200 
Manners and Customs of the CeyIo?iese, 
feats of activity for which the natives of Ilindostan are so fa- 
mous ; for all the jugglers, dancers, and conjurors, who are at 
any time found in Ceylon, are universally from the contiiient. 
The dispirited and oppressed state under which the Cinglese 
have so long groaned, may indeed be supposed to have among 
them extinguished the practice of their original amusements; 
but during the whole time of my stay on the island, and after 
the minutest enquiries, I never could learn of any diversions 
in use among the Candians. It is indeed to be supposed that 
in their more flourishing state, they had, like other nations, 
some recreations for their leisure hours ; and Mr. Knox records 
one or two rvhich in his time still continued in use at iiew- 
years and particular festivals : '■but their perpetual contests with 
the Portuguese and Dutch, joined to the tyranny of their own 
internal government, have probably succeeded, along with tlie 
gloom of their superstition, in destroying those glimmerings of 
humane and social enjoyment, which were just beginning to 
break through the dark ferocity of barbarism. 
During the wet season, the Ceylonese are subject to a variety 
of diseases. Every man is here his own physician, and the mode 
of cure practised is of course very simple. A plaister of herbs 
or of cow dung is universally applied to the part affected ; 
and I have seen the same remedy applied to a man in a high 
fever, wdien his whole body was daubed over with this ointment. 
Leprosy appears to be very prevalent among them, and the 
streets of Columbo swarm with Cinglese beggars labouring under 
this distressing disease. I have seen some of these objects with 
their 'skins party-coloured, half black and half white; for this 
disease leaves white blotches and spots in all those places of 
the skin wiiere it breaks out, and it is not uncommon to see 
