104 The Rifle and Hound in Ceylon. 



greased and twisted. The arrows are three feet long, 

 formed of the same wood as the bows. The blades are 

 themselves seven inches of this length, and are flat, 

 like the blade of a dinner-knife brought to a point. 

 Three short feathers from the peacock's wing are 

 roughly lashed to the other end of the arrow. 



The Veddah in person is extremely ugly ; short, but 

 sinewy, his long, uncombed locks fall to his waist, look- 

 ing more like a horse's tail than human hair. He des- 

 pises money, but is thankful for a knife, a hatchet or a 

 gaudy-colored cloth, or brass pot for cooking. 



The women are horribly ugly, and are almost entirely 

 naked. They have no matrimonial regulations, and 

 the children are squalid and miserable. Still these peo- 

 ple are perfectly happy, and would prefer their present 

 wandering life to the most luxurious restraint. Speak- 

 ing a language of their own, with habits akin to those 

 of wild animals, they keep entirely apart from the Cin- 

 galese. They barter deer-horns and bees'-wax with the 

 traveling Moormen peddlers in exchange for their trifling 

 requirements. If they have food, they eat it ; if they 

 have none, they go without until by some chance they 

 procure it. In the mean time, they chew the bark of 

 various trees, and search for berries, while they wend 

 their way for many miles to some remembered store of 

 deer's flesh and honey, laid by in a hollow tree. 



The first time that I ever saw a Veddah was in the 

 north of the country. A rogue elephant was bathing 

 in . little pool of deep mud and water near the tank of 

 Monampitya, about six miles from the " Gunner's Coin." 

 This Veddah had killed a wild pig, and was smoking 

 the flesh within a few yards of the spot, when he sud- 

 denly heard the elephant splashing in the water. My 



