GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS. 



441 



locations for sanitariums, prosaic work, indeed, 

 but not less full of promise in the future devel- 

 opment of Hindostan in its aspects of civiliza- 

 tion and commerce. The past year has not 

 been less prolific than its predecessors in nar- 

 ratives of these explorations. The Schlagent- 

 weit brothers have continued the publication 

 of their interesting work on the Himalayas ; 

 Dr. Hooker has contributed new additions to 

 Indian botany ; Messrs. Montgomery and Thuil- 

 lier have pushed their investigations into Little 

 Thibet and Cashmere, ~and the results of their 

 labors have been laid before the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society in two interesting papers. 

 Major Walker has communicated to the "Jour- 

 nal of the Asiatic Society" at Calcutta a 

 "Memoir on the Trigonometrical Survey of In- 

 dia," and recent additions to the geographical 

 knowledge of districts bordering on the British 

 trans-Indus frontier. Capt. Knight has pub- 

 lished "The Diary of a Pedestrian in Cash- 

 mere and Thibet; " Rev. H. Baker, "The Hill 

 Aryans of Travancore," and another mission- 

 ary, in the " Church Missionary Intelligencer, 

 " Travancore and its Population ; " Dr. Hugh 

 Cleghorn, "The Forests and Gardens of South 

 India ;" Prof.Flechia, "Impero Anglo- Indiana ; " 

 Dr. Hoffmeister (the botanist of Prince Wal- 

 demar's expedition), an interesting account of 

 the botanical peculiarities of Ceylon, the 

 Himalaya, and the frontiers of Thibet, in the 

 Relation du Voyage of that expedition. Mr. 

 Howard laid before the Linnasan Society of 

 London, in June, 1863, specimens of chinchona 

 bark and quinine, procured from the trans- 

 planted chinchona of India, demonstrating the 

 success of the transplantation. Messrs. Cassels 

 and Medlicott have published further communi- 

 cations concerning the cultivation of cotton in 

 India. Mr. Stokes has read a paper " On the 

 Indian Arc of Meridian" before the Royal So- 

 ciety, which has been published in the " Phil- 

 osophical Transactions." Surveys have been 

 made by direction of the Admiralty, and maps 

 and charts prepared and published of the Strait 

 of Palk, the Gulf of Manaar, part of the coast 

 of Ceylon, and the currents of the Gulf of Ben- 

 gal during the southwest monsoon. 



A paper was read before the Ethnological 

 Society of London, at its December meeting, 

 prepared by a Tamil, a native of Ceylon, on the 

 Weddos or Widdos, a tribe in the interior of 

 that island, of whom little has been hitherto 

 known. They are supposed to be the direct 

 descendants of some royal families or chiefs 

 who were driven into the forests of the interior 

 when the island was invaded by the Buddhists 

 2,200 years ago. They have remained entirely 

 distinct from the other races of the island 

 neither intermarrying nor commingling with 

 them in any way. The men have occasionally 

 exchanged wax, ivory and dried venison for 

 salt and arrow root. They have recently com- 

 menced cultivating the soil, but subsist chiefly 

 on the flesh of wild animals, which they kill 

 with the bow and arrow and preserve in honey. 



They have no knowledge of fire arms ; but 

 are expert in the use of the bow and arrow 

 killing their game at the distance of sixty yards. 

 They are a miserable looking race, and speak 

 a dialect of Cingalese mixed with Telinga, 

 which is not generally understood by the 

 Cingalese. They worship a tortoise, called 

 Ebba, as their only divinity, making sacrifices 

 to it in sickness and at childbirth. If the sick 

 person for whom the offering is made does not 

 speedily recover, he or she is abandoned to die 

 alone, and the body remains unburied. The 

 women of the tribe are totally secluded ; 

 strangers are not permitted to approach their 

 villages, and a father never sees his daughter 

 after she has grown up, nor a mother her male 

 children after they have reached the age of 

 manhood. Formerly the tribe wore no cloth- 

 ing, but within the last generation or two they 

 have adopted a scanty wardrobe. 



The pearl fisheries of Ceylon have been fa- 

 mous for ages, and have yielded a princely reve- 

 nue to the sovereigns of the island. The Dutch 

 Government formerly held the monopoly of 

 the fishery of the Tinnevelly Pearl Banks near 

 Tuticorin, and received a net income of about 

 $100,000 per annum from it ; but they seem 

 to have fished too recklessly, and the product 

 had greatly diminished before it passed into 

 the hands of the English. In 1822 the revenue 

 derived was about $65,000, and in 1830 about 

 $50,000; but from that time till 1860-'G1 there 

 was no yield. In 1861, "fthere was a revenue to 

 the Government of over $100,000, and in 1862 

 about the same sum ; but in 1863 there was a fail- 

 ure, owing, the divers believed, to the presence 

 of two other mollusks on the banks, called 

 Soorum and Kollikoz (belonging to the families 

 Modidla and Avicula), which destroyed the 

 oysters. The pearl oyster, it should be said, 

 is not a true oyster, but rather a mussel, secur- 

 ing itself to the rocks by a byssus or foot, 

 which it can throw off at pleasure. Th super- 

 intendent of the Tinnevelly Pearl Banks, Capt. 

 Phipps, has now undertaken to propagate the 

 pearl oyster by an artificial system, putting the 

 adult oyster into a basin walled in and strewed 

 with loose coral, and rearing the young oysters 

 in a division of the basin till they are of suffi- 

 cient age to be removed to one of the pearl banks, 

 which has been cleared of all offensive or de- 

 structive shell fish, mud, &c. By thus stocking 

 the banks successfully, he is confident that the 

 fishery can be kept hereafter at its highest 

 point of productiveness, and the pearls of Tu- 

 ticorin now, as of old, be in demand in all the 

 markets of the world. 



Turning now to AFRICA, we find the veil of 

 Isis at least partially lifted, and the secret of the 

 source of the White Nile, sought for more than 

 three thousand years in vain, at last exposed. 



The history of the discovery is deeply inter- 

 esting: all efforts to penetrate to the source 

 of the White Nile by ascending the river had 

 utterly failed; partly from the ferocity and 

 hostility of the tribes who dwelt on its upper 



