408 THE NOKTHEEN FOKESTS. [Part IX. 



blank as an " Uiiexplored district ;" — yet it is by no 

 means destitute of population. Scattered throughout its 

 recesses, there exists a senii-ci\dlised race, whose members 

 have httle or no intercourse with the inhabitants of the 

 rest of the island, but dwell apart in these deep sohtudes, 

 subsisting by the cultivation of rice, generally in the 

 basins of deserted tanks, or on the marghis of the neglected 

 watercourses. 



One vast expanse to the north-east of the Kandyan 

 mountains is known by the name of the Vedda-ratta, 

 or country of the Yeddahs, a harmless and uncivihsed 

 tribe, who hve in caves, or inhabit rude dwellings con- 

 structed of bark and grass. For food they are dependent 

 upon then- arrows, and they never leave the \'icinity of 

 their solitary homes, except at certain periods of the 

 year, when they visit the confines of the civilised country 

 in order to barter honey and dried deer-flesh for arrow- 

 heads and other articles, essential in their rude mode of 

 life. 



The influence of the successive settlements planted 

 in turn by Em^opeans, on the confines of tliis secluded 

 district, has never penetrated far within its borders. 

 Whilst the forts and the factories estabhshed by the 

 Portuguese and the Dutch, at Batticaloa, Cottiar, and 

 Trmcomahe on the eastern coast, and at Jafhia and 

 Manaar on the west, enabled them to maintain a suffi- 

 ciently secure position for the protection of their com- 

 merce, no evidence remains of their having estabhshed, 

 or sought to estabhsh, then* authority permanently in 

 the interior of Neuera-kalawa or the Wanny. Even 

 the English, tiU recently, devoted no attention to these 

 outlying provinces ; but a highway has lately been cut 

 due north and south through the central forests, 

 from Jafliia to Kandy; one branch extending eastward 

 to Trincomahe, and a second westward through Anarnja- 

 poora to Putlam. Other roads are in progress, leachng 

 to the interior from those points on the coast Avhere the 

 Malabar Coohes disembark, on arriving from the con- 



