the goal; or, the double foot race, (díavλos dpóμos) in which the goal was rounded, and the starting point was also the winning-post; or the race of the heavy-armed (tŵv óñditâv dpóμos), in which the runners were in panoply. This last is something for our volunteers, in full marching order, to look forward to. In the Phœacian games (Odyssey VIII.) the course seems to have been a straight one, and the "blameless Clytoneus" was the victor, the rest were nowhere, the difference being represented as that in the speed of mules against oxen in ploughing a furrow-an agricultural comparison not probably appreciated at Beaufort House, but well understood by any heavy-land farmer, if horses be substituted for mules. The race in the funeral games at the tomb of Patroclus (Iliad 23) was the diavλos, and, as usual, Ajax's luck was bad; he would have been the victor, but for the help which the goddess Athené gave Odysseus. The foot race in the fifth book of the Æneid, except so far as it is a mere copy of the games in the twenty-third Iliad, is after the manner usual in Virgil's own days, in the circus at Rome; as the Ludus Trojae (revived and celebrated by Augustus) in the same book, was described by Virgil under the form of an equestrian exercise, in which Ascanius and a certain number of selected Trojan boys exhibit the evolutions of a mock battle. The disc throwing has no exact parallel in modern times, though putting the weight or throwing the hammer is ejusdem generis. This has been termed among ourselves an "ungraceful and unmeaning effort;" but disc throwing was especially lauded among the ancients. It was practised in the heroic age. Whilst Achilles continued still wrathful, and lay in his dark sea-traversing ships, muttering wrath against Agamemnon, and while his horses were eating their heads off on trefoil and parsley, his forces amused themselves with disc throwing and dart hurling (Iliad II., 1773.) Something more than a disc—a rudely molten mass of iron which the great might of Eëtion used to hurl-Achilles Iliad XXIII.) proposed as the projectile at the funeral games in honour of Patroclus, when Epëus got laughed at; but Polypotes cast it as far as a cowman can throw his crook, however far that may be. It was also the game in which Odysseus, without taking his coat off (avrŵ páper), and with a disc bigger, thicker, and stouter than those puny ones which the Phœacians used, far surpassed all his competitors who had been most impudently chaffing him. But then it must be remembered that he had the goddess Athené for a marker which was hardly fair. (Odyssey VIII., 186, &c.) "Then, mantled as he was, he rushed in rage Worsley. It could have been wished that the weight of the disc had been given, and that Athené had been provided with a measuring tape. |