Whoever First Saw Veddah Huts In The Trees Would
Have Discovered, Upon Enquiry, That They Were Temporary Watch-Houses,
From Which They Guard A Little Plot Of Korrakan From The Attacks Of
Elephants And Other Wild Beasts.
Far from LIVING in the trees, they live
nowhere; they wander over the face of their beautiful country, and
migrate to different parts at different seasons, with the game which
they are always pursuing.
The seasons in Ceylon vary in an extraordinary
manner, considering the small size of the island. The wet season in one
district is the dry season in another, and vice versa. Wherever the dry
weather prevails, the pasturage is dried up; the brooks and pools are
mere sandy gullies and pits. The Veddah watches at some solitary hole
which still contains a little water, and to this the deer and every
species of Ceylon game resort. Here his broad-headed arrow finds a
supply. He dries the meat in long strips in the sun, and cleaning out
some hollow tree, he packs away his savoury mass of sun-cooked flesh,
and fills up the reservoir with wild honey; he then stops up the
aperture with clay.
The last drop of water evaporates, the deer leave the country and
migrate into other parts where mountains attract the rain and the
pasturage is abundant. The Veddah burns the parched grass wherever he
passes, and the country is soon a blackened surface--not a blade of
pasture remains; but the act of burning ensures a sweet supply shortly
after the rains commence, to which the game and the Veddahs will then
return.
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