AN ITINERARY OF THE VEDDA COUNTRY. 157 



feared some misunderstanding, but when one of us was shown within 

 one of their temples, into which after some trouble he was allowed 

 to penetrate, a small model of a ship partly square rigged was seen, 

 and it was stated that at a special ceremony this was hoisted to the 

 top of a pole some thirty feet tall which stood outside the temple ; 

 it appeared that there was no reason to doubt the substantial accu- 

 ra,cy of the information given, and the matter is brought forward 

 here in the hope that some of the readers of Spolia may be able and 

 walling to give some details of this' worship, and perhaps trace its 

 origin. On the way back from Batticaloa we stopped at Kallodi, 

 and here, from the remains of the folk of Unapane and Idipola we 

 obtained the first hint of the possible existence of the remains of a 

 hunting language, for an informant, of whom we asked the words 

 for bear and deer, showed considerable hesitation before he would 

 give these words. 



We reached Bandarawela with some hours to spare, which were 

 spent on the patanas quite close to the town, where we were de- 

 lighted to find a number of flakes and worked fragments of quartz. 



We returned to Colombo, and after a certain amount of delay, 

 caused, first, by the necessity of overhauling gear and going through 

 the collections in the Colombo and Kandy Museums, and subse- 

 quently by the wet weather, work was begun with Bibile as base. 

 Through lack of appreciation of the amount of fresh food that was 

 always obtainable in the jungle, we were unduly hampered at the 

 outset by the amount of tinned food and biscuit that we carried, 

 and the number of our tavalam bulls was unnecessarily great. The 

 first day's march was to the Public Works Department bungalow 

 at Nilgala, where, owing to the unexpectedly wet weather, several 

 days were spent. On the way to Nilgala we passed a number of 

 graves of the village Sinhalese, usually occurring in groups of two or 

 three; the litter, ornamented with red and white, on which the body 

 is carried to the grave, being left to decay by the side of the burial 

 mound. Mr. Bibile, who had been attached to us as interpreter and 

 assistant, told us that usually each family had its own burial area. 

 In spite of the wet tlie time spent at Nilgala bungalow was 'not 

 wasted, for we were kept busy making colour and other tests upon 

 the local Sinlialese for comparison with the results which we hoped 

 later to obtain from the Veddas. A number of optical illusions were 

 also shown these people, who were most interested, and saw nearly 

 all the illusions well, afterAvards explaining the reason of parallel 

 line illusions to each other with much excitement and illustrating 

 their reasoning on their fingers. 



On the first fine morning we started early for the Danigala Veddas, 

 about eighteen of whom are all that remain of the Nilgala Veddas, 

 who in 1858 numbered 72 souls.* The road was interesting, for it 



* J. Bailey: "Wild Tribes of the Veddas of Ceylon." Trans. Ethn. Sec, 

 I8G3, p. 28. 



