Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/The City of the Flying-fox

​
THE CITY OF THE FLYING-FOX.
PART I.
Far up in the dense jungle of Ceylon, some five-and-twenty miles from Colombo, a road was required to connect two main arteries of communication; and I, a happy, healthy, and needy lieutenant in her Majesty’s land forces, was sent to cut the tracing and make the necessary estimate. I had a gang of Malabar pioneers who were enrolled for road-work in military fashion, with sub-officers, Serjeants, and corporals, very complete. There was also a native assistant-surgeon, and a clerk to keep the accounts. At the head of my little black army I marched across the district, and finding—without difficulty—the spot of intended operations, halted and selected at once a suitable camping-ground. We were allowed seven days in which to make ourselves comfortable—not too much to clear the ground and throw up mud-huts for two hundred souls—but an abundance of material, such as clay, wood and water, facilitated matters wonderfully. Before the end of the week smoke was seen rising from quite a little township forming three sides of a large open square, the fourth being occupied by my bungalow, which had been built with considerable ingenuity opposite on a rising

Đọc bản gốc tại Wikisource tiếng Anh