1S5 
Petiah of Columho. 
or scooped out by the carpenters. Along the sides of it 
boards are nailed to the height of about two feet, in the form 
of a gunwale, to prevent the water getting in by raising the 
boat more above its surface. When it is necessary to carry 
large burdens inland by the canals and rivers, two or three of 
these canoes are lashed together without the out-riggers. Split 
canes, bamboes, or betel-tree, are then laid across them, so as 
to form a kind of raft ; which, though ever so much loaded, 
will draw but very little water. 
Other flat-bottomed boats are also used by the natives. They 
are of a much greater breadth than those we have described ; 
they are thatched With cocoa-tree leaves, like a house, and are 
large enough to hold couches. They are very pleasant convey- 
ances, and are much used by our officers when going on shoot- 
ing excursions. The owners of these boats, and vast numbers of 
the Cinglese, whose business it is to convey burdens by water 
from one place to another, live constantly on board of them. 
Near Columbo, in particular, I have often seen tv/o or three 
hundred of these boats in regular rows moored along the banks 
of the rivers, with entire families on board, who made them 
their habitations. Boats of our European construction are sel- 
dom or never used in Ceylon ; and indeed are hardly known to 
the natives, except at Trincomalee and Columbo. 
The street, or rather alley, which leads through Kenman’s 
gate to the outer pettah, is exceedingly narrow, and from the 
nature of the climate and its confined situation is of course 
excessively hot. Here the shroffs and money-changers have 
fixed their stations. The outer pettah is very large, and branches 
out into a number of streets which extend some of them two 
miles. At the further end of one of them stands the church; 
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