542 



THE XOKTHERX FORESTS. 



[Part IX. 



ornamented by a class of calico-painters, the descend- 

 ants of a party avIio were invited to settle here under 

 the Dutch Government, nearly two hundred years ago. 

 The goldsmiths are ingenious and excellent workmen, 

 and produce bangles, chains, and rings, whose execution 

 is as fine as their designs are tasteful. Nothing is 

 more interesting than to watch one of these primitive 

 artists at liis occupation, seated in the open air, with 

 no other apparatus that a few clumsy tools, a blow-pipe, 

 and a chatty full of sand on which to hght his charcoal- 

 fire. 



The crushing of the coco-nut for the expression of the 

 oil is another flomishing branch of trade, and for this 

 purpose the natives erect their creaking miUs under the 

 shade of the groves of palm-trees near their houses. 

 These consist of the trunk of a tree hollowed into a 

 mortar, in which a heavy upright pestle is worked round 

 by a bullock yoked to a transverse beam. 



A NATIVE OIL MILL. 



Jaffna is almost the only place in Ceylon of wliich it 

 might be said that no one is idle or unprofitably em- 

 ployed. The bazaars are fuU of activity, and stocked 

 with a greater variety of fruits and vegetables than is 

 to be seen in any other town in the island. Every one 

 appears to be more or less busy ; and at tlie season of 

 the year when labour is not in demand at liome, num- 

 bers of the natives 2:0 off to trade in tlie interior ; 



