284 The BedaJis or Vaddahs. 
were wild and savage in their appearance, and armed with bows 
and arrows. After enjoining them to live in quiet, colonel 
Champagne made them a few presents, and then ordered them 
to be released ; upon which they instantly lied away into the 
woods like deer. 
The Bedalis are scattered over the woods in different parts 
of Ceylon, but are most numerous in the province of Bintan, 
which lies to the north-east of Candy in the direction of Trin- 
comalee and Batacolo. The tribe found in this quarter ac- 
knowledges no authority but that of its own chief and religious 
men. The Bedalis are completely savage here, and have never 
entered into any intercourse with the other natives, or scarcely 
even been seen by them. Those bordering on the district of 
Jafnapatam, and the tribes who inhabit the west and south- 
west quarters of the island, between Adam’s Peak and the Ray- 
gam and Pasdam corles, are the only Bedalis who have been 
seen by Europeans, and are much less wild and ferocious than 
those who live in the forests of Bintan. 
Tlie Bedalis, as they acknowledge no power but their own 
chiefs, so they adhere, from generation to generation, to their 
own laws and customs without the smallest variation. They sub- 
sist entirely by hunting deer and other animals, with which their 
forests supply them. The cultivation of the ground is an art 
which they never attempt to practise ; nor would it indeed be 
possible for them in the thick woods and wilds which they in- 
habit, without infinite labour, to prepare the ground for the 
reception of rice or any other sort of corn. Tlie flesh of the 
animals which procure by the cliace, and the fruits which grow 
spontaneously around them, compose tli6ir whole food. They 
sleep either on trees or at the foot of them : and in the lat- 
3 
