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Manners and Customs of the Ceylonese. 
Owing to the early intercourse of the women with the other 
sex, for they are in general even regularly married at twelve, 
they soon lose the appearance of youth, and get old and hag- 
gart in their looks immediately after they pass twenty. The 
climate indeed conduces much to this early decay ; and they 
expose themselves so much to the sun, that were it not for 
the quantities of cocoa-nut oil with which they anoint them- 
selves profusely, their skins would soon crack and break out in 
blotches. 
The Cinglese women are much more pleasant in their man- 
ners, and I may add, more elegant in their persons ,than those 
of the other Indian nations. Their extreme cleanliness is a trait 
which renders them particularly agreeable to an Englishman, 
although he finds it something difficult to reconcile himself to 
the strong exhalations of the cocoa-nut oil. 
The Ceylonese, like other inhabitants of warm climates, are 
particularly fond of bathing, and often plunge into the water 
several times a day. In this gratification, however, they are 
often interrupted by alligators, of which they entertain the 
greatest terror; and are obliged to have recourse to precautions 
against this dreadful enemy, by inclosing with a strong paling 
a little spot on the side of a pond or river, sufficiently large 
to allow them room to wash and refresh themselves. 
Gravity, that constant cliaracteristic of the savage state, still 
continues among the Ceylonese in a much greater degree than 
might be expected from their stage of civilization. This is 
probably owing to the gloomy superstitious fears which, they 
imbibe from their infancy, and which continue to embitter their 
existence ever after. Sports and diversions are almost entirely 
unknown among them. None of them attempt those tricks and 
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