AN ITINERARY OF THE VEBdA COUNTRY. 169 



after a brief visit to the chena settlement of Welanpelle, which was 

 certainly not worth the detour we made to reach it, we went on to 

 Alutnuwara, where we found the main part of our baggage which 

 had been sent on by the good track from Kallodi. 



The Sinhalese new year now made it necessary to give our men a 

 holiday, so, after a couple of days of quiet spent in working up notes, 

 we crossed the Mahaweli-ganga and walked to Madugoda, climbing 

 en. route the Gallepadahulla, or pass of one thousand steps, the old 

 pilgrim route to Alutnuwara. A zig-zag road up the hill, which is 

 practicable for bulls, has been made, but in spite of this and the 

 disrepair into which the stone steps of the pass have fallen, we met 

 a fair number of pilgrims, and, tiring though the climb was, the view 

 from the top of the pass over Uva and the valley of the Mahaweli- 

 ganga was certainly worth the effort. After a pleasant week spent 

 at Kandy we returned by the same route to Alutnuwara, where we 

 encountered considerable trouble in obtaining cooHes, which would 

 have been really serious if it had not been for the kindness of Mr. 

 C. Herft, District Engineer, who lent us a batch of road Tamils. 

 From here we started to walk down the valley of the Mahaweli-ganga 

 to visit the Vedda communities which were said to exist stretching 

 northwards and eastwards into Tamankaduwa. Although we ex- 

 pected to find these Veddas had come much under Sinhalese and 

 Tamil influence, it was necessary to do this in order to obtain a full 

 list of the Vedda clans {warge) , for there were a number of clans of 

 wliich we had obtained the names without being able to verify the 

 existence. Our first halt was made at Hemberawa, £\;bout eighteen 

 miles from Alutnuwara, a compact village of potters who are con- 

 sidered of so low a caste that the ArachcM, who is theoretically in 

 charge of them, lives at or in the neighbourhood of Alutnuwara, one 

 of their own men being appointed Vidane, and making an extremely 

 efficient village headman. This man told us that he and his people 

 were the descendants of Veddas; whether this accounts for the 

 greater energy than usual displayed by the villagers seems doubtful, 

 but we had little difficulty in persuading this man and a number of 

 his villagers to act as guides and carriers to Polonnaruwa in place of 

 the Alutnuwara men, who were already clamouring to be sent back. 

 The houses of the village of Hemberawa are rather unusually closely 

 crowded together ; very many of them have a potter's wheel in front 

 of them under a hghtly built thatch, and between the houses there 

 are many fragments of broken pots, some of them of extremely good 

 design and evidently portions of vessels of unusual dimensions. 

 There were a number of young betel vines growing about the village, 

 and one of these was protected from the evil eye in an interesting 

 and, as we believe, infrequent manner. Instead of the usual 

 blackened inverted pot with white designs on it, the skull of a buffalo 

 was carefuUy placed at the foot of the prop up which the vine was 

 climbing, in order, as we were assured, to exert the protective 

 influence already alluded to (figure 5). 



