174 
THE ISLAND OF CEYLON. 
spoons ; but like other Indians, place themselves on the 
ground, and eat their food with their hands. The houses of 
the Candians, are neater and better constructed than those of 
the Cinglese ; for although the latter are accustomed to better 
models, yet the abject state to which their minds have been 
reduced by the successive tyranny of the Portuguese and 
Dutch, has made them rather go back than advance in 
improvement, since they ceased to form part of a barbarous 
empire. 
Their villages and towns, instead of presenting that com- 
pact appearance to which we are accustomed, look more like 
a number of distinct houses scattered up and down in the 
midst of a thick wood or forest. There is not the smallest 
regularity observed, but every one places his hut in the cen- 
tre of a cocoa-tree tope, in the most convenient spot lie can 
find. In those mountainous parts where sustenance itself can 
scarcely be procured, and where the natives live in constant 
danger of attack from wild beasts, of being annoyed by rep- 
tiles, or suddenly overtaken by inundations, it is usual for 
them to build their huts on the summits of rocks, or the 
tops of high trees. Some of them fix a number of high 
posts in the ground, and place upon them a sort of hurdle 
which serves them for a nocturnal habitation. To preserve 
themselves from the intense rays of the sun, they universally 
have the large leaf of the talipot-tree carried over their 
heads. 
The Ceylonese are exceedingly polite and ceremonious, and 
