Three Short Feathers
From The Peacock's Wing Are Roughly Lashed To The Other End Of The
Arrow.
The Veddah in person is extremely ugly; short, but sinewy, his long
uncombed locks fall to his waist, looking more like a horse's tail than
human hair.
He despises money, but is thankful for a knife, a hatchet,
or a gaudy-coloured cloth, or brass pot for cooking.
The women are horribly ugly and are almost entirely naked. They have no
matrimonial regulations, and the children are squalid and miserable.
Still these people are perfectly happy, and would prefer their present
wandering life to the most luxurious restraint. Speaking a language of
their own, with habits akin to those of wild animals, they keep entirely
apart from the Cingalese. They barter deer-horns and bees'-wax with the
travelling Moormen pedlers in exchange for their trifling requirements.
If they have food, they eat it; if they have none, they go without until
by some chance they procure it. In the meantime they chew the bark of
various trees, and search for berries, while they wend their way for
many miles to some remembered store of deer's flesh and honey, laid by
in a hollow tree.
The first time that I ever saw a Veddah was in the north of the country.
A rogue elephant was bathing in a little pool of deep mud and water near
the tank of Monampitya, about six miles from the 'Gunner's Coin.' This
Veddah had killed a wild pig, and was smoking the flesh within a few
yards of the spot, when he suddenly heard the elephant splashing in the
water.
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